“The Nation of Shopkeepers.”
In the Præludia to the Chronicon Albeldense, attributed to Bulcidius, Bishop of Salamanca, a Spanish writer at the end of the ninth century, we find the following singular refutation of an ungraceful compliment hitherto paid to us by our Gallic neighbours. In a paragraph headed De Proprietatibus Gentium, we see the tables turned in our favour:—“1. Sapientia Græcorum; 2. Fortia Gothorum; 3. Consilia Chaldæorum; 4. Superbia Romanorum; 5. Ferocitas Francorum; 6. Ira Britannorum; 7. Libido Scotorum; 8. Duritia Saxonum; 9. Cupiditas Persarum; 10. Invidia Judæorum; 11. Pax Æthiopum; 12. Commercia Gallorum!” This discovery seems to be invested with an additional interest at a time when our Allies very handsomely acknowledge that they have hitherto laboured under a mistake in their estimate of our national peculiarities.
Results of Revolutions.
Sir George Cornewall Lewis, in his last work, On the Best Form of Government, has this summary: “There are some rare cases in which a nation has profited by a revolution. Such was the English Revolution of 1688, in which the form of the Government underwent no alteration, and the person of the King was alone changed. It was the very minimum of a revolution; it was remarkable for the absence of those accompaniments which make a revolution perilous, and which subsequently draw upon it a vindictive reactionary movement. The late Italian revolution has likewise been successful; by it the Italian people have gained a better government and have improved their political condition. It was brought about by foreign intervention; but its success has been mainly owing to the moderation of the leaders in whom the people had the wisdom to confide, and who have steadily refrained from all revolutionary excesses. The history of forcible attempts to improve governments is not, however, cheering. Looking back upon the course of revolutionary movements, and upon the character of their consequences, the practical conclusion which I draw is that it is the part of wisdom and prudence to acquiesce in any form of government which is tolerably well administered, and affords tolerable security to person and property. I would not, indeed, yield to apathetic despair, or acquiesce in the persuasion that a merely tolerable government is incapable of improvement. I would form an individual model, suited to the character, disposition, wants, and circumstances of the country, and I would make all exertions, whether by action or by writing, within the limits of the existing law, for ameliorating its existing condition and bringing it nearer to the model selected for imitation; but I should consider the problem of the best form of government as purely ideal, and as unconnected with practice, and should abstain from taking a ticket in the lottery of revolution, unless there was a well-founded expectation that it would come out a prize.”
Sir William Hamilton has well observed that “No revolution in public opinion is the work of an individual, of a single cause, or of a day. When the crisis has arrived, the catastrophe must ensue; but the agents through whom it is apparently accomplished, though they may accelerate, cannot originate its occurrence. Who believes that but for Luther or Zwingli the Reformation would not have been? Their individual, their personal energy and zeal, perhaps, hastened by a year or two the event but had the public mind not been already ripe for their revolt, the fate of Luther and Zwingli, in the sixteenth century, would have been that of Huss and Jerome of Prague in the fifteenth. Woe to the revolutionist who is not himself a creature of the revolution! If he anticipate, he is lost; for it requires, what no individual can supply, a long and powerful counter-sympathy in a nation to untwine the ties of custom which bind a people to the established and the old.”
Worth of a Republic.
Mr. Baron Alderson is described as having a temper too calm for the stormy floor of the House of Commons; but he studied politics as a science, from a safe distance; and his letters contain his opinions on some points expressed with a very deliberate care. To Mrs. Opie, who had been writing against Republics and Republican Government, he says: “I entirely agree with your view of a Republic. As long as men are so wicked, it is an impossibility for it to be a lasting government, for it does not govern, but obey. America is no exception to this rule. In the first place, at its commencement, I believe it was a remarkably moral population; and so the evils would not at first appear. And, since that time, the immensity of its territory has enabled its most active and least self-restrained population to expand itself with less inconvenience. But will the thing last? When the wilderness is peopled, will not the wickedness, which is now expended on the Indians and the weak without observation, become intolerable, and a government strong enough to protect, be the result? Such a one, I think, will hardly be a republic, but, I fear, a despotism, for men always run into extremes. Lynch law is, in fact, an ill-regulated despotism.”
“Safe Men.”
Dean Hook, in his Lives of the Archbishops of Canterbury, has the following judicious observations upon appointments of this practically useful class: