negotiations with foreign powers. Lyons furnished us with one example ;* and, as another, the name of Toulon will occur to every reader.

The question, then, at issue must, we repeat, be decided by observing what were the dispositions of the early revolutionists; and here, it cannot fail to be noted as a distinctive and prominent feature in the character of revolutionary France, that, even from the outset, she paid an eager attention to the concerns of other nations. The forky tongues of the popular leaders were systematically and incessantly employed in hissing forth the cant of philanthropy and cosmopolitanism. Their conduct was exactly what might have been expected from their language. It is pretty notorious that, in the year 1790, there subsisted a perfect understanding between the demagogues of Paris and the malcontents in Flanders and Brabant; and the national act of annexing Avignon to the French territory, was, to say the least of it, far from evincing a forgetfulness of the affairs of foreign countries. Now of this busy spirit of interference, it plainly was the necessary tendency to bring France more and more into close contact with the rest of Europe, particularly with the continental states, and thus perpetually to afford fresh excitements to her vigour and violence. The single principle into which all the conceivable causes of human contention resolve themselves, is that of intercourse without sympathy; and what then shall we expect, when audacious strength is made immediately contiguous to haughty imbecility?

It will not escape observation that we have here gratuitously narrowed the ground of our argument, by limiting our references to such facts as are of a date prior to the famous conference at Pilnitz, from which some politicians are apt to deduce all the subsequent misfortunes of Europe. The falsehoods, indeed, once so prevalent, respecting secret treaties, secret articles, and secret contracting parties at Pilnitz, have long since been chased or shamed into their native darkness; but the opinion seems not yet extinct, that the weak, ambiguous, and vacillating declaration of the Austrian and Prussian sovereigns, signed at the conference in question, first provoked France to entertain views of a warlike nature, and thus laid the foundation of her present aggrandizement. Let us, for the sake of brevity, concede it to have been possible that, without any predisposition to such views on the part of France, such effects should be produced on her by the conditional menaces of the sovereigns in question;-that a timid whisper of merely contingent hostility should strike the ears of the revolutionists like the blast from the trumpet of Alecto, inspiring them with horrid recollections of war and havoc. If so much be thought possible, it still

* Vid. Lacretelle, Revolution Française, Convention Nationale, liv. 3. VOL. IV. NO. VII.

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cannot be thought possible that the declaration framed at Pilnitz in August 1791, should have occasioned the rapacious seizure of Avignon by France twelve months before; or should have suggested the ludicrous but very significant farce exhibited by Anacharsis Clootz; or should have given birth to the whole system of revolutionary cosmopolitanism. Place France, therefore, at the point of time instantly anterior to the issuing of the declaration at Pilnitz; or, which is equivalent, suppose no such declaration ever to have been made; and it is manifest to us that, by its very nature, the revolutionary power, if on the one side it was precipitating itself towards a state of civil warfare, was hastening with no moderate celerity towards a state of foreign warfare on the other; nor is it obvious to perceive which of the two biasses was the more likely to prevail.

It would certainly be difficult to conceive a more singular spectacle than that of a nation thus anxiously watchful of its neighbours, at the very instant when it is struggling amidst the throes of a domestic revolution unexampled in history. In contemplating such a phenomenon, we might almost be tempted to concur with those speculators who have thought that the scheme, great as it was, of the French revolution, formed only a limb of some more comprehensive project; whether that project was, as some contend, one of universal disorganization, or, as others maintain, one of universal conquest. Opinions, however, like these, are perhaps too captivating to the imagination, to be weighed with calmness. Nothing can be more imposingly magnificent than the notion, that a revolution which overthrew the most splendid monarchy in Europe was, together with all its attendant system of minor changes, designed only for a satellite to some more vast and central innovation. Nothing can be more horribly interesting than the combined idea of that grandeur of conception, and that boldness of purpose, which could meditate iniquity on so stupendous a scale. But the suppositions want proof, and do not seem necessary. Of the phenome. non which they are intended to explain, a sufficient solution may surely be found in the operation of that restless, pragmatical, and anprincipled vanity, which, miscalling itself philanthropy, and, in a measure, probably mistaking itself for that virtue, sustained all the leading parts in the earlier scenes of the revolutionary drama. Greedy, not of fame, but of plaudits, the chiefs of the Assembly soon discovered that the theatre of their own country was far too confined for their strutting consequence and frisking activity. They, therefore, determined to embrace the whole world (such was their own lofty phraseology) in their system of benevolence. This resolution once taken, the grand principle of assisting subjects against their governors would readily occur to those who had treated their own governors with so little ceremony. To many of the philoso

phers, indeed, the principle was already associated with all their notions of liberty; for they had caught their notions of liberty from the contagion of the American alliance. In essence, there can be little doubt that the French revolution wolud have come to pass, even had America never revolted from the British yoke; but America must answer for much of what was mere circumstance in that event. To render France highly dangerous to her neighbours, was, as we apprehend, of the very essence of the revolution; but, without the impressions suggested by the remembrance of the American war, that danger might possibly have made its first appearance at least under some other shape than that of the encouragement of universal rebellion. Thus much, at any rate, iş certain, that the doctrine was warmly cherished by a party whose American prepossessions are well known to have been strong, the Brissotins.*

But it is needless to form conjectures respecting the motives which led the new state so early to interfere in the concerns of its neighbours, and not, in this place, very important even to examine the character or complexion of its first acts of interference. For the purposes of our present argument, it will be perceived that the mere fact of its having interfered is sufficient. Of what consequence can it be to ask, at whose bidding, or of what materials, the bridge was constructed, that opened an access to Europe from the pandemonium of robbery and murder? If the new state was resolved to hold an intimate communication with the rest of mankind, some conjuncture could not fail shortly to arise, which would betray to it the terrible secret of its destiny. Whatever might be the forbearance of other powers, the suggestions of its own characteristic arrogance and impetuosity would not be wanting; and its subsequent career would have been little different, whether it had originally been provoked into the field of blood by the challenge of an adversary, or beckoned to it by the hand of its own Evil Genius.

We have thus attempted to throw some doubt on the proposition, that the French revolution naturally gravitated rather towards a state of civil, than towards one of foreign warfare. Let us next, however, concede the truth of this proposition in its utmost extent; and, imagining revolutionary France to have become the absolute victim of domestic commotion and bloodshed, let us inquire how far, according to all rational conjecture, it would have been the effect of these convulsions to reduce her portentous

It is observable that Brissot, in his Address to his Constituents, though he condemns the famous decree of the 19th of November, of which the doetrine in question formed the basis, is yet so far from disclaiming the doctrine itself, that he vehemently censures the Anarchists for not having better attended to it in their foreign policy.

strength, and incapacitate her for the business of molesting her neighbours.

The very sensible author of the 'Letter on the genius and dispositions of the French government,' in treating a question somewhat similar to this, has disposed of it at once, by a reference to the acute observations of Montesquieu respecting the influence of civil war on national character. In presenting the reader with the greater part of those observations, we shall very nearly adhere to the spirited and substantially faithful translation given of them by the author in question. There is no state which so seriously menaces the world with conquest, as one which is afflicted with the miseries of civil war. Every man, the noble, the citizen, the labourer, becomes a soldier, and, when peace unites their strength, such a state possesses great advantages over the rest who have citizens alone. In civil wars, morever, great men are formed, because, amidst the confusion,* those who possess merit, make their way and rise to their proper level; whereas, in other periods, the subordination which must exist, counteracts the buoyancy of superior minds.'t-Montesquieu is too much a writer for effect, to be fond of qualifying the theorems which he lays down; and to that which has just been cited, cases of exception might easily be imagined, if indeed they were not already supplied by history. Declining, however, all general disquisition on the subject, we will content ourselves with mentioning the circumstances which eminently bring France, situated as our argument presumes her to be, within the pale of Montesquieu's rule.

The revolutionary tumult, as has already been observed, was a struggle of minds; and to this description it would have continued to answer, whether we suppose it to have taken the form of an armed, or to have remained a forensic contest, to have been carried on by armies or by mobs. Had it become a general civil war, it is easy to perceive that such a civil war must, beyond most others, have allowed that scope, of which Montesquieu speaks, to the ascendency of military talent. Such wars have usually originated in the operation of some profound feeling or some particular interest; they have been the explosion of traditional antipathies or

Dans la confusion,—which the author of the Letter unnecessarily generalizes into in times of confusion.

Grandeur et Decadence des Romains, chap. xi.

Machiavel (Discors. lib. 2. c. 25.) lays down a principle somewhat similar to that of Montesquieu; but necessarily implies the possibility of exceptions to it when he prescribes some most Satanical expedients for taking advantage of the divisions in a state These expedients may be summed up in the old rule Divide and conquer; the force of which, indeed, Montesquieu admits in other parts of the Grandeur et Decadence. Vide chap. vi.

religious intolerance; they have been excited and guided by the ambition of nobles or the bigotry of hierarchs. In all these instances, some obstacle has still been opposed to the emergency of naked ability; some prejudice has still been respected; some institution has still been held sacred; the confusion, to adopt the term of Montesquieu, has not been complete. In the civil war, on the contrary, which we are now figuring to ourselves, all artificial distinctions having been utterly swept away, nothing would be held sacred but the divinity of mind,' nothing would give rank but merit.

In intimating our opinion, that such a civil war must, in a peculiar degree, sharpen the martial faculties of a people, let it be remembered that we are not indulging ourselves in a merely imaginary exemplification of a general rule, but referring to a chapter in the actual history of the French revolution. Revolutionary France has already sustained the lustration of a civil war, and has come forth, invigorated and refreshed; nor is there apparently any reason for believing that, if the experiment had been tried on a grander scale, it would not have terminated in the same manner. Of a civil contest to which the combatants had been respectively dragged as the vassals of some quarrelsome baron, or to which they had been respectively impelled by the dictate of some deep and inexorable passion, it is perhaps conceivable that, from the mixed effect of its length and its violence, it might break and debilitate both the parties engaged. But the commotions in France, if the views that we have ventured to afford of them be at all correct, were of a character far different. By the influence of powerful individuals, if they were in some sense excited, they were yet in no respect guided or governed; and, on the other hand, they involved hardly any thing that could be called either a principle or a prejudice. They amounted, in fact, to nothing less than a rebellion against all influence, all principles, and all prejudices. They were spontaneous, or, if we may so apply the epithet, autonomous movements of the popular mind. From this account of them, two inferences seem to result; the first, that they were not of a nature easily to be exhausted; the second, that they were likely to stop of their own accord at some point short of actual exhaustion.

In all civilized countries, the burden of making war falls chiefly on that class of the comforts of society, which, superfluous by nature, have been rendered necessary by taste or fashion. If, however, a people should become, by taste and fashion, strongly ad dicted to martial pursuits, if those feelings which are commonly abhorrent from a state of warfare, should declare themselves in its favour,-to the warlike capabilities of such a people imagination can hardly affix a boundary. If we reflect on the enormous mass of unproductive labour which the surplus-resources of even the