12 OCTOBER 1861, Page 23

THE QUARTERLIES.

IT is to be f•retted that the Reviews cannot, like the Bernie des Dear Mendes, be published at shorter intervals, for they supply a want beginning t be more keenly felt. Our periodical literature suffers from cond nsation, from the absolute necessity of compressing thought wit tin a definite amount of type, and from the habits thence arising of a lusive writing, and of touching but one side of a subject at one time. Physiologists say that Shelley's dream of a race fed by pure nutri exit, chemically extracted, can never be realized, for the stomach fe only on pemmican begins to prey upon itself, and the remark is true of literature as of food. The newspapers have lost the power • f exhaustive discussion, and but for the Reviews, periodic writing wou id be reduced to pleasant, but one-sided, or half-informed commentary The effect is a loss of influence over the mass, who need exposition, d not merely the provocatives to thought which the mass of leading • ides supply. They find it in the Quarterlies ; but from their infreque at publication their teaching is apt to fall a little dead, while their nu n.ers are driven too often on abstract argument, em- ployed in the ear that events may have impaired the illustration which seems a the moment so apt. The paper on "Principle and No Principle in our Foreign Policy," in the present number of the Na- tional, is strictl) a newspaper article, expanded till it covers the argu- ment, and there fore at once intelligible and unfitted for a newspaper. A little too diet( mica in style, it still brings before the public a ques- tion they will ha ye speedily to decide—the object of the foreign policy of the country. Up to 1848, argues the reviewer, that policy was tolerably simple, - viz, to resist France and Spain, and develop our colonial empire. Both objects have been, for the time at least, laid aside, and Ent, "land is groping its way painfully to a new theory, to a policy broad ei lough to enable statesmen to act without thinking out first principles o n every new occurrence. He believes that, in the slow blundering wa) peculiar to a practical people, we are arriving fast at two cambia ins. We have abjured isolation, and decided to

prohibit intervention. Isolation is impossible, unsafe, and finally wrong:

4' But, lastly, the English people have pronounced against a policy of isolation for a third reason, still more conclusive to their minds than the two others, viz_ that it is mean and wrong. Neither their logic nor their feelings will permit them to adopt the maxims of a school of coarse logic and of narrow feelings, which teach that neighbours have no duties towards each other unless they live within the same geographical boundaries, and are members of the game political combination of units ; that, in fact, all those mutual claims and charities, the sacredness of which has been proclaimed by Christian and Pagan moralists alike, apply to fellow-citizens, but not to fellow-men. The British nation is simply incapable of saying,—as Mr. Bright's language sometimes almostpersuades us he would have us say,—' Let the strong oppress the weak ; let the rich rob the poor —elsewhere: it is no concern of ours; we are not the policemen of the world.' The masses among us are happily yet more revolted by such doctrines than the higher ranks. We are not the policemen of the world, it is true ; and the political knight-errantry which preaches a crusade against iniquity in general is simply absurd; but every man is a policeman to prevent violence and wrong being com- mitted in his sight and on his path, so far as his capacity extends,—and so is every nation; otherwise the dominion of the law is restricted within the narrow limits of private life, and robbery and outrage are banished from the interior of civilized communities, only to have wider range and freer scope and vaster de- velopment outside. Is it not obvious that such a policy, if universally adopted, —and if right for us it must be right for all,—would first condemn all weak states to extinction, and then all powerful ones to ceaseless warfare?"

We doubt if the struggle for isolation is quite over, but the result is foretold for all practical purposes in the line we have italicized. The aristocracy, the masses, and the thinkers are unanimous on the point, and the middle class, even if it were as much deceived as Mr. Bright, must in the presence of that alliance for once give way. So far from the nation hungering for isolation, as continental politicians are at to believe, it has a tendency to err on the other side, to mix itself in every controversy without knowing exactly what result of the struggle it desires. As to non-intervention, the Reviewer, we think, pushes an idea with too little reference to facts. He observes that the doctrine is accepted, and it remains only to decide what excep- tions can be allowed. He would admit intervention whenever foreign force intervenes, or had previously intervened, between the people and their rulers, and perhaps in cases where civilization and humanity are notoriously and painfully outraged, a limitatiou which meets, he argues, every difficultynow existing, except that of Turkey. As the Turk- ish question contains in itadozen wars, the exceptionalmost neutralizes the rule ; but the Polish case is almost as strong. If Poland is to battle out her own quarrel, her case is simply hopeless. Nothing but foreign intervention can give her sufficient unity even to commence an independent struggle, and though it is easy to say "Perish Poland that the principle be maintained," the world gains no peace while Poland is compressed. There is, we think, a sounder, because a more practical, policy contained in the following sentences : "The great guiding truth, then, which we seek, seems to be written in sun- beams, both on the annals of the last generation and on the living history that is now unrolling before our eyes ; viz, that the stable equilibrium,' which is indispensable to the peace and progress of the world, can only be found by per- mitting and encouraging the development of these two prevailing and irrepressible tendencies of the age,—the tendency of peoples to demand free institutions, and to group themselves according to their natural affinities; in other words, the principle of self-government and the principle of nationality. These tendencies once developed to their full issues,—the artificial and illegitimate obstacles now placed in their way by extraneous and therefore unwarrantable interference, once forbidden and removed,—the world has a clear path, and England a smooth future, before them. The healthy and natural development of these tendencies will give us peace; for all the wars and convulsions which have disturbed Europe since the downfal of Napoleon are indisputably traceable, directly or indirectly, to the struggle between those irrepressible instincts and the shackles with which terror or ambition has pertinaciously endeavoured to chain them down. When nations are united to their natural kindred and their chosen friends, and when citizens everywhere have obtained those political and civil privileges which can nowhere be permanently withheld from any who truly desire them and are fit for them, then,—we do not say, for we do not hope, that wars will altogether cease, —but assuredly the most prolific and the most incurable source ot sanguinary conflicts will be removed; for the just claims and the indestructible aspirations of all peoples will have been satisfied, and no quarrels but such as admit of arbitration can thenceforth arise. You may mediate between two claimants to one territory, or two nations which have been irritated by mutual affronts; you cannot mediate between a nation determined to be free and a despot bent upon retaining it in thraldom."

Even that idea needs one formidable limitation, viz, a definition of what constitutes a people. We question the right of the Basques, the Bohemians, or the people of Malta to imperil civilization by de- claring their own independence on the ground of their own na- tionality, and we utterly deny that a nation which, like the Welsh, has a free Govenment, and its full share in the general administra- tion, can be considered an oppressed nationality entitled, if it please, to rise. With the general conclusion, however, we heartily agree. Europe, filled with nations so far free as to have full power of de- velopment, will in all probability enjoy, mine more an interval of peace. Permanent peace is an impossible and unhealthy dream ; im- possible, because ideas cancreate war as readily as interests; unhealthy, because a protracted peace would produce more and lower vices than occasional war.

The paper on "The Great Arabian," is the best in the number. It is an estimate of Mahomet as a political leader—a side of his cha- racter too often neglected in the rancour of theological warfare. Its strong, terse, and graphic writing, and full command of the subject, mark it out as an article of no ordinary merit.

"Piers Ploughman" is a clever, but somewhat slight review of early- English poetry, as "Street Ballads" is of the minstrelsy of the popu- lace, while the thoughtful paper on "Tracts for Priests and People" is disfigured by the tendency to mistiness which destroys the popular effect of all the new theology. What notion, for example, can an uneducated man derive from this sentence, and what earthly use is there in a creed which an uneducated man cannot comprehend ? Are none but philosophers to believe?- The real evil is the non-existence of a power somewhere, above all laws whatsoever. The English Constitution by no means provides that the most capable man shall in time of emergency be raised to the direction of affairs. It only provides that the most capable par- liamentary leader shall be there. But then Parliament is despotic, and if it wanted a dictator not in Parliament, or even, as once did happen, a foreigner, three hours would suffice to give to the required man all the required rower. To Parliament the slavery question

• ht be a frightful political difficulty, but it could be no legal culty at all. It is as competent to alter the status of a class, or tax

slaveholders in the whole of their slave property, as to alter the dis- position of property under a new Mortmain law.

The Westminster Review is full, as usual, of ability marred by a doctrinaire harshness and tendency to extreme views. Perhaps those defects are in this number a little more perceptible than usual. We do not allude to the argument on the Apocalypse, utterly offensive as it must be to most Englishmen, for while disagreeing with its con- clusions we rather appreciate its outspokenness. There is nothing so tiresome as the present habit of wrapping up offensive ideas in smooth phrases. If a writer must discuss the Apocalypse, and does not believe it to be either divine or wonderful, let him say so plainly,

"The Incarnation is true, not of Christ exclusively, but of man universally, and God everlastingly. He bends into the human, to dwell there: and humanity is the susceptible organ of the divine. And the spiritual light in us which forms our higher life is of one substance' (Opooiratov) with his own righteousness —its manifestation, with unaltered essence and authority, on the theatre of our nature. All minds are of one species—or rather concur in transcending the limits of species ; all, as Plato said, feed upon the same aliment, the true, the right, the beautiful, the good ; and that aliment itself is the very bread of heaven,' the essential life of spirit everywhere, in its source and in its distribu- tion. And however our abstract names may parcel or disguise it, and make it seem like a thing or thought of ours, it is God's eternal imparting of Himself to those who may grow into his likeness."

"Is Cotton King ?" is an able effort to prove that in the very worst case England is not dependent on America for her prosperity. The argument of the Reviewer is the most convincing we have yet seen, and may be shortly stated thus. 'Unless America or Louis Napoleon interfere, our supply for present wants will be about 1,400,000 bales. That amount may be indefinitely reduced if the F,rench Emperor employs the State revenue to buy cotton rather than risk his operatives' discontent, but apart from that contingency, it is sufficient to enable the mills to work three-quarters time. The hope of getting this quantity depends upon a law usually unfaili viz, a rise in price sufficient to draw from Egypt, Brazil, and the West Indies the maximum export, i.e. 368,000, and from India 1,000,000 bales, or 400,000 bales more than her export in 1857. There are symptoms that this law may not operate rapidly enough, shippers being crippled by their fear that the blockade will be over too soon for profit, but there is, in addition to all this, another source of supply. Some of the American cotton must come. The Federalists will capture some, the overland route, viti Tampico, will bring some more, and, above all, the fact that the cargo will be worth three times its cost will bring a great deal. The very blockade which may raise cotton to is. a pound in Liverpool will reduce it to 2d. a pound in New Orleans, and that temptation has always proved irresistible. Three hundred per cent., as Dunning said, will tempt men into any crime and any danger; and it matters nothing whether the vessels ran the blockade or fail to run it, so that they do but try. If they succeed, their owners sell the cotton; if they fail, the captors sell it, and we get it at its price in either contingency. The only danger is of a deficient rise in price, owing to the excessive uncertainty of American affairs; and this we believe to be, to a certain extent, unreal. Buyers only pause, like tired runners, but ultimately, what- ever the risk, they must go on. The paper on "'The American Constitution at its Present Crisis" is a thoughtful analysis of the impediments the American Constitution has placed in the way of Northern success. The greatest of these, according to the Reviewer, is the necessary and inevitable extinction of talent. The President, it is well known, can never be a man of the first class "Nor is it worth a great man's while to be a President's minister. This is not because such a minister would be in apparent subordination to the President, who would probably be an inferior man to him—for able men are continually ready to fill subordinate posts under constitutional monarchs, who are usually very inferior men, and even under colonial governors, who are rather inferior men —but because a President's minister has no parliamentary career. As we know, the first member of the Crown is with us the first man in Parliament, and is the ruler of the English nation. In those English colonies which 'possess popular constitutions, the first minister is the most powerful man in the State—far more powerful than the so-called governor. He is so because he is the accepted leader of the colonial Parliament. In consequence, whenever the English nation, or a free English colony, is in peril, the first man in England, or in the colony, at least the most trusted man, is raised at once to the most powerful place in the nation. On the continent of Europe, the advantage of this insensible machinery is just beginning to be understood. Count Cavoar well knew and thoroughly showed bow far the power of a parliamentary Premier, supported by a willing and con- fiding Parliament, is superior to all other political powers, whether in despotic governments or in free. The American Constitution, however, expressly prohibits the possibility of such a position. It enacts, That no person holding any office under the United States shall be a member of either House during his continuance in office.' In consequence, the position of a great parliamentary member who is responsible more or less for the due performance of his own high administrative functions, and also of all lesser ones, is in America an illegal one. Ifs politician has executive authority, be cannot enter Parliament; if he is in Parliament, he cannot possess executive authority. No man of great talents and high ambition has therefore under the Constitution of the United States a proper sphere for those talents, or a suitable vista for that ambition. He cannot hope to be Presi- dent, for the President is ex officio a poor creature; he cannot hope to be, mutatis mutandis, an English Premier, to be a Sir R. Peel, or a Count Cavour, for the American law has declared that in the United States there shall be no similar person." and not argue against belief under cover of a fictitious reverence. But what can be the use of a sentence such as we are about to quote ? The Reviewer approves trades' unions and fights on their side with a bold, almost savage, vigour which is pleasant in days when men seem to think it necessary to apologize for standing up for the poor. And while doing this good service he must utterly destroy the effect of his own arguments by sentences like this, which, by rousing the in- stinctive hostility of every man of common sense and decent morals, excites a prejudice against which reason is powerless :

"We do not despair. Although plenty of men are to be found in every rank of life who recklessly produce families which they have no means of supporting, there are only two classes of whom it can be said that such shameless selfish- ness is the rule rather than the exception—the agricultural paupers and the clergy of the Established Church. Both these classes abdicate all responsibility, and are content to leave the prospects of their offspring to chance or charity. Among the skilled mechanics earning comfortable wages, there is, we believe, something more of prudence and self-respect; but it is hardly to be expected that improvement in this respect will become general, so long as public opinion looks leniently upon conduct as degrading as it is anti-social."

There is no answer to that sentence required beyond the instinctive de- sire which every respectable man who reads it has to swear at it. The celibacy enforced by the Catholic Church is bad enough, but it is at least based on a nobler idea than the fear that God cannot feed the people He has made. If the theories of the Westminster Review have any foundation at all, it is that humanity ought to be developed, not placed under new restrictions. Argument, however, is useless with a writer who believes, in spite of the whole history of the world, that anything except superstition is strong enough to ensure celibacy. For the rest, the article, though extravagant in tone, should be read by every one who wants to see the other side of the strike controversy, stated as the men would state it when unrestrained by conventional respect. The following sentence is a good example of its merits and defects; "Whatever may have been the policy of unions in times gone by, we believe it is quite untrue that the leading societies (by which the tendencies of combina- tion should be judged), such as the Engineers, Masons, Bricklayers, &c., attempt to shut others out from their employment. But Mr. Mill makes a specific charge. Let us see with what justice. The Amalgamated Engineers, in the great lock- out of 1851, to which he alludes, made three demands, and three only. That systematic overtime should cease; that overtime in case of emergency should be paid double-time; and that the regular day should be limited to certain hours We repeat it, they made no other demands; and the effect of these, if conceded, muat have been to cause more labour to be employed, not less, as Mr. Mill asserts. The workmen of Messrs. Hibbert and Plate, with whom the dispute began, did, indeed, demand the dismissal of unskilled men, but the Executive Council of the Society emphatically refused to support them in any such claim, and it was dropped accordingly by them. By the Society, it was never for a moment urged. The employers and the Times repeatedly asserted that the men were demanding it, and so managed to deceive the public, and amongst others, it seems, Mr. Mill; but they were stating what they knew to be false. The Report of the Social Science Committee on trades' unions contains overwhelming proof of this and other artifices to which the employers stooped in that dispute. We think Mr. Mill should either retract his statement in some future edition, or substantiate it."

That is true as regards this quarrel, but not true as regards the unions. All the trades shut out women ; and the very first rule of the printers' union shuts out all competitors not regularly trained. The same spirit runs through the article "Biography, Past and Present," a forcible exposure of the deficiency of British literature in this respect. We have no biographical dictionary worth the name, the best for reference being the one included in the English Cyclopedia, which is of necessity far too much compressed, and without necessity occasionally imperfect and obscure. But in the midst of the most rapid analysis the Reviewer must hit a side blow which 'will, with the majority of thinking men, at once condemn him : "Of our existing biographical dictionaries, when not devoted to particular classes of lives, little can be said in praise. That of Aikin no longer satisfies Dissenters, nor that of Chalmers good Churchmen. The biographical labours of the Useful Knowledge Society, although Lord Brougham cried "Ewe !" and the late Joseph Hume opened his purse in its behalf., wound up (suddenly with the first letter of the alphabet. Rose's Dictionary,' indeed, turniiml the izzard- point, but mainly by the aid of compilation,' and Gordon's Diet ionary' would not be worth even a passing word, were it not for the circumstance t/hat the lively author of 'The Ingoldsby Legends' contributed largely to the lead with which it is ballasted. The old Biographia Britannica,' in spite of its short -comings and its barbarous idiom, its cumbersome arrangement, and its unackno% vledged debts to Mordri and Bayle, is not yet pushed from its stool. But the be tter portion of these tall folios is devoted to the lives of theologians—a subject w hich may one day rankfor its importance with the lives ofnecromancers—and hi sirs about the same relation to the Biographie Universelle' that Dr. Dilworth's tipelling-book; or Bailey's Dictionary,' bears to Bopp's or Max Miiller's works ot s the 'Science of Language.'" Theology must be either true or false. If true, it is j- dst as much greater than any other science as eternity is greater t hail time ; If false, it is at all events more dangerous than any sys tern of philo- sophy ever invented. In either case it must remain the most im- portant subject of human thought, and the biography w lich excluded theologians would be about as valuable as that whic li excluded all conquerors and discoverers. We remonstrate againE ,t this style of remark the more warmly because the just contempt wl 'jell narrowness like this produces, aids above all other obstacles to ret Ward the coming era of free but reverent search for truth. Who wil' L listen to Louis Blanc while he only conceals Proudhon ? "A. Visit t o the Mormons" is a well executed effort to boil down M. Remy's hoc ik into an article, and is written with a tolerance which leaves the imr iression of a bias in favour of the Mormons. Theocracy is not pre c 3isely the form of government one would have expected the Wm& ainster Review, to uphold, but the despotism seems to be sweetened b y its anti-Chnstian tendencies.

The "Rival American Confederacies" contai us little of special novelty, but we may note that the Westminster, as well as the Na- tional, believes the danger of a cotton famine ow ;mated.