he goes so far as to declare, that it is a problem not clear in his mind that the condition of the Indians, without any government, is not yet the best of all. This sort of language much more resembles the fanaticism of some fulminator of paradoxes like Rousseau, than the gravity of a statesman, to whose discretion the interests of a civilized community might be safely left.

The commentary on Montesquieu by Destutt Tracy," unquestionably the ablest living writer on abstract subjects," appears to be his favourite work on the principles of government. It is called "the most precious gift the present age has received." Taylor's Enquiry, in opposition to Adams's Defence, represents the theory of the constitution of America, as understood by the dominant party at the present day; whilst Hume's History, as republicanized by Baxter, is referred to for the free principles of the English constitution. This latter work seems to have been printed in England, where it is said "not to be popular, because it is republican." Popularity or unpopularity can hardly be predicated of a work, of whose existence the most omnigenous readers among our acquaintance have never heard. Brought up in the neighbourhood of indigenous Indians, and living at head-quarters during two revolutions, Jefferson had splendid opportunities for the examination and discussion of first principles. After complaining that there is no good work on the organization of society into civil government, he quotes the well-known condition of the Tribes, and especially the present example of the Cherokees, as conclusive against the patriarchal hypothesis. His expectations in 1789, were apparently turned not merely to the establishment of a national government in France, but to the discovery of new truths in politics. These truths were to be such as would rouse Americans even from the errors in which they had been hitherto rocked;" but were scarce likely to benefit an Englishman, as they are pronounced to be reasonable beyond his reach," who, slumbering under a kind of half reformation in politics and in religion, is not excited by any thing he feels or sees to question the remains of prejudice!" We cannot compliment him on what appears to be the only discovery, in the class of new truths, he has thought worth preserving. It is a proof, which, in his horror of the corrupting consequences of a national debt, he volunteers against any possible right in one generation of men to bind another. This doctrine was so great a favourite with its author, that he sent it to Madison all the way from Paris, and at the lapse of a quarter of a century is seen urging it with undiminished earnestness, on the head of the Committee of Finance. Though, like some other natural rights, it has not yet entered into any declaration of them, it is said to be no less a law. Had we a shilling in the American funds, we should feel not over and above easy, when the honest and vigorous understanding of the ex-President could be duped by such strange sophistry; especially, since his school is zealous in preaching the necessity of declarations of natural rights, strenuous for re-setting the law of nations upon true principles, and resolved to establish their theories by force the year they are strong enough to do so.

It has been our object, by a reference to opinions upon general subjects, with which most readers might be supposed to take more or less interest, to give some idea of Jefferson himself. nothing of his views on religion, and his sanguine "trust that there is not We perceive that we have said a young man now living in the United States, who will not die a Unitarian." Our extracts, too, will give a very feeble notion of the fierceness of his thoughts and language concerning a hundred things, as well as per

division has run across the Union, may be imagined from the alarm with which he describes the fact, that five hundred of their sons were educating in the northern seminaries, as "a canker eating on the vitals of their existence." Washington, in his will, recommends the endowment of a university in Virginia, as a protection against the necessity of passing so important a period of life in Europe. Little could he foresee that the fortune of his country would imperatively demand a domestic institution, on the ground of a greater hostility in principle and position, in Connecticut and New York. "The reflections that the boys of this age are to be the men of the next: that they should be prepared to receive the holy charge which we are cherishing to deliver over to them; that in establishing an institution of wisdom for them, we secure it to all our future generations; that, in fulfilling this duty, we bring home to our own bosoms the sweet consolation of seeing our sons rising under a luminous tuition to destinies of high promise; these are considerations which will occur to all; but all, I fear, do not see the speck in our horizon which is to burst on us, as a tornado, sooner or later."

Our course of miscellaneous observations may have served to bring before the reader more distinctly the individual character and merits of this distinguished statesman. But space is not remaining for a single sentence on what we stated at the beginning to be the most important part of the present volumes. The historian and politician will here find invaluable materials upon nearly all the controverted points of the domestic and foreign policy of the United States, from the day of their existence as an independent government. The conclusion of our private judgment considerably inclines against some of the propositions maintained by Jefferson: yet, as a party equally honest and well-informed, he will be a necessary witness, whenever we survey the successive constitutional questions which have so furiously divided parties in America. Between the opposite hazards pressing in on either side, the nation has made its choice-a choice certainly of spirit, perhaps of wisdom. For, in case the alternative dependent on a farther consolidation of the powers of the general government be at all correctly assumed throughout this correspondence, it is impossible to say, under any circumstances of intermediate dissension and ultimate separation, that the painful alternative, thus taken and endured, was not yet the best. The foreign policy of the United States is to us a point of more immediate, as, indeed, it some day must become a point of incalculable, importance. It involves bold innovations on the principles and practice of the Law of Nations, as hitherto understood and established. Some of these innovations appear to be improvements for the interest of humanity; others, to be only encroachments and pretexts for the interest of America. In the meantime, it is evident that, as against Europe, and especially as against England, there exists no difference of opinion in their determination to dictate the novelties of their diplomacy at the cannon's mouth. Jefferson was mistaken in his date; but his declaration is the motto of federalists and republicans alike, and is applied to all matters relating to the continent and the islands of America, as much as to the universal sea. "The day is within my time as well as yours, when we may say by what laws other nations shall treat us on the sea; and we will say it." The authority of mere precedent on one side, and this intractableness of insolent passion on the other, can never meet. What a debt would the world owe to those statesmen in both

countries, who, whilst her calm and deliberate voice might be yet listened to, would close these fatal questions on the just principles of Reason!

PARALLEL BETWEEN CROMWELL AND NAPOLEON.*

Between Cromwell and Napoleon, Mr. Hallam has instituted a parallel, scarcely less ingenious than that which Burke has drawn between Richard Cœur de Lion and Charles the Twelfth of Sweden. In this parallel, however, and indeed throughout his work, we think that he hardly gives Cromwell fair measure. Cromwell," says he, "far unlike his antitype, never showed any signs of a legislative mind, or any desire to place his renown on that noblest basis, the amelioration of social institutions." The difference in this respect, we conceive, was not in the characters of the men, but in the characters of the revolutions by means of which they rose to power. The civil war in England had been undertaken to defend and restore; the republicans of France set themselves to destroy. In England, the principles of the common law had never been disturbed; and most even of its forms had been held sacred. In France, the law and its ministers had been swept away together. In France, therefore, legislation necessarily became the first business of the first settled government which rose on the ruins of the old system. The admirers of Inigo Jones have always maintained that his works are inferior to those of Sir Christopher Wren, only because the great fire of London gave to the latter such a field for the display of his powers, as no architect in the history of the world ever possessed. Similar allowance must be made for Cromwell. If he erected little that was new, it was because there had been no general devastation to clear a space for him. As it was, he reformed the representative system in a most judicious manner. He rendered the administration of justice uniform throughout the island. We will quote a passage from his speech to the Parliament in September, 1656, which contains, we think, stronger indications of a legislative mind, than are to be found in the whole range of orations delivered on such occasions before or since.

"There is one general grievance in the nation. It is the law ... I think, I may say it, I have as eminent judges in this land as have been had, or that the nation has had for these many years. Truly, I could be particular as to the executive part, to the administration; but that would trouble you. But the truth of it is, there are wicked and abominable laws that will be in your power to alter. To hang a man for sixpence, threepence, I know not what,-to hang for a trifle, and pardon murder, is in the ministration of the law, through the ill framing of it. I have known in my experience abominable murders quitted; and to see men lose their lives for petty matters! This is a thing that God will reckon for; and I wish it may not lie upon this nation a day longer than you have an opportu nity to give a remedy; and I hope I shall cheerfully join with you in it. Mr. Hallam truly says, that though it is impossible to rank Cromwell with Napoleon as a general, yet his exploits were as much above the level of

Hallam's Constitutional History.-Vol. xlviii. page 142. September, 1828.

his contemporaries, and more the effects of an original uneducated capacity." Bonaparte was trained in the best military schools; the army which he led to Italy was one of the finest that ever existed. Cromwell passed his youth and the prime of his manhood in a civil situation. He never looked on war till he was more than forty years old. He had first to form himself, and then to form his troops. Out of raw levies he created an army, the bravest and the best disciplined, the most orderly in peace, and the most terrible in war, that Europe had seen. He called this body into existence. He led it to conquest. He never fought a battle without gaining a victory. He never gained a victory without annihilating the force opposed to him. Yet his triumphs were not the highest glory of his military system. The respect which his troops paid to property, their attachment to the laws and religion of their country, their intelligence, their submission to the civil power, their temperance, their industry, are without parallel. It was after the Restoration that the spirit which their great leader had infused into them was most signally displayed. At the command of the established government, a government which had no means of enforcing obedience, fifty thousand soldiers, whose backs no enemy had ever seen, either in domestic or in continental war, laid down their arms, and retired into the mass of the people-thenceforward to be distinguished only by superior diligence, sobriety, and regularity in the pursuits of peace, from the other members of the community which they had saved. In the general spirit and character of his administration, we think Cromwell far superior to Napoleon. "In civil government," says Mr. Hallam, there can be no adequate parallel between one who had sucked only the dregs of a besotted fanaticism, and one to whom the stores of reason and philosophy were open." These expressions, it seems to us, convey the highest eulogium on our great countryman. Reason and philosophy did not teach the conqueror of Europe to command his passions, or to pursue, as a first object, the happiness of his people. They did not prevent him from risking his fame and his power in a frantic contest against the principles of human nature and the laws of the physical world, against the rage of the winter and the liberty of the sea. They did not exempt him from the influence of that most pernicious of superstitions, a presumptuous fatalism. They did not preserve him from the inebriation of prosperity, or restrain him from indecent querulousness and violence in adversity. On the other hand, the fanaticism of Cromwell never urged him on impracticable undertakings, or confused his perception of the public good. Inferior to Bonaparte in invention, he was far superior to him in wisdom. The French Emperor is among conquerors what Voltaire is among writers, a miraculous child. His splendid genius was frequently clouded by fits of humour as absurdly perverse as those of the pet of the nursery, who quarrels with his food, and dashes his playthings to pieces. Cromwell was emphatically a man. He possessed, in an eminent degree, that masculine and full-grown robustness of mind, that equally diffused intellectual health, which, if our national partiality does not mislead us, has peculiarly characterised the great men of England. Never was any ruler so conspicuously born for sovereignty. The cup which has intoxicated almost all others, sobered him. His spirit, restless from its buoyancy in a lower sphere, reposed in majestic placidity as soon as it had reached the level congenial to it. He had nothing in common with that large class of men who distinguish themselves in lower posts, and whose incapacity becomes obvious as soon as the public voice

summons them to take the lead. Rapidly as his fortunes grew, his mind expanded more rapidly still. Insignificant as a private citizen, he was a great general; he was a still greater prince. The manner of Napoleon was a theatrical compound, in which the coarseness of a revolutionary guardroom was blended with the ceremony of the old Court of Versailles. Cromwell, by the confession even of his enemies, exhibited in his demeanour the simple and natural nobleness of a man, neither ashamed of his origin, nor vain of his elevation; of a man who had found his proper place in society, and who felt secure that he was competent to fill it. Easy, even to familiarity, where his own dignity was concerned; he was punctilious only for his country. His own character he left to take care of itself; he left it to be defended by his victories in war, and his reforms in peace. But he was a jealous and implacable guardian of the public honour. He suffered a crazy Quaker to insult him in the midst of Whitehall, and revenged himself only by liberating him and giving him a dinner. But he was prepared to risk the chances of war to avenge the blood of a private Englishman.

No sovereign ever carried to the throne so large a portion of the best qualities of the middling orders-so strong a sympathy with the feelings and interests of his people. He was sometimes driven to arbitrary measures ; but he had a high, stout, honest, English heart. Hence it was that he loved to surround his throne with such men as Hale and Blake. Hence it was that he allowed so large a share of political liberty to his subjects, and that even when an opposition dangerous to his power, and to his person, almost compelled him to govern by the sword, he was still anxious to leave a germ from which, at a more favourable season, free institutions might spring. We firmly believe, that if his first Parliament had not commenced its debates by disputing his title, his government would have been as mild at home as it was energetic and able abroad. He was a soldier;—he had risen by war. Had his ambition been of an impure or selfish kind, it would have been easy for him to plunge his country into continental hostilities on a large scale, and to dazzle the restless factions which he ruled, by the splendour of his victories. Some of his enemies have sneeringly remarked, that in the successes obtained under his administration, he had no personal share; as if a man who had raised himself from obscurity to empire solely by his military talents, could have any unworthy reason for shrinking from military enterprise. This reproach is his highest glory. In the success of the English navy he could have no selfish interest. Its triumphs added nothing to his fame; its increase added nothing to his means of overawing his enemies; its great leader was not his friend. Yet he took a peculiar pleasure in encouraging that noble service, which, of all the instruments employed by an English government, is the most impotent for mischief, and the most powerful for good. His administration was glorious, but with no vulgar glory. It was not one of those periods of overstrained and convulsive exertion which necessarily produce debility and languor. Its energy was natural, healthful, temperate. He placed England at the head of the Protestant interest, and in the first rank of Christian powers. He taught every nation to value her friendship and to dread her enmity. But he did not squander her resources in a vain attempt to invest her with that supremacy which no power, in the modern system of Europe, can safely affect, or can long retain.

This noble and sober wisdom had its reward. If he did not carry the