have exulted in the parentage of a stock which, in the brief period of one hundred and fifty years, had swelled from a knot of pilgrims into an independent nation; and which, in the first fifty years of its independence as a nation, had drawn together, by a centripetal force like that of nature, the discordant materials of half a globe, and magnetized the mass with the electric spark of civil and religious freedom. DIFFERENCE OF CHARACTER IN THE POLITICAL CHANGES OF GREAT BRITAIN AND FRANCE. Edinburgh Review for July, 1832. THE meeting of the States-General in France was the signal for the explosion of all the hoarded passions of a century. In that assembly, there were undoubtedly very able men; but they had no practical knowledge of the art of government. All the great English revolutions have been conducted by practical statesmen. The French Revolution was conducted by mere speculators. Our constitution has never been so far behind the age, as to have become an object of aversion to the people. The English revolutions have therefore been undertaken for the purpose of defending, correcting, and restoring-never for the mere purpose of destroying! Our countrymen have always, even in times of the greatest excitement, spoken reverently of the form of government under which they lived, and attacked only what they regarded as its corruptions. In the very act of innovating, they have constantly appealed to ancient prescription; they have seldom looked abroad for models; they have seldom troubled themselves with Utopian theories; they have not been anxious to prove that liberty is a natural right of men; they have been content to regard it as the lawful birthright of Englishmen ! Their social contract is no fiction. It is still extant on the original parchment, sealed with wax which was affixed at Runnymede, and attested by the lordly names of the Marischals and Fitzherberts. No general arguments about the original equality of men, no fine stories out of Plutarch and Cornelius Nepos, have ever affected them so much as their own familiar words,-Magna Charta, Habeas Corpus,-Trial by Jury,-Bill of Rights.-The English, content with their own national recollections and names, have never sought for models in the institutions of Greece or Rome. The French, having nothing in their own history to which they could look back with pleasure, had recourse to the history of the great ancient commonwealths: they drew their notions of those commonwealths, not from contemporary writers, but from romances written by pedantic moralists long after the extinction of public liberty. They neglected Thucydides for Plutarch. Blind themselves, they took blind guides. They had no experience of freedom, and they took their opinions concerning it from men who had no more experience of it than themselves, and whose imaginations, inflamed by mystery and privation, exaggerated the unknown enjoyment; from men who raved about patriotism without having ever had a country, and eulogised tyrannicide while crouching before tyrants. The maxim which the French legislators learned in this school was, that political liberty is an end, and not a means; that it is not merely valuable as the great safeguard of order, of property, and of morality, but that it is in itself a high and exquisite happiness to which order, property, and morality ought without one scruple to be sacrificed. The lessons which may be learned from ancient history are indeed most useful and important; but they were not likely to be learned by men who, in all their rhapsodies about Athenian democracy, seemed utterly to forget that in that democracy there were ten slaves to one citizen; and who constantly decorated their invectives against the aristocrats with panegyrics on Brutus and Cato,-two aristocrats, fiercer, prouder, and more exclusive, than any that emigrated with the Count of Artois. THE EMIGRANT. HON. HENRY ERSKINE. FAST by the margin of a mossy rill, That wandered, gurgling, down a heath-clad hill, Unwonted! well I ween; for ne'er before "Farewell! farewell! dear Caledonia's strand, "And must I leave thee, then, my little cot? "Thou, dear companion of my happier life, Far, far from hence, he revels life away, "To shun these ills that threat my hoary head, To pay the insatiate claims of avarice. "In vain of richer climates I am told, Whose hills are rich in gems, whose streams are gold; I am contented here, I ne'er have seen A vale more fertile, nor a hill more green; Nor would I leave this sweet, though humble cot, Driven out to hunger, nakedness, and grief, gore "On whatsoever coast I may be thrown, No lord can use me harder than my own. Even they who tear the limbs and drink the Of helpless strangers, what can they do more? "For thee, insatiate chief! whose ruthless hand For ever drives me from my native land; S For thee I leave no greater curse behind, "For you, my friends and neighbours of the vale, "On your dear native land, from whence I part, Rest the best blessing of a broken heart. If in some future hour the foe should land His hostile legions on Britannia's strand, May she not then the alarum sound in vain, Nor miss her banished thousands on the plain! "Feed on, my sheep, for though deprived of me, My cruel foes shall your protectors be; For their own sakes shall pen your straggling flocks, And save your lambkins from the ravening fox. "Feed on, my goats, another now shall drain Your streams that heal disease and soften pain: No streams, alas! can ever, ever flow, To heal your master's heart, or soothe his woe. "Feed on, my flocks; ye harmless people, feed; The worst that YE can suffer is to bleed. O! that the murderer's steel were all my fear, How fondly would I stay to perish here !— But, hark! my sons loud call me from the vale, And, lo! the vessel spreads her swelling sail. Farewell! farewell!"-Awhile his hands he wrung, And o'er his crook in speechless sorrow hung; Then, casting many a lingering look behind, Down the steep mountain's brow began to wind. |