instrumentality of the law; but until we read M. de Tocqueville's ingenious discussion on this point (vol. ii. pp. 175 to 188) we certainly had not sufficiently appreciated the good which the Americans derive (unconsciously and indirectly) from this characteristic propensity. He says,

In all ages of the political history of Europe the lawyers have taken an important part in the vicissitudes of political society. In the middle ages they afforded a powerful support to the crown; and since that period they have exerted themselves to the utmost to limit the royal prerogative. In England, they have long contracted a close alliance with the aristocracy; in France, they have proved the most dangerous enemies of that class.'-p. 175.

He proceeds to explain in what way American lawyers, by their education and habits, acquire instinctively tastes hostile to the revolutionary spirit and unreflecting passions of the multitude. Their special information, and their ten thousand technicalities, which it is utterly impossible that any one but themselves can understand, still less apply to practice, ensure them a separate station in every society. They are the masters of a science which is necessary, but which is not generally known, and as they serve as arbiters between the citizens, and direct, more or less, the blind passions of parties in litigation, they acquire a sort of habitual scorn for the judgment of the multitude. In short, they form a body, connected in mind by the analogy of their studies and the uniformity of their proceedings.

A portion of the tastes and habits of the aristocracy may consequently be discovered in the characters of men in the profession of the law; they participate in the same instinctive love of order and formalities, and they entertain the same strong repugnance to the actions of the multitude, and the same secret contempt of the government of the people.'

p. 177. The object of the legal profession is not to overthrow the institutions of democracy; but they constantly endeavour to give it an impulse which diverts it from its real tendency by means of which the others know nothing.'-p. 181.

'The indispensable want of legal assistance which is felt in England and in the United States, and the high opinion which is generally entertained of the ability of the legal profession, tend to separate it more and more from the people, and to place it in a distinct class. The French lawyer is simply a man extensively acquainted with the statutes of his country, for although the French codes are often difficult of apprehension, they may be read by every one. On the other hand, nothing can be more impenetrable to the uninitiated than a legislation founded on precedents; so that the English or American lawyer resembles the hierophants of Egypt, for like them he is the sole interpreter of an occult science.'-p. 183.

'In America there are no nobility and no literary men; and as the people distrust the wealthy, the professors of the law form the highest

politica

political class, and the most cultivated circle of society. They have nothing to gain by innovation, which adds a conservative interest to their natural taste for public order. If I were asked where I place the American aristocracy, I should reply, without hesitation, that it is not composed of the rich, who are united together by no common tie, but that it occupies the judicial bench and the bar. The more, too, that we reflect upon all that occurs in the United States, the more we shall be persuaded that the members of the legal profession, as a body, form the most powerful, if not the only counterpoise to the democratic element. When the American people is intoxicated by passion, or carried away by the impetuosity of its ideas, it is checked and moderated by the almost invisible influence of its legal counsellors, who secretly oppose their aristocratic propensities to its democratic instincts-their superstitious attachment to what is ancient, to its love of novelty-their circumscribed views, to its immense designs— and their habitual procrastination, to its ardent impatience.'—p. 185.

We do not quite assent to what our author alleges as to the main cause of the democratical tendency of the French, as opposed to the aristocratical tendency of the English and American lawyers. In our opinion, were the work of destruction once complete in France, the lawyers would be found acting there quite as aristocratically as they now dare to do in America. But the circumstance which M. de Tocqueville adverts to is still an important one; and accordingly we find all our own philosophical radicals strongly infected with their master, the sublime Jeremy Bentham's hatred of 'judge-made law,' and love of what is called, in the same dialect, Codification.'

We have not room for our author's equally luminous exposition of various other conservative circumstances in the condition of the American republic-such as her having no neighbours a wide territory of virgin soil-and last, not least, of her having no metropolis. Were there a Paris or a London in America, the whole system would go to shivers in a single twelvemonth; and this too was the distinct belief of Jefferson, expressed in one of his letters from Paris, while the French Revolution was going on-a revolation, by the bye, in the reality of which the said Jefferson never believed, until the bloody head of Madame de Lamballe was dabbed against his window one morning, while he was reading the newspaper over his chocolate.

The following remarks are very important in many senses :

'It cannot be doubted that in the United States the instruction of the people powerfully contributes to the support of a democratic republic and such must always be the case I believe where the instruction which awakens the understanding is not separated from the moral education which regulates manners. Yet I by no means wish to lay too much stress on this advantage; and I am far from thinking, as many people in Europe do, that men can be instantaneously made good

citizens

citizens by teaching them to read and write. True information is mainly derived from experience; and if the Americans had not been gradually accustomed to govern themselves, their book-learning would not assist them much at the present day.'

'I have lived a great deal,' he continues, with the people of the United States, and I cannot express how much I admire their experience and their good sense. An American should never be led to speak of Europe, for he will then probably display a vast deal of presumption and very foolish pride. He will take up with those crude and vague notions upon which the ignorant all over the world love to dwell. But if you question him respecting his own country, the cloud which dimmed his intelligence will immediately disperse, and his language will become as clear and precise as his thoughts. He will inform you what his rights are, and by what means he exercises them; and he will be able to point out the customs which obtain in the political world. You will find he is well acquainted with the rules of the administration, and that he is familiar with the mechanism of the laws. The citizen of the United States does not acquire his practical science nor his positive notions from books: he learns to know the laws from participating in the act of legislating-he takes lessons in the forms of government from governing; the great work of society is ever going on before his eyes, and, as it were, under his hands. In the United States politics are the end and aim of education-in Europe, its powerful object is to fit men for private life.'-vol. ii. p. 254.

Of all the moral influences, however, which mitigate the tyranny, and therefore tend to prolong the existence, of the democratical institutions of America, we agree with M. de Tocqueville in considering the prevalence of religious feelings in the great mass of the people themselves as by far the most powerful.

The greatest part of British America was peopled,' says our author, by men who, after having shaken off the authority of the Pope, acknowledged no other religious supremacy; they brought with them into the new world a form of Christianity, which I cannot better describe than by styling it a democratic and republican religion. The sect contributed powerfully to the establishment of a democracy and a republic, and from the earliest settlement of the emigrants politics and religion contracted an alliance which has never been dissolved.

"Nature and circumstances concur to make the Americans bold men, as is sufficiently attested by the enterprising spirit with which they seek for fortune. If, however, their minds were free from these restraints, they would very shortly become the most daring innovators and the most implacable disputants in the world. But the revolutionists of

America are forced to profess an ostensible respect for Christian morality and equity. Thus, while the law permits them to do what they please, religion prevents them even from conceiving, and forbids them to commit what is rash and unjust.

'Religion, indeed, takes no direct part in the government of American society, but it must nevertheless be regarded as the foremost of the poli

tical institutions of that country; for, if it does not impart a taste for freedom, it greatly facilitates its use. Despotism may govern without faith, but Liberty cannot. Religion is much more necessary in the republic which political theorists describe in glowing colours, than in the monarchy which they attack, and it is more needed in democratic republics than in any others. How is it possible that society should escape destruction if the moral tie be not strengthened in proportion as the political tie is relaxed?-and what can be done with a people which is its own master, if it be not submissive to the Deity?'-vol. ii. p. 236.

M. de Tocqueville is a firm believer in the Roman Catholic creed; and yet (we think) he has not failed to obtain some glimpses of the danger to which America is at present exposed by the spread of a Roman Catholic population within her territory.

'I think,' says he, 'the Catholic religion has been erroneously looked upon as the natural enemy of the democracy. Amongst the various sects of Christianity, Catholicism seems to me, on the contrary, the most favourable to the equality of conditions. In the Catholic church the religious community is composed of two elements, the priest and the people. The priest alone rises above the rank of his flock, and all below him are equal. On doctrinal points the Catholic faith places all human capacities upon the same level: it subjects the wise and the ignorant, the man of genius and the clown, to the observances of the same creed; it imposes the same authorities on the strong and the weak; it listens to no compromise with mortal man, but reducing all the human race to the same standard, it confounds all the distinctions of society at the same altar, even as they are confounded in the sight of God.'-vol. ii. P. 224.

This is one way of putting the theoretical question; but the practical result at least is clear

'There are, at present, more than a million of Christians professing the truths of the Church of Rome in the Union. These Catholics are faithful to the observances of their religion; nevertheless they constitute the most republican and the most democratic class of citizens in the United States.'-ibid.

In

In our humble opinion the real object of the Romish priesthood, all the world over, always was and will be power; and they seek it in different ways according to the circumstances of the age and the country in which their operations are carried on. a monarchy their ambition is to master the mind of the prince; in an aristocratical republic they endeavour to establish their sway among the noble senators; in a democracy they are sure to bend all their exertions to the acquisition of power over the dominant mass; and we should not be at all surprised to find that the results of their experience in this last field were such as to convince them, that the finest thing in the world for them would be the universal establishment of democracies-each ostensibly omnipotent within VOL. LVII. NO. CXIII.

M

itself,

itself, but each eventually the slave of their own compact allpenetrating influence. Already, as M. de Tocqueville knows, the Irish Catholic mob has made itself the ruling power in the elections of New York; he well knows that this mob acts in blind obedience to the orders of its priests-that is to say, of its Bishops-the only men, by-the-bye, in the American Union who are at this day styled Lords; and he must also be well aware that this mob could never have acquired the tithe of such influence but for the hardihood with which ruffians, landed from Connaught or Kerry but a week before, take false oaths as to residence in America, which alone enable them to march to the poll, and vote for the candidate who is so fortunate as to have the support of those holy personages.

It is due to Mr. Reeve, the translator of M. de Tocqueville's very nice and delicate language, to bear our testimony to the fidelity with which he has executed a task of considerable difficulty. We strongly recommend him to use his influence with his publisher, to bring out the book in a cheaper shape, in order that the interesting information and practical wisdom with which it abounds may be placed within the reach of those classes where prejudice and error take their firmest stand. In conclusion, we once more congratulate the public on their having at last obtained a popular account of America, written in the very purest spirit of philosophy, and with such rare temperance, that persons of all parties, and of all shades of parties, may read it not only with profit, but without their patience being ruffled. It may be thought that we ought to have introduced it sooner to our readers; but we are glad that we deferred the matter; for it is our sincere belief that thousands will now consider M. de Tocqueville's statements with calmness who but a year ago were beyond the reach of temperate discussion upon such topics.

ART. VII.-The Mountain-Decameron.

By Joseph Downes.

3 vols. 12mo, London. 1836.

THOUGH every season brings a new swarm of novels and romances written with cleverness, the display of any masculine power of imagination, or vivid eloquence of language, was never perhaps rarer in works of this class than it has been for some years past. In the volumes named at the head of this paper it is impossible not to recognise many traces of genius, and therefore we think it our duty to notice them; but we regret to add we must do so very briefly. A finer field than the characters and manners of the Welsh peasantry no novelist could have

selected;