none have been more applauded than the frequently repeated assertion, that the constitution, of which that house is an element, "works well in practice." From this remark he wishes it to be inferred, and the illogical heads of his admirers have inferred accordingly, that in as far as the government works well, that effect must be attributed in part to the mock representation, as a cause. In what way that circumstance has been productive of the good in question, he never has and never will be able to demonstrate. În what way it operates in the character of an obstruction to the good, it is impossible to show at present. That will be the work of a future essay. In the mean time, it is sufficient to have put the reader on his guard against this celebrated sophism.

The proposal to repeal the Usury Laws, in the last session of parliament, was met by the same fallacy. "We are a wealthy people," say the sophists; "the laws against Usury have accompanied us in our progress to prosperity, and are, in fact, the main cause of our advancement. As much so, and for the same reason, as Tenterden church-steeple was said to be the cause of the Goodwin sands.

A further example is behind, which illustrates the fallacy as; applied to the purposes of the consecrated prop of all legitimate governments. We quote from Mr. Bentham.

In virtue and knowledge, in every feature of felicity, the empire of Montezuma outshines, as every body knows, all the surrounding states, even the Common-wealth of Tlascala not excepted.

"“Where,” said an inquirer once, to the high priest of the Temple of Vitzlipultzli, "where is it that we are to look for the true cause of so glorious a pre-eminence?" "Look for it!" answered the holy pontiff, where shouldest thou look for it, blind sceptic, but in the copiousness of the streams in which the sweet and precious blood of innocents flows daily down the altars of the great God ?" '

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Yes," answered in full convocation and full chorus the archbishops, bishops, deans, canons, and prebends of the religion of Vitzlipultzli: yes," answered in semi-chorus the vice chancellor, with all the doctors, and masters of the university of Mexico:-" yes, in the copiousness of the streams in which the sweet and precious blood of innocents flows daily down the altars of the great God."'

When abuses cannot be denied, the system may yet be defended by the old, and not the less groundless maxim-" from the abuse argue not against the use."

Be the system what it may, the good results constitute its use, the bad, its abuse. In so far, therefore, as any institutions are liable to abuse, their use is proportionably diminished. We shall confine our consideration of this fallacy to the case of its employment in the service of religion. Of this subject it

is scarcely permitted to analyse the unfavourable side. On its uses, we cannot expatiate too freely; on its abuses, too reservedly; a partiality which indicates a poor opinion either of religion or of mankind. If it spring from the fear that religion cannot bear analysis, the unfavourable opinion lies that way. If the usefulness of the religious sanction is believed to be matter of experience, it is mankind who are accused of imbecility, in being thought even capable of overlooking so obvious a truth. To conceal this marked partiality, recourse has been had to the aid of fallacy. The bad effects of this sanction are attributed to superstition; while the term religion is reserved to designate the good. Superstition does all the mischief; all the benefit is owing to religion.

To strike an impartial balance of the relative advantages and disadvantages which accrue to the cause of morality from this source, we should first subtract the influence of the other sanctions upon human conduct. Having found what these are capable of effecting without the aid of religion, we should discover what of good and bad is really attributable to the latter. The performance of this service is entitled to no mean distinction; since a more extensive benefit could scarcely be conferred upon mankind.

We shall close this list of fallacies with some remarks upon the celebrated sophism of" Not measures, but men." The words are from the pen of Mr. Fox. "How vain, how idle, how presumptuous is the opinion that laws can do every thing! and how weak and pernicious the maxim founded upon it, that measures, not men, are to be attended to !"

Such is the vague sentence in which this fallacy is propounded. It is mainly a device of the Outs, who intend to signify by the phrase that good government is unattainable by any measures of the existing men in office, and can only be brought about by changing them for a certain set of individuals-meaning themselves-whose virtue is the only security for the just exercise of the ruling power. The constitution being so defective that no check is opposed to the malversation of the men in officefor such is the assumption of the fallacy-a class of human beings, in whom the social motives should so predominate above the selfish, as to reconcile their public duties with their private interests, would certainly be no common blessing. How far such exceptions to the general laws of human nature have ever yet been witnessed, let the annals of mankind declare. Not to try them by their past conduct, what are the reasons for believing that a substitution of the Outs to the Ins, would do no more than change the men and the names, whilst the results

remained the same; and what are the reasons for supposing that such a change would be attended with the consequences which the Outs declare likely to ensue ?

The mere existence of the checks imposed upon private interests for the public good, by political institutions, demonstrate the predominance of personal over social feelings, as a general fact. It is admitted of the Ins in particular; for that predominance is the reason alleged in favour of changing them for the Outs. In the case of such a change, to all the motives for preferring themselves to their duty, of which preference the Ins had been guilty, would the Outs in their turn succeed.

That these motives would produce the same effect upon any one set of men, as any other; upon the Outs, as the Ins; is rendered likely by the universal experience of what has always happened in such cases, amongst the immense majority of human beings.

Against the results of this experience, what can be alleged by the Outs in favor of the opposite position? Nothing more than their own assertion.

When the charlatan affirmed his power of squeezing himself into a quart bottle, he assumed no greater an exemption from the laws of nature, than is claimed by the patrons of this fallacy.

Whilst the spectators were anxiously awaiting the performance of their prodigy, the bottle-conjuror decamped with their money; a sample of what may be expected from all conjurors, political or histrionic, who advertise these mighty undertakings.

ART. VIII. Histoire des Ducs de Bourgogne de la Maison de Valois, depuis 1364 jusqu'en 1477. Par M. de Barante, pair de France. Paris. 8vo, 1824.

A REMARKABLE change has taken place of late in the manner of writing history, and particularly in France. The mind satiated by an endless and often profitless philosophizing, has sought relief in the simplicity of the old chronicles, just as the wearisomeness of long and barren narrations led to the decorations of deductive and speculative reasoning: ad narrandum non ad probandum has again become the motto of historians. Neither a summary sketch of events, nor a judicious appreciation of their causes and consequences, will any longer satisfy those who would trace in the time that is passed the vicissitudes of human affairs; and this is well, though care must be taken lest the spirit of inquiry become narrow and exclusive, lest the study of history degenerate into an idle amusement, as it once became

a school of pedantry, and make none but fleeting impressions on the mind.

It would not be easy to find or to fix a model for writing history. Its object is to record past events, and to this end it accommodates itself to the taste and the knowledge of the passing age. Thus there are as many classes of historical composi tion as there are literary eras, in each of which the state of opinion gives its colouring to the facts of history. Herodotus, Joinville, Froissart, and Brantome are simple narrators whose compositions are full of grace and good sense. They lived when facts alone excited an intérest, and they related the facts which they had seen or heard. They related them in all their vividness, all their activity, careless of their influence on the future. This is the infancy of the literary spirit which, developing itself at a higher point of civilization, assumes another form, and wears a wholly different dress. Take for example the three historians of Rome, Sallust, Livy, and Tacitus; their narratives march more proudly, they are organized and arranged. Their style of thought is more profound and more disciplined, they relate not only detached facts, but events always, full of significance, with circumstances creating other circumstances, and concurring to a particular end. And even in the end they aim at they are distinguished by variety. Sallust, who wrote during the civil war of Rome, pourtrays the great characteristics of the revolutions he had witnessed; he traces their causes, judges their progress, describes their agents, anticipates their results. He brings home to the different factions, to the nobility, to the people, and to their ambitious leaders, the share of each in the vicissitudes he narrates. Livy appeared not while the revolution was in action, but when it was accomplished. He witnessed the tranquillity and the degeneracy of his country. He dwelt at the brilliant court of Augustus which gave a new direction to the activity of the Roman character, and destroyed by civilization and literature its stern and rugged virtues. Nothing was then left for a Roman to do, without the risk of being considered factious, but to write the Republic's history, and Livy did so, erecting a proud monument to a people and to principles which had passed away. His work is in truth the funeral oration of his country. It is composed with the taste and talent, as well as with the political indifference and abandonment, of the time. He appears neither as a statesman, nor as a partisan; he is only an admirable man of letters. Then came Tacitus: the reign of Nero was passed, that of Domitian had begun, and Tacitus fell on an age when public virtue scarcely existed for want of public security, and man had lost

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all his dignity in losing all his freedom. This spectacle was but the contrast of insolent and violent tyranny, with humiliated and degraded submission. Tacitus wrote under the inspiration of indignation and regrets. His thoughts were turned towards Rome, as he pictured her, in the past, pure, great, and free. He narrates the deeds of despotism, not to elevate man, but to protest against his degeneracy. Sallust is the historian of parties Livy of events-Tacitus of the human heart: and their works take the stamp of these characters, in their political, literary, and moral influence.

Characteristics scarcely less obvious distinguish our modern historians. Chivalric chroniclers take up the feudal era; republican Italy of the middle age has statesmen to record its vicissitudes; under absolute monarchy literary men are the historians; and the eighteenth century gave the narration of events to the pen of philosophers. Guicciardini, Davila, and, more than all the rest, Machiavelli, raised up in the midst of busy changes and contending factions, have little of the dignity, but infinitely more of penetration, than the historians of antiquity. They trace the motives, develope the secrets, mount up to the causes of events with a sagacity far more alert and dexterous than their predecessors. Before the French Revolution it was Italy alone that could produce such writers, for they spring up only under free institutions or amidst the great events which make a crisis in man's social history. The writers under monarchical despotism usually judge without discernment, and relate without sympathy; for they are placed above the arena of events, with little knowledge of the human mind, except in its degradation, and with none of the great masses of society. History to them is but a sepulchral stone on which inanimate facts and names and dates are graven, while the existence of a whole people is interred unrecorded beneath. . Such are Velly, Daniel, Anquetil and others.

The eighteenth century introduced another school of history, and Voltaire, Hume, Robertson, and Gibbon, applied the philosophy of their own time to the times of which they wrote. They dwelt more on the consequences of events than on the events. themselves. They followed the moral march of mankind. They boldly attacked the opinions and the prejudices which had till then existed, but were verging into decay; and their reforming. ardour scarcely allowed them to judge impartially in the past that which they deemed so baneful in the present. They looked with natural and honest disgust on the middle ages, whose picturesque and prominent character, whose customs, laws, and observations, have such a charm for more modern imaginations..