Spain, under republican fervour, and the democratic Constitution of 1812, which sets out with the principle of universal suffrage, as now given by Mr Michael Burke, the accuracy of whose observations and predictions regarding the Peninsula has been so completely established by recent

events.

"The Constitution of 1812, may now be said to rule the kingdom of Spain. Established for the second time by a military insurrection, this form of government, in every respect unsuitable to the character of the Spaniards, cannot prove of long duration. The presidents of every constitutional junta in the country are military men, and, with scarcely an exception, the most unprincipled persons in the nation. Nor are the other members of these juntas more deserving of public confidence. Composed for the most part of indigent employés and petty lawyers, who endeavour to grin, in a day or week of revolution, the fortune which their slender talents could never procure for them in peaceable times, their first measure has invariably been the imposition of heavy contributions. It were idle to say that the sums thus raised have been made use of for the benefit of the state. The most vexatious hardships, the most unjust persecution, the most shameful robbery, and the direst oppression, form the catalogue of the labours of the constitutional juntas of Andalusia. Men, however commendable their conduct may have been during life, however sincere their admiration of rational liberty, if rich, are suspected of Carlism, and heavily fined if poor, they are not unfrequently cast into a loathsome prison, and forced to herd with common malefactors. Such are the auspices under which the groundwork of Spanish regeneration has commenced. On the 25th of July, Malaga began the revolution by the assassination of the military and civil governor of the town; and in Madrid the idolized Constitution was proclaimed on the 15th of August, and celebrated by the murder of General Quesada. But even the vile populace of Malagathe very galley slaves let loose for the occasion-respected the dead bodies of the victims. To the people of Madrid-of the heroica villa of Madrid-it was reserved to hack and mangle the corpse of a brave general, and again exhibit to Europe the horrible barbarity of a scene similar to that represented in Barcelona on the 5th of August, 1835. And can such a system, originating in bloodshed, and ported by the most cruel exaction, find favour in the eyes of the Spanish people? A momentary enthusiasm may exist amongst a part of the people; but, like

sup

that of the past year, it will flicker for a while, and then totally disappear."

These, and similar examples, with which all history is filled, are utterly inexplicable by the democratic party, and therefore they style history an old almanac, and by common consent make it a rule never to refer to, or pay any regard to its disagreeable lessons. But to any person, who considers the nature of the human heart, who reflects that it is "deceitful above all things, and desperately wicked ;' that there is no one guiltless, no not one;" and who has observed how completely these assertions of universal and inherent corruption are confirmed by unvarying experience, both of the affairs of nations and of single men, it will appear noways surprising that the attempt to purify the affairs of Government, and eradicate the vices of its administration, by merely multiplying the number of persons who are to be actuated by its passions, and seduced by its temptations, is of all hopeless undertakings the most hopeless. And he will probably be of opinion, that if democratic institutions ever are to exist with safety in an old state, it will be in a country where the incessant influence of a beneficent religion has gone far to uproot the seeds of wickedness in our common nature, and that the first reform which must precede all others, and is at once the most important and the most difficult, is the reform of the human heart. He will conclude, that till this is done, all attempts at Republican institutions must prove either nugatory or pernicious, and that Pope Pius VI. proved himself a more profound politician, as well as a better man, than any of our modern Reformers, when he said, in 1797, when still bishop of Imola-" A democratic government is not contrary to the Gospel; only it requires those sublime virtues which cannot be learned but in the school of Jesus Christ. That virtue, whose duties are prescribed to us by the light of nature, and fully brought to light by the Christian dispensation, is alone capable of bringing mankind to perfection, and preparing them for supreme felicity; it and it alone can be the true foundation of a prosperous democracy. Clothed with mere moral virtues, we should be but imperfect beings: it is religious truth which alone can inspire the graces requisite for general self

government. The foundation of such a system must be, that every one is to respect the rights of his neighbour as much as his own, which is only another way of stating the Christian precept, to love your neighbour as yourself. The Gospel of Jesus Christ is the sole code which can bring man to perfection, even in the social affairs of this world, and ensure, without disturbance, the exercise of those reasonable privileges, which, assumed as the basis of our temporal constitution, are not less the foundation of our eternal felicity. Mere human wisdom and virtue leave a frightful void in this particular: the Gospel alone is capable of filling it up.'

It is not thus, however, that our modern reformers and esprits forts rea

son.

The great object of their efforts is to ridicule, weaken, and cast down religion; to establish equality of privileges on the ruins of the Church; to elevate mere intellectual cultivation upon a total neglect of moral virtues and religious precepts. Certainly the coalesced herd of Radicals, rakes, libertines, roués, Dissenters, and Papists, have no intention of establishing their Utopian democracy on the great basis of doing to others as they would they should do unto them. No men have a weaker sense of the distinction of meum et tuum; none pant more ardently after a general system of spoliation and injustice, provided only that they are to be the gainers, not the losers by it ; none are more ardent in the pursuit of pleasure, none more unscrupulous in the means of attaining it. From such men and such principles, we say it fearlessly, nothing but social ruin, individual suffering, and national decline can be anticipated. Their very first position, the necessity, ante omnia, of destroying the Church, proves that they are either indifferent to, or ignorant of the only basis on which a general system of self-go. vernment, and the practical exercise of the powers of administration by the people must be founded. If in the complicated and artificial system of society in which we live, it is possible with safety to any class to establish a really practical Democracy, unquestionably the only foundation on which it can be rested, is, such a ge

neral influence of religion as can enable the people to withstand the seductions of power, and keep the rapacity of indigence from laying its covetous hands on other men's goods. But to commence the work of regeneration by destroying religion; to begin the system of national self-government, by unloosing the bonds of individual self-control; to imagine that men, released from all restraint but their own desires, are to keep their covetous hands off each other, or their bloody weapons from mutual destruction, is certainly, of all human extravagances, the most monstrous.

The Republicans are aware of the absurdity of this expectation; but they have a panacea for this and all other political evils. Education is to unloose the Gordian knot: intellectual, mere intellectual cultivation is to eradicate all the vices of the human heart, and by preparing all men for the duties of self-government, render the sway of rulers unnecessary. This is perhaps the grossest delusion under which the nation has laboured for the last half century; and yet, if the subject be considered attentively, it is the one in which the sophism lies most completely on the surface. Education, that is, the conferring the power to read and write, has no tendency whatever to check crime: it neither disarms passion, nor checks desire: it confers power, but does not fix the direction which it is to take, or the objects to which it is to be applied. It is an instrument of vast force; but whether that force is to be exercised to good or bad purposes, depends entirely on the habits of the people to whom it is intrusted, and the desires in the public mind with which it coexists. It is generally considered as the deadliest foe of despotism, and the only bulwark of freedom; but this is a total mistake, and has generally spread only from the efforts of the press in this country having been hitherto chiefly on the side of freedom. But the examples of Imperial France proves that in other circumstances, and under the influence of different passions, it may become the most terrible instrument of Oriental bondage, and of Republican America the severest scourge of injured innocence.

Thus, from 1812 to 1832, crime over England and Wales has just DOUBLED; while the population has only advanced, during the same period, somewhat under a half.

In Scotland, where education is so general, the criminals committed in 1832 were 2431, which, for a population of 2,400,000, is as nearly as possible one in 1000: indicating a much more rapid increase than in England; for in 1812, the committals were not 500 over the whole counties to the north of the Tweed.§

In Ireland, in the year 1832, the committals were 16,056, on a population of 8,000,000, or about 1 to 500. And there, the proportion of persons who can read is fully as great as in either Scotland or England: an extraordinary proof of the combined effect of agitation and the Catholic faith

64,538

93,718 127,910

1831. 13,894,574

1831, added about a sixth to And this was the period The total persons committed

Population. 9,551,000

11,261,000

13,089,000

on that unhappy land, and the total inefficiency of such education to correct their combined influence.||

Our limits will not permit us to enter upon the corresponding facts which we have accumulated from America. Suffice it to say, that the United States afford still stronger demonstration of the total inadequacy of education to correct the corruption of our nature or arrest the progress of crime, and that it is admitted by Beaumont and Tocqueville, the great advocates of instruction, and the enlightened travellers in that interesting Republic: "Nevertheless, we do not think that you can attribute the diminution of crimes in the northern states of the Union to instruction; because in Connecticut, where there is far more instruction than in New York, crime increases with a terrible rapidity; and

† Porter's Parl. Tables, i. 139.

§ Parl. Return. Porter, ii. 87.

Porter's Parl. Tables, ii. 81, and i. 139.

Ibid. ii. 87.

if one cannot accuse knowledge as the cause of this, one is obliged to acknowledge it is no prevention."

Nothing can be more plain, therefore, than that this, the great panacea of the Liberal party-the vast regenerator which is to banish sin from the world, and fit men for the important duties of self-government, is a total delusion, and that mere intellectual education, so far from qualifying the masses for political rights and the safe exercise of democratic powers, in reality renders them more than ever unfit for them, by increasing, on the one hand, the restless activity of their minds, and augmenting, on the other, the depraved tastes, corrupt desires, and unbridled passions, which lead them to turn that activity to wicked purposes. This fact, which utterly bewilders the whole Liberal school which is, literally speaking, to the Jews a stumbling block, and to the Greeks foolishness with which Lord Brougham and all those smitten by the education-mania are sore perplexed, without knowing how to extricate themselves from its weight, is perfectly intelligible to, and was all along predicted alike by the calm observers of human nature, who took experience for their guide, and the simple believers, who, without going farther than the gospel, were aware that in religion alone was an antidote to the poisonous fruit of the tree of knowledge to be found. Miss Edgeworth showed her knowledge when she put into the mouth of one of her characters-"Edication will do a great deal, but it won't change the natur that is in them." History in every age has taught, that it was in the latest ages of society that knowledge was most generally diffused, and corruption most widely spread. Experience every where around us shows, that in those situations where the human race is most densely massed together, instruction, at least on political subjects, is most common, and depravity of every sort most abundant. Coupling these facts together,

the result of observation, alike in the past and the present, is, that it is not in the cultivation of the intellectual faculties that an antidote to the corruption of our nature is to be found, but that the only real regeneration, either of society or of its political institutions, must begin with those measures which augment the spread and increase the influence of that faith, which, setting itself in the outset to root out the seeds of evil in the human heart, can alone prepare men, by successfully governing themselves, to take a useful part in the direction of others.

The way in which general instruction, when unaccompanied with a proportional cultivation of the moral and religious feelings, acts in this way, is, to any person practically acquainted with the middling and lower orders, perfectly apparent. It extends the desires of the heart and the cravings of the passions to a degree inconsistent with the destiny of the great majority of mankind on earth. In numbers of the working classes it induces a disinclination to physical labour, by which alone they can be rendered comfortable, and a desire for intellectual pleasures or exertion, in which line they cannot earn a decent livelihood. It drives them, in consequence, into those desperate circumstances, and induces that recklessness of conduct, which is at once the parent and the excuse of crime. In all ranks it engenders an uneasy restlessness and dissatisfaction with their condition, which is the fruitful parent of disorders both private and political. By magnifying to the imagination the pleasures of wealth, while it induces a dissatisfaction with bodily labour, it both strengthens the temptations to vice and weakens the habits by which alone competence can be safely and honestly acquired. By clothing in a more voluptuous and seductive form than they naturally possess the pleasures of sense, it adds fuel to a flame which already burns fiercely enough in the human heart.† By strengthen