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Thus, from 1812 to 1832, crime over England and Wales has just DOUBLED; while the population has only advanced, during the same period, somewhat under a half.

In Scotland, where education is so general, the criminals committed in 1832 were 2431, which, for a population of 2,400,000, is as nearly as possible one in 1000: indicating a much more rapid increase than in England; for in 1812, the committals were not 500 over the whole counties to the north of the Tweed.§

In Ireland, in the year 1832, the committals were 16,056, on a population of 8,000,000, or about 1 to 500. And there, the proportion of persons who can read is fully as great as in either Scotland or England: an extraordinary proof of the combined effect of agitation and the Catholic faith

64,538 93,718 127,910

1831. 13,894,574

1831, added about a sixth to And this was the period The total persons committed

Population.

9,551,000

11,261,000

13,089,000

on that unhappy land, and the total inefficiency of such education to correet their combined influence.

Our limits will not permit us to enter upon the corresponding facts which we have accumulated from America. Suffice it to say, that the United States afford still stronger demonstration of the total inadequacy of education to correct the corruption of our nature or arrest the progress of crime, and that it is admitted by Beaumont and Tocqueville, the great advocates of instruction, and the enlightened travellers in that interesting Republic: "Nevertheless, we do not think that you can attribute the diminution of crimes in the northern states of the Union to instruction; because in Connecticut, where there is far more instruction than in New York, crime increases with a terrible rapidity; and

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From these facts, the chaplain of Coldbathfields draws the conclusion, "That it is not the want of education, but the absence of principle, which leads to crime."

† Porter's Parl. Tables, i. 139.

$ Parl. Return. Porter, ii. 87.

Porter's Parl. Tables, ii. 81, and i. 139.

Ibid. ii. 87.

if one cannot accuse knowledge as the cause of this, one is obliged to acknowledge it is no prevention."

Nothing can be more plain, therefore, than that this, the great panacea of the Liberal party-the vast regenerator which is to banish sin from the world, and fit men for the important duties of self-government, is a total delusion, and that mere intellectual education, so far from qualifying the masses for political rights and the safe exercise of democratic powers, in reality renders them more than ever unfit for them, by increasing, on the one hand, the restless activity of their minds, and augmenting, on the other, the depraved tastes, corrupt desires, and unbridled passions, which lead them to turn that activity to wicked purposes. This fact, which utterly bewilders the whole Liberal school which is, literally speaking, to the Jews a stumblingblock, and to the Greeks foolishness with which Lord Brougham and all those smitten by the education-mania are sore per plexed, without knowing how to extricate themselves from its weight, is perfectly intelligible to, and was all along predicted alike by the calm observers of human nature, who took experience for their guide, and the simple believers, who, without going farther than the gospel, were aware that in religion alone was an antidote to the poisonous fruit of the tree of knowledge to be found. Miss Edgeworth showed her knowledge when she put into the mouth of one of her characters"Edication will do a great deal, but it won't change the natur that is in them." History in every age has taught, that it was in the latest ages of society that knowledge was most generally diffused, and corruption most widely spread. Experience every where around us shows, that in those situations where the human race is most densely massed together, instruction, at least on political subjects, is most common, and depravity of every sort most abundant. Coupling these facts together,

the result of observation, alike in the past and the present, is, that it is not in the cultivation of the intellectual faculties that an antidote to the corruption of our nature is to be found, but that the only real regeneration, either of society or of its political institutions, must begin with those measures which augment the spread and increase the influence of that faith, which, setting itself in the outset to root out the seeds of evil in the human heart, can alone prepare men, by successfully governing themselves, to take a useful part in the direction of others.

The way in which general instruction, when unaccompanied with a proportional cultivation of the moral and religious feelings, acts in this way, is, to any person practically acquainted with the middling and lower orders, perfectly apparent. It extends the desires of the heart and the cravings of the passions to a degree inconsistent with the destiny of the great majority of mankind on earth. In numbers of the working classes it induces a disinclination to physical labour, by which alone they can be rendered comfortable, and a desire for intellectual pleasures or exertion, in which line they cannot earn a decent livelihood. It drives them, in consequence, into those desperate circumstances, and induces that recklessness of conduct, which is at once the parent and the excuse of crime. In all ranks it engenders an uneasy restlessness and dissatisfaction with their condition, which is the fruitful parent of disorders both private and political. By magnifying to the imagination the pleasures of wealth, while it induces a dissatisfaction with bodily labour, it both strengthens the temptations to vice and weakens the habits by which alone competence can be safely and honestly acquired. By clothing in a more voluptuous and seductive form than they naturally possess the pleasures of sense, it adds fuel to a flame which already burns fiercely enough in the human heart.† By strengthen

Beaumont and Tocqueville, Sur les Pénitentiaires d'Amerique, 204. †M. Guerry states, that sexual irregularity is in every part of France just in proportion to the spread of information, and that almost all the prostitutes of Paris come from the highly educated and excited departments of the north and east. (See Guerry, 174.) There are 2,300,000 bastards in that country, and no less than 1,092,910 individuals who have been abandoned from their birth by their parents, and brought up by public hospitals.

ing the imagination more than moral or religious principle, it, in effect, adds to the force of the antagonist powers which assail human integrity, while it gives no additional strength to the counteracting dispositions by which alone they can be restrained. The pleasures of intellectual labour are, by the constitution of the human mind, accessible only to a small fraction of the human race. When Lord Brougham said he did not despair of seeing the day when every poor man should read Bacon, and Cobbett added it would be much more to the purpose if he could give them all the means of eating it, the one showed as great ignorance as the other evinced knowledge of the intellectual capacity of the great bulk of mankind. In no rank of life nor condition of society did any man ever find a tenth of his acquaintance in whom the pleasures of study would form a counterpoise to the excitement of the imagination or the seductions of sense. Education can to almost all magnify the influence of the latter: to a few only can it strengthen the sway of the former. Thence its universal and now generally experienced failure as a substitute for religious principle, and its total inadequacy to counteract the temptations to sin, which it itself has so greatly in

creased.

But how then, it may be asked, if the universal failure of democratic institutions be owing to the inherent corruption of the human heart, can it be argued that aristocratic government is preferable? Are not nobles children of Adam as well as paupers? And has not the taint of universal liability to crime descended in at least as great a degree to the high-born, pampered, and luxurious aristocrat, as to the humble hard-working peasant or mechanic? Undoubtedly it has, and the observation is a perfectly fair one; and unless it can be satisfactorily answered, it leaves wholly unsolved the problem to be solved, which is the universal and experienced rapidity of corruption, oppression, and misgovernment in democratic states. The solution, however, is easy, and it at once confirms the general truth of the preceding argument, and points out the only form of government where a due protection either to persons or property can be secured.

"It is frequently observed with sur

prise," says Mr Hume, "both in history and private life, that while most persons evince both judgment and moral feelings in judging of the conduct of others, they exhibit but little of either when called into action themselves; and very generally fall into the very same vices which they have been the loudest in condemning in their neighbours. The reason is obvious; in estimating the conduct of others, they are guided by their reason and their feeling; in acting for themselves, they are actuated by their reasons, their feelings, and their desires." In this simple observation is to be found the key to the whole mystery. When the machinery of government is in the hands of the holders of property, that is, the aristocracy, whether landed or commercial, the great bulk of the people are spectators merely of their conduct; they are the audience in the court, or the jury in the box, not engaged in the heat or animosity of the trial. In such a situation, therefore, their reason or feelings only are called into action, and these principles in mankind generally, when not under the influence of passion, are uniformly on the side of virtue. In these circumstances, therefore, the feelings of the majority, that is, public opinion, is, generally speaking, and unless when their passions are excited by extraordinary circumstances, the best safeguard of public morality, and the most effectual check on the corruptions of government; and thence the long stability, enduring virtue, and pure state of public feeling in such communities. when the people are themselves, or by their leaders, admitted into power, this felicitous state of things is at once subverted. From being spectators of the game, they become actors in it-from being actuated by their reason and their feelings only, they become actuated by their reason, their feelings, and their passions. The latter, ever predominant with men acting together and under the excitement of common feeling, speedily becomes omnipotent, and immediately the sovereign multitude fall into all the vices, ambition, and corruptions of the sovereign aristocracy or the sovereign despot-nay, worse; for, from the contagion of multitudes, the passions are more strongly excited; from the needy condition of the ruling mass, the necessity of instant spoliation is more

But

strongly felt; from the division of power among numbers, the responsibility of injustice is reduced to nothing. At the same time, and what is still worse, the counteracting principle which chiefly kept the aristocracy right when it was at the helm, viz. the force of public opinion, that is, the feelings of the majority, so far from being an antidote to the evil, becomes its greatest supporter. The masses, formerly so loud in their reprobation of abuses when their rulers only were to profit by them, become their cordial supporters when they are themselves to obtain these benefits; the crowds, formerly so clamorous in their demand for economy, become the warmest supporters of costly measures when domestic corruption or the multis utile bellum is to shower its golden showers over them; the patriots, once so indignant in their declamations in support of freedom, speedily become the greatest of all tyrants when they are to restrain others, instead of being restrained by them. The aristocratic classes indeed, and their supporters among the people, make the loudest lamentations at this portentous state of things; but what is the opinion of hundreds among that of thousands, or the weight of the minority against a tyrant corrupt government, which is securely entrenched in the fastnesses of corruption by a majority, all hoping to profit, directly or indirectly, by its fruits? Thence the rapid and inevitable degeneracy of all democratic states; thence the frightful and swift progress of corruption among the classes who had heretofore been its most strenuous opponents; thence the total inability of the minority, composed of the property, virtue, and education in the community, to stem the progress of evil thence the inconceivable celerity with which all the bulwarks of freedom are laid low by the blows of a deluded or interested populace: thence that fatal confusion of public ideas which, as Madam de Stäel says, is the worst bequest of revolutions, to destroy altogether the eternal distinction of right and wrong, and make men apply to public actions no other test but that of success. We need not refer to other ages or states for a proof of this assertion: our own country, and our own age, is its most striking confirmation: the worst corruptions, the most disgraceful tergiversations in

public men noways weaken their influence with their supporters, if they do the one thing needful in supporting the cause of democracy. "Si monumentum quaeris, circumspice."

It is another reason why aristocratic societies are less liable to the invasion of corruption or the temptations to oppression than democraticthat, in the former law, the rulers of the state have a lasting interest in the administration of Government, and will be permanently affected in their interests and estates by external disaster, or internal misgovernment; whereas, in the latter, as Government is perpetually changing, the consequences of error or criminality hardly ever affect the actual perpetrators of it. The first is a tenant with a long lease, or such a grant as he may think almost amounts to a perpetuity. The latter is a tenant at will-every year expecting notice to quit from a changing and capricious set of landlords. It is not difficult to say which will run out the soil. Rotation of office is the grand principle of democratic government, and will do admirably well with a conquering state, which, like the Roman Commonwealth, or French Republic, can annually send forth fresh its magistrates to conquer and plunder other countries, and gratify the ambition of its rulers by foreign suffering; but it is utterly fatal to good government when the rulers are confined to their own bounds; and the cupidity of the changing demagogues, who are raised for a few months or years to power, must be satisfied at the expense of their own subjects or supporters. Admitting that an aristocratic government is not disposed by nature to abstain more from abuses or misgovernment than a democratic one, the important distinction lies here, that it is made to feel in its own estates, and in the power or influence which its members can transmit to their descendants, the consequence of misconduct, and, therefore, from self-interest, if from no better motive, is brought to abstain from flagrant acts of violence or injustice: whereas the popular leaders, having no prospect of retaining power for more than one or two years, and none whatever of transmitting it to their descendants, and no estates to be permanently affected by hurtful measures, are natu

rally led to make the most of it before it slips out of their hands. And experience has abundantly proved the justice of these views; for while history shows that the nations who have risen to the highest and most lasting greatness, from the Roman to the English, have been governed by aristocratic government, and exhibits many, as Austria, Prussia, and Bavaria, where this form of government at this moment rules with a paternal and beneficent, though despotic sway, it can exhibit none in which democratic institutions, in an old state, have not, in a few years, utterly destroyed the frame of society, and, by levelling all the bulwarks of freedom, necessarily induced a transient or lasting despotism.

Lastly, aristocratic societies differ from democratic in this essential particular—that they bring to the helm of public affairs a far greater degree of skill, experience, and practical talent than can possibly be expected under the changing jealousy of popular rule. Here, again, it is not that there is any original difference between the intellectual capacity of different ranks of men, but that it is a difference of circumstances which occasions the difference in the result. Experiencelong, hard-earned experience is indispensable to the formation of an accomplished statesman; twenty years' study and practice are as indispen

sable to that character as to that of a great lawyer, or judge, or physician. The theory of self-government by the masses is utterly at variance with the plainest dictates of common sense, as evinced in the daily transactions of life. What should we think of the masses pretending to build their own houses, or make their own coats, or plead their own causes, instead of employing architects, and tailors, and barristers to do these services for them? Infinitely more absurd is it for them to employ their ever-changing delegates to engage in the difficult science of legislation for them, bound hand and foot, as they will always be under democratic institutions, by their mandates; for seven years

will make an accomplished tailor or mason, but thirty years is barely adequate to the training of a judicious statesman. It is a common complaint that the English diplomatists are now so much inferior to those of the monarchical states with whom they are brought in collision; but the fact is no ways surprising, when we consider how often administrations in this country are now changed under the pressure of popular fickleness, and how little chance, therefore, any diplomatist has to be employed for the time requisite to acquire skill in his profession. Without a certain degree of stability in Government, ability in administration or its subordinate situations will never be acquired by the servants of the public; and this stability will never be found under the changeful phases of democratic fervour.

Do we conclude, from all this, that a pure unmixed aristocracy is the only beneficial form of government? Far from it; though we strenuously maintain that it is infinitely preferable to an unmixed democracy. What we maintain is, that the holders of property are men, and liable to human error as well as the supporters of democracy, and therefore stand in need of the watchful jealousy and effective control of the masses of the people: but that it is only where property is the ruling, and numbers the controlling power, that control can be turned to good account; and that when numbers become the rulers, its weight is all thrown on the wrong side, and, instead of the flywheel regulating the motion of the machine, it drives it headlong to destruction. It is the first form of government which Old England for a hundred and forty years possessed: it is the second which New England for six years has experienced. According to the choice now made by its electors it is easy to see whether the star of British prosperity is to shine on with undiminished brightness, or to blaze for a short term, and to be extinguished for ever.

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