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r « a « £ s * ha ibottt « fc < th « e / SBeofflrful conspkatorRTtfere men moved by no othePunpulse than the desperation of gamblers who had nothing-to lose * nd all to gain by a crime which ttooW tare paralysed the arm of any man iaeirKb ^ tte ^™* "" *^^ .
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The account--we taw rKsceited in a- private letter < # the reception of M . Esxmm by the Breach Academy * adds lit £ e *» our remarks of last meek . It s « y » tfea * tfee affluence of the aristocracies of the Faubourg St . Germain and Ike Gh * oi » e * e d » Antin -was immense ; that it was regarded « s a «^« acai Jemonsteation ; and i 3 wt the-ladies moTO eapeoiaHy were ready to seize til * fafetert ? ailwmm against the Empire , «•>* > «* " course , on account ot aBTfiympatiiyMrtAfreemstitutionBi but "because they want to go back to powder andfcoops ; " ""This determination , * onr correspondent * ays , "to oppose by dmmbw of historical aH «» ion , threatens a total falsification of historyforB € « ie time to come . ** M . bb Sajlvawdy ' s reply was laboured and rhetorical , and nmofa too long ; *» By-the-by , when it was previousl y submitted to the committee , every one felt its enormous length , bo * nobody liked to telliwar bo . At length Mi Scscbe undertook the task . 'My -dear «« V » he * rid , ' tfeak is splendid : your address is like a great city : there are m « nyfwaaces « nd many houses ; if you knock down eenie of the houses the palace * will-fa * mm visible . ' Some were knocked dwwa , but not enough . M . Bkkrter , excusing his inexperience in literary wmpeehaon , isi reported to have said , ' I know how to speak * but I can neither read nor write . ' His address savoured ** , little of oratorical dlfiuseness and effort ,. but this modest and witty inot of the great speaker was not deserved . " In ifoe semi-official Pays there has appeared a very angry article against 4338 perversion of toe Academy to political demonstrations ; and a threat to close the dbompon " provocations . which areas dangerous in the salon as in the street /*'
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We hare not yet received the newnumber of the Revue des Deux Mondes { "Marca 1 % but we have heard that it contains a remarkable contribution , « rtendmg-tb some forty pages , by M . Gtjizot , on a subject Which to many irSL appear singular in connexion withthe name of that austere Minister—JSurV Amour dans le Mariage .
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A . HISTORY . OF ENGI ^ AND DUfiUftGr THE KfilGBT OF GEGB . GKE III . A . Motor */ of ' England during tie Meigu qf George III . By WOliam Massey , M . P Vol . X—1746-1770- John W . Parker and Son . Several of our contemporaries have sagaciously observed of this book that Mr . Massey has but a slight chance"bf permanently supplying the want xecentty ^ pointed out by Lord John Russell at the Bedford Mechanics ' XnstfttrttOH—the want of a . good history of England . But we have not been the les » xKoKned * o weieome the yolu-me . While waiting for- the history . ( which will never arrive ) the contribution * of political students like
Mfc Massey arei highl y desirable , and , when they come , ai-e to be regarded , not as ambitious substitutes of foregoing-works , but as fragmentary essaysputting otZt materials in a new point or view . We take such works as this as * they stand , gratefully :- —and as Mr . Massey does not appear to us to ¦ deeepve censure / merely because his -history- is not our ideal history , so we do . not qusrsel with him because he does not even precisely fulfil his own design- in his , preface ^ , in > which : he -Announces- four volumes a& the complement of the plan , . be , apeak * of his . aim being to write a " social" rather than ajpoh ' tical or military history of the reign of the third George ; and we are quite content , this first volume being exclusively of anecdotic politics , ± o ¦ wait for the social sketches .
The'spirit m which tbe werkis written ts to-be inferred from Dod ' s de-^ oxaption , of Mr . Mtwsey , as the MJP . — " a Liberal , in favour of Free Trade , Extension of the Suffrage , and Vote , by Ballot ; " that is to say , a man of "Whig traditions ^ who modifies his party formula , by references to the spirit of the : agp . So iar as we have gone with Mr . Massey , we find his" potftics so little nrtepferfn * with his history that he writes of the England i otf' ' 100 yeaft" ^ W fcnpartiaHytts he might write of Athens—indicating throughout this volume only one prejudice , and that being a literary one ^ on the subject afJTnnius * . Mia styie isjeKcallemt iloor aa essay— -suggestive and rapid . At the present moment , with our institutions on the strain , ^ aud the realities o ^ our constitutionaT blessings abruptly tested by a generation , artfthltstjaty practical * such a retrospect as Mr . Massey—offers upon our iMrti « iaipawit » 9 « in < lhe'moirt blessed days of WbHnrery ; when the House of
Haaotrer had been node safey . the House of Goimnone wm in half a dofcen men's pockets , and our noble * enjoyed , the luxury of > . a war with which ; " representative institutions" did not in . the least interfere—affords points of immediately useful application to our own day . This volume commencing , with a description of * England entering on a war ( with Franco and Spain ) after a long and prospurcrus peace , is occupied with a narrative of popular restiveness during the progress of the war . Throughout there , are materials for xnumua . camnwt upon the national characteristics , which are equally jMPBminent . ia J 8 £ O-60 as they were in 17 T , 6 © -7 O . Considering that nee . are only about a hundred years distaat from the death . ofWalpole , at is , for us , a humiliation to find an English gentleman vindicating ^ ifte character of that astute man of the world , on tho ground that tltfryMflto'iBeKof Hflte cornntry-wns then so rotten , that Sir Robert Walpole w » idn IwwiMmi tmne "to the cause of good gorermnent" if be had
dedined to adopt that system , of corruption which is so lnfamooaly a « d eternally associated with his name . Usually , English historians annou that Walpole degraded the . land and disgraced the age : Mr , Massey £ the fact that the glorious revolution on behalf of a reformed religion , still left our ancestors singular ^ mauvdis sujels , in more ways than one . Mr . Massey explams , for the benefit of contemporary . innocent ypi Englishmen , that up to the faihire of the ' 45 our statesmen , doubtful if Stuarte were down , were perpetually—oaths of allegiance notwitbstandin trimming between the in and out royalties , the result being that M . I their consciences puzzled , allowed the question of legitimacy against resp sible governments to be determined by the previous question- —Which j best ? " A fastidious temper , " says Mr . Massey , " would have shrunk t
disgust from the sordid trafiic : a squeamish morality would have suffe the ^ commonwealth to peidsh rather than save it by such means ; " and eulogises Walpole , accordingly , by arguments which would fully jus Lord Palmerston , in our day , settling annuities on all members of the He of Commons who hesitate to believe that he is the only man to carry on war or conclude a peace . " Political purists , " adds our historian , " i cavil at the means by which the -immediate peril was averted , but such j ticmns I leave to their paper constitutions and their impossible Utopi Clearly , we thus see , Mr . Massey is a practical * man . He further descr the political peculiarities of that day , when what he here and there < " our noble constitution , " . " neither valued nor understood by an ignoi people "—who perhaps judged , weak creatures , less by theory than by facts "before them—would seem to have been but imperfectly developed
In a population of eight millions there were no more than 160 , 000 electors , representation of the people was merely a phrase . The people of England had fo most part no more voice in th& election-of the House of Commons than ithe peop ! Canada . The counties were in the hands of the great landowners , who mostly se die representation by previous concert . .... Upwards of fifty villages hamlets were each entitled to return two members to Parliament B of the small town * which could furnish a few electors were entirely under the i ence of one or two of their great neighbours , who accordingly named the men without question . . . . . In those places where freedom of election was pos ; venality in its grossest form , accompanied by brutal debauchery ., were for the part exhibited . It is a remarkable instance of the tenacity of life which belong established abuses , however glaring and enormous , that such a system as this sh have lasted nearly a century and a half , and have at last only yielded within 1 few years to a national struggle which , before it could succeed , was pushed close i the verge of revolutionary violence .
Mr . Massey writes these sentences with perfect composure : he fully lieves that the Beform Act put us all right ,. For be is jio visk > naiy . ridicules , perhaps not -very keenly , but with solemn intention , the theor Pitt and Camden , that the House of Commons could not impose taxes on unrepresented—viz ., the Noi-th American colonists i and it is ^ indeed , singi ; as showing that even in those days Englishmen thought they had s government and were free , and so on , that so comprehensive a mind as 1 possessed was unequal to the observation that , if his theory were carried at home , the king would have got a remarkably small revenue . Massey thinks the right , the definition of which by Cannden has made eft Radical meeting roar applause , can never be " practically" maintai " The attempt to-square political institutions with exact principles v ever be attended with failure ; " and he seems rather to congratulate country that nearly all onar " statesmen'" are now of opinion that on select class of their enlightened countrymen ought to have the franchii universal suffrage being " incompatible with our mixed constitution "—; in Mr . Massey * s eyes , the maintenance of the mixture is of the first portance . He does not appear to perceive , that despite his arithmet sKo ' win ^ s " of *' tlid " ^ paidlce ' d **" coii ( 31 tioii" " of ~ tlie > ClienT House " of " ~ Coixfxzion ' s , masses had-then , in many respects , a power which they have lost in i \ days . Those were the days of mobs and pressure from without . Tl was the Court End and the City End ; and the City made the Court tolerably right .
f V ixtlxso udib biic uav ; n . t ; u jljluuog ui v ^ ltixaiiiujlao uj m \ juB y uuu KisuutitLi strong from hrs felt popularity among the mercantile classes , and niort pecially those of " vnlgar" London , was long able to keep the King and Whig aristocracy down . In our days a Wilkes couldn ' t get a mob—he w < be ungenteel ; would be ob-oh'd into extinction in the House of Comm < ind we see Pahnorston , as- strong in popularity as Chatham was , compe to fight a Whig aristocracy against his reluctant sovereign . England i n her oligarchical Parliament , very vicious then ; but there was abr tmong the people a spirit of'freemen ; they had heard their fathers tall evolution , and they knew their power . That country was safe , even t mch . a House of Commonsf near suek a Oheapside , and with a public wl : ould enjoy and applaud " Junius . " In our day— 'with a hundred years m > f a genteel civilisation—Junius writes still , but our crack statesmen si nm as one of a " ribald press . " In our day , our oligarchical Purliam 5 less openly vicious , but can still afford to be oligarchical , and to mo jcflase government to the aristocracy , because there are now too many pec ; oi allow of a practical mob , and because the Beckfords who used to lead uiddle class have fallen into the rfashion of getting baronetcies and peera
Mr . Massey sketches the success of a coalition opposition against Waif in a manner which suggests a comparison with the" fall of Lord Ab . erdec the simitttuae being in the fact that in both cases aristocratic faction , p haps with good national results , but still factiously , sacrificed n minis who would servo no class , and who would only think of the country . A aristocracy triumphant , Mr . Massey shows that danger to the notion mediately commenced : and he attributes the safety of England , then , the fatuity of the Pretender and his allies rather than to the energy or intellect of the men who , to use his phi'aso about Uie Pelham adtninidtrati "jobbed on the Government . " Frederick , Prince of Wales ,, dead—' Mr . Moasoy unloydQ y suggests that Queen Victoria ' a grcat-grnndfnthcr ' even tlic greatest ( villain of Jter family— and Mr . Pelham following him , 1753 , the House of Commons wa « as bewildered as to tine man to whou give its " lead , " as it would have been this year , if Mr . Disraeli , Mv . O" ' stone , and Lord Palmerston had been in the same Government . The tb
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pt f « mjiMrf : » ifitnm I&uBmanflourcea . on the war , are rife in the nentrai city af ^ Bmissete . Thetw © Ikttest we hear of are caHed respectiTCly Mena&nyes etJ&atkeadeJa . gtterrcd'Orient , and Lettres Susses . ! t -
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MA TKB rjLJli : ^ E R . { SA Tj-rapAar
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Leader (1850-1860), March 3, 1855, page 210, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse2.kdl.kcl.ac.uk/periodicals/l/issues/vm2-ncseproduct2080/page/18/
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