and Augustan policy he set about the arduous task of blending the appearance of a Commonwealth with the functions of royalty—of exhibiting, in semblance at least, the uncommon spectacle of a Citizen King—a monarch who should be at once the lord and the equal, the master and the servant of his people. It is doubtful whe her success in such an attempt is possible. At first the reign of Louis Philippe seemed to hold out the fairest prospects to France; nor would it be charitable to conclude that at first he did not sincerely desire her welfare. By extraordinary labor and wisdom he strove to conciliate every section of the community; to diffuse such a degree of liberty as an accurate understanding of the French people justified him in supposing they could safely bear; to restrain their extraordinary thirst for military renown; to cultivate relations of amity with the states of Europe, and thus gradually to blot out the impression of their having a dangerous neighbor; to procure for France, by peaceful measures, the blessings which former occurrences might well induce the prudent to despair of obtaining by forcible means.

Still even during the best period of Louis Philippe's reign, the liberties of France were very much circumscribed. It would be a great mistake to imagine that her people enjoyed any thing like the political privileges of the English. Her parliamentary constituency was a mere fraction in comparison; the press was checked in a manner which the British would not have tolerated; the king assumed a control over his ministers to which no British cabinet would have submitted; the system of police espionage was not a whit less strict than it was under the Empire; the centralization of all power in Paris remained as complete as ever; and the evidences of a military rule were every where conspicuous. We are not sure that the king ever contemplated any relaxation of these oppressive restrictions. But the death of the Duke of Orleans, his eldest son, appears to have fixed his determination, and he resolved on rather tightening than slackening the reins. That melancholy event roused him to a sense of the instability of his throne, and evidently overbore his desire of the public good by the stronger and far less laudable desire of establishing his own dynasty. In common with all Europe he perceived that the sudden removal of the heir apparent swept away the most trusted part of the foundation of his power. He could no longer afford to be patriotic. The brief remainder of his own life time was all he had left to build up the fabric which had been shattered by this one blow; and thenceforth he seems to have commenced and carried or that series of schemes and intrigues for personal and family aggrandizement which, coming at last into decided conflict with the popular party, whose discontent had been long accumulating, ended in his ignominious expulsion from the realm.

Of the three revolutions in France none has been confined in its immediate effects to that country alone. The first convulsed all Europe for more than twenty years. The second, which placed

Louis Philippe on the throne, led to reform in the British Parliament—a movement equivalent to a revolution, inasmuch as it gave power to a portion of the working classes, entirely changed the constitution and composition of municipal corporations, and popularized the government to a degree that was scarcely anticipated by Earl Grey himself. The second French revolution also brought on the severance of Belgium from Holland, and sowed the seeds of constitutional principles in some of the continental monarchies. The third revolution is already far more extensive in its results than the second, and bids fair to issue in consequences which, we trust, will vastly promote the cause of liberty all over the world. We hope that, ere the onward impulse is expended, Italy, where it began, shall have revived from her long lethargy, and manifested the mind and the majesty which anciently rendered her the greatest country on the earth; that Germany, with its numerous principalities and varied governments, shall have assumed a place worthy of the extraordinary endowments of her people; that Poland shall once more have been numbered among the nations; that Greece, second only to Palestine in noble associations, shall really have started to life agein; and that even Spain and Portugal, now downtrodden and distracted, shall remember and emulate their former glories. Neither would we withhold our sympathy and our hope from benighted Turkey, anti-christian though she be, nor from Russia, that vulture of the North, which seems to watch the expected carnage, and whet her beak and her talons for the spoil. Why should not the tide of freedom roll as far towards the arctic lines and the rising sun, as to water a tree of liberty planted amid the wilds of Tartary and in the imperial city of Constantine? Nor lastly can we exclude from our aspirations the condition of unhappy Ireland. May she, too, rise from the present convulsions purified, although for the time being weakened, and though rent in the ordeal through which she appears destined to pass, yet with renovated frame and prepared to attain the full measure of that strength which her fine race of men, and her ample natural resources entitle and require her to possess !

Should these events follow, America may justly indulge the proud reflection that it was she who led the way in the glorious career of emancipation. Her success in the war which shook off the yoke of England gave Europe the first lesson in the power of a good cause and a determined people. It was no doubt her success that hastened the great revolution in France when, notwithstanding its terrible concomitants and despotic termination, the strength of the masses and the comparative weakness of kings was demonstrated, the citizens acquired experience in revolutionary movements, and an inextinguishable love of freedom was implanted in the hearts of the French nation. The first revolution prepared the country for the second, and the second for the third. We repeat, therefore, that if the consequences we anticipate shall result from the present commotions in Europe, the nations in that quar

ter of the world will not only be indebted to this country for a model after which they may frame their policy, but for the original impulse which set the wheels of the car of Liberty in motion.

The question, however, is how far these nations are fitted for institutions similar to our own. And first let us glance at France herself.

The intrigues of Louis Philippe have succeeded to such a degree that out of France there now exists a family of royal pretenders, enjoying great wealth and powerful alliances, and possessed of no contemptible talents. It is not to be expected that so many dukes and princes will rest in obscurity and make no attempt to recover their father's throne. For a century yet to come they and their heirs will trouble France. They are a hundred-fold more able to do so than the exiled Stuarts were to endanger the Hanoverian dynasty of England.

Again the French people differ widely from the people of America or even of Great Britain in the feeling of self reliance, and in the practice of constitutional rights. The system of centralization in France has made the metropolis every thing and the provinces nothing. Paris, it has been often said, is France-and hence while, in that kingdom, revolutions are easy and short, the population are ill prepared to reap the advantages of the change. A despotism may be established before they have learned the arts of freedom, and in consequence of their very unfitness for selfgovernment.

Farther we do not hesitate to add that the religion of France is not the religion for a republic. Catholicism and Liberty cannot coexist. The one must strangie the other. We believe, however, that the men of France have sense enough to set the priests packing, to enfranchise the consciences of the nation, and chase into its native darkness the impudent imposture of purgatory. Indeed one of the most desirable results of the European overturns would be the extinction of spiritual as well as political despotism.

That an emeute such as has occurred in Paris, happening in London, or any great British city, would terrify Victoria into an abdication, or produce a change from monarchy to republicanism, no man in his senses can believe. Although a considerable number of the citizens and laborers both in England and Scotland are, we know, republicans at heart, still the immense majority of the nation are sincerely attached to the British constitution-as sincerely-nay as enthusiastically attached to it as Americans are to theirs, and they are convinced that it has within itself a susceptibility of accommodation, and progress—a vis medicatrix-which needs not the application of violent remedies, far less of total regeneration. The ministry and not the monarch of Great Britain, are so entirely and truly its rulers; the British press is so completely free; the middle classes of the country have such an immense interest in its quietude, and a power so competent to preserve it, that the lower orders neither feel the employment of phy

sical force to be necessary for obtaining their desires, nor likely to prove successful if attempted. Agitation and moral force are their proper weapons; and their battle must be fought in public meetings peacefully conducted, in the newspaper and the pamphlet, and above all on the floor of the Commons' house of Parliament. Tampering with the army is out of the question. There are no citizen soldiers in England-and among her red-cross ranks no politics except loyalty to the imperial standard. Military interference with the civil affairs is jealously guarded against. A soldier, while his name is on the roll, has no voice in political matters and cares for none. Nay more, even in civil life, no one who enjoys her majesty's pay-from the exciseman or the keeper of a pennypost receiving house, up to the prime minister, exercises the parliamentary franchise. The servants of the crown, especially in the army, are required to relinquish this privilege, not more for the sake of preserving inviolate the rights of the people from government interference, than to retain for protection of the crown an army unbiassed and undisturbed by party predilections. This watchfulness is very clearly shown in the fact that no body of troops is allowed to remain in a town during the election of a member of Parliament. It is alleged that with reference to the state of Ireland the Irish soldiers are disaffected. We have no doubt this is to some extent true; and we could easily account for it, did we not wish to avoid the vituperation of ignorant or interested persons. But, as was the case during the holding of the monster meetings in 1843-44, the Commander-in-Chief will see that the Irish regiments are sent on service elsewhere than to their native land, while there the garrisons will be filled with regiments of Scotch and English. The embodiment of a militia in Britain and their employment in Ireland is a much more questionable source of strength. That force must be drawn by ballot from the class comprising the great body of the chartists, whose loyalty, especially when they are thus recruited, may not be much to be depended on. Yet after all there is no community of feeling between the chartists and the repealers. The former were denounced by Mr. O'Connell, and he was not a greater enemy to Sir Robert Peel than to Feargus O'Conner.

But while we do not believe that there will be bloodshed, at least to any extent, in Great Britain, we cannot entertain the same hope with respect to Ireland. We have little doubt that if repeal is not granted the sword will be drawn, and wo to the land before it is again placed in the scabbard! Its famishing millions will be thinned in the civil conflict. Their tumultuary ranks cannot stand now, any more than in 1798, before the discipline of the regular troops, and we have yet to learn that the Irish are prepared, like the Scots under Wallace, or the Americans under Washington, to rise above repeated reverses, and persevere in a desperate struggle till a late and laborious success shall crown their efforts. If, as the French stormed the Tuilleries, they could carry Dublin castle

by assault, and so have done with the matter, they need not despair of an appeal to arms. But this would only be the beginning of the war; and they would find that English stubbornness is only to be met and mastered by the equal stubbornness of the Caledonian, or the iron resolution of the New Englander.

It may happen, however, that a repeal of the Union shall be desired by the protestants as well as the catholics of Ireland. Indeed some symptoms of such a thing are already discernible-as if all parties, wearied by turbulence and distress, were resolved to try the last extremity, and run the risk of a final uproar in hope of the storm's eventually exhausting itself and giving place to a calm even though the wreck of society should float upon the surface. Now there can be only three reasons why England should desire to retain possession of the sister Island. The first is a foolish national pride; the second is the fear of imputed weakness which might tempt the insolence of enemies; and the third is the protection of the quiet, industrious, and protestant portion of the population, who have, amid many difficulties and much obloquy, stood true to Britain, and are among the most valuable subjects of the empire. To deluge Ireland with blood for the first of these reasons would be an enormous sin, while to yield would be an act of national magnanimity which, we trust, the English would be capable of performing if the other causes did not stand in the way. It would be still more magnanimous to disregard the imputation of weakness and to prove it false if need were. And if those of the Irish who have been hitherto anti-repealers are now prepared for the hazard of repea!, and look no longer to Britain for protection, we do not see any strong ground for not acceding to their wishes. Ireland is to England rather a source of feebleness than of strength. The best portion of the British army is employed in keeping her quietthe treasures of England are drained to feed her multitudinous poor-the interests of England are neglected because of the perpetual and harrassing attention which Irish affairs demand, and the laborers of England are kept at the point of starvation in consequence of the continual influx of the Irish peasantry into Great Britain. Let Ireland be separated from England and the standing army might be reduced by one-half, the income tax might at once be relinquished, the Parliament of London might shorten its sessions a couple of months annually, and British labor would no longer be a drug in the market: such cities as Liverpool and Glasgow, if the present French sytem of expelling foreigners were adopted, might dispense with a portion of their police, and the calendar at the assizes would be a subject of congratulation to the whole bench of judges. But after all we belong to that credulous class of people who are of opinion that sovereigns may, and sometimes do, feel a disinterested attachment to their subjects, even as subjects are capable of a disinterested affection toward their sovereigns; and perhaps Queen Victoria may really be reluctant to leave the Irish altogether to themselves. She may shrink from