On this page
- Departments (1)
-
Text (5)
-
Untitled Article
-
Untitled Article
-
Untitled Article
-
il > 44-rt.t».i+%tt«tv 3LIl£lUlUiw
-
Untitled Article
Note: This text has been automatically extracted via Optical Character Recognition (OCR) software. The text has not been manually corrected and should not be relied on to be an accurate representation of the item.
-
-
Transcript
-
Note: This text has been automatically extracted via Optical Character Recognition (OCR) software. The text has not been manually corrected and should not be relied on to be an accurate representation of the item.
Additionally, when viewing full transcripts, extracted text may not be in the same order as the original document.
Untitled Article
Having no longer any party to support , the Quarterly Review is becoming more liberal in its political sympathies . In the first article of the current number , for example-an able one on ' The French Constitutionalists' — revolutionary movements are spoken of with respect , and a writer of strong Republican sympathies , M . de Tocqueville , is quoted and referred to throughout in terms of high praise . The paper is , indeed , little more than an analysis of his last , and perhaps most striking , work , On the State of Society in France before the Revolution , which the writer justly considers to be in many respects a political discovery reflecting the highest credit on M . du TocQUEViLLii ' s insight and research as a philosophical historian . One of the most noteworthy points of this discovery relates to the action of the Government in the provinces before the Revolution . M . de Tocqueville proves by the fullest evidence that the centralized Government of the French people , commonly supposed to be the work of ^ lic Revolution , had in reality grown up under the old regime , and was at the time of its dissolution strong enough to survive the political convulsions that followed . The following extract will give an idea of the style and spirit of the article : —
M . de Tocqueville ' s discovery may no \ tf be accepted that the Revolution was not the source of the centralization which prevails in France , for he has found the latter in an earlier stratum , and found it to his astonishment with the attributes which he presumed to be of much later origin . He has found , for example , the similitude engendered by similar institutions between the administrators of those times and the administrators of our own . He has remarked the same desire to take cognizance of every detail of business , the same appetite for statistics ^ for returns more circumstantial than accurate—the same flowing and colourless official language . The administrators of those times and those of our own , seem , as he says , to join hands across the abyss of the Revolution which lies between them . Even their exemption from modern
the jurisdiction of the ordinary tribunals , which the latter regard as a privilege , and which they are accustomed to speak of as one of the great conquests of 1789 , was enjoyed by their predecessors , though less regularly and legally . In short , we may concur with M . de Tocqueville that centralization , governmental and administrative , existed with all its essential features when the revolutionary wave swept over and for a time submerged it . ' This grand institution of the Monarchy , ' as it is termed , subverted in the first confusion of the revolutionary crisis , was nevertheless restored in 180 © . " It was not , as has been so often said , the principles of 1789 which triumphed at that time and ever since in the public administration of France ; but on the contrary the principles of the administration anterior to the Revolution which then resumed their authority , and have since retained it . "
What then is the first obvious deduction from these premises ?—that centralization , though a precursor , was not the chief , and apparently not a direct cause of the Revolution in any sense , for it has been maintained and developed subsequently without consequences corresponding . By disqualifying men for the conduct of affairs it may have promoted the confusion in " which the Revolution was worked out , and which may be clearly distinguished from the Revolution itself . The nature of the latter , moreover , is not to be mistaken , for it may be exactly ascertained by the M'ork it accomplished , by what existed before but did not exist after , and by what existed after but did not exist before it . Centralization existed both before and after ; it was a fact simply parallel and out of the same sequence . " What then can we say was
either removed or established by the French Revolution so as t ;> indicate unequivocally its cause or its object ? A fairer division of burdens supervened . The anomaly , neither feudal nor modern , of an aristocracy which retained its privilges without discharging its obligations— -that oftencc against eternal justice—was brought to account , and for time to come reduced to insignificance . One of the worst descriptions of inequality was abrogated in virtuo of that tendency which modern philosophers , the Arnolds and De Tocquevilles , have attempted to measure , and the existence of which was observed oven by Aristotle and Thucydides—the tendency to equal rights of every kind which has been regarded as the law of human progress , yet on the one side as the principle of national advancement , and on the other as the source of national decline .
The second article on Electioneering , ' is a graphic , gossiping sketch of election doings , of canvassing , bribery and corruption , as they were carried on in the good old times , when a borough was a necessary part of a gentleman ' s establishment , and scats in Parliament were bought and sold like houses and land , horses and dogs , or any other marketable property . Here is a specimen of some of the arts that were successfully practised to overcome the independent electors : — To manufacture elactors was as important an art as getting rid of them . At Bristol the daughters of freemen conferred the right of voting upon their husbands . A trick devised at one closely contested election was for the same woman to marry several men . The ceremony oncled , the couple shook handa over a grave in the churchyard , and exclaimed , " Now donth us do part . " This was considered a divorce . " Away then , " says Southey , who relates the incident , " went the man to vote with his new qualification , and the woman to qualify another husband at another church . " There is a vuriety most creditable to Knglish invention , In the way in which , our ancestors administered
their bribes . At one pluce a mysterious person used to arrive with the cash , known as the * Man in the Moon / who approached at nightfall , and was at once met with " What nows from the moon ? '' This was a poetic form . Then there was the humorous form . " I'll lay you five guinons , " said a celebrated canvasser in Fox ' s eontest of 1784 , " and stake the money in your own handa , that you will not vote for Mr . Fox . "—" Done ! " says the Free mid Independent , nnd wins his bet—and bribe . Another playful \ t \ a , n was to buy the elector ' ** canary at ti price that would have boon handsome for ft bird of paradiao—a vory pretty kind of bird-fancying I Sometimes men showed perfect genius in availing themselves of professional advantages ;—thus , a military gentleman employed in the recruiting florvleo once stood for Groat Grlmsuy , and enlisted a majority of the voters for soldiers with a liberal bounty ! Such anecdotes as those constitute tho literature of electioneering ; and there is probably not a town or county in England whore there Su not an elderly gentleman with a email batch of tliom . In a coolest a good many years ngo In North Britain one of tho parties had strong reason to suspect a particular votor of having' taken a bribe—a considerable bribe too-rfor votes were valuable . A sharp enemy resolved to make an attempt on him . Accordingly , as tho man ontorod to poll , ho whispered iu his ear ,
rapidly , " They ' re making a fule of ye , Jock—they ' re a' badJ" " The scoundrels !" exclaimed his dupe ; and down on the table he flung a batch of notes . They were impounded at once by the authorities , and the man ' s suffrage invalidated . The kind of treating referred to at the close of the following extract—relating to Pox ' s contest for ' Westminster in 1784—lias not , we believe , been specially provided for by act of Parliament : — Mr . Fox having applied to a saddler in the Hay market for his vote and interest , the man produced a halter , with wiich he said he was ready to oblige him . Mr . Fox replied , " I return you thanks , my friend , but I should be sorry to deprive you of it , as I presume it must be a family piece . "
This was one incident of the canvass , and shows the freedom of manners then , prevailing . But the whole of Fox ' s canvass was one of the most remarkable ever known . Wharton himself was outdone . The fairest women of the Whig aristocracy worked for his cause . Every day their carriages—the horses glittering with his coloursdrew up on their favourite ' s side of the hustings , and they sallied forth to conquer . The Duchess of Devonshire , the Countesses of Carlisle and Derby , Lady Beauchamp , and Lady Duncannon , were conspicuous , with the fox ' s brusk in their hats , wooing votes from door to door . A polite epigrammatist wrote : " Sure Heaven approves of Fox ' s cause , Tho' slaves at Court abhor him ;
To vote for Fox , then , who can pause , Since Angels canvass for him ?" On this occasion it was that the lovely Duchess of Devonshire ( the second « Fairy Queen' produced by the Spensers ) immortalized herself in electioneering annals by bribing a butcher with a kiss . The sternest reformers may regret the discontinuance of this mode of treating the electors . The literary article of the number— Homeric Characters in and out of Homer '—is obviously by Mr . Gladstone , and must be accepted as another contribution to the volumes which he hopes ' may soon be committed to the press * on the c various branches of the Homeric History , Religion , Polity , and Poetry . We attribute the article to the right honourable gentleman , not only from the careless English , and ponderous mannerism of its style , but t hout
from the exaggeration and special pleading that mark the criicism throug . The article , indeed , can scarcely be called a criticism any more than . Mr . Gladstone ' s two previous ones on the same subject . It maybe critical in part , but as a whole it is a eulogium , a panegyric on Homer , the secular God of his latest idolatry , to whom , however , he seems more than half disposed to offer divine honours . He makes no attempt to estimate fairly the excellences and defects of Home& ' s poems . True , he compares them with the works of later poets ; but this is only to exalt his hero by depreciating every other great name in literature to do him honour . It is not enough for . him that the leading characters of the < Iliad' should be great and noble , poetically consistent and perfect ; all the characters introduced are , he maintains , equally so . The slightest sketch in Homer has more of poetical harmony and finish
than the most perfect portrait by any later poet . The characters of the Greek drama are coarse and vulgar in comparison with the Homeric heroes , and tho j Eneas of Virgil naturally becomes a ' pale and sickly automaton . ' The critic looks with dignified compassion on Siiakspeare ' s representations , attributingthem to the mediaeval darkness of the age in which he lived . The first sentence sufficiently indicates the tone of exaggerated admiration that runs through the article . " To one only , " says the writer , " among the countless millions of human beings , has it been given to draw characters , by the strength of his own individual hand , in . lines of such force and vigour , that they have become , from his day to oar own , the common inheritance of civilized man . That one is Homer . " This sentence
indicates not only the kind of criticism you arc to expect , bufe the heavy , involved , redundant style in which it is conveyed . Consistently with the opening sentence , he adds , in the same paragraph , " The fame of Hamlet , Othello , Lady Macbeth , or JFalstaiF , and much more that of Varney , or Ravenswood , or Caleb Balderston , or Meg Mcmlies , has not come , aud may never come , to be a world-wide fame . " Both the style and point of view of the writer arc in fact those of a public speaker rather than of a literary critic . Tho end
of the article is to persuade , to convert you to tho true Homeric faith ; but the writer cannot fuse his materials with the glowing passion that wins your sympathy , even when it does not convince your judgment . It shows the meres mechanism , without tho living power of oratory . The stylo , too , possesses the rhetorical vices without tho poetical virtues of eloquence . It is redundant aud swelling , witliout being animated or picturesque , showing at most a kind of forensic skill instead of imaginative power . Tho reasoning docs not convince , nor tho rhetoric move . It is , in . fact , a weariness to the flesh , and we cannot but hope that we shall hear no more of Homeu iu tho Quarter ^ for
some time to come . The London Quarterly lieoieto opens with an article entitled ' Philosophy , Old and New , ' which praises highly Professor Fjsjmubr ' s Institutes of Metaphysic , but whether the praise is exactly of the kind tho Professor will relish is questionable The writer considers tho Institutes to prove not only the falsehood ol psychology , but the impossibility of all metaphysio , its utter inability to solve tho problems it attempts . Tliis , however true in itsolf , is scarcely tlio object the tvouto Scotch Professor proposes in his striking theory . Uio ttaovv ooutuins also an article on Curnm , ' full of pleasant gossip about that most goaiul , witty , wad eloquent of Irish orators .
Untitled Article
AKAGO'S SCIENTIFIC BIOGItAPHIES . Bionraphics of T ) MnguUh « d Scientific Men . Jiy FrancoU Arago . Translated by Admiral W . II . Smyth , tho Kov . Baden Powell , and Jtobort Grant . , Longm , un « ^ o < Arago ' s ftlogos of illustrious men have long boon celebrated , and a selection of them Fa now presented to the English public under eonous pntroniuje .
Untitled Article
Cities are not tne legislators , but the judges and police of literature . They do not Cities ^^^ iffig : interpret aadtry to enforce them .- Edmburffh Review .
Il ≫ 44-Rt.T».I+%Tt«Tv 3lil£Luluiw
j Etterntur * . a —~
Untitled Article
No . 383 , Jtjiy 25 , 1857 . J THE LEADER . 713
-
-
Citation
-
Leader (1850-1860), July 25, 1857, page 713, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse2.kdl.kcl.ac.uk/periodicals/l/issues/vm2-ncseproduct2202/page/17/
-