CHAPTER XIV.

The Savoyard looked at me wistfully. I wished to enter into

conversation with him. That was not easy. However, I began:--

PISISTRATUS.--"You must be often hungry enough, my poor boy. Do the

mice feed you?"

SAVOYARD puts his head on one side, shakes it, and stroked his mice.

PISISTRATUS.--"You are very fond of the mice; they are your only

friends, I fear."

SAVOYARD, evidently understanding Pisistratus, rubs his face gently

against the mice, then puts them softly down on a grave, and gives a

turn to the hurdy-gurdy. The mice play unconcernedly over the grave.

PISISTRATUS, pointing first to the beasts, then to the

instrument.--"Which do you like best, the mice or the hurdy-gurdy?"

SAVOYARD shows his teeth--considers--stretches himself on the

grass--plays with the mice--and answers volubly.

PISISTRATUS, by the help of Latin comprehending that the Savoyard

says, that the mice are alive and the hurdy-gurdy is not--"Yes, a

live friend is better than a dead one. Mortua est hurda-gurda!"

SAVOYARD shakes his head vehemently.--"Nô--nô! Eccellenza, non ê

mortu!" and strikes up a lively air on the slandered instrument. The

Savoyard's face brightens--he looks happy: the mice run from the

grave into his bosom.

PISISTRATUS, affected.--"Have you a father--An vivat pater?"

SAVOYARD, with his face overcast.--"Nô--eccellenza!" then pausing

a little, he says briskly, "Si-Si!" and plays a solemn air on the

hurdy-gurdy--stops--rests one hand on the instrument, and raises the

other to heaven.

PISISTRATUS understands.--"The father is like the hurdy-gurdy, at

once dead and living. The mere form is a dead thing, but the music

lives." Pisistratus drops another small piece of silver on the

ground, and turns away.

"God help and God bless thee, Savoyard. Thou hast done Pisistratus

all the good in the world. Thou hast corrected the hard wisdom of

the young gentleman in the velveteen jacket; Pisistratus is a better

lad for having stopped to listen to thee."

I regained the entrance to the churchyard--I looked back--there sate

the Savoyard, still amidst men's graves, but under God's sky. He was

still looking at me wistfully, and when he caught my eye, he pressed

his hand to his heart, and smiled. "God help and God bless thee,

young Savoyard."

REPUBLICAN FRANCE.

JUNE 1848.

How far is the application to France, of the epithet employed in the

title that heads these pages, a misnomer? This is a question that

would be answered very differently by those who study its state of

feeling, and those who judge its position by mere established fact.

That the fact and the feeling are completely at issue throughout

the country, is undoubted, indisputable. A republican government

has been established by the _coup de main_ of a small minority in

France--has been accepted by the hesitation of surprise--has been

maintained by the desire of peace and order:--so far goes fact.

Republican principles were hateful to the immense majority of

the country at large in the past, uncongenial to its habits and

sentiments, impossible according to its views; they are productive,

as yet, of nothing but confusion, distress, ruin, riot, and

mistrust, in the present; they are looked upon with alarm as regards

their results in the future:--so much for feeling. Fact and feeling,

then, are at variance and in collision. The result of the conflict

lies hidden in the mysteries of that future, the issue of which, at

no epoch of history, perhaps, clearseeing eyes and wise foreseeing

heads could less pretend to predict, than in the present chaotic

hurly-burly of European society. The politicians who declared that

the general spirit of the country in France was, in their vague and

fantastic language of the Chamber, _centre-gauche_, or the advocate

of liberal progress, may have been very right,--but republican it

never was, republican it is not. Republican--without pretension

to the audacity of a prediction but just stated as impossible--it

certainly does not as yet appear ever likely to become.

In its present state of feeling, then, France--that is to say,

the country, the provinces, the departments, or whatever France,

out of Paris, may be called--is about as much genuine republican,

as a white man who suddenly finds his face smeared over with the

contents of a blacking-bottle is a genuine negro. But, for the sake

of avoiding that confusion of terms and ideas in which the French

themselves are so fond of indulging, to an extent that proves the

deification of "the vague" to take far higher flights among them,

especially in their republican tenets, than any flown by confused

German head,--let it be taken as a rule, that fact is to have the

precedence of feeling, as in most matters in the world,--and let it

be supposed that the misnomer is no misnomer, that there has been no

mistake, in truth, in the title of "Republican France."

Between France out of Paris and France in Paris, a great

distinction, in speaking of the country, must always be drawn;

although, in the matter of republicanism in the feelings of the

mass, the same blacking-bottle remark might be applied to the

majority of the citizens of the capital, as to the country at large.

No family of grown-up daughters, who have been tyrannically kept

in the nursery like children when they no longer felt themselves

such, and made to wear mamma's worn-out dresses scantily cut down

to their shapes, could be more sundered in feeling from their

lady-mother, and jealous of her overgrown charms, her gaiety, her

splendour, and her power, than the departments,--kept in the nursery

upon centralisation system, and fed upon the bread-and-milk of

insignificance,--are of the tyrannical supremacy, the overweening

superiority, and the disdainful airs, affected to her despised

progeny by Mother Paris. The pursuance of the concentrating system

has thus produced an estrangement in the family,--a jealousy and

spite on the one hand, a greater and increasing assumption of airs

of supremacy on the other. The family ties between Paris and France

are as wholly disunited as family ties can be, in the necessities

of a more or less intimate connexion: the mother has isolated, in

her despotism, herself from her children, the children have imbibed

distrust and envy of the mother. The consequence is, that there

are two distinct families in feeling,--there are two Frances; there

is the France of Paris, of Paris that asserts its right to be all

France, and the France of the departments, that, in spite of the

assertions of Paris, desire to put in their little claim for a

small share in the name, and would like to have their own little

fingers in the pies of revolutions, and changes of government in

the family, that mamma cooks up. True, they are supposed to eat at

the same table, but mamma has all the tit-bits. They have a voice

in the family council, but it is when mamma has already issued

her _dictum_, and declared that such and such things shall be as

she has decided it. They help to support the family establishment

with the moneys which mamma declares they must contribute out of

their heritage; but then mamma, they declare, spends a most undue

proportion upon herself, in dressing herself out with finery,

keeping up an unnecessary state, and throwing away the sums confided

to her to overpay a throng of unruly onhangers, with all the

prodigality of fear; while they, the poor daughters, are made to put

up with cast-off finery, and to be thwarted and twitted by harsh

governesses, and to fight, as best they may, with an obstreperous

herd of unpaid pensioners, which mamma's mismanagement has excited

to uproar; and then, after all, to kiss hands and thank mamma for

whatever they can get,--scanty sugar-plums and many cuffs. Is this

to be endured? The children grumble much, and particularly since

mamma has chosen to make changes in the direction of the household

establishment of which they by no means approve, and has only

produced confusion and disorder in it. But at present they can do no

more than grumble; mamma has the rod, and they know that she will

use it; mamma has the supreme influence, and habit makes them think

they must abide by it. There is no doubt, at the same time, that the

children and parent would unite in a common bond of union were the

family honour to be asserted against an attack from any adversary

to the family out of the house. Their intestine jealousies would be

forgotten for the time, for the maintenance of the common good--a

fancied good; for, after all, mother and daughters have the same

blood, the same temperr and character, the same vain-glory, conceit,

and irritability, the same strong prejudices of ignorance; and

they would join hands and clamour together in the same opposition

to the stranger. But this common-cause making, upon occasions of

extraordinary pressure from without, detracts nothing, at other

times, from the mistrust, jealousy, and angry susceptibility of the

children in internal affairs. In moments of family crisis, will

matters always go on as heretofore?

Nurseries will be obstreperous sometimes, and children will revolt,

and mammas may pass very uncomfortable moments in the face of angry

daughters in rebellion. Will the children take upon themselves,

at last, to protest against mamma's disdainful commands, and

assert a will of their own, and a right to think for themselves?

This question is one upon the solution of which depends the fate

of France, as well as upon the many thousand chances which the

capricious and ever-shifting gales of a revolutionary atmosphere

may, at any moment, suddenly blow, like a spark into a powder

barrel, shattering the face of the past, and changing the direction

of the future. Twice already, since the revolution of February,

has the question been nearly answered in the affirmative. The last

instance, of which more anon, may be taken as a striking proof that

the children may possibly not always submit to the dictates of the

mother,--that family mistrust may break out into family quarrel,

and family quarrel in nations is civil war. Who again, however,

may venture to predict what shall be the destinies of Republican

France,--what web of darkness or of light, of blood-streaked stuff

or of gold-threaded tissue, it may be weaving with its agitated and

troubled hands, or what force it may interpose to tear the work to

shreds before it be even yet completed? Most may fear, none may say.

But prediction, upon whatever cunning foresight it may be based,

must always call a sort of feeling of inspiration, nearly allied to

superstition, to its aid: and thus the fanciful mind may, without

taking upon itself the airs of a Pythoness, give way to a little

superstition, and yet, perhaps, be not too strongly condemned of

folly. There exists an old prophecy in France, emanating from a monk

of the middle ages, the authenticity of which cannot be doubted, or,

at all events, cannot be disputed, in as far as it was in well-known

existence at the commencement of this century. It predicts, in

mystic language,--dark, it is true, but wonderfully clear after

its verification,--all the many revolutionary changes that have

taken place in France, and now once more proclaims the reign of the

"sons of Brutus." "Armed men," it distinctly says, "will march upon

the doomed city," "sword and fire will prevail against it," "the

wolves will devour each other." May the seeming superstition of a

fantastical question be pardoned! May not these words refer to the

future outbreak of the provinces of France against the capital? If

they do, in what sense, with what tendencies, to forward the views

of what party, may it be? Be that as it may, however, it is not the

obscure future that is dealt with here, but the present confused and

uncertain state of Republican France.

As it may be inferred from what has been said, Paris, then, has put

on its crown, as capital, to some purpose. Never did despot assert

his right to dictate his autocratic will to serfs and slaves more

authoritatively than does revolutionary and republican Paris to

the provinces of France. No three-tailed Bashaw of old melodrams

could be more imperative in his ordinances, more arrogant in the

conviction of the indisputability of his will. The bare supposition

that the provinces could have a will of their own would strike

Paris dumb with astonishment. Paris has been accustomed to consider

itself not only as the heart, but the head, and the arms and legs

to boot, of the whole country. The inert body has no more, in its

consideration, to do, than allow itself to be fed with what scanty

morsels of bounty and importance Paris may choose to afford, and

then not to dare to grumble afterwards if the food prove unsavoury

to its tastes, or indigestible to its susceptibilities. Paris is

"Sir Oracle," and, when it speaks, no provincial "dog dare bark."

Paris, thus, is the great type of the mainspring of the national

character,--which works sometimes, we allow, for good as well

as for evil:--namely, of that mixture of vanity and overweening

conceit, which may be found at the bottom of almost every action

of the French. It calls itself "the great capital of the civilised

world;" and thus considers that, although the departments may be

admitted to the reflected rays of lustre that emanate from its

superior glory, they must look upon themselves as mere satellites,

created to revolve at its liking and its high will, and perform

their revolutions in whatever direction it deems fit to make its

own revolution. Let it not be supposed that this representation

is exaggerated, or that it proceeds from the distorted views of a

foreigner. Hear the Parisian himself speak; list to his expressions

of contempt for those unknown and barbarous regions called

departments; mark how he asserts the unutterable superiority of

his Parisian essence; see how he tosses his head and curls his lip

with an infinitely aristocratic air, when he condescends to notice

them with a word; and never was Paris more eager in the maintenance

of its tyrannical supremacy; never was it more despotically and

autocratically disposed; never more aristocratic, to use the pet

phrase of the day, than under the rule of _soi-disant_ liberty, and

of liberty of opinion, above all other liberties proclaimed by the

French republic.

What were the expressions of the first republican minister of the

interior, that type of republican exclusiveness and despotism, in

his famous and rather too famous _bulletins de la republique_,

issued to all France as the language and opinions of the government

of the day? Paris, they informed the world, was the heart of France,

from which all life and living principle emanated, through which

every drop of the country's blood must flow, in order that it might

beat in unison, and be refreshed with true republican vitality.

Paris, they said again, was the hand that had created and fashioned

the republic, and that was to direct its steps, lead it vigorously

forward in its way--as it was the head that conceived, it was the

hand that executed: it was more than all this, it was the _soul_

of France--the pure and true essence emanating from the new deity,

the republic. Paris, they asserted in as many direct words, was

the mistress whose will was to be obeyed. It is unnecessary to

point out how little such declarations were in accordance with

republican principles, what little affinity they had with the three

great watchwords of the day, "Liberty, Equality, and Fraternity."

Republicanism in France, according to those old traditions, to which

those who call themselves the only true and pure republicans seem

always to be looking back as the only true and pure models for their

admiration and imitation, was always based upon despotism, supported

by constraint, compulsion, violence, and even terrorism; and the

first efforts of modern republicanism were evidently exerted to

place their old, newfangled, statue of bastard liberty upon the same

heterogeneous pedestal. The instructions of the same Bashaw-minister

to the emissaries whom he despatched as Bashaws of lesser and fewer

tails into the provinces, to see that they were duly disposed to

fall down and worship the Goddess Republic, that had been set up,

were modelled after the same and still rougher fashion.

The missionaries were invested with autocratic powers to make

and unmake according to their own autocratic will; to send away

functionaries who might appear lukewarm in the cause; to put

in their places such acolytes as might better serve the altars

of the goddess, and to offer up sacrifices to her, civil and

military, judicial and political, as they might think pleasing

to the divinity, or convenient and agreeable to their own hates

and prejudices. They were particularly requested to _travailler_

the country, to torture it, as the French phrase goes; and were

taught, if they could not hammer the hard and unbending metal of

departmental feeling to the shape they fancied, just gently to

make the iron red-hot with the fire of terrorism, and then twist

it to the suitable form. How well the workmen, in many instances,

performed the task--how well they employed the fiery passions of the

mob to produce the desired red-hot effect, and then strike--is a

matter of historical fact.

In the elections for the National Assembly, the same dogmas of

republican religion were strenuously enforced. No emissaries of

the Inquisition ever used more moral violence to propagate a faith

among suspected schismatics, than did these ministers of republican

despotism to enforce the full, entire, and uttermost doctrines

of their creed, even to the minutest articles. Where the moral

influence appeared unlikely to penetrate as deeply into men's

hearts as was desired, other and more direct methods were adopted

to make entire converts; and, when these methods were found too

mild to work the intended effect, and purge the land of moderatism

and anti-whole-hog-ism, another stronger and more racking dose

was administered: the mob was excited to overawe with threat and

terrorism, and, where it could not prevent, to destroy. How should

the departments dare to have a will of their own? The rebellious

children were to be whipped like schoolboys into learning their

lessons of pure and undefiled republicanism, and reciting them

as Master Commissioner taught them; there was no better rod in

pickle for such naughty urchins than the scourge of the fury of a

mob, carefully taught another lesson, and one it was not slow of

learning--namely, that it was master, and must constrain obedience

to its will; while, in fact, itself obeyed the influence, and

was the instrument of the master-spirit that ruled up above, and

made the best, or rather the worst use of its rule. That all

these measures failed in a great measure--those of violence as

well as those of moral constraint--is attributable to a variety

of complicated reasons, connected with the present state of the

departments; and the how and why they failed, will be the subject of

a few considerations presently.

What, again, were the expressions of the more violent and so-called

only true republican party in the capital, proceeding from its

organs, the clubs, upon the same occasion of the elections? To all

the candidates who presented themselves before them, the same

question was propounded. If, when the votes of all France were

taken, it should be found that the departments declared themselves

averse to the establishment of a republic, what would be the duty

they would have to perform,--what steps would they take? Those who

did not declare that they would turn against that National Assembly,

of which they themselves might then be members, and take up arms

to march upon it, were denounced as traitors to their country,

unworthy of the votes of true men, and hooted from the tribune, in

which they had dared to stand forward as future representatives of

the people. It would have been in vain to insinuate to these good

gentlemen, that, in the application of the principle of universal

suffrage, in which every man was not only an elector, but eligible

as representative, the voice of the majority would be the voice of

all France; and that it was for all France, by the voice of its

majority, to decide upon the form of government best suited to all

France. In vain, indeed. The ready answer would invariably have

been--that Paris was the mistress of France, and had a right to

dictate its will; that Paris had made the revolution, and that,

consequently, Paris was privileged to support the principles of

that revolution, and to arrogate to itself all its advantages: that

the country at large, in fact, had nothing to do but to give in its

approval, and be happy that its concurrence was so far demanded, and

that, should it dare to have an opinion of its own, woe betide it!

All this insolent bombast of the ultra party in Paris might have

been spared, however; the cause of "Paris _v._ the Departments" was

never called into the court of the country. The departments had

accepted the establishment of the republic as a _fait accompli_:

they never desired to subvert the new order of things by another

convulsion, that would have plunged the country, already so

miserable, into an increase of misery; but they protested in favour

of a republic of peace and order, upon moderate principles; and,

lo and behold, Paris itself combined with them in this desire. The

disappointed party of the directing master-spirits of Paris have

been none the less furious in their expressions of contempt for

the openly declared will of all France. They had long kicked down

their idol of universal suffrage with disdain, as soon as they had

found that, in spite of all the hidden machinery they had set to

work in it, the idol had not obeyed their will, or declared their

oracles. Universal suffrage they pronounced a hoax: constraint,

tyranny, anarchy, conspiracy, civil war, were proclaimed by them

the only true elements of the only true republic. Frantic with

disappointment at the result of their own manœuvres, by which they

had been caught in their own toils, they seized upon the pretext

of sympathy in the sorrows of another country; and, aided by the

treachery of certain of their own party in authority, invaded the

obnoxious Assembly, overthrew the government for an hour, and

proclaimed a terrorist government of their own. Foiled again in

this audacious attempt, _foiled at least for the time being_, they

now endeavoured to patch up the shaking soil that has given way

beneath their feet, and plunged their leaders into a quagmire, and

to build new foundations for fresh aggressions upon the discontent

of a part of the working-classes. For this purpose they have taken

two newfangled tools into their hands, the one of impulsion, the

other of repulsion--the one of enthusiasm, the other of alarm; and

both are so vaguely fashioned, and of so unintelligible a nature,

that the real fact of their existence can never be proved, although

their use, their purpose, and their design, in the hands of these

men, are very clear. The one of these tools is a bugbear, a phantom,

a bogie, to which they endeavour to give as terrific an aspect

as possible, in order to fright ignorant men over into their own

ranks. This evil spirit, they declare, has an existence, although

no one ever saw it, no one ever felt it, no one ever knew where it

dwells. No superstitious people was ever endeavoured to be worked

up into a more irrefragable belief of some mysterious demon that

haunts them in dark woods and obscure places to devour them--nor,

generally, with more complete success over the credulous; for fear

is the most powerful agent over the minds of the masses, and more

especially when the fear is of the unknown and mysterious: and

certainly no demon was ever described with a more hideous or blacker

face. This bogie, phantom, bugbear, is a supposed influence called

"Reaction." No precise form is given to it, for that would be to

deprive it of more than half its terrors. No! _onme ignotum pro

terribili_ is the policy. Nothing can be more vague or indefinite

than this same monster, Reaction; it remains an Ossianic cloudlike

spectre, floating no one knows whence, but bringing death and

pestilence in its train. If the working-classes suffer, it is the

Reaction, they are told, that is the cause of all their sufferings.

If all their exactions, however exorbitant and impossible, _are not

conceded at once_, it is because that horrible Reaction labours

that their just demands should be withheld. If the most violent of

their own body are not elected as the true representatives of the

people, it is because that pestilential Reaction has cast a spell

over the minds of all the electors. The Reaction has also, potent

demon although it be, all the freaks and caprices of a lesser imp;

it performs the strangest and most incomprehensible feats,--for

if a discontented mass of workmen revolt unsuccessfully, and gain

not their ends, it was the Reaction again that was the cause of

all. The Reaction, for its own vile reactionary purposes, it was,

that treacherously induced them to revolt, when they themselves

were naturally inclined to be the most peaceable, contented, and

the least exorbitant people on the earth. See how perfidious,

Machiavelic, and Jesuitical, is this horrible monster Reaction! Pity

it is that, in order to establish the fact of its real existence,

it should not as yet have made itself visible to mortal eyes in any

incarnate form! The Reaction is, however, no less, men are told,

the enemy of the republic, the adversary of all true republican

principles, labouring ever to overthrow it; above all, the enemy

of the people and the people's interests, their undermining

serpent, their secret assassin. It is already sapping, unseen,

the foundations of the republic, and it intends to pull down the

ruins of that august structure upon the heads of the people, and

crush it for ever beneath them. In spite of the infinite harm

worked upon the spirit of the lower classes by the establishment

of the belief in this phantom, there would, perhaps, be no real

danger in the effect produced by the clamours of insensate ultra

journals, the preachings of agitating demagogues, and the insidious

insinuations of anarchist _meneurs_ among the crowd, did not certain

members of the government itself, and some of those in authority,

render themselves parties concerned to the propagation of the

belief, either genuinely, from having been themselves carefully

inoculated with the _virus_ of false fear, until they have really

taken the disease, or designedly, for the advancement of their

own purposes--did they not, in fact, throw a sop continually to

mob-lecturers, by insinuating their own conviction in the existence

of "bogie" by their decrees, edicts, and proclamations, and, when

they are called to put down anarchy, never obey without crying

"Reaction" at the same time, and vainly giving the phantom a

slap on the face. As it is--and herein lies the evil--the people

are taught that the National Assembly, as it is now constituted,

is the concentrated essence of the spirit of Reaction--that the

representatives of the people, with but few exceptions, are the

ministering imps in a visible form of the invisible demon. If a

word of reason is spoken in the Assembly against the clamours of

unreasonable demand--"Look ye there! reaction!" is the cry; if it

prepares safe measures of repression against the open efforts of

anarchy--"reaction;" if it defends its own existence against the

subversive attempts of conspirators--"reaction;" if it attempts

to establish the republic upon a firm and solid, but moderate

basis--"reaction;" if it does any thing--"reaction;" if it does

nothing--"reaction;" if it cannot perform impossible wonders for the

amelioration and prosperity of the lower working-classes,--at which,

however, it labours most hard,--"reaction--reaction--reaction; the

reaction of aristocratic feeling--the reaction of ill will--the

reaction of indifference and indolence;" thereby always meaning

reaction against the true republic, and its true representatives,

the lower classes. The phantom Reaction is thus used as a tool

by a wild and violent party against the present order of things;

against the moderate majority of the Assembly more particularly;

against all things and all men not suiting its views, its schemes,

its dreams, and its ambitions; and the bugbear is not ill got up to

scare the credulous of the lower classes more completely into the

toils of the malcontents, with the fear that reaction really may

destroy that idol from which they have been taught to expect all

the good gifts of "roasted larks," for which they have only to open

their mouths, and "showers of gold," for which they have only to

stretch forth their hands--that idol that has been lacquered over

with the false gilding of delusive promises by imprudent rulers, and

which the many still fancy to be all of solid gold--in a word, the

Republic. The reaction, in truth, exists not, or exists not in the

manner that people would be led to believe. If it exists, it is in

the disgust of the more laborious and less tumultuous of the lower

classes themselves, who, in their increasing misery, would be happy

to accept the Lama of Thibet, or any other abstraction, with an

absolute government, in the place of the false idol of their hopes,

that has as yet only deluded them into greater misery-- it is in the

reactionary cry of the wretched, who call for "King Log," or any

other senseless ruler that would bring with it peace, and order, and

a hope of well-being.

The other tool employed by the designing malcontents--that of

impulsion--is the banner upon which is inscribed "_Republique

Democratique_." We have a republic, it is true, they say, but not

the republic of our wishes. This is only a mere republic like any

other: we want a democratic republic, and the democratic republic is

taken from us; but the democratic republic we must and will have.

Ask them what they mean by their "_republique democratique_," they

will not be able to inform you. They launch into phrases which are

but phrases: they lose themselves in a cloudy confusion of terms and

ideas: they pretend to give you vague and chaotic explanations, that

are no explanations at all: they know not themselves what they mean.

Universal suffrage upon its broadest basis, with all the rights

and privileges thereto attached, in their most democratic sense,

is no democratic republic according to their view. What is? Who

can tell?--certainly not they. "They have clamoured for the moon,"

says a wit of the day, "and the moon has been given them; and now

they cry, 'we are betrayed; we wanted the sun, and the sun we will

have.' But have a care! the sun will blind your eyes, my friends,

and you will stagger in still greater darkness; the sun will burn

your fingers, and you will smart beneath the blisters. But they heed

not; they still clamour for the sun." At all events, the banner on

which flaunts aloft the words--"_Republique démocratique_" is a good

rallying banner for all malcontents, a good banner under which to

enlist the unwary among their ranks. It is a cry, a clamour, and all

the more enticing because it is vague, unexplained, mysterious in

its fresh promises of some fancied good that has not yet arrived,

full of the great and alluring unknown. Thus it serves a purpose.

But to return from this long digression upon the efforts of

subversive parties, to the state of feeling that subsists in

Republican France between its now well-sorted and divided

elements--Paris and the provinces.

What are, again, the expressions used by the lower classes with

regard to the departments? what the feelings they express? Ever

the same. Paris, they declare, makes, has made, and will make all

the revolutions of the country. Paris, consequently, is all in

all in France: Paris is the mistress, and the queen, the supreme

arbitress of the destinies of France: Paris must be obeyed in all

its wishes and its high will. What were the words of the workmen of

the national workshops, in a late revolt, to the Minister of Public

Works? They were told that there was no longer any work for them in

the capital, that their pretended labour was an irony of labour,

that the country paid them for doing nothing, and that they were

eating the bread of idleness under the name of work: they were told

that they were to be dispersed in the provinces, to be employed

upon great works of public utility--upon railroads and canals, that

stood still for want of hands: while money was lavishly promised

them for this work, which the treasury could no longer afford upon

unproductive labour. What was their answer? That they, the people,

had made the revolution in Paris, that they were the masters of

Paris, that Paris was theirs, to work in it their work; that, as

masters of Paris, they were not to be bid leave it; that leave it

they would not; that if labour failed, money must be found them at

all events, or they would find means of taking it; in short, that

they would not be _degraded_ by being sent into the provinces. The

workmen of Paris claim, then, to be the masters of the capital, and

still more, in their esteem, the masters of all France. The people

of Paris, then, is _the_ people; it owns no other. Now the people,

in modern republican phrase, and alas! in government decrees also,

is by no means the nation; it means the lower classes alone. The

people, it has been previously declared, is the sovereign people,

whose voice is the voice of God; then, they reply, by the simplest

reasoning, the sovereign people, whose voice is the voice of

God--it is alone we: it is the lower classes. But there is still

another deduction to be drawn. Among the lower classes it is only

the active, the stirring, the discontented, the disorderly and

tumultuous, who come forward in evidence as the representatives of

this people. And thus it is very clear that the sovereign people,

whose voice is the voice of God, the sovereign of France, is a small

body of uneducated, misled, and wrong-headed men in the capital.

So stands the account in theory. And who can deny that, in theory,

they are in truth the masters? Who shall say when the chances of

revolutionary struggles may not make them so in fact?

So stands the state of feeling on the side of Paris--how stands it

on the other side?

When the revolution of February broke out, the departments scarcely

knew themselves, their wishes, or their feelings. They had no

mutual understanding. They were taken by surprise. They had not

the time to consult their sentiments. Notoriously anti-republican

as has been shown to have been the spirit of all France in the

departments, they accepted, however, from old habit, the _dictum_

of Paris: they accepted, as has been before remarked, from that

species of resignation shown in France to a _fait accompli_: they

accepted from a wish to avoid all further convulsion, from a love

of established order in whatever shape it might come--from a hope

that, whatever the form of government proclaimed and imposed upon

the country, all would "go well." And besides, the republic, they

were told, was only a provisional form of government at a moment

of crisis, when no other could be adopted: upon its future form of

government, the country, it was said, was to be freely consulted:

the provinces were not prepared for the ulterior _dictum_ of Paris,

that, without consulting the nation at all, the republic was to be

considered as definitive; and that those who desired a change would

be regarded as traitors to their country. But France is not what it

was; it is enlightened by the experience of successive revolutions.

The jealousy of the departments, towards despotic Paris had long

been boiling in men's hearts: it did not at first boil over; but

when, instead of order and peace, the provinces found that the

new government produced only results of disorder, animosity, and

ruin, the departments began to grumble and murmur openly--for the

first time they seemed determined to show that they ought to have,

and would have, a will of their own. In the commencement all was

tranquil. In some parts of France the republic was accepted, if

not with that enthusiasm which lying Parisian papers would have

induced the world to believe, at all events with a species of

contentment, arising from the trust that a more equitable popular

government would relieve the mass from some of those charges

which weighed so heavily upon them under the former government,

and remove constraints that were painful to them. In other parts,

there prevailed a sort of sullen resignation to the establishment

of a _régime_ which was dreaded from an experience of a hateful

past, and was repulsive to its tastes--but it was a resignation to

the _fait accompli_. Some thus hoped, and others feared; but all

combined in assuming an attitude of quiet expectation.

In this state was France, when an imprudent Minister of the

Interior, pushed on by ambitious, designing, misguided, and reckless

men, sent down as a scourge upon the country those commissaries

of obnoxious memory, who were publicly charged to work their will

upon the departments as they pleased, by the means they pleased, by

whatever oppressive or repressive measures they pleased, provided

they worked the suspected and mistrusted departments into a proper

feeling of true republican principle, according to the most ultra

traditional doctrines of old republicanism. Down upon the country

came the autocratic commissaries with these instructions; and,

in too many instances, with the best intentions of torturing and

tormenting the country, after their own fashion and according

to their own views, to their heart's content. Down they came,

with their history of the first republic in their heads, and the

desire in their hearts of emulating the zeal of those fearful

representatives of the people of the last century, who ruled in the

departments, each a petty, but a bloody tyrant. To all alike the

same violence of disposition must not be attributed: there were a

few more prudent and better-thinking men among the number--although

they, in certain instances, were afterwards accused in high quarters

of mild laxity, and recalled as suspected of moderatism; but the

many were evidently disposed to play the tyrant to the life, in

their desperate measures to twist the country to their will. The

times, however, were changed; the spirit of the age no longer

permitted of the same violence. _Messieurs les Commissaires_ could

not well proceed by the old-established and expeditious method of

cementing the foundations of republics, one and indivisible, by

blood, or erecting the scaffolding of the edifice on scaffolds.

Shootings, drownings, and guillotinings were instruments rather

too rough to be accepted by the manners of the time. But they

had other means in their power, and according to the tenor of

their instructions, which they thought to use, and attempted to

use, with just as much effect. They dismissed functionaries in

wholesale numbers--put their creatures, or those who cringed and

worshipped, in their places, with orders to brow-beat and bully

the recalcitrant, and with the exhibition of high example before

their eyes. They threatened and accused; and when these means

failed, according to their fancy, or when they were too mild for

the taste of Master Commissary, the other underhand instruments

of terrorism, already mentioned, were employed to make men crouch

and tremble. The manner in which mobs have been excited against

the better classes, or those who were suspected of moderatism, by

manœuvres unequivocally traced to the agency of the commissaries

themselves, and the frightful excesses committed, are matters

of common notoriety and of newspaper history. The scenes of the

old Revolution were resorted to, although in another form; and

not only supposed anti-republican sentiment, but moderatism,

was endeavoured to be kept down by agents of terror, and the

ever-ready riotous populations of the great towns. It would be an

endless and a useless task to re-transcribe all the scenes of the

violence of an insensate mob, secretly got up by the republican

agents in authority, more than secretly connived at, and openly

and avowedly excused and applauded. The rod that the commissary

himself could not prudently employ, he placed in the hands of a

designedly inflamed and infuriated people, to scourge the country

to his will. One of the strongest instances, however, may be found

in that state of continual terror on the one hand, and violence

on the other, which for many long weeks hung over the head of the

doomed city of Lyons. See there the mob constituting itself into

illegally armed bodies, sundered from and inimical to the national

guards, assuming names, such as _les voraces_ and _les dévorants_,

by which they themselves marked their character, ruling the whole

city of Lyons by fear; exacting, spoliating, arresting _suspects_

at will; searching the houses of quiet inhabitants under the

pretext of conspiracies against the republic that did not exist,

and of concealed arms, such as they themselves illegally bore,

that never could be found; dragging trembling priests from the

altar to be confined in cellars, because they were suspected of

anti-republicanism; laying their hands upon church plate as the

property of traitors; liberating prisoners arrested for revolt

and disorder--arresting the magistrates who had condemned them;

dictating their orders to military officers for the release of

soldiers put under restraint; pulling a general from his horse,

and nearly immolating him to the wrath of their high justice in

the streets; commanding the fortresses, making barricades at the

least opposition to their will, domineering over the whole city as

masters--a herd of power-intoxicated savages--and the commissary

looking on, applauding, sanctioning their deeds, rubbing his hands

with satisfaction, and approving them with the words "_Allez, mes

enfans! vous faites bien!_" Such scenes as these, carried to the

utmost limits of anarchy and excess in Lyons, have been exhibited

also in almost all the great towns of France, with all the effect of

well-applied terrorism. There is scarcely one that has not similar

outrages, from the violence of an excited mob, to lay to the charge

of him who was set in authority over them--to work his will, so

said the letter of his instructions--but to preserve peace and

order, in a country where convulsions, collisions, and commotions

were so infinitely to be dreaded and avoided--so should his duty

have told him. It ought to be said, at the same time, that the

acknowledged authorities of the government were aided in their high

revolutionary mission, and in the extraordinary means they employed

in its execution, by less acknowledged agents, in the persons of

emissaries from the violent ultra clubs of Paris; who, arrogating to

themselves the right to the true expression of the only true feeling

of Paris--and consequently, _à fortiori_, of all France--racked the

country with their manœuvres, their excitements to violence, their

bullying threats and intimidations. Unacknowledged by government

authority as they were, however, their missions were bestowed

on them by the quondam friends and fellow-conspirators, under

the former reign of the Minister of the Interior; their expenses

were supported by funds, supplied no one could say by what hand,

although most might divine; their measures were evidently taken

in accordance, and in perfectly good understanding, with the

departmental commissary.

What, however, was the result? The very reverse from that intended

by _Messieurs les Commissaires_ and their supporter, the Minister

of the Interior. They over-reached themselves, and worked the very

effect they attempted to exterminate. Instead of subjugating the

departments to their will of ultra-republicanism by the violence

of terrorism, they almost roused the whole better feeling of the

country, at first quietly disposed and resigned, against the very

principles of republicanism in general. The sentiment at first

accepted was soured and embittered; the discontent and aversion

daily increased; and it was more than once openly affirmed that

the departments were ready to revolt, and formed the design of

marching upon Paris. That this subject was actually discussed in

large, and not even secret meetings in the provinces--and even in

such as had been always considered ultra-liberal and democratic

in their opinions, as parts of Normandy, for instance--admits of

but little doubt; and this feeling, although it was never actually

embodied in any living and active fact of resistance, may be taken

as one example in support of the opinion, that the children may

not always prove so submissive to the dictates of the mother,

and may one day raise their voices and hold forth their hands to

dispute her will. The open and general outbreak of the provinces,

which was at one time expected, and was the common topic of

conversation in Paris, was suppressed, however, by the influence

of the better-thinking and more prudential men in the country. But

the feeling of opposition and resistance did not fail to manifest

itself in minor demonstrations. Expostulations were at first

made against the tyranny and the inflammatory manœuvres of the

government commissaries; then broke out angry remonstrances on the

part of the _bourgeoisie_, backed by the better and quieter of the

working-classes; and at last, when all these more legitimate means

failed, the populations of several of the larger towns rose against

the provisional despot, who played the autocrat and the tyrant in

the name of "Liberty, Equality, and Fraternity."

The national guards took up arms to demand the revocation and

the departure of the obnoxious commissary. The commissary, in

opposition, acted the self-same part of which a despotic king

has since been so violently accused by the republican journals.

As Ferdinand of Naples is said to have excited the dregs of the

populace, the lazzaroni, to aid him in a reactionary movement in his

favour, so did even the republican commissary after the self-same

system. He caused the mob to be roused to his assistance, as to that

of the only true democratic friend of the people; he called upon

them to take up arms and combat in his defence: the lazzaroni mob of

the departments was the weapon he wielded to overcome the resistance

of the majority to his will. In most instances the recalcitrant part

of the provincial populations prevailed. In several of the larger

towns, as in Bordeaux, Bourges, and many others, the commissary was

obliged to take to flight: in some the palace of the little tyrant

was stormed, he himself was made prisoner, and was taken to the

railroad, and "packed off" back to that Paris which had sent him.

In a very few instances only the influence of the commissary gained

the day: in still less was he again returned, to be enforced upon

the department from which he had been driven; and in one case he was

sent back by the powers that were, only to be again ignominiously

expelled.

In the department of the Ariège, at the town of Foix, a journal,

founded under the auspices of the commissaries of the government,

and professing the most violent ultra-republican doctrines, was

publicly burnt by the magistrates and most influential persons of

the place, to show their contempt and abhorrence of the principles

and actions of the authority set over them. Other instances of

the general opposition, either to the commissaries themselves or

to the agents they had appointed and supported, on account of

their violence, their tyrannical measures, and their anarchical

principles, are too numerous to quote; and, generally speaking, the

feeling was so strong, that the _Messieurs les Commissaires_, or

rather, _les Citoyens Commissaires_, were obliged to give way before

the expression of popular indignation.

The departments then, for the first time, have begun to show that

they are determined not to be treated as the mere humble serfs

of the capital,--that they are resolved to have a will and an

action of their own. The results have been such that, even among

the staunch republicans in the provinces, and among those who

look to the republic as the only form of government at present

suitable to France, symptoms of a tendency to a federal system have

indubitably sprung up,--of a tendency, in fact, to that system

in opposition to which, under the first revolution, the title of

"one and indivisible,"--so little understood at the present day,

so constantly repeated by the herd without any real meaning being

attached to it,--was bestowed upon the republic. The fear of a

powerfully organised resistance to the sacred principles of French

republicanism,--unity and indivisibility,--is, at this very time,

one of the bugbears by which those in power are terrified and

haunted. But, whether this fear be well founded or not, it suffices

for the present purpose, to show that a disunited feeling exists to

a great extent between the departments and the capital; and that,

while on the one hand the former begin to show a disposition to

resist the overweening influence and tyrannical importance of the

former, on the other, a dread is beginning to be expressed of their

growing discontent, and a suspicion is constantly expressed of their

increasing tendency to reactionary principles, likely to prove

eventually subversive to the republic. Among those "lookers-on,"

who proverbially "see the most of the game," there are some who, in

their exceptional and impartial position as foreigners, are able

to see expressed in letters from the provinces "curses, not loud,

but deep," against "that detestable, unruly, and insolent Paris,

that has made alone a hateful revolution, which it imposes on all

France." It cannot, however, be said, at the same time, that any

reactionary feeling against the republic itself, and a republican

form of government, prevails in the country at large. That which

is thought to be stigmatised by the ultra party with the term of

"reaction," appears, as yet, to be nothing but the acceptation of

a republic based upon the principles of peace and order; but, at

the same time, an opposition to all views and doctrines likely to

produce disorder and anarchy. And yet still, in another sense,

the feeling of the country at large cannot be said to be strictly

republican: the "true men" might be in vain sought except in the

disorderly, tumultuous, excitable, and easily stirred populations of

the great manufacturing towns.

Shortly after the appointment of the obnoxious commissaries, several

causes arose to increase the discontent of the departments, not only

among the _ci-devant_ upper and middling classes, but among the

lower classes,--particularly in the agricultural districts, and more

especially among that peasant population that has so universally

in France acquired a little property in land. One of these causes

was the imposition of the new taxes. Under the former _régime_,

France had been crushed down by the weight of its impositions. One

of the first advantages of the republic was announced, in official

proclamations, to consist in the removal of taxes, and in the

enormous diminution of state expenses necessarily attendant upon a

republican form of government. Already the country people looked to

a release from the greater part of their obligations: the system of

"no taxes at all," they thought, in their _naïveté_, was to follow;

instead of which came very shortly the decree, begging the country

for the loan of a certain proportion of the taxes for the ensuing

year beforehand, in order to meet the deficiencies in the finances,

followed up almost immediately by the more imperative ordinance,

imposing the additional 45 per cent in support of the increased,

not diminished, expenses of the republican government. In many

parts of the country the peasant population refused to pay this

additional tax, or responded only to the demand with that equivocal

answer, so characteristic of the French peasant, "We'll see about

it." It nevertheless, however, refused to pay at the same time the

rents of its landlords, upon the pretext that it was ruined by the

revolution, and the exactions of the republic. It was in vain that

the government protested that these measures were necessitated by

the financial dilapidations of the dethroned dynasty. Clear-sighted

enough where their own interests are concerned, the French peasants

in the provinces replied by denunciations of that odious Paris.

Paris, they declared, had chosen to make for the nonce a revolution

in which they had not aided, and which they had not desired; and

then Paris turned to its own advantage alone the results of that

revolution. It had imposed upon all France, by calling for resources

from a country already drained, to be lavishly squandered in

rewarding the idleness of its own tumultuous and unruly inhabitants

among the working-classes, which it dreaded, by the establishment of

its expensive so-called _ateliers nationaux_, and by paying fresh

troops under the name _gardes mobiles_,--when the standing army was

already such a burden the country,--for the sake of draining off and

regularising the worst dregs of its own population, and satisfying

the caprices of a riotous Parisian mob, that chose to object to the

presence of the old military force among it, while it accepted a new

defensive and repressive force, in addition to the former, under a

new title. Upon such questions, of vital importance to their own

interests, the country people of the provinces were not disposed

to listen to argument or reason; and in the discontent at the

exorbitant exactions of the capital the jealousy of the departments

towards Paris waxed stronger and stronger.

Another cause, which added greatly to the increasing apprehension

and aversion was the preaching of the communist doctrines in Paris,

upon the first establishment of republican principles, and the

support apparently given to these wild and spoliating principles by

certain members of the Provisional Government itself. If there be

any feeling more alive than any other in the breast of the French

peasant, it is that attached to the acquirement and the possession

of landed property in however humble a form, be it but a small field

or a tiny vineyard. If he has any hope, any ambition, any sentiment,

which he thinks worth living for, it is the extension, by any and

every means, of his small domain. On the fact of this possession

are concentrated all the mainspring motives and agencies of his

whole existence--in this, his industry, his talent, his cunning,

his thoughts, his affections, his very love for his children, to

whom he hopes to transmit it. The great _mobile_ of the character of

the French peasant is self-interest in this respect. The doctrines,

then, which preached that the possession of all landed property by

individuals is an infamous spoliation of the _res publica_, filled

the country people in the provinces with the liveliest alarm, and

contributed to establish a still greater hatred to a state of things

that tended to produce results so fatally detrimental to all that

they held dear. The Parisian, almost as blindly ignorant of the

state of his own country--which, in his theory that Paris is all

France, he looks upon with indifference, if not contempt--as he is

proverbially utterly ignorant of every other country beyond the

frontiers of France, even the most neighbouring--and, in fact, of

every thing that touches upon geography or the state of nations, of

which he has only the vaguest and most incorrect notions--thought

that all his wild fraternity schemes, developed and accepted by

those who possessed nothing, in the capital, would be received

with enthusiasm also by the "miserable, oppressed, and tyrannised

inhabitant of the fields and plains;"--such was the language used,

and eagerly caught up. The Parisian soon found, by experience, that

he had made a gross mistake. The emissaries sent down into the

provinces by the professors and high-priests of communism, or by the

ultra clubs, and supported, there is every reason to believe, by

the members of the government before alluded to, met only with the

most active repulsion. Their Utopian ideas of universal fraternity

and spoliation of property were scorned, scouted, and opposed:

themselves were hooted, pelted, almost lapidated as incendiary

enemies of the peasant. "The innocent and humble inhabitant of

the fields" was indignant, insulted, aggrieved, that he should

be so contemptuously considered "miserable and oppressed:" he

showed himself in the light of the landed proprietor, the most

avariciously interested in the possession of property, and by no

means the _naif_ individual the Parisian had been accustomed to

believe him, according to his text-books of _vaudevilles_ and

melodramas. The agents of communistic doctrines were forced to

retreat in dudgeon, to declare the French peasant the most ignorant

and pig-headed animal upon earth, still under the yoke of the

tyrants, and _endoctriné_ by the aristocrats; and to avow that

the departments were not ripe for the enlightenment of communism,

perhaps even to denounce them as infamously reactionary. Certain it

is that communistic doctrines found no enthusiastic disciples in the

country; or, if the propagandism made any steps, it was after the

fashion so characteristically depicted in a caricature published

by the _Charivari_, in which a peasant appears before the mayor of

his _commune_ to say, that, since a general _partage des biens_ is

to take place, he puts down his name for the _château_, but makes

a most wofully wry face upon hearing that his own field has been

already divided among the paupers of the village. The propagation of

communism, then, only excited fears instead of hopes, consternation

instead of joy, and tended still more to indispose the country

people, and excite their aversion and discontent towards a state of

things likely to become so prejudicial to their interests: more than

ever, they were disposed to revolt.

In this state was the feeling of the country at large when the

general elections came on, accompanied by all the violence of

party manœuvre to support the principles of ultra-republicanism,

advocated by the unscrupulous minister of the nation; but all

these efforts tended only to indispose it still more, and to call

forth, in spite of the desperate opposition made, its sense in

favour of respect of property, order, and moderatism of views in

the republic, if republic there was to be. As is well known, an

immense majority of those men of moderate principles, whom all

the ill-judged and hateful efforts of the violent and reckless

republicans at the head of affairs had so greatly contributed to

form into a decided, self-conscious, and compact party of opponents,

was returned to the Assembly. Most of the leading men of the liberal

party under the former dynasty, who had stood forward as friends

of progressive reform, but not as opponents to the constitutional

monarchy principle, were likewise elected, with great majorities,

by the suffrages of the people. The country declared its will to

be against the views of the principal and stirring influence which

emanated from the reckless man who governed the interior affairs

of the country in the capital. But it did not forget, at the same

time, and it still bears an inveterate grudge to the violent agents

of that ultra-republicanism, chiefly concentrated in Paris, who

had filled the country with disorder, tumult, terror, and, in some

cases, bloodshed, by the atrocious and outrageous means it placed in

the hands of a riotous mob to overawe them, and sway the direction

of the elections, and by the base manœuvres employed to attain their

ends. It does not forget the despotism of certain commissaries, who,

after having their own lists of ultra-democratic candidates, whom

they intended to force down the throats of the electors, printed,

threatened the printer, who should dare to print any other, with

their high displeasure, and caused them to shut up their press. It

does not forget the seizure of those papers that proposed moderate

candidates, with every attempt to strangle in practice that liberty

of the press which was so clamorously claimed in theory. It does

not forget the voters' lists torn from the hands of voters by a

purposely excited mob. It does not forget the odious manœuvre by

which agents were largely paid and sent about to cry "_Vive Henri

V._" in the streets of towns, in order to induce the belief in

a Bourbonist reactionary party, and thus rouse the passions and

feelings of the flattered and declamation-intoxicated mob against

the moderates, regardless of the consequences--of the animosity

and the bloodshed. It does not forget the intimidation, the threat

of fire and sword, the opposition by force to the voting of whole

villages suspected of moderatism--the collision, the constraint,

the conflict, the violence. It does not forget all this, nor also

that it owes the outrage, the alarm, and the suffering, the ruin

to peace and order, to commerce, to well-being, to fortune, to

that central power which turned a legion of demons upon it, in the

shape of revolutionary emissaries and agents. It forgets still

less the scenes of Limoges, where a mob were turned loose into

the polling-house to destroy the votes, drive out the national

guards, disarm these defenders of order and right, and form a mob

government, to rule and terrorise the town, while Master Commissary

looked on, and told the people that it did well, and laughed in his

sleeve. It forgets still less the fury of the disappointed upon

the result of the elections, their incitements to insurrections,

their preachings of armed resistance for the sake of annulling the

elections, obtained, it must never be forgotten, by _universal

suffrage_, in face of their culpable manœuvres: the emissaries

again sent down from the clubs, and with an apparent connivance

of certain ultra-members of the government, from the charge of

which, now more than ever since the conspiracy of the 15th May,

they will scarcely be able to acquit themselves: the efforts of

these emissaries to make the easily excited and tumultuous lower

classes take up arms, and the bloody conflicts in the streets of

Rouen: the complicity of the very magistrates appointed by these

members of the government--the terror and the bloodshed, and then

the cry of the furious ultras that the people had been treacherously

assassinated--the conspiracies and incendiary projects of the

vanquished at Marseilles, the troubles of Lisle, of Amiens, of

Lyons, of Aubusson, of Rhodez, of Toulouse, of Carcassonne--why

swell the list of names?--of almost every town in France, all with

the same intent of destroying those elections of representatives

which the country had proclaimed in the sense of order and of

moderatism. It forgets still less the dangers of that same 15th

May, when the government was for a few hours overthrown, by the

disorderly, the disappointed, the discontented, the violent ultra

republicans, the conspirators of Paris,--when some of those, who

had been formerly their rulers, were arrested as accomplices, and

others still in power can scarcely yet again avoid the accusation

and conviction of complicity.

All the other troubles of this distracted country, since the

revolution of February, may be passed over--the ruin to commerce,

the poverty, misery, and want, the military revolts excited by

the same emissaries to cause divisions in the army, as likewise

the unhappy troubles of Nismes, where the disturbances took

a religions tendency--as a conflict of creeds between Roman

Catholics and Protestants, rather than a political or even a social

character,--although they still bore evidence of the disorder of

the times and the disturbance of the country. The elections, then,

contributed more powerfully than ever to the fermentation, the

discontent, the mistrust, and the ill-will of the country.

In this state of France, with the feeling of impatient jealousy

and irritation against tyranny and despotism expressed by the

departments towards the capital, with the evident disunion between

the provinces and Paris, what are likely to be the destinies of

the Republic hereafter? Again it must be said--who can tell,

who foresee, who predict? The Republic has been accepted, and

is maintained, from a love of order and the _status quo_: but

there is no enthusiasm, no admiration for the republican form of

government throughout the country at large; there is, at most,

indifference to any government, whatever it may be, provided it but

insure the stability and prosperity of the country. If an opinion

may be hazarded, however, it is, that the danger to the present

established form of things will not arise so much from the conflict

of contending parties in the capital, as from the discontent,

disaffection, jealousy, and, perhaps, final outbreak and resistance

of the departments. Terrorism has had its day; and it would be

difficult, if not impossible, to apply the system once again to the

country in its present state. What other means will the violent

possess--what coercive measures, if, when parties come to an issue,

the wearied and disgusted country should rise to protest against the

disorders of Republican Paris? There seem at present to be none. The

result of such an outbreak would be inevitable civil war. The strong

instance before alluded to, of the determination of the departments

to assert a will of their own, was given in a very striking

manner in the affair of the 15th May. One of the conspirators got

possession of the electric telegraph at the Home Office, and sent

down despatches into all the provinces, to inform the country

that the Assembly was dissolved, and the new government of the

ultra-anarchist party had taken the reins of power. Instead of being

awed into submission as heretofore, instead of calmly and resignedly

accepting the _fait accompli_ as was their wont, the departments

immediately rose to protest against the new revolution of Paris.

Before a counter-despatch could be sent down into the provinces,

to let them know that the former order of things was restored, the

national guards of all the great towns were up and out, with the cry

"to arms!" and it was resolved to march upon Paris. It was not only

in the towns within a day's journey of the capital that the movement

was spontaneously made. In the furthest parts of the country, from

the cities of Avignon, Marseilles, Nismes, and all the south of

France, the national guards were already on their way towards the

capital, before the information that declared the more satisfactory

result of the day could be made public. It is more than probable,

then, that, should a desperate faction ever seize upon the power, or

even should a close conflict of parties further endanger the safety

of the country and its tottering welfare, that the provinces would

again take up arms against Paris, and that a civil war would be the

result.

This is rather a suggestion hazarded, than a prediction made, as to

the future fate of the French republic. Whatever that future may be,

an uneasy submission on the part of a great anti-republican majority

to the active agency of a small republican minority--but, at the

same time, a desire of maintaining a government, whatever it may be,

if supportable, for tranquillity's sake; a feeling of humiliation

and degradation in this utter submission to the will of Paris

throughout the country--but, at the same time, an apparent growing

determination eventually to resist that will, should it at last

prove intolerable--such is the present state of Republican France.

COLONISATION.

_Journal of an Expedition into the Interior of Tropical Australia_,

&c. By Lieut.-Colonel Sir T. MITCHELL, Surveyor-General, &c. 1 vol.

London: Longmans.

Australia is the greatest accession to substantial power ever made

by England. It is the _gift_ of a _Continent_, unstained by war,

usurpation, or the sufferings of a people. But even this is but a

narrow view of its value. It is the addition of a territory, almost

boundless, to the possessions of mankind; a location for a new

family of man, capable of supporting a population equal to that of

Europe; or probably, from its command of the ocean, and from the

improved systems, not merely of commercial communication, but of

agriculture itself, capable of supplying the wants of double the

population of Europe. It is, in fact, the virtual future addition

of three hundred millions of human beings, who otherwise would not

have existed. And besides all this, and perhaps of a higher order

than all, is the transfer of English civilisation, laws, habits,

industrial activity, and national freedom, to the richest, but the

most abject countries of the globe; an imperial England at the

Antipodes, securing, invigorating, and crowning all its benefits by

its religion.

Within the last fifty years, the population of the British islands

has nearly tripled; it is increasing in England alone at the rate of

a thousand a day. In every kingdom of the Continent it is increasing

in an immense ratio. The population is becoming too great for the

means of existence. Every trade is overworked, every profession

is overstocked, every expedient for a livelihood threatens to be

exhausted under this vast and perpetual influx of life; and the

question of questions is, How is this burthen to be lightened?

There can be but one answer,--Emigration. For the last century,

common sense, urged by common necessity, directed the stream of

this emigration to the great outlying regions of the western world.

North America was the chief recipient. Since the conquest of Canada,

annual thousands had directed their emigration to the British

possessions: the conquest of the Cape has drawn a large body of

settlers to its fine climate; but Australia remained, and remains

for the grand future field of British emigration.

The subject has again come before the British public with additional

interest. The Irish famine, the British financial difficulties,

and the palpable hazard of leaving a vast pauperism to grow up

in ignorance, have absolutely compelled an effort to relieve the

country. A motion has just been made in Parliament by Lord Ashley,

giving the most startling details of the infant population; and

demanding the means of sending at least its orphan portion to some

of those colonial possessions, where they may be trained to habits

of industry, and have at least a chance of an honest existence. We

shall give a few of these details, and they are of the very first

importance to humanity. On the 6th of June Lord Ashley brought in a

resolution, "That it is expedient that means be annually provided

for the voluntary emigration, to some one of her Majesty's colonies,

of a certain number of young persons of both sexes, who have been

educated in the schools, ordinarily called 'ragged schools,' in and

about the metropolis."

In the speech preparatory to this resolution, a variety of

statements were made, obtained from the clergy and laity of London.

It was ascertained that the number of children, either deserted

by their parents, or sent out by their parents to beg and steal,

could not be less than 30,000 in the metropolis alone. Their habits

were filthy, wretched, and depraved. Their places of living by day

were the streets, and by night every conceivable haunt of misery

and sin. They had no alternative but to starve, or to grow up into

professional thieves, perhaps murderers. Of the general population,

the police reports stated, that in 1847 there had been taken into

custody 62,181 individuals of both sexes and all ages. Of these,

20,702 were females, and 47,479 males. Of the whole, 15,693 were

under twenty years of age, 3,682 between fifteen and ten, and 362

under ten. Of the whole, 22,075 could neither read nor write, and

35,227 could read only, or read and write imperfectly.

The average attendance last year in the "ragged schools" was

4000. Of these 400 had been in prison, 600 lived by begging, 178

were the children of convicts, and 800 had lost one or both their

parents, and of course were living by their own contrivances. Out

of the 62,000, there were not less than 28,113 who had no trade, or

occupation, or honest livelihood whatever!

The statement then proceeded to consider the expense to which the

nation was put to keep down crime. It will perhaps surprise those

readers who object to the expenses of emigration.

In 1847. The expense of Parkhurst Prison was £14,349

" Of Pentonville Prison, 18,307

In 1846. Of County Gaols, 147,145

" Of County Houses of Correction, 160,841

" Of Rural Police, 180,000

" Of Prosecutions for Coining, 9,000

In 1847. Of Metropolitan Police, 363,164

The whole but a few items, yet amounting to a million sterling

annually. In this we observe the Millbank Penitentiary, an immense

establishment, Newgate, the Compter, and the various places of

detention in the city, are not included; and there is no notice of

the expenses of building, which in the instance of the Penitentiary

alone amounted to a million.

Yet, to dry up the source of this tremendous evil, Lord Ashley

asks only an expenditure of £100,000 annually, to transform 30,000

growing thieves into honest men, idlers into cultivators of the

soil, beggars into possessors of property, which the generality of

settlers become, on an average of seven years.

There can be no rational denial of the benefit, and even of the

necessity, of rescuing those unfortunate creatures from a career

which, beginning in vice and misery, must go on in public mischief,

and end in individual ruin. Lord Ashley's suggestion is that the

plan shall be first tried on the moderate scale of sending 500 boys,

and 500 girls, chosen from the ragged schools of London, under

proper superintendents, to the most fitting of the colonies; by

which we understand Australia. The plan may then be extended to the

other parts of the kingdom, to Scotland and Ireland. He concluded by

placing his motion in the hands of government, who, through the Home

Secretary, promised to give it all consideration.

It is certainly lamentable that such statements are to be made;

and we have little doubt that the foreign journalist will exult in

this evidence of what they call "the depravity of England." But,

it is to be remembered that London has a population of nearly two

millions--that all the idleness, vice, and beggary of an island

of twenty millions are constantly pouring into it--that _foreign_

vice, idleness, and beggary contribute their share, and that

what is abhorred and _corrected_ in England, is overlooked, and

even cherished abroad. It is also to be remembered, that there

is a continual temptation to plunder in the exposed wealth of

the metropolis, and a continual temptation to mendicancy in the

proverbial humanity of the people.

Still, crime must be punished wherever it exists, and vice must be

reformed wherever man has the means; and, therefore, we shall exult

in the success of any judicious plan of emigration.

It happens, at this moment, that there is an extraordinary demand

for emigration; that every letter from Australia calls for a supply

of human life, and especially for an emigration of females,--the

proportion of males to females in some of the settlements being 9 to

1, while the number of females predominates, by the last census in

England.

There is a daily demand for additional labourers, artificers, and

household servants, and with offers of wages which in England

neither labourer nor artisan could hope to obtain. Thousands are now

offered employment, comfort, and prospective wealth in Australia,

who must burthen the workhouse at home. The advantages are so

evident, the necessity is so strong, and the opportunity is so

prompt and perfect, that they _must_ result in a national plan of

constant emigration, until Australia can contain no more--an event

which may not happen for a thousand years.

It happens, also, by a striking coincidence, that Australian

discovery has just assumed new vigour; and that instead of the

barrenness and deformity which were generally supposed to form

the principal characteristics of this vast territory, immense

tracts have been brought to European knowledge for the first time,

exhibiting remarkable fertility, and even the most unexpected and

singular beauty. We now give a sketch of the journey in which those

discoveries were made.

To explore the interior of this great country has been the object

of successive expeditions for the last five-and-twenty years. But

such was the want of system or the want of means, that nothing was

done, except to increase the tales of wonder regarding the middle

regions of Australia. The theorists were completely divided; one

party insisting on the existence of a mediterranean or mighty lake

in the central region, _because_ there was a tendency in some of the

small rivers of the coast to flow inward. Others, with quite as much

plausibility, laughed at the idea; and, from having felt a hot wind

occasionally blowing from the west, had no doubt that the central

region was a total waste, a desert of fiery sand, an Australian

Sahara! while both parties seem to have been equally erroneous, so

far as any actual discovery has been made.

But it seems equally extraordinary, that even the only two

expeditions which within our time have added largely to our

knowledge, alike should have neglected the most obvious and

almost the only useful means of discovery. The especial object of

exploration must be, to ascertain the existence of considerable

rivers pouring into the sea, because it is only thus that the

government can effectively form settlements. The especial difficulty

of the explorers is, to find provisions, or carry the means of

subsistence along with them. Both difficulties would be obviated by

the steam-boat, and by nothing else. The natural process, therefore,

would be, to embark the expedition in a well appointed and well

provisioned steamer; to anchor it at the necessary distance from the

coast, which in general has deep and sheltered water, within the

great rocky ridge; and then send out the explorers for fifty or a

hundred miles north and south, making the steamer the headquarters.

Thus they might ascertain every feature of the coast, inch by inch,

be secure of subsistence, and be free from native hostility.

Yet all the expeditions have been overland, generally with the most

imminent hazard of being starved, and occasionally losing some of

their number by attacks from the natives. Thus also the present

expedition of the surveyor succeeded but in part, though it had

the merit of discovering that the reports of Australian barrenness

belonged but to narrow tracts, while the general character of the

country towards the north was of striking fertility. The purpose of

Sir T. Mitchell's late expedition was, to ascertain the probability

of a route from Sydney to the Gulf of Carpentaria. But as this

route was to be made dependent on a presumed river flowing into the

gulf, the actual object was to reach the head of that river--an

object which could have been more effectually attained by tracing it

upward from the gulf; and, in consequence of not so tracing it, the

expedition ultimately failed.

To establish an easy connexion between the colony of New South

Wales and the traffic of the Indian Ocean had long been a matter of

great interest. Torres Strait, the only channel to the north, is

a remarkably dangerous navigation; while, by forming an overland

communication directly with the Gulf of Carpentaria to the west of

the strait, the commerce would find an open sea. A trade in horses

had also commenced with India, which was impeded by the hazards of

the strait. There had also been a steam communication with England

by Singapore, and there was a hope that this line might be connected

with a line from the gulf.

The idea of tracing a river towards the north was a conjecture

of several years' standing, in some degree founded on the natural

probability that an immense indentation of the land could not but

exhibit some outlet for the course of a considerable fall of waters,

and also that there had been a report by a Bushman, of having

followed its course to the sea.

After some difficulties with the governor, which were obviated by a

vote of the Colonial Legislature of £2000 for the expenses of the

expedition, it set out from Paramatta on the 17th of November 1845.

The expedition consisted of Sir Thomas Mitchell; E. B. Kennedy,

Esq., assistant-surveyor; William Stephenson, Esq., surgeon and

naturalist; twenty-three convicts, who volunteered for the sake

of a free pardon, which was to be their only payment; and three

freemen. They had a numerous list of baggage conveyances, &c. &c.;

eight drays, drawn by eighty bullocks; two boats, thirteen horses,

four private horses, three light carts, and provisions for a year,

including two hundred and fifty sheep, which travelled along with

them, constituting a chief part of their animal food. They had also

gelatine and pork. The surveyor-general preferred light carts, and

horses in place of bullocks; but it was suggested that the strong

drays were necessary, and that bullocks were more enduring than

horses--the latter an opinion soon found to be erroneous. It is

rather singular, that either opinion should not have been settled

fifty years ago.

Some natural and well-expressed reflections arise, in the course of

this volume, on the lonely life of the settler. Its despondency,

and its inutility to advance his moral nature, are in some measure

attributed to the absence of the "gentler sex."

"At this sheep station," says Sir Thomas, "I met with an individual

who had seen better days, and had lost his property amid the wreck

of colonial bankruptcies; a 'tee-totaller,' with Pope's 'Essay

on Man' for his consolation, in a _bark hut_. This man spoke of

the depravity of shepherd life as excessive.... The pastoral

life, so favourable to the enjoyment of nature, has always been a

favourite with the poets. But here it appears to be the antipodes

of all poetry and propriety, simply because man's better half

is wanting. Under this unfavourable aspect the white man comes

before the aboriginal. Were they intruders, accompanied with wives

and children, they would not be half so unwelcome. In this, too,

consists one of the most striking differences between settling and

squatting. Indeed, if it were an object to _uncivilise_ the human

race, I know of no method more likely to effect it, than to isolate

a man from the gentler sex and children. Remove afar off all courts

of justice and means of redress of grievances, all churches and

schools, all shops where he can make use of money, and then place

him in close contact with savages. 'What better off am I than a

black native!' was the exclamation of a shepherd to me."

A general description of the aspect of New South Wales would be

difficult, from its extreme diversity in parts; but the general

face of the country is marked by lines of granite hills; short

water-courses, which in summer are dry, or retain the water only

in pools; clumps of trees, generally dotted over the soil, and

occasional _prairies_. But the soil is generally fertile, and, in

the spring, exhibits a great variety of flowers. Thus the land is

every where fit for European life, though in the same latitude

with the hottest portions of Africa. It has occasional gushes of

intense heat, but they seem not to have affected the health of the

expedition; and with that progress of comforts which follows all

civilisation, the heat and cold alike may be successfully mitigated.

We have not heard of any endemic in Australia; the epidemic has

never visited its shores. The chief want in the pasture-grounds

is water, but even that is merely the result of the rudeness of

early settling; for vast quantities of water run to waste, or are

lost in swamps, which future colonists will receive in tanks, and

check with dams. The capricious abundance and deficiency of this

prime necessary of life, for it is more essential than food, is

shown in a striking, passage of this picturesque Journal. They were

still within the sheep-feeding country. Water was much wanted.

Mr Stephenson, the naturalist, was sent out on the inquiry. He

returned soon, having met two of the mounted police, who told him

that "a flood was coming down from the Turon Mountains."

"But the little encampment was held in suspense. Still, the bed

of the Macquarie continued so dry, that the report could scarcely

be believed. Towards evening, a man was stationed with a gun, to

give a signal on the appearance of the flood. The shades of evening

came, but no flood; and the man returned. This was a period of

considerable anxiety, for the need of water was urgent.

"Some hours later, and after the moon had risen, a murmuring sound,

like that of a distant waterfall, mingled with occasional cracks,

as of breaking timber, drew our attention." They then returned to

the river bank. Still no flood appeared, though they continued to

hear the sounds of the crashing timber. At length an increase of the

sounds told them that the water was in the next bend. All this, in

a serene moonlight night, was new. At length it came, and came in

power and beauty.

"It rushed into our sight, glittering in the moonbeams, a moving

_cataract_; tossing before it ancient trees, and snapping them

against its banks. It was preceded by a _point_ of meandering water,

picking its way, like a thing of life, through the deepest parts of

the dark, dry, and shady bed of what thus again became a flowing

river." The phenomenon might make a fine subject for the pencil, if

our artists were not divided between the palace and the pigstye. The

noble river rolling along under a _tropical_ moon; the wild country

around, with its forests and hills touched by the light; the bronzed

faces and bold figures of the men of the expedition, gazing with

natural surprise and gladness at this relief, and at the majestic

object before them; and even the cattle hurrying up from the

encampment, to cool the thirst which had pressed so severely on them

during the day, all were made for the finest efforts of the pencil.

"By my party," says Sir T. Mitchell, "situated as we were at the

time--beating about the country, and impeded in our journey solely

by the almost total absence of water--suffering excessively from

thirst and extreme heat,--I am convinced the scene can _never_ be

forgotten! _There_ came abundance at once, the product of storms in

the far-off mountains, that _overlooked our homes_! My first impulse

was to have welcomed this flood on our knees; for the scene was

sublime in itself, while the subject, an abundance of water sent to

us in a desert, greatly heightened the effect to our eyes. I had

witnessed nothing of the kind in all my Australian travels."

But the writer is an accomplished man of science, and he leads the

contemplation to still more glorious things, "Even the heavens

presented something new, at least uncommon, and therefore in harmony

with this scene. The variable Star of Argol had increased to the

first magnitude, just above the beautiful constellation of the

Southern Cross, which slightly inclined over the river, in the only

portion of sky seen through the trees. That very red star, thus

increasing in magnitude, might, as characteristic of her rivers,

be recognised as the 'Star of Australia,' when Europeans cross the

line. The flood gradually filled up the channel nearly bank high,

while the living cataract travelled onward much slower than I had

expected to see it; so slowly, indeed, that more than an hour after

its first arrival, the _sweet music_ of the head of the flood was

distinctly audible from my tent, as the murmur of waters and crash

of logs travelled slowly through the tortuous windings of the river

bed. I was finally lulled to sleep by that melody of waters."

It has been often remarked, that Europeans once accustomed to a life

of wandering, can never return to the life of cities; and even the

clever journalist before us appears to have been a little captivated

with this life of the wilderness. It may be easily admitted, that

vigorous health, and active exercise, variety of objects, even if

those objects are no more than new ridges of mountains or new rills

of water; with keen appetite and sound sleep, are all excellent

things in their style. But, is life given to man only to eat, gaze,

and sleep? What is the life of the wilderness above that of the

brute? The true improvement of man, and, therefore, the especial

employment intended for man, is, that increase of knowledge, of

command over the powers of nature, and of the various means of

adding to the conveniences, comforts and value of human existence,

which, delivered down to us by our forefathers, it is our part to

deliver with increase to our posterity. But the savage improves in

nothing; he is as much a brute this year as he was a thousand years

ago. Savagery is, in practice, a total defeat and denial of all the

original purposes for which our nature was made. And it is with some

regret and more surprise, that we quote, from such a source, such

language as the following:--

"We set out, guided by our native friend," (a savage whom they had

hired to lead them to some water-courses.) "He was a very perfect

specimen of the _genus_ homo, and such as is _never_ to be seen,

except in the precincts of savage life, _undegraded_ by any scale

of _graduated classes_; and the countless _bars_ these present

to the free enjoyment of existence." Whether this is actually a

recommendation that we should throw off our clothes and walk in

nudity, for the purpose of recovering the original elegance of our

shapes, or whether it is the borrowed rapture of some savage in

person which the gallant officer has transplanted into his pages,

to vary his more rational conceptions, we know not; but he has

_not_ made us converts to the pleasures of cold, hunger, filth, and

bloodshed, which furnish the realities of savage life, even in the

paradisaic solitudes of Australia.

The savage, in his original state, is simply an animal, superior to

his own dog only in sharpness of intellect; but wholly inferior to

his dog in fidelity and affection. All savages are tyrannical--cruel

to their wives, if wives they can be called--and in general

cheating and plundering wherever they can. As to their bodily

organs, of course, they cannot be perverted where they cannot

reach temptation; but no savage comprehends moral restraint, and

he gets drunk whenever he has the opportunity, and robs wherever

he finds any thing to steal. On the other hand, civilisation

necessarily enfeebles no man, and what the gallant Colonel regards

as its "degradation of man by classes," produces quite the contrary

effect; for the humbler the class, generally the more vigorous--as

the peasant is a stronger man than the artisan, and the artisan

than the nobleman. Even the idea that savage limbs can do more

than civilised, is equally erroneous. A well clothed and well fed

Englishman, if well formed, and with some training, will outwork,

outrun, and outwrestle any savage from pole to pole. A ropedancer,

a tumbler, or a horserider, at any of our theatres, though bred

in the very heart of civilisation, or even in the hotbed of its

temptations, will perform feats of activity which would defy all the

muscles of a generation of savages. The truth is, that civilisation

improves the features, the form, and the powers of the human frame.

Men in society may be indolent, and throw away their advantages; but

society is the place for man. Rousseau, once made a noise by talking

nonsense on this subject; but Rousseau _knew_ that he was talking

nonsense. Whether his imitators are equally cognisant of their own

performances, is another question; but we come to better things.

This journey settled the disputed point of "horses or bullocks,

light carts, or heavy drays." The bullocks and the drays were a

perpetual annoyance; to feed and water the one, and to drag the

other, soon became the grand difficulty of the expedition. We find

the Colonel perpetually leaving them to follow, when any peculiar

object of exploration was in view. At length the whole "park" was

left to take its rest, under the second in command; and the Colonel,

with eight men, two native boys, fourteen horses, and two light

carts, with provisions for ten weeks, moved to the northward, to

trace where the division of the waters was to be found, and then

follow some of them down to the Gulf.

We were not prepared for the beauty sometimes exhibited by the

Australian landscape. The Journal compares it to a succession

of Ruysdaels. "The masses of rock, lofty trees, shining sands,

and patches of water in wild confusion; the mimosæ, the

Anthistiria-grass, of a red brown, contrasting most harmoniously

with the light green bushes; all those again so opposed to the dark

hues of the casuarinæ, mimosæ, and rifted rocks, that a Ruysdael or

a Gainsborough might have found an inexhaustible stock of subjects

for the pencil."

This wild travelling has its discomforts, and now and then its

dangers; but it is a perpetual source of exciting sensations.

Every step is new, and every day's journey may place the traveller

within some region of unexpected value or beauty. One of the hopes

of the Journalist, on commencing this portion of his travels, was

to discover a chain of hills to the northwest, from which he might

trace the course of a river to the Gulf. At last this chain rose

before his eyes.

"The most interesting sight to me was that of blue pics at a great

distance to the northwest, the object of all my dreams of discovery

for years. _No white man had before seen them._ There we might hope

to find the division of the waters still undiscovered--the pass to

Carpentaria still unexplored. I called this hill Mount First-View,

and descended, delighted with what I had seen from its rocky crest."

The latitude was 27°, yet the thermometer at sunrise was but at 45°,

at noon 68°, and at 9 P.M. 45°.

The captivations of the scenery were equal to the delights of the

temperature, though so near the tropics.--"An Australian morning

is always charming. Amid those scenes of primæval nature it seemed

exquisitely so. The barita or gymnoskina, the organ-magpie, was

here represented by a much smaller bird, whose notes, resembling

the softest breathings of a flute, were the only sounds that met

the ear. What the stillness of evening adds to such sounds in other

climes, is felt more intensely in the stillness of morn in this."

The forms of the vegetation, both tree and shrub, are picturesque,

and the colours are finer still:--"Instead of autumnal tints,

there is a perpetual blending of the richest hues of autumn with

the most brilliant verdure of spring; while the sun's welcome

rays in a winter's morning, and the cool breath of the woods in a

summer morning, are equally grateful. This was in the depth of the

Australian winter, and, which sounds oddly to the European ear, in

the 'merry month of June.'"

Advancing still to the north, a country of an extraordinary kind was

reached in July; and they had now found, that most important of all

objects in a wilderness, a fine "flowing stream, full of sparkling

water to the margin." The Journalist seems quite enamoured with

the surrounding scene, a miniature Australian Switzerland:--"The

hills overhanging it surpassed any I had ever seen, in picturesque

outline. Some resembled Gothic cathedrals in ruins; some forts;

other masses were perforated; and being mixed and contrasted with

the flowing outlines of evergreen woods, and having a fine stream in

the foreground, gave a charming appearance to the whole country. It

was a vision worthy of the toils of a pilgrimage. Those beautiful

recesses of unpeopled earth could no longer remain unknown. The

better to mark them out on any map, I gave to the valley the name

of Salvator Rosa. The rocks stood out sharply and sublimely from

the thick woods, just as John Martin's fertile imagination would

dash them out in his beautiful landscapes. I never saw any thing

in nature come so near those creations of genius and imagination."

But this river, which they followed for some time, ran so far to

the east, that they justly began to doubt its being the one of

which they were in search and they turned again to the north. They

now passed into a fine level country, incomparably formed for

settlement. "An almost boundless extent of the richest surface in

a solitude corresponding to that of (southern) China, yet still

unoccupied by man. A great reserve provided by Nature for the

extension of his race."

They left the Salvator between the 21st and 22d degrees of latitude,

and moved to the north-west. There at length their aspirations,

though only partially, were probably realised. In the middle of

September they reached some heights, from which lay before them

a vast extent of open downs traversed by a river, traceable to

the utmost verge of the horizon, and falling to the _north-west_!

"Ulloa's delight at the first view of the Pacific could not have

surpassed mine," is the natural exclamation of the Journalist. "Nor

could the fervour with which he was impressed have exceeded my sense

of gratitude for being allowed to make such a discovery. From that

rock the scene was so extensive as to leave _no room for doubt_ as

to the course of the river, which, then and there revealed to me

alone, seemed like a reward direct from Heaven for perseverance,

and as a compensation for the many sacrifices which I had made, in

order to solve the question as to the interior rivers of tropical

Australia."

From the 16th to the 24th of September the course of the river was

followed, which still was north-west, but at this period the party

returned. The reason stated is the failure of provisions. This must

have been a most vexatious disappointment--so vexatious, that we

cannot comprehend how it could have been submitted to without some

more remarkable effort than any thing that we find recorded in these

pages. That an expedition equipped for a four months' journey should

have turned back at the very moment when a few days', perhaps a

few hours', march, might have completed its object, is altogether

incomprehensible, while it had any conceivable means of subsistence.

In such a condition of things, the traveller ought to have eaten

his horse, if he could get nothing else. But there was actually, at

no great distance behind, a depôt of their own bullocks and sheep,

all feeding comfortably, and, as the party found on marching back

to them, "Sheep and cattle fat, the whole a sort of farm." A good

stackyard had been set up, a storehouse had been built, a garden

had been fenced in, and contained lettuce, radishes, melons, and

cucumbers. Indeed, the whole establishment exhibited the effects of

good order and discipline.

Why, then, did not the Journalist return on his track, and establish

the discovery which was the express object of his mission? This

exceeds our knowledge. The only direct intimation of his necessities

in these pages is, "our provisions were nearly out, the sun having

reduced the _mess sugar and melted the bacon_, which had been

boiled before we set out." Whether the _lean_ of Australian bacon

may liquefy in the sun is more than our European experience can

tell, but we presume it must be ranked among the wonders of a new

country; at all events, the Journalist returned without having

done the very thing for which his expedition had been fitted out,

and left the object to be completed by his subordinate, who was

subsequently despatched in the direction of the north-west. Thus,

though probabilities are in favour of the river, which the Colonel

named the Victoria, the point is by no means settled, and Australian

curiosity may be disappointed after all.

As the party approached the river, they saw considerable numbers of

the natives. On reaching one of the lagoons, the shrieks of many

women and children, and the angry voices of men, apprised them that

they had at length overtaken the tribe, and unfortunately had come

on them by surprise. "Aya, minya!" was vociferated repeatedly, and

was understood to mean, "What do you want?" I steadily adhered to

my own tactics towards the aborigines, and took not the slightest

notice of them, but rode on according to my compass-bearing. On

looking back for my men, I saw one beckoning me to return. He had

observed two natives with spears and clubs hide themselves behind

a bush in the direction in which I was advancing. On my halting,

they stole away. The whole seemed to have been amusing themselves

in the water during the noonday heat, which was excessive, and the

cool shades round the lagoon looked most luxuriant. Our position, on

the contrary, was any thing but enviable. Even there, in the heart

of the interior, on a river utterly unheard of by white men, an

iron tomahawk glittered in the hand of a chief. The anxious care of

the females to carry off their children seemed the most agreeable

feature of the scene. Some had been digging in the mud for worms,

others searching for fresh-water mussels, and if the whole could

have been witnessed unperceived, such a scene of domestic life

among the aborigines had been worth a little more risk. The strong

men assumed a strange attitude, which seemed very expressive of

surprise, having the right knee bent, the left leg forward--the

right arm dropping, but grasping clubs--the left arm raised, and

the fingers spread out. "Aya, aya, minya," they continually shouted.

However, the party rode on, and the shouts died away.

The Journalist occasionally recovers from his enthusiasm for

savagery. We have no more bursts in his earlier style, "Such

truth and exemption from disease, such _intensity_ of existence,

in short, must be far beyond the _enjoyments of civilised men_,

with all that art can do for them. And the proof of this is to

be found, in the failure of all attempts to persuade these free

denizens of uncultivated earth to forsake it for the tilled ground.

They prefer the land, unbroken and free from the earliest curse

pronounced against the first banished and first created man." All

this unfortunately shows nothing, but that the gallant Colonel would

be the wiser for going back to his Bible, where he would find the

words, "I will not again curse the ground any more for man's sake."

But at last (page 328) we have a sketch of the reality. "It would

appear that, the finer the climate and the fewer man's wants, the

more he sinks towards the condition of the lower animals. Where the

natives had passed the night, no huts, even of bushes, had been set

up. A few tufts of dry grass only marked the spot, where, beside a

small fire, each person had sat, folded up like the capital letter

N. Their occupation during the day was only wallowing in a muddy

hole, in no respect cleaner than swine. They have no idea of any

necessity for washing themselves between their birth and the grave,

while groping in mud for worms." After admitting the filth, the

indolence, and the uselessness of the savage; contrasting, however,

his teeth and tongue favourably with those of the civilised man or

child, of which he pronounces it to be "ten to one but he should

find _only impurity and decay_," (a point in which we are wholly

at issue with him,) he asks, "what then is civilisation in the

economy of the human animal?" He answers, "Cultivated man despises

the perishable substance, and pursues the immortal shadow." We are

but little satisfied with the language of this solution, nor is

its meaning much more intelligible. In the first place, man, in a

civilised state, does not necessarily injure his bodily organs. The

fool who cannot stir, or even sit, without a cigar in his mouth, or

the drunkard who continually sacrifices health and understanding

to intoxication, has only to condemn himself. But, give the savage

tobacco and rum, and he will as speedily destroy his organs, and

bring himself to the grave, as the most civilised profligate in

existence. And as to the grand supposed use of civilisation--the

fixing our minds on "immortal shadows"--if by this he meant giving

us ideas of religion, there are many highly civilised nations

which think but very little of religion, and many highly civilised

persons who think of it nothing at all. Yet, it is only justice to

the gallant Colonel to quote this sentence. "Animal gratification

is transient and dull compared to the acquisition of knowledge, the

gratification of mind,--the raptures of the poet, or the delight

of the enthusiast, however imaginary. Such were my reflections on

this day of rest, in the heart of a desert, while protected from the

sun's rays by a blanket."

But even his metaphysics are entirely a misconception. The original

purpose of civilisation is, to enable man to live in society; that

is, in peace, with the advantages of mutual assistance. That those

objects are powerfully aided by religion is true, and that science

may be best cultivated in settled life, is equally true; but those

are merely collateral. Civilisation means the work of law, of safe

intercourse, of secure property, and of all the safeguards of

society which ultimately enable man to polish the general manners,

and to improve the general mind. Religion is not the consequence,

but the origin of Civilisation.

We now take leave of the journey, with the sketch of the rivers.

After moving for some distance between two streams, they approached

the junction, which formed--"the broad, deep, and placid waters of a

river as deep as the Murray. Pelicans and ducks floated upon it, and

mussel shells of extraordinary size lay in such quantities, where

the natives had been in the habit of eating them, as to resemble

snow covering the ground. But even that reach seemed diminutive,

when compared with the vast body of water of which traces had been

left there; affording evidence, that though wide, they must have

been impetuous in their course. Verdure alone shone now, over the

wide extent to which the waters sometimes rose. Beyond that channel

lay the almost boundless plains; the whole together forming the

finest region I had ever seen in Australia."

Still the luckless character of the Australian rivers appears; and

after expecting that this fine channel, which there seemed navigable

for steamers, would continue, in a few miles more it exhibited only

ponds. Whether the great central stream may not exhibit the same

caprice, is still the question.

The party returned to Sydney in January 1847; and in March, Mr

Kennedy, the second in command, was sent, as has been already

stated, to explore the course of the Victoria.

There are some valuable observations on the aborigines. It is

said that they have good natural faculties, all one of them

named Uranigh, an attendant on the expedition, obtains especial

praise for sagacity, fidelity, and courage. But, from inevitable

circumstances, it appears to be the fate of the natives to waste

away before the European blood, and, even without any violence

or oppression, gradually to vanish. To teach them to earn their

bread, to adopt European habits of any kind, or even to live with

any sense of comfort in the vicinity of European settlers, seems

impossible, and thus they gradually retire into the interior. This

process has so uniformly occurred in all colonised countries, where

a new civilisation has been introduced, that it may be regarded as

almost a law of nature. "Fire, grass, and kangaroos," are essential

to native life; and when the pastures are no longer suffered to be

burned, and when the kangaroos disappear, the savage _must_ retire.

Sir T. Mitchell's favourite project would be, to send away a young

married pair to the south of Europe, where they might learn the

cultivation of the grape and olive, fig, &c.; then to bring them

back with their children. But we are afraid they would make but few

converts; that the benevolent experiment would be totally thrown

away; and that the poor, idle, and useless being, whom Sir Thomas

will persist in calling the noble savage, must be left to eat rats

and mice, to live in misery and wretchedness, and to be inevitably

pushed into the wilderness, to make way for a superior class of

human capability.

But, regarding the condition of the natives as utterly beyond

European influence, except so far as it may and ought to be exerted

to protect them from all injury,--there are other questions of high

importance, relative to the condition of the convicts. The preamble

of the Transport Act made the reformation of the culprit a primary

object. There never was any use of forced labour so effective. The

galley-slaves of France and Italy were in general made more wicked,

if possible, by their imprisonment and work. We think it also

next to an impossibility that any culprit, punished by temporary

imprisonment, and then thrown out again among his associates, _can_

change his habits. Who will employ a known felon? A single act of

robbery may give him more means of gross gratification, than he

could obtain by the severest toil in a twelvemonth. The temptation

is too strong. The only hope of his recovery, is in his being sent

where his bad character will not utterly prevent his getting a good

one; where he will have profitable work, (let the profit be more or

less;) where he will have few temptations, and none of his old ones;

and where he may have a prospect of bettering his condition among

his fellows. All these he had, and has, in New South Wales.

But it is remarkable and unfortunate, that we seldom have a new

head of the colonial department who does not bring with him some

new theory; and the fashionable theory now is, to try the effect of

prison discipline. We have no hesitation in denouncing this theory,

as ineffectual, intolerably costly, highly dangerous, and even

actually cruel. We take the points in succession: we doubt whether

it has really reformed one prisoner out of a thousand. Its expense

is enormous: the single prison at Millbank cost a million sterling,

and probably £100,000 a-year for its support. The model prison at

Pentonville is an architectural _bijou_, but terribly expensive.

Men cannot be reformed by turnkeys in the most moral costume, or by

locks of the most exquisite invention.--It is dangerous: because

those felons, once let loose, almost invariably become felons

again; and a general jail-delivery once a year, from handcuffs and

shackles, may people the streets with ruffianism.--It is even cruel.

The prisoners are not merely deprived, for a long succession of

years, of all healthful exercise--for who ever could take healthful

exercise within prison walls?--but shut out from all the view and

enjoyment of nature, and especially from matrimony; they cannot

be husbands or fathers. It is true, that the felon forfeits all

rights, if they are found incompatible with the public safety; but

we have no _right_ to inflict on him any suffering beyond that

which is absolutely necessary. If by sending him to Australia we

can accomplish, without cruelty, those objects which we _cannot_

accomplish without cruelty at home, it is our duty to send him to

Australia.

We know that a middle system of imprisonment, to be followed by

transportation, has been attempted, but we have no faith in its

operations. The true place is Australia.