COMPARATIVE SKETCHES OF FRANCE AND ENGLAND. conduced to the late Revolution, and the characters of the men who influenced it, or were affected by it, for misfortune or advantage. The characteristics of the writer are such as they appeared in Eastern Europe: there is the same rather imaginative breadth of view, the same full and rotund but somewhat verbose Having exhausted Russia and the Sclavonic races, with a glance at Austria and Germany, the Author of Revelations of Russia takes up France and England, to consider their "contrasts and analogies." The book was written, he informs us, before the late Revolution in France, which he claims the merit of predicting; and certainly he (and not he alone) dimly fore-state-paper style; a similar attempt at exhibiting shadowed changes in that country. As, howev er, the work depends upon observations extended over a long period, or broad statistical views long since accessible, there is nothing to have prevented the composition of these rhetorical volumes within the present year; only in such case the author would doubtless have predicted more specifically. The title of the work does not convey a very distinct idea of its contents, or the objects of the writer; which objects, indeed, are various and independent enough, if we judge by what is done. One purpose is to show, by a broad statistical survey of civilized countries, that the well-being of the community at large-of the people-depends upon their political freedom; that men live longer, live better, consume more varied produce, have more money, and (with the exception of the United States) pay more taxes, in proportion to the constitutional character, of their government and their influence over it. Another object is to urge that the advancement of Europe depends upon the good understanding of England and France; as each country in its respective way sets an example to the European world, and both are able by their mere will to control the despotic powers. Some half dozen chapters are devoted to the more direct resemblances or contrasts of France and England in their material power, national characteristics, social condition, and ideas of politics and government; which expositions are followed by a disquisition on the effect of institutions upon a country and of the reacting influence of race. The remainder of the book is of a less disquisitional kind, consisting for the most part of personal sketches or comments upon contemporary public events. There is a survey of the life and character of Louis Philippe,-pressing hard enough upon the Citizen King: a chapter giving an account of the Spanish marriages, professing to furnish secret information, but really containing little that is fresh, though deriving some novelty from the dramatic form into which it is thrown. The sketches of the parties and politicians of France is a paper attractive for its subject; dealing with the circumstances that the philosophy of history and politics; with great cleverness in the use of statistics. The book is hardly so attractive as its predecessor; and part of this may arise from the more hacknied nature of France and French politics and politicians at present. Ever since the Spanish marriages, certainly, perhaps since the Syrian war and the affair of Pritchard, a good deal of not very favorable attention has been paid to Louis Philippe and his government. Its corruption has been pointed out, the selfishness of the Monarch touched upon, the leading men of France exhibited in periodical literature; and though the extent of the corruption or of the selfishness and still more of the national dissatisfaction were not apprehended till the result, yet the subject is now deficient in that novelty which characterized the author's views on the despotisms and peoples of Middle and Eastern Europe. Hence he may have been tempted to elaborate the philosophy of the topics too much, especially as the manner of his philosophy is not very taking in itself, belonging as it does to the extreme rhetorical school. Notwithstanding the author's rather boastful enumeration of his opportunities of seeing France and mixing with Frenchmen, we think the statistical parts of the work better than the living descriptions. The facts in the following summary may not be accurate in their arithmetic, but the general conclusion is independent of precise accuracy, and is remarkable. "France exceeds in most things all the great European powers combined; but when we confar behind Great Britain as she is in advance of trast France with Great Britain, we find her as other Continental states. "Thus, France exceeds the three powers in the extent of her trade. Great Britain in her commerce doubles France. "France doubles the three powers in the extent of her navy. Great Britain more than trebles France. "In the extent of its middle class, France ex ceeds the Continent: France has 1,164,000 subjects enjoying an income above 217. Great Britain has more than two millions and a quarter enjoying upwards of 40l. annually. "In the quantity of food consumed by its population, France averages double the quantity of wheat and double the quantity of sugar consumed by the population of the absolutely governed states: in France 361 pounds of wheat, and 6 to 74 1-4 pounds of sugar are consumed per head. In the United Kingdom 336 pounds, (and, taking only Great Britain, 446 pounds per head of wheat,) and 19 pounds of sugar, are consumed. During 1847, 68,000,000l. have been raised in France. The revenue of Russia, Prussia, and Austria, whose subjects are still more severely taxed, in proportion to their ability to pay, is collectively 48,000,000l. The United Kingdom levies only 50 millions of taxes; but as its income is computed at 550 millions, and that of France at 320 millions of pounds sterling, it is obvious that Great Britain could, without greater pressure raise double the present revenue of France. [It should have been stated, however, that many subjects of local or special taxation in England are in France discharged by the government: were every thing brought to a comparative account, it would be found, we think, that England pays the most.] "It is also worthy of remark, that in Russia more than a third of the whole revenue is derived from the brandy farms; which, when the low price at which it is sold, the profits of the brandy farmers, and the produce of illicit distillation are taken into account, suppose the consumption of a prodigious quantity of ardent spirits. "To the Russian empire our exports are eightpence and a fraction for each inhabitant.” Louis Philippe is painted badly enough, from first to last. The author tells the scandalous story of his reputed illegitimacy, with a leaning in its favor; and in his preface he asserts his disbelief of the alleged narrow circumstances of the dethroned Monarch. "Louis Philippe now represents himself as almost penniless. It was so notoriously his cus tom, when the wealthiest individual in the world, to speak of himself as in embarrassed circumstances, that he was popularly called in derision the 'pauvre pere de famille.' He has now a substantial motive for pleading poverty, in the hope of recovering, without deductions too absorbing, his sequestrated property from the pity of the French people; a motive the writer would have respected if there had not been strong grounds for believing that the hoarded wealth he has placed in safety, is being employed to embroil this country with France. "Under these circumstances the following facts, recalled to the attention of the reader, will show what credit is due to the simulated poverty of the royal exile. "A few days before the Revolution broke out, the New York papers, then in England, announced that purchases to the total amount of one million dollars had been effected for Louis Philippe in that city. Armand Marrast has notoriously of late discovered upwards of 20,000l. annuities invested in the French Funds, under an assumed name, by Louis Philippe. Is it to be believed that the Ex-King's foresight extended no further?” The author considers the late Revolution fa "If we turn next to Prussia, attempted to be imposed on us as a specimen of model administration, we find twenty-four pints of distilled liquor the share of each individual; whilst in Ireland, the land of whisky, the average-nine before Father Matthew's reign-is since only about seven; and in the United Kingdom, in-vorable to the prospects of peace with France. cluding London with its gin palaces, something Louis Philippe's government had brought the under six and a half. If we draw a line through financial condition of the country to so distressed Europe, separating the Western and constitu- a state, and induced such universal disgust tional from the absolutely governed states of the among the people, that, however unwilling the Centre and of the East, we shall find that our King himself might have been to plunge into the British exports to Holland, Belgium, Spain, Por- uncertainties of war, no other resource would in tugal, and France, notwithstanding the illiberal tariffs of France and Spain, average three shil- reality have been left him to divert attention lings for each individual, whilst for Central and from home affairs. The prospect from the ReEastern Europe only one shilling and eight public is only a chance of war; with Louis Philippe it was a certainty. Spectator. pence. STATE PROSECUTIONS. The state prosecutions" have closed, after two minor failures, in the conviction of John Mitchel under the recent statute. This is unquestionably a momentous result; for had justice, in his case, been defeated, it is difficult to calculate the vastness of the possible, and even probable, consequences. Two prosecutions had already been frustrated under circumstances most painfully and impressively illustrative of the social condition of this country. Had a third, and incomparably the most momentous, in like manner failed, it would have been diffi cult to combat the conclusion, that the entire of that arm of the law which visits political offences was paralyzed in Ireland. Had Mr. Mitchel escaped, it would, indeed, have been appallingly plain that no extravagance of seditious language, no audacity or truculence of treasonable design or incentive, could any longer, in Ireland, be made amenable to the existing laws; and that either the constitution which juries refused to administer, must have been superseded by the temporary rigors of a despotism, or else unpunished sedition have been permitted to ripen and increase in insolence and organization, until some hideous outbreak, provoking the direst retaliations of military severity, should have terminated the feverish interregnum, and extinguished the hopes of treason amidst the blood and smoke of desolation. Thank God, an alternative so gloomy has not been forced upon the country, and that the righteous penalty of the law, honestly administered, has, in crushing one public offender, saved, perhaps, the lives and fortunes of innocent thousands. The failure in the comparatively insignificant cases of Messrs. O'Brien and Meagher-comparatively insignificant alike in relation to the importance of the traversers themselves, and to the severity of the penalty sought to be enforced is more than compensated by the complete vindication of the law in the verdict against Mr. Mitchel. Every thinking man who has watched the history of the Irish agitation for the last six months, must perceive in this John Mitchel, not merely the ringleader, but the creator of the entire revolutionary system here, at least in its present armed and threatening attitude. quagmires, social barriers or legal chasms, he pushed on doggedly toward his purpose. He was no favorite with the ostensible leaders of his party; he had renounced the Nation, and turned his back upon the Confederates, because, notwithstanding their cant about "earnest men,” perennially longing for that which, in modern Irish history, though always approaching, never arrives, "the occasion" for drawing the sword, and all the rest of their warlike fustian, he clearly discerned in them and their system a mere reproduction, with a few melo-dramatic accessories, of the coarse old sham of Conciliation Hall. He became a seceder, if not an outcast, set up on his own account; and the United Irishmen, together with rifle clubs, drilling, and thirty thousand pikes, were the results. Mitchel, even though he stood alone, was resolved to follow out the principle professed by the Confederation to its logical conclusion. Disentangled from his associates, he was instantly in advance of them all; and they found themselves reduced to the bitter necessity of either surrendering into his hands the revolutionary lead, or keeping abreast of him in a march of no visionary danger. He alone was resolved to press forward—a strongwilled, one-ideaed, desperate man: and the rest were all hurried on, like flies, in the rush of his career. In Mitchel the sedition has lost its motive power, its real chief- one dreaded and hated infinitely more by the sham leaders of the moveWe treat John Mitchel as the leader of this ment (whom he was remorselessly forcing into insurrectionary movement in Ireland, for such be a literal fulfilment of their bombastic promises,) unquestionably was. The peculiar attitude of than ever he was by the most hypochondriac his party the perils they threaten, and the friend of tranquillity. We therefore look upon perils in which they stand, are all his work. He his conviction (independently of the stern examwas, so far as the public have yet the materials ple involved in his severer punishment) as infor judging, the only formidable man among comparably more momentous than that of any them. It is impossible to read his speeches and fifty of his associates. Among those with whom writings, and not to be impressed with the strik- the public is as yet acquainted, there is no man ing evidences everywhere apparent, of that im- to take his place. Others, as yet unknown, inpetuous abandonment of self, which character- deed, there possibly— nay (judging from some izes the genuine fanatic. He was full to overflow-indications we have seen) even probably may be ing of his malign inspiration. The one idea, the one aspiration engaged his head and heart. He was thoroughly in earnest, and consequently really dangerous. In juxtaposition with such a man, the mere vulgar, histrionic agitator looks the "walking shadow" that he is. Mitchel wrote and spoke irrespectively of display; he gave us no pompous metaphors, no affected quaintness, no vapid parodies upon the style of "Sartor Resartus." He seems to have been equally destitute of vanity, and of fear. Ireland republicanized and communized was his engrossing idea; he saw nothing else, cared for nothing else it had transfixed his vision; and without regarding either natural or artificial obstacles, pitfalls or And eléves of his austere and reckless schoolwho are willing and able to fill the vacant post, and prepared to devote themselves to civil extinction with the same stoical fanaticism. while we are upon this theme, we must needs remark, that had the government, instead of trifling with this novel and serious agitation at first, instead of permitting it, week after week and month after month, to proceed, for a quarter of a year, undisturbed in its dangerous and abominable propagandism-covering a real indecision and trepidation with what we are forced to term an hypocrisy of contemptuous indifference — if, instead of this procrastination and duplicity, the government had exhibited even ordi nary promptitude and vigor, the first number of the United Irishman would have been prosecuted in the then state of the public mind, a verdict certainly procured — and, perhaps, one year's imprisonment would have expiated the guilty frenzy of the convicted journalist, and effectually checked this sanguinary agitation. This dilatory policy has made a FELON of John Mitchel, and is distinctly chargeable, not only with the fate of this victim, but of the dozens of other victims who are too probably to follow in his wake. We find in the course of these trials some very startling social, as well as political, phenomena. Irish trial by jury for political offences, has always been a very precarious process. But in the dissensions of the two special juries respectively sworn in Mr. Meagher's and Mr. O'Brien's cases, there is so much that is instructive, that it were improper, in any discussion of these proceedings, however brief or hurried, to omit to notice their history. The subject has, indeed, been brought before the notice of the House of Commons in one of its aspects, by Mr. Keogh, and some curious ministerial lights elicited in the collisions of debate. The facts are soon told. In striking the special juries in Mr. Meagher's case, out of twelve Roman Catholics who attended, the crown set aside eleven. In forming the jury for the subsequent, and more important trial of Mr. Mitchel, the proceedings of the crown were still more marked and instructive. The panel consisted of one hundred and fifty names; of these, one hundred and ten were called, and seventy-one answered. From this number, fifty-five of whom were Protestants, and sixteen Roman Catholics, the jury was formed. The Roman Catholic attorney-general, reviving a prerogative which ever since Sir Michael O'Loghlin filled that office in Ireland, had been, as we believe, most unwisely abandoned by the crown, peremptorily challenged thirty-nine, and in the number thus set aside was included every individual Roman Catholic who was called amounting, in all, to sixteen persons. This was the act, not of Mr. Kemmis, nor of any other subordinate, but of the Roman Catholic attorneygeneral himself— the legal organ of the Irish government. The government, therefore, must themselves bear the undivided odium (unjust as we believe it to be) of this necessary, but startling procedure and they must also acquiesce in all the consequences logically deducible from the great social admission it involves. We quite agree with Lord John Russell, that it would be preposterous to accuse a Whig government, and a Roman Catholic attorney-general, of setting aside Roman Catholic jurors, merely on account of their religion. We cannot gainsay his Lordship's boast, to the effect that his partialities are all precisely in the opposite direction. The principle on which the attorney-general founded his instructions to Mr. Kemmis, and upon which, of course, in the exercise of the crown prerogative, he himself acted, we shall state from his own lips-"The only instruction that was given was this," observed the attorney-general, in stating the case against Mr. Mitchel-"Obtain an honest, fair, and impartial jury. Any man who, from your information, you believe not to Le a man who will give an impartial verdict between the crown and the subject, that man, and that man alone without reference to his religion — you are to exclude from the panel." This is a satisfactory vindication of the government, but how does it affect the character of her Majesty's Roman Catholic subjects, by, through, and for whom, for nearly twenty years, this country has been governed? It so happens that, acting upon this constitutional principle of selection, every single Roman Catholic (with the exception of three, to whom we shall presently have to allude) who presented himself as a juror upon these prosecutions, was made to stand aside by the crown. The crown officers, in removing from the jury those whom, in the words of the attorney-general in the same case, "they had reason to know concurred and coincided in the politics of the prisoner," happened also, by a strange coincidence (with the exception already mentioned), to exclude every individual Roman Catholic who was called. But there were exceptions. Three Roman Catholics were permitted to serve — two upon the special jury who tried Mr. O'Brien, and one upon that who tried Mr. Meagher. In both these cases the juries unfortunately disagreed, and, upon sifting the matter, it was ascertained, that the only two Roman Catholics upon Mr. O'Brien's jury, happened to be also the only two dissentients from a verdict of guilty, agreed to by the other ten jurors. Precisely similar, too, was the result in Mr. Meagher's case. One dissentient there frustrated a verdict of guilty, agreed upon by eleven jurors, and by a like coincidence it turns out, that that one dissentient was also the one Roman Catholic in the jury-box. The inference from all this is inevitable, aided as it is by the fact, that the common jury who afterwards tried Mr. Mitchel, although composed of men of every shade of political opinion, yet not containing a single Roman Catholic, did find a verdict for the crown. Do those facts indicate the respective loyalty and disaffection of the Protestant and Roman Catholic population of Ireland and do they also illustrate the weakness, the duplicity, and the guilt of that policy which has, for nearly twenty years, systematically weakened and discouraged the former, while it meanly flattered and formidably aggrandized the latter. Here we have upon record the practical admission of the Whigs, and of their Roman Catholic attorney-general one from which, we trust, they shall never be suffered to escape that the supremacy of British law in this country is actually maintained by and depends upon, the loyalty of Irish PROTESTANTS. We shall not dispute about terms; they may call it a "curious coincidence," or even an unaccountable one, if they will, but a FACT it nevertheless unquestionably is —a fact practically admitted, beyond the power of retractation, by the government themselves, and patent in the contrasted results of the two first and of the last of these three important prosecutions." To the heavy responsibilities of the government, not only in connexion with the individual fate of John Mitchel, but also in reference to the existing state of Ireland, we must once more allude. To the cowardly deference to Roman Catholic disaffection, which has so uniformly characterized the Whigs, is attributable that policy of procrastination which has ended in making Mitchel a felon, his wife bereaved, and his children fatherless all rather than enforce at once the milder law of sedition, to which four months since the now ruined convict was amenable — and this is mercy!. To this dilatory policy is also attributable the alarming fact that the doctrines of revolution have gradually acquired a footing and created a school in Ireland, to an extent which threatens a repetition of many such stern and melancholy scenes as that which has closed the turbulent career of John Mitchel, and the possibility, too, of far more awful consequences in perspective. "I shall say no more (were the last words of Mitchel, while standing in the dock) than that all through this business, from the first, I have acted under a strong sense of duty, and that I will not repent of anything I have done. I do believe the course I have opened is only commenced. The Roman saw his hand burning into ashes, and could promise for three hundred who were ready to follow his example. Can I not promise for one, for two, for threeHere the court interrupted him, and he was removed. But Mitchel has not promised, we venture to predict, in vain. He has had an uninterrupted mission of four months, and leaves, too probably, many disciples behind him. -Dublin University Magazine. COLLECTANEA. QUEENS AND THEIR LETTERS. The Revue Retrospective continues to lay bare the secrets of the royal houses of England and France, and we rejoice to find Queen Victoria continue to deserve the praise we bestowed upon her first appearance as an authoress. We do not mean to say that she will ever be a Lady Mary Wortley Montagu of a scribe, but there is one line in her letter, as we shall presently show, deserving of great praise. The last number of the Revue contains a letter from Louis Philippe, July 28, 1804, to the Bishop of Landaff, on the assassination the word is justifiable, though Hazlitt in his "History of Napoleon" strangely defends the deed of the young Duc d'Enghien, in the trenches at Vina letter from Admiral Dupetit also Thouars, the French admiral at Tahiti. These epistles, however, present nothing new. We now give the close of the correspondence between the (then) Queens of France and of Great Britain: cennes; "TO HER MAJESTY THE QUEEN OF GREAT BRITAIN. "Madam, Confident in that great friendship of which your Majesty has given us so many proofs, and in the amiable interest which you have always shown to all our children, I hasten to announce to you the conclusion of the marriage of our son Montpensier with the Infanta Louisa Fernanda. This family event overpow the happiness of our dear son, and that we will ers us with joy, because I hope that it will insure find in the Infanta a new daughter as good and as amiable as the elder ones, and who will add to our internal happiness, the only true happiness in this world, and which you, Madam, know so well how to appreciate. I ask of you, in anticipation, your friendship for our new child, feeling devotion and of affection which we all feel for sure that you will partake all the sentiments of you, for Prince Albert, and for all your dear family. -I am, Madam, your Majesty's entirely devoted servant and friend, MARIE-AMELIE." This letter reads to us very like one written to order - written to please an intriguing father and husband, not an intriguer, however, as respects any infringement of his marriage vow, but unquestionably the good and loving husband of a very excellent wife. It appears constrained. It is not like the outpouring of a kindly old lady, such an one as Cowper, had he lived now, might have described the ex-Queen of the French — "By long experience well informed, Well read, well temper'd, with religion warm'd." |