mentally, and are beings representing two distinct phases of European civilization.

The seas kept the inhabitants of the British Islands for centuries aloof from most of those cruel wars which have left deep marks upon the institutions and temper of Continental Europe, and protected that energetic pursuit of material wealth and commercial pre-eminence to be expected from the first maritime position in the world, from enstoms at once free and aristocratic, and not least from a climate which demands the labour which it renders easy, while precluding foreign modes of existence and amusement.

Twenty Continental summers, following the passing of the Reform Bill, would work a total revolution in the social economy of Britain. They would leave us a gayer and pleasanter, but a vainer and an idler people. They would slacken our steps, and quicken our eyes and tongues; they would thin the city and crowd the parks, give a holiday air to English life, and improve manners and the art of conversation amazingly. We should lose the cold and sedate reserve, the calm concentration of the mind on serious business, and that earnest, patient, and practical character which our history, our Puritan ancestry, and our clouds, have formed for us. We should become less fond of domestic life, less engrossed with personal and family interests, living more in the open air, and abandoning ourselves much to subjects and feelings in which passers-by could share and sympathise. It would become more agreeable to spend than to get; accumulation would pause; people would love most to shine in society and at the table d'hôte, or to see splendid spectacles. In the end perhaps London might be so like Paris, we should have found so many of the ways of our lively neighbours worthy of our imitation, that we might enact a loi de partition and a conscription, elect an emperor, place an immense army under his command, talk about natural boundaries, and gladly wear red ribbons in our button-holes. Our susceptibilities

and sense of honour would have grown more refined; the press and the courts of law might fail to arrange many of our differences in a becoming manner, and we might find it imperative to recur to the chivalrous arbitrament of the duel.

This may perhaps appear a grotesquely exaggerated picture; yet in America the force of climate and circumstance is seen to reproduce in a few generations the lineaments of the indigenous inhabitant in the face of the Saxon settler, and to excite an eager restlessness of temperament wholly foreign to the ancestral type. And we have sketched but a few of the influences which tend in France to enervate the industrial spirit, and to give an undue force and direction to other impulses and motives of action. It is not only that the Frenchman naturally seeks the ideal more and the material less than the sober Englishman, but that his country affords fewer avenues for advancement and enterprise in civil life, and scarcely one safe pacific theme of politics. Here the love of change and excitement, the public spirit of the citizen, and the romantic impulse of the man to transcend the narrow boundary of home; and to become an actor on a greater stage than the market and the mill, find vent and exercise, not only in the discussions of a free press, but in the possession of a world-wide empire, familiar to the imagination and yet full of the unknown--a consideration the more operative on the side of peace, that the magnitude of this empire is felt to be largely due to the conquests of industry, not of arms, and that, by universal consent, the nation may have equals in war, but has no rival in the renown and blessings of wealth. The Frenchman, on the other hand, has but a soldier's tent abroad; he has no sphere of cosmopolitan action save the campaign, nor anything beside his famous sword to assure him of a conspicuous figure in Europe and a place in history.

Nor let us suppose entirely spent the original forces of that triumphant Jacquerie, the Revolution of 1789,

which made a populace of serfs a people of freedmen, with the pride and spirit of citizens and the vanity and suspicions of parvenus. The despot said, "L'Etat, c'est moi;" the emancipated slave awoke to the intoxicating reflection, "L'Etat, c'est moi." Seldom, since, has an idea of the dignity and glory of the State been presented to the popular mind of France in any other shape than that of victory and military precedence.

Mr. Buckle has been led far astray when he maintains that every great step in national progress, and every considerable increase of mental activity, must be at the expense of the warlike spirit; nor could he have happened on a more unfortunate reference than to the "military predilections of Russia" for an illustration of his theory that a dislike of war is peculiar to a people whose intellect has received an extraordinary impulse from the advancement and general diffusion of knowledge and civilization. "It is clear," he says, "that Russia is a "warlike country, not because the inha"bitants are immoral, but because they unintellectual." But, in fact, what is clear is, that Russia is at present not a warlike country. Its situation, climate, history, and institutions, have contributed to make its inhabitants, in the opinion of the best authorities, "the "most pacific people on the face of the "earth." 2

are

Never in Moscow or St. Petersburgh would you hear the cry of War for ever!

1 Buckle's History of Civilisation, vol. i. p. 178.

2 "Upon this point, I believe, no difference of opinion exists among all observers. Having lived for several years in a position which enabled me to mix much with the officers and men of the Russian army, such is my strong opinion of the Russian character. M. Haxthausen mentions, as a point admitting of no doubt, 'the absence of all warlike tendency among the Russian people, and their excessive fear of the profession of a soldier.' The Russian people have no pleasure in wearing arms; even in their quarrels among themselves, which are rare, they hardly ever fight, and the duel, which now often takes place among the Russian officers, is contrary to the national manners, and is a custom imported from the West."— Russia on the Black Sea, by H. D. Seymour, p. 97.

-Vive la guerre !-uttered often unrebuked by the writer's side, as the army of Italy defiled through the streets of Paris on the 14th of August, 1859.1 Never during the Crimean War would you have seen a Russian manufacturer join the army as a volunteer, confessing with pride, "Moi, je n'aime pas la paix." 2

.

There is, in truth, a natural relationship between the economic impulse, or the desire of a higher and better condition, and those national sentiments to which, in France, an unfortunate course of circumstances has given a military direction. Patriotic pride and emulation are personal ambition purified and exalted by the alliance of some disinterested motives and affections. Nor can that feeling ordinarily fail to have an elevating influence on the character of a people which raises the aspirations of the multitude above selfish ends and material gain, and infuses some measure of enthusiasm and public spirit into the most vulgar minds. Hence political economists of the highest philosophic genius, such as Adam Smith and William Humboldt, have been far from reprobating a martial temper in a people as barbarous in every form and under all conditions. To France, unhappily, we might apply Lord Bacon's lamentation on the improper culture of the seeds of patriotic virtue: "But the misery is that the "most effectual means are applied to the "ends least to be desired." It is not only that the structure of the French polity is such that the ruling classes are those least fit to rule, and most liable to be swayed by passion and caprice, while there is no percolation through succes

1 This was among persons who were able to pay twenty francs a-piece for their seats.

The writer met returning from Solferino a French manufacturer, who, deserting his business for the campaign, had attached himself to the army of Italy, in which he bore the rank of captain. He had served in like manner in the Crimea, at the siege of Rome, and in Algeria. This individual made the above declaration of his disrelish for peace; yet, upon the truce, he quietly resumed his business until another war, which he anticipated the following spring, should relieve him of the inglorious occupation.

sive grades, as in England, of the cooler views and habits of aristocratic and educated thought, but that a morbid intolerance of superiority has been left by the remembrance of the tyranny of the feudal nobility. As Mr. Mill has observed, "When a class, formerly "ascendant, has lost its ascendancy, the "prevailing sentiments frequently bear "the impress of an impatient dislike of "superiority."1 Among the French democracy this hatred of superior eminence, being carried into every direction of the popular thought, continually recurs in the form of an envious and hostile attitude towards Great Britain. A nation prone to jealousy is placed by the side of another, at the head of all peaceful enterprise. Whatever envy of English fortune might thus arise, is aggravated by traditions of defeat and injury,—

Ungentle wishes long subdued,

Subdued and cherished long. France has now no colonies save a few military stations. But a century ago it was otherwise, and her sons might have found themselves in their own country from Quebec to Pondicherry, and from the Strait of Dover to the Strait of Magellan. Why are they now bounded by the Bay of Biscay and the Gulf of Lyons? How is it that Canada, Nova Scotia, Cape Breton and Prince. Edward's Island, the Bahamas, Tobago, Grenada and Dominica, St. Lucia and St. Vincent, the Falkland Isles, Malta, the Ionian Islands, the Mauritius, Rodrique and the Seychelles, and India from the Kistna to Cape Comorin, once held or claimed by France, are now undisputed fragments of the British Empire? It is a question which calls up the names of Chatham and his son, of Wolfe and Clive, of Nelson and Wellesley, and other memories retained with different emotions at each side of the Channel. And the answer might throw some light upon the source of the popularity at one side of the theory of natural boundaries, and

the eagerness of our rivals to push their frontiers to the Scheldt, the Rhine, and the Alps, and to live in a larger world of their own.1

Let us not be too severe in our censure of an ambition, which we must at the same time manfully resist. Suppose the conditions of the two empires to be suddenly reversed. Suppose England to be rankling under a successful invasion, and a long occupation by a foreign army. Suppose the British flag to have been swept from every sea, and almost every distant settlement and ancient dependency transferred to the domain of France. Suppose at the same time that we felt or imagined our ability to restore the balance and resume our former place upon the globe; and who shall say that, less sensitive and less combative as we are, we should not be eager to refer the issue to the trial of the stronger battalions once more? Or who shall say that the ideas of glory throughout the civilized world are not such at this hour that the defeat of England by sea and land would add immensely to the prestige of France, to the personal status of all her citizens in the maxima civitas of nations, and make the meanest of them feel himself conspicuous in the eyes of every people from America to China? When, after such reflections, we imagine the many roads to national distinction upon which the French might occupy the foremost place, but to which they give little heed; when we find among them such an intense appreciation, and such prodigious sacrifices for military fame; when the accumulation of capital among them, and the consequent growth of a pacific political power, is prevented by the fundamental conditions of their polity; when the agrarian division leaves a numerous youth of the military age disposable for war,2 it would

Since the above passage was in the press a remarkable map has been published in Paris, entitled "L'Europe de 1760 à 1860," designed to excite attention to the territorial and colonial losses of France in the last hundred years, and the immense aggrandizement of Great Britain at her expense.

2 See Mr. Laing's Observations on the State of Europe. Second Series. Pp. 104-8.

seem impossible to deny that the latent force of the warlike element in France is at all times prodigious; that so far as it is latent it occupies the place of the deep general attachment to peace which is felt in England; and that its actual ebullition in war depends partly upon the temper and life of a single individual, and partly on the occasions offered by the state of Europe, and the weakness of neighbouring powers. these are the conditions of a military age and society. And thus it is that De Tocqueville has described his countrymen: "Apt for all things, but excel"ling only in war; adoring chance,

But

force, success, splendour, and noise more "than true glory; more capable of "heroism than of virtue, of genius than "of good sense; the most brilliant and "the most dangerous of the nations of "Europe; and that best fitted to become "by turns an object of admiration, of "hatred, of pity, of terror, but never of "indifference."

It is this people which has elected an absolute monarch, and that monarch is Napoleon III. But it is a most obvious inference from this fact alone, that a community, which, however advanced in some of the arts of civilization, has not outgrown the superintendence of despotic government, nor learned to govern itself or to trust itself with liberty, has not arrived at that stage of progress in which the claims of industry and peace can be steadily and consistently paramount in the councils of the state. The traditions of old, and still more the exigencies and ambitions of new imperial dynasties, are incompatible with the conditions of the greatest economical prosperity. Neither are the independence and robustness of thought educated by free industrial life favourable to the permanence of an unlimited monarchy. Let us, indeed, ask if it be auspicious of the entry of Europe upon the industrial and pacific stage, and the millennium of merchants, that the trade of the world has hung since the truce of Villafranca upon the tokens of peace, few and far between, that have fallen from the lips of a military chief?

Yet that chief has deeply studied history, and gathered the lesson that monarchs must march at the head of the ideas of their age.1 And there are indications that the vision of a holy alliance of the sovereigns of Europe for the maintenance of the peace and brotherhood of nations rose before his youthful mind as one of such ideas. In 1832, he mused as follows: 2

"We hear talk of eternal wars, of "interminable struggles, and yet it "would be an easy matter for the sove

reigns of the world to consolidate an "everlasting peace. Let them consult "the mutual relations, the habits of "the nations among themselves; let "them grant the nationality, the insti"tutions which they demand, and they "will have arrived at the secret of a true

political balance. Then will all nations "be brothers, and they will embrace "each other in the presence of tyranny "dethroned, of a world refreshed and "consolidated, and of a contented "humanity."

But experience has not increased the confidence of the wise in princes or holy alliances. One has indeed but to glance at the conditions essential, in the mind of so subtle a politician as Napoleon III., to the peace of Europe, and their inevitable consequence, to rest assured that its present sovereigns could hardly grant them if they would, and would not concur to yield them if they could. For what are these conditions ? The nationality and the institutions which the nations demand. And what is to be the consequence? Tyranny dethroned.

Such really are, if not the only requi sites to "consolidate the world and content humanity," the indispensable supports of "a true political balance." And let the history of the last twelve years let the war in Hungary in 1849, and the war in Italy in 1859-let the dungeons of Naples, the people of Venetia, the Romagna, Sicily, and Hungary in 1860 (should we not add Nice and

1 Historical Fragments. Works of Napo

leon III.

2 Political Reveries. Works of Napoleon III.

Savoy?) say if the sovereigns of Europe are ready to concede without a struggle the nationality and the institutions for which the nations cry.

Let us not, however, ungratefully forget that the year 1860 opened with an assurance from the chief of the sovereigns of Europe, of his desire, "so far as depends on him, to re-establish peace and confidence." Yet this is but personal security for our confidence. Should Napoleon III., in truth, be anxious and resolute for peace, yet a few years, and the firmness of the hand which controls an impetuous and warlike democracy must relax, and afterwards the floods of national passion may come and beat against a house of peace built upon the sand of an Emperor's words. Gibbon has remarked upon the instability of the happiness of the Roman Empire in the era of the Antonines, because "depending on the character of a single man." The son and successor of Marcus Aurelius was the brutal tyrant Commodus. Besides, we cannot forget that he who "dreamed not of the Empire and of "war," in 1848, had, "at the end of four years," re-established the Empire; that the third year of that Empire was the beginning of strife with Russia, and that its last was a year of unfinished war with Austria. Moreover, under the second Empire, all France is assuming. the appearance of a camp in the centre of Europe, and this phenomenon becomes more portentous if we take in connexion with it the Emperor's opinion respecting the precautions necessary to preserve the honour and assert the rightful claims of France. In 1843, he wrote: "At the present time it is not "sufficient for a nation to have a few

hundred cavaliers, or some thousand "mercenaries in order to uphold its rank "and support its independence; it needs "millions of armed men. The ter"rible example of Waterloo has not

"Je ne suis pas un ambitieux qui rêve l'Empire et la guerre. Si j'étais nommé Président je mettrais mon honneur à laisser au but de quatre ans à mon successeur le pouvoir affermi, la liberté intacte." Proclamation of Louis Napoleon, December 10, 1848.

taught us. The problem to be "resolved is this to resist a coalition "France needs an immense army: nay

66

more, it needs a reserve of trained men in case of a reverse."

We must infer, either that in 1843 Louis Napoleon foresaw that France was destined to pursue a policy which would, to a moral certainty, bring her into conflict with the other powers; or that in his deliberate judgment no great European state is secure without millions of disciplined soldiers, against a coalition of other states for its destruction. If this be a true judgment, in what an age do we live! But, at least, the armaments of France prove that its sovereign has not hesitated to employ its utmost resources for the purpose of enabling it to "resist a coalition ;" and a late despatch of Lord John Russell supplies the fitting comment. "M. Thouvenel conceives that Sardinia "might be a member of a confederacy "arrayed against France. Now, on this "Her Majesty's Government would ob(6 serve, that there never can be a con"federacy organized against France, "unless it be for common defence "against aggressions on the part of "France." 1 Another natural reflection presents itself, that if Napoleon III. can solve "the problem," and make France powerful enough to defy a confederacy, he has but to divide, in order to tyrannize over Europe. An apology which has been made for the great military, and more especially the great naval, preparations of France-that they indicate no new or Napoleonian idea, but are simply the realization of plans conceived under a former governmentmay be well founded. But then the question recurs-are these preparations necessary, or are they not? Does France really need "millions of armed men," or does she not? If she does, what conclusions must we form respecting the character of the age, and the theory of the extinction of the military element in modern Europe? Shall

1 Further Correspondence relative to the Affairs of Italy, Part IV. No. 2.