to the blowing up of the mine, and | fidence in the stability of political inimmediately after stabbing Ottilia, is stitutions established by an experience very fine. CESARIO. Ay, shout, shout, king, This steel his sceptre! Tremble, dwarfs in guilt, And own your master! Thou art proof, Henriquez, 'Gainst pity; I once saw thee stab in battle A page who clasped thy knees: And Melchior there Made quick work with a brother whom he hated. But what did I this night? Hear, hear, and reverence! There was a breast, on which my head had rested A thousand times; a breast which loved me fondly As heaven loves martyred saints; and yet this breast I stabbed, knaves-stabbed it to the heart!- Wine! wine there! For my soul's joyous!”—p. 86. The resistance which Amelrosa op. poses to the firing of the mine, is well wrought out; and there is some good poetry scattered up and down the play, of which we should very willingly make extracts, if our limits would permit. The ill success which it has justly experienced, is owing, we have no doubt, to the want of nature in the characters, and of probability and good arrangement in the incidents, -objec tions of some force. NECKAR'S LAST VIEWS. of their wisdom? Are the various interests of society adjusted and protected by a system of laws thoroughly tried, gradually ameliorated, and purely administered? What is the degree of general prosperity evinced by that most perfect of all criteria, general credit? These are the considerations to which an enlightened politician, who speculates on the future destiny of nations, will direct his attention, more than to the august and imposing exterior of territorial dominion, or to those brilliant moments, when a nation, under the influence of great passions, rises above its neighbours, and above itself, in military renown. If it be visionary to suppose the grandeur and safety of the two nations as compatible and co-existent, we have the important (though the cruel) consolation of reflecting, that the French have yet to put together the very elements of a civil and political constitution; that they have to experience all the danger and all the inconvenience which result from the rashness and the imperfect views of legislators, who have everything to conjecture, and everything to create; that they must submit to the confusion of repeated change, or the greater evil of obstinate perseverance in error; that they must live for a century in that state of perilous uncertainty in which every revolutionised nation remains before rational liberty becomes feeling and habit as well as law, and is written in the hearts of men as plainly as in the letter of the statute; and that the opportunity of beginning this immense edifice of human happiFiness is so far from being presented to them at present, that it is extremely problematical whether or not they are to be bandied from one vulgar usurper to another, and remain for a century subjugated to the rigour of a military government. at once the scorn and the scourge of Europe. (E. REVIEW, 1803.) Dernières Vues de Politiques, et de nance. Par M. Neckar. An 10, 1802. Ir power could be measured by territory, or counted by population, the inveteracy, and the disproportion which exists between France and England, must occasion to every friend of the latter country the most serious and well-founded apprehensions. Fortunately however for us, the question of power is not only, what is the amount of population? but, how is that population governed? How far is a conVOL. L. constitution, we are indebted for the Chamber of Indication is to preser. t work of M. Neckar now before us; a five candidates, of whom the people work of which good temper is the cha- are to elect one; and the right of voting racteristic excellence: it everywhere in this latter election is given to every preserves that cool impartiality which body engaged in a wholesale or retail it is so difficult to retain in the discus- business; to all superintendents of sion of subjects connected with recent manufactures and trades; to all comand important events; modestly pro- missioned and non-commissioned offposes the results of reflection; and, cers and soldiers who have received neither deceived nor wearied by theo- their discharge; and to all citizens ries, examines the best of all that paying in direct contribution, to the mankind have said or done for the amount of twelve livres. Votes are attainment of rational liberty. not to be given in one spot, but before the chief magistrate of each commune where the voter resides, and there inserted in registers; from a comparison of which the successful candidate is to be determined. The municipal officers are to enjoy the right of recommending one of these candidates to the people, who are free to adopt their recommendation or not, as they may think proper. The right of voting is confined to qualified single men of twenty-five years of age; married men of the same description may vote at any age. The principal object of M. Neckar's book is to examine this question: "An opportunity of election supposed, and her present circumstances considered, what is the best form of government which France is capable of receiving?" and he answers his own query by giving the preference to a Republic, One and Indivisible. The work is divided into four parts. 1. An Examination of the present constitution of France. 2. On the best form of a Republic, One and Indivisible. 3. On the best form of a Monarchical Government. To this plan of election we cannot help thinking there are many great and insuperable objections. The first and infallible consequence of it would be, a devolution of the whole elective fran 4. Thoughts upon Finance. From the misfortune which has hitherto attended all discussions of pre-chise upon the Chamber of Indication, sent constitutions in France, M. Neckar has not escaped. The subject has proved too rapid for the author; and its existence has ceased before its properties were examined. This part of the work, therefore, we shall entirely pass over because, to discuss a mere name is an idle waste of time; and no man pretends that the present constitution of France can, with propriety, be considered as anything more. We shall proceed to a description of that form of a republican government which appears to M. Neckar best calculated to promote the happiness of that country. and a complete exclusion of the people from any share in the privilege; for the Chamber, bound to return five candidates, would take care to return four out of the five so thoroughly objectionable, that the people would be compelled to choose the fifth. Such has been the constant effect of all elections so constituted in Great Britain, where the power of conferring the office has always been found to be vested in those who named the candidates, not in those who selected an individual from the candidates named. But if such were not the conseEvery department is to be divided quences of a double election; and if it into five parts, each of which is to send were so well constituted as to retain one member. Upon the eve of an elec- that character which the Legislature tion, all persons paying 200 livres of meant to impress upon it, there are government taxes in direct contribu- other reasons which would induce us tion, are to assemble together, and to pronounce it a very pernicious inchoose 100 members from their own stitution. The only foundation of number, who form what M. Neckar political liberty is the spirit of the calls a Chamber of Indication. This people; and the only circumstance which makes a lively impression upon Sickness, absence, and nonage would their senses, and powerfully reminds (even under the supposition of universal them of their importance, their power, suffrage) reduce the voters of any and their rights, is the periodical country to one fourth of its population. choice of their representatives. How A qualification much lower than that easily that spirit may be totally ex- of the payment of twelve livres, in tinguished, and of the degree of abject direct contribution, would reduce that fear and slavery to which the human fourth one half, and leave the number race may be reduced for ages, every of voters in France three millions and man of reflection is sufficiently aware; a half, which, divided by 600, gives and he knows that the preservation of between five and six thousand conthat feeling is, of all other objects of stituents for each representative; a political science, the most delicate and number not amounting to a third part the most difficult. It appears to us, of the voters for many counties in that a people who did not choose their England, and which certainly is not so representatives, but only those who unwieldly as to make it necessary to chose their representatives, would very have recourse to the complex mechanism soon become indifferent to their of double elections. Besides, too, if it elections altogether. To deprive them could be believed that the peril were of their power of nominating their own considerable of gathering men together candidate, would be still worse. The in such masses, we have no hesitation eagerness of the people to vote is kept in saying that it would be infinitely alive by their occasional expulsion of preferable to thin their numbers, by ina candidate who has rendered himself creasing the value of the qualification, objectionable, or the adoption of one than to obviate the apprehended bad who knows how to render himself effects, by complicating the system of agreeable, to them. They are proud election. of being solicited personally by a man M. Neckar (much as he has seen of family or wealth. The uproar, and observed) is clearly deficient in even, and the confusion and the that kind of experience which is clamour of a popular election in Eng-gained by living under free governland, have their use; they give a stamp ments: he mistakes the riots of a free, to the names, Liberty, Constitution, and People; they infuse sentiments which nothing but violent passions and gross objects of sense could infuse; and which would never exist, perhaps, if the sober constituents were to sneak, one by one, into a notary's office to deliver their votes for a representative, or were to form the first link in that long chain of causes and effects which, in this compound kind of elections, ends with choosing a member of Parliament. for the insurrections of an enslaved, people; and appears to be impressed with the most tremendous notions of an English election. The difference is, that the tranquillity of an arbitrary government is rarely disturbed but from the most serious provocations, not to be expiated by any ordinary vengeance. The excesses of a free people are less important, because their resentments are less serious; and they can commit a great deal of apparent disorder with very little real mischief. An English mob, which, to a foreigner, might convey the belief of an impending massacre, is often contented by the demolition of a few windows. "Above all things (says M. Neckar) languor is the most deadly to a republican government; for when such a political association is animated neither by a kind of instinctive affection for its beauty, nor by the continual homage of reflection to the The idea of diminishing the number happy union of order and liberty, the public of constituents rather by extending the spirit is half lost, and with it the republic. period of nonage to twenty-five years The rapid brilliancy of despotism is preferred to a mere complicated machine, from than by increasing the value of the which every symptom of life and organisa-qualification, appears to us to be new tion is fled." and ingenious. No person considere himself as so completely deprived of a share in the government, who is to enjoy it when he becomes older, as he would do, were that privilege deferred till he became richer;-time comes to all, wealth to few. No qualification* of property is necessary to its members, who receive each a salary of 12,000 livres. No one is cligible to the assembly before the age of twenty-five years. The little national council consists of one hundred members, or from that number to one hundred and twenty; one for each The municipal officers enjoy, in this election, the same right of recommending one of the candidates to the people; a privilege which they would certainly exercise indirectly, without a law, wherever they could exercise it with any effect, and the influence of which the sanction of the law would at all times rather diminish than increase. This assembly of representatives, as M. Neckar has constituted it, appears to us to be in extreme danger of department. It is re-elected every ten turning out to be a mere collection of years; its members must be thirty country gentlemen. Every thing is years of age, and they receive the same determined by territorial extent and salary as the members of the great population; and as the voters in towns council. For the election of the little must, in any single division, be almost council, each of the five Chambers of always inferior to the country voters, Indication, in every department, gives the candidates will be returned in in the name of one candidate; and, virtue of large landed property; and from the five so named, the same voters that infinite advantage which is derived who choose the great council select one. to a popular assembly from the variety of characters of which it is composed, would be entirely lost under the system of M. Neckar. The sea-ports, the universities, the great commercial towns, should all have their separate organs in the parliament of a great country. There should be some means of bringing in active, able, young men, who would submit to the labour of business, from the stimulus of honour and wealth. Others should be there expressly to speak the sentiments and defend the interests of the executive. Every popular assembly must be grossly imperfect that is not composed of such it in their power to propose any law heterogeneous materials as these. Our own parliament may, perhaps, contain within itself too many of that species of representatives who could never have arrived at the dignity under a pure and perfect system of election; but, for all the practical purposes of government, amidst a great majority fairly elected by the people, we should always wish to see a certain number of the legislative body representing interests very distinct from those of the people. The legislative part of his constitution M. Neckar manages in the following manner. There are two councils, the great and the little. The great council is composed of five members from each department, elected in the manner we have just described, and amounting to the number of six hundred. The assembly is re-elected every five years. The grand national council commences all deliberations which concern public order and the interest of the state, with the exception of those only which belong to finance. Nevertheless, the executive and the little council have for the consideration of the grand We believe M. Neckar to be right in his idea of not exacting any qualification of property in his legislative as Nothing can be more absurd than our qualification for parliament: it is nothing but a foolish and expensive lie on parchment. semblies. When men are left to choose placed some agents of the executive in the great council, all measures of finance would, in fact, have originated in them, without any exclusive right to such initiation; but the right of initiation, from M. Neckar's contrivance, is likely to excite that discontent in the people, which alone can render it dangerous and objectionable. their own governors, they are guided in their choice by some one of those motives which has always commanded their homage and admiration : if they do not choose wealth, they choose birth or talents, or military fame; and of all these species of pre-eminence, a large popular assembly should be constituted. In England, the laws requiring that members of parliament should be possessed of certain property are (except in the instance of members for counties) practically repealed. In the salaries of the members of the two councils, with the exception of the expense, there is, perhaps, no great balance of good or harm. To some men it would be an inducement to become senators; to others, induced by more honourable motives, it would afford the means of supporting that situation without disgrace. Twenty-five years of age is certainly too late a period for the members of the great council. Of what astonishing displays of eloquence and talent should we have been deprived in this country under the adop-sertion respecting it. There is only tion of a similar rule! The institution of two assemblies constitutes a check upon the passion and precipitation by which the resolutions of any single popular assembly may occasionally be governed. The chances that one will correct the other do not depend solely upon their dividuality, but upon the different ingredients of which they are composed, and that difference of system and spirit which results from a difference of conformation. Perhaps M. Neckar has not sufficiently attended to this consideration. The difference between his two assemblies is not very material; and the same popular fury which marked the proceedings of the one would not be very sure of meeting with an adequate corrective in the dignified coolness and wholesome gravity of the other. All power which is tacitly allowed to devolve upon the executive part of a government, from the experience that it is most conveniently placed there, is both safer, and less likely to be complained of, than that which is conferred upon it by law. If M. Neckar had In this plan of a republic, everything seems to depend upon the purity and the moderation of its governors. The executive has no connection with the great council; the members of the great council have no motive of hope, or interest, to consult the wishes of the executive. The assembly, which is to give example to the nation, and enjoy its confidence, is composed of six hundred men, whose passions have no other control than that pure love of the public, which it is hoped they may possess, and that cool investigation of interests, which it is hoped they may pursue. Of the effects of such a constitution, everything must be conjectured; for experience enables us to make no as -- Hap one government in the modern world, |