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mere title and privilege of the peer that is hereditary: the hereditary feeling pervades all classes, enters into the composition of the national character, and mocks the wisdom of philosophy.

But that which more peculiarly distinguishes the composition of English society is, the character and importance of what is denominated the middle class. Our readers will recollect the remark cited from M. Mignet; that the first events of the French Revolution were an insurrection of the middle class against the privileged orders; the second act, an insurgency of the mob against the middle class. Assuming this to be correct, we might be warranted in saying, that the cause of the miscarriage of the Revolution was the numerical insignificance and relative weakness of the middle class in France. Wo awaits that nation in which, in time of foreign or domestic peril, there exists no mediatory class at once connecting and keeping apart the privileged orders and the mob. But not only was the middle class of society relatively inconsiderable: the absence of virtue, wisdom, and true piety, the sources of moral ascendancy, rendered it intrinsically weak. The exile of the Protestants, the persecution of the Jansenists, had exhausted society of its conservative worth, and enfeebled the nation at its heart. The consequences were not felt till, when the seeds of disease long latent in the body politic developed themselves, it was found that there was no strength left to struggle with the excitement, which passed almost at once into frenzy.

In this country, an intelligent foreigner, Count Pecchio, has remarked, that that class of society which is the best informed, 'the most hospitable, the most beneficent, and the most virtuous of all,' is immeasurably more numerous than in any other country, and forms, so to speak, the heart of the nation. We think it was Voltaire who compared the English nation to their own porter, the froth at the top, the dregs at the bottom, and all between excellent. But the distinction between the different classes of society in England, is not marked by intervals, but by gradations. There are a variety of castes in the aristocracy itself; but there is no impassable barrier to prevent the child of poverty from attaining the highest political or ecclesiastical dignity. There is no one definable middle class, but rather a series of middle classes; and the lowest orders of England would, in any other country, be a middle order, in point of comfort and intelligence. That a frightful amount of popular ignorance, irreligion, crime, and distress exists in this country, cannot be denied. How should it be otherwise, when, in less than a century, our population has more than doubled upon us, without any adequate correspondent extension of the means of instruction? How should it be otherwise, when, till very recently, the higher orders have discouraged, and even opposed the education of the people;

while the very criminal institutions of the country have contributed to the encouragement of crime.* The increase of vice and delinquency under these circumstances, however appalling, bears a smaller proportion to the increase of the population, than might have been anticipated, and than must inevitably have resulted from such positive and negative causes of demoralization, had not other causes of mighty efficiency come into operation, of which, till of late, small account has been taken by our statesmen and legislators.

The march of intellect is a hackneyed phrase, which has afforded occasion for much fair satire, as well as unfair and vulgar ridicule. But it means something. It describes a fact which, even if exaggerated, is not the less worthy of being rightly estimated. The ridicule is not unmixed with jealousy and fear on the part of many who are constrained to admit the progress of intelligence in the lower orders of society. What is the true meaning of the spirit of reform which has assumed so commanding an attitude? To Quarterly Reviewers and the faction they represent, it may seem to presage revolution; whereas it is the effect of one. A revolution has taken place; and that which, in their blindness, they wish to prevent, has become history. And what is the character of that pacific revolution, which has been going on almost unperceived among us? It differs from that which took place in France forty years ago, much as the revolution produced by the vernal sun in the face of nature, differs from the effects of a physical convulsion, or a conflict of the elements. The French revolution was a conflict of the new opinions with the old. The English revolution of the nineteenth century is the development of the moral energies of the nation.

Among the unequivocal signs of that development, we may in the first place refer to the astonishing display of the principles of spontaneous exertion and voluntary combination, in our religious and patriotic institutions. Other countries have their munificent public establishments and endowed institutions: but where shall we find any thing like the immense amount of beneficence that is sustained by popular contributions in this country? The pecuniary amount that is annually raised for such objects, though a striking evidence of the wealth and reproductive energy of the nation, is not the most important feature of these institutions. To estimate them aright, we must take into account the moral sympathy which is generated and transmitted throughout the social system by this reticular apparatus, spread over the surface, and blending with the veins and arteries of the body politic, as the media of thought and voluntary motion. All this additional

See, on the Increase and Causes of Crime, Ecl. Rev., 3d Series, vol. vii. p. 319.

organization, instead of interfering with the political structure, only connects it the more firmly. Or, to change the figure, we may consider these voluntary institutions as so many new conduits and channels opened for the civilizing influence of intelligence, and as so much additional apparatus for extending the moral cultivation of society. Of many of these institutions, it would be difficult to say, whether their direct or their indirect efforts be the most beneficial. The Bible Society, with its innumerable ramifications, is scarcely more useful in distributing the inspired volume, than by promoting the union among Christians, founded on their common rule of faith, by recalling them to that standard, and by exciting an interest in the universal diffusion of the saving knowledge it imparts.

The spirit of the French Revolution was purely disorganization: it could destroy, but not create. It demolished every thing, but substituted nothing better in its place. The spirit of the English revolution is a plastic energy, producing spontaneously, to meet the new wants of society, a constitution of things that seems to reproach with inefficiency the worn-out machinery of older times. The spirit that lives in our institutions, and which originated them, has outgrown the forms which it is gradually putting off; but, in the new formations to which it is giving birth, there is nothing but what is in harmony with the old. The spirit of reform wars with nothing in our institutions, but their decay or corruption.

To a dispassionate and impartial observer, the numbers and the spontaneous exertions of the English Protestant Dissenters must appear one of the most striking proofs of the energy innate in the British nation. To the churchman who views all that is done without his church, as so much done against it, the activity and influence of the sectaries present only a subject of jealousy and alarm. Southey has said, that those who are discontented with the Church of England are but half Englishmen '; to which it may well be retorted, that those who quarrel with Dissent are but half Christians. Two-fifths of the public provision for the religious instruction of the nation are supplied by the voluntary contributions of the Dissenters, in addition to all that is raised among them for public institutions, which cannot be less than a quarter of a million sterling. In what a state should we have been as a nation, with sixteen millions of people, and a stationary, slumbering, unpopular Church, but for the free and popular efforts of the Dissenting communions, the Sunday-schools, the village preaching, the tract societies, the Bible associations, which they have originated, the evangelical instruction which they have imparted, and the salutary re-action of their labours upon the Establishment itself? Can a man be more than half an Englishman, who, viewing with utter dissatisfaction all this

movement of moral life and energy as a revolutionary agitation, sickens at the name of Methodism, and curses Dissent. The spirit of Dissent, which Burke styled the Protestantism of the Protestant religion, the spirit of religious liberty, the spirit of voluntary zeal and combination, the missionary and aggressive spirit which an Establishment restrains and discourages, but which the Gospel both sanctions and produces,-call it a revolutionary spirit, (as the Apostles were stigmatized as the men who turned the world upside down,)-this spirit has made our country what it is, and, by the moral revolution it has produced, and is producing, has saved us from the horrors of a political convulsion, such as the increase of the population, and the unrestrained growth of pauperism and vice, must otherwise have brought on.

Dissent has saved the country, but it has brought the tithe into danger! Hinc illi lachrymæ. This turbulent spirit of reformation, not contenting itself with planting chapels and Sundayschools all over the country, and Bible societies all over the world, is beginning to measure its strength against long-standing corruptions in Church and State. The slave-trade has fallen before it, and slavery itself is in its death-struggle. The testlaws have given way. Old Sarum and Gatton have been annihilated. And matters are brought to such a pass, that the Church Establishment, in order to stand, must submit to reform, must part with its cherished pluralities, must become less secular and more popular. Is not all this extremely like the first movements of the French Revolution? If the following picture of the progress of public opinion, drawn by Lord John Russell, described the previous state of France, some resemblance might be detected between it and the present state of England; but to the former it is wholly inapplicable.

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There is a principle of life in modern governments,' says the noble author, which antiquity never knew. In Greece and Rome, all the citizens, alike poor, were at first the virtuous supports of free institutions; but, as wealth and luxury advanced, all grew alike corrupt, and the needy multitude were swayed by the opulent few. In modern monarchies, the progress has been very different. The wretched dependants of feudal times were converted, with the increase of wealth, into the substantial yeomanry and tradesmen. Into these powerful but inert masses were thrown, from the printing press, the animating sparks of historical instruction and political intelligence. Where works of genius, on the subjects of law and liberty, are generally diffused, there arises a new spirit of virtue, which corrects the rancid corruption of a decaying government. In proportion as the middle and lower classes rise in knowledge, they rise in importance, and judge of their masters by the test of their own worth. Not having been corrupted by power, their standard of what is right in government is much higher than that of the ruling classes. A new people come to the surface, and obtain an influence over the destiny of their country. An awful tribu3 B

VOL. IX.-N.S.

nal is erected even in the midst of a corrupted society; and the mem. bers of the most vicious order begin to bend before public opinion.. The minds of men are cleared; public character is submitted to the ordeal of shame or approbation; and that lethargy of a state which is the sure forerunner of dissolution, is effectually prevented.' pp. 84-86.

Lord John must have been thinking of his own country only, when he penned this paragraph. There is, however, a principle of life in nations, unknown to Greece and Rome, with which the philosophic historian rarely concerns himself, which eludes his observation, and scarcely comes into his creed. That vital principle is the secret of England's strength and greatness,-her religious faith. "God is in the midst of her: she shall not be

moved."

Whatever were the secondary causes of the French Revolution, no one who believes that the affairs of nations are under the moral government of the Judge of the whole earth, can look upon that catastrophe in any other light than as a national punishment. If it was the offspring of infidelity, it was the avenger of the persecuted faith. The iniquities of the court and the nation were full, and retribution for all the innocent blood that had been shed in former reigns, was fearfully exacted from that generation. The Quarterly Reviewer would fain exculpate altogether the nobles, and clergy, and court of France from having had any share in causing the Revolution. Oh, no;-the heartless profligacy of Louis XV., the tyranny and oppression under which the nation groaned, the abominations of Popery, the hypocrisy and immorality of a corrupt priesthood, had nothing to do in causing the displeasure of Heaven or the madness of the people. No, the chief cause was the feeble character and the concessions of Louis XVI.! This is worse than absurd, because it is irreligious. It not only falsifies history, but would blot out the salutary lesson which the handwriting of God has inscribed upon its records, that Sin alone is the cause of the ruin of nations.

Our confidence that no such dire and fatal overthrow awaits Britain, mainly rests, after all, upon the animating and consolatory assurance, that, with all our national guilt, the characteristics of the times are not such as mark a people prepared for destruction. The righteous are not few; their numbers are not diminishing. The signs of the times are, in many respects, full of promise. The standard literature of England does not consist of the obscene effusions of deism. Never was religious knowledge so widely diffused. Compare the state of France before the Revolution with that of England now, in this one respect, and the difference is infinite. In the one country, the word of God was less read than Voltaire by the higher classes, and was a sealed book to the lower orders. In the other, the Bible is found in every cottage. Need we pursue the contrast? The truth is,

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