NEW BOOKS.

POLITICS,

An Essay on the Future Destinies of Europe.

From the French of M. D'Erbigny

POLITICAL ECONOMY,

The Rights of Industry: addressed to the Work- ing-Men of the United Kingdom. § 1. Capi- tal and Labour. (Useful Knowledge Society's Tract—Working.Man's Companion) Gray's Social System ; a Treatise on the Princi- ple of Exchange

FICTION,

Cameron, a Novel

Baldwin and Co.

Knight.

Tait, Edinburgh. 3 Vols. Bull.

Moron.

Knight.

POSTS!,

Selections from Wordsworth 12 Vols. Southey

:STATISTICS,

Companion to the Almanac, or Year.Book of General Information for 1832

THE SPECTATOR'S LIBRARY.

THE Essay on the Destinies of Europe is one of those composi- tions which from time to time produce an effect upon the Conti- nent, and which when imported, and, as in this instance, well transferred into our own tongue, fail to attract the slightest atten- tion from the public.

"This work was published at Brussels in 1828, and has excited a con- siderable sensation on the Continent, more especially in Italy, where the original and an Italian translation have been read and circulated with great avidity, though in secrecy. A gentleman lately visited one of the principal but most remote convents amidst the Apennines, where the monks (of Camaldoli) are of a more than usually respectable class ; and one, the best informed among them, in speaking on literary subjects, ex- pressed his great anxiety to see a small book, of which he said he had heard a great deal, but had never been able to obtain it."—Preface, p. v. We have been more fortunate than the Monk of Camaldoli, in the fact of having procured the work ; more unhappy than he would be when he did do so. We have little doubt that the Essay of, M. D'ERBIGNY would strike him as a masterpiece of wisdom, abounding in new and important truths, prophetic in its pro- mises, universal in its views. The intelligence of the society a man has lived in may be ascertained by the air of relish with which he utters commonplaces : they are new truths to him ; and he enounces with the air of discovery, propositions which have long ceased to be discussed, and which are established as undeniable, and dedicated as a part of the supply of a schobl- boy's education. In politics, many parts of Europe are in this condition : the very elements of government, to people who have for ages looked no farther than the necessity of submission to the powers that be, are in some sort state secrets. A very fair specimen of the profundity of the Essay is con- tained in the following passage. It enunciates the proposition that Kings can no longer give the direction to the destinies of nations.

" If the present be still indulgent, the future will be exacting, and justly so ; for those who guide have more need of wisdom than those who are directed. It is a right of peoples to require•guarantees in the virtue and the knowledge of those who govern them. In the times of absolute power in sovereigns and of silence in peoples, Will takes the

place of all things ; but now that every thing resumes its name, its value, and its place, sovereigns must form other ideas of royalty than those under which it has been exercised. The common sense of the public brings it back to its true elements, in passing from which it enters on ille- gitimate powers.

" It is in vain that sovereigns seek to give the direction; they must receive it. It is no longer possible for them to oppose themselves to the impulse that society gives itself, and that sweeps with it all its compo- nent parts. The world moves by a force of its own : no human being has created it, and none can arrest it. The world goes by itself, said Pope Urban VIII.: it may be better said, that it goes in spite of kings and in spite of popes. Its march has been slow. The human mind made more progress in one century of the government of Athens, than it has made in twelve ages of royal and priestly rule ; but these very persons who have hitherto impeded it, are now included in the sphere of its ac- tivity. If, instead of yielding, they resist, the motion will destroy them." —P. 4.

If we had found this passage in ARISTOTLE, we should have opined that it contained a vast deal of matter, and was worthy of the great philosopher and tutor of ALEXANDER. But it is more than two thousand years since the death of ARISTOTLE. We have looked in vain over this pamphlet for an idea which appears calculated for our meridian. The majesty of the tone, the oracular air, and really the exceeding truth of all the writer says, will have their due weight upon the Continental mind, and per- haps even here meet with admirers. We profess, however, to have heard it all before—and that, we fear, a long time ago.

One passagel---which is, however, no more new than the rest— has its value for its applicability to the circumstances of the pre- sent contest now going on in this country, and is for that reason well worth quoting.

"England has no more revolutions to make; she has only reforms to undergo ; and the sooner she shall enter on them the more will she diminish the labour and the danger. Her Government is too clever not to-prevent the evils that may menace it ; it is not heedless like that of Fiance ; it is a Cabinet that knows the future, that, besides, is not igno- rant that constitutional England has degenerated from her primitive ge- nius, that the civilization of the age comes to restore it, that it urges her to place herself in harmony with the new social spirit and with herself, and to adopt the principles of distributivejustice, which the people, tired of the.yoke of privileges, demand passionately, and which extend them- selves everywhere like universal morality, or like a new religion. Her rebel' aristocracy will postpone this epoch with all the force it can exert; aristocracy is the -same everywhere; it is never false to its character; it is its nature to debase and to oppress; distributive justice irritates it; it prefers to serve and to abase itself under a single despot, rather than see citizens rise to its level. But the aristocracy of privileges, which for so long a time has disgraced and wounded human society, is its turn become vulnerable; it is reached and already vanquished by the aristocracy of capa- cities, which detects it on every side, and rises preeminent above it. "- P. 137, 138.

The pamphlet was written previous to the Belgian Revolution: the author eulogizes the former Government as the most enlight- ened in Europe ; and so far from a prophet is he, that, on the very brink of its overthrow, he admires its stability. England is the object of his praise for knowing best the genius of Catholicism and refusing Catholic Emancipation !