BOOKS.

MONTALEHBERT ON ENGLAND.* IT is always interesting and instructive to listen to the opinions of an intelligent and well-informed foreigner upon the institu- tions and manners of one's own country. Such opinions have been well compared to the verdict of a contemporary posterity ; and though they are not to be substituted for our own more thoroughly instructed knowledge and practical experience, they form a most valuable corrective to our prejudices and partialities, and often reveal to us tendencies of which we are little conscious, dangers to which familiarity blunts our sensibility, and strengths we enjoy without sufficiently prizing. M. de Montalembert is a critic at once intelligent, well-informed, frank, and cordial. He has studied English history, English institutions, English litera- ture, and English society, with minute care and sympathetic at- tention. The result is a profound admiration, and a firm confi- dence that England is destined to escape the perils of a levelling democracy, and its creature a dictatorship, under which France has sunk. In the present work, he states clearly, boldly, though somewhat abstractedly and sketchily, the grounds of this confi- dence ; and though he has by no means comprehended all the elements of the vast problem implied in his question, " What is to become of Eland ?" what he does say possesses unquestion- able. value, and well deserves the thoughtful consideration of every Englishman who interests himself in public affairs, and especially of the Liberal party, to which the warnings of this distinguished French statesman may be supposed more particu- larly addressed.

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It is to the internal policy of England that M. de Montalem- bert's remarka are mainly confined. He passes with a commen- datory phrase the treatment of English colonies since the American war ; bestows a high eulogium on our government of Indiareprobates our foreign policy, as egotistical and ty- rannical, almost as bitterly as Count Iiqu.elmont himself ; and of course laments our schism from. Popish unity. But the bulk of his little voluine treats of our domestic polities and character ; and seldom has England met with so admiring and at the same time so candid a critic in a Frenchman. Hire is no Anglomania, no mere rage for what is foreign ; but he, finds among us the insti- tutions, the sentiments, and the political usages, to the want of which: he traces most of the evils under which his own country has suffered and continues to suffer. If we fancy that he labours wider a morbid-apprehenaion of Socialism and Ccesarism, we must remember that he knows more about both practically than we do ; and " the burnt child fears the fire."

M. de Montalembert hears everywhere prophecies—sometimes hopes, sometimes forebodings—of the approaching downfall of England; and he asks himself whether England will fall before those dangers to which France has succumbed. He is able, though slot without-misgivings, to reply-

" No, England is not on the eve of perishing. No, she is not disgusted with her institutions, so prolific of good and of glory. No, she has not yet fallen solow as to prefer Democracy to Liberty, or Equality in servitude to the strength, the true independence that she draws from the old aristocratic traditions of her government. No, she will not follow the example of the Continent ; and the enemies of freedom of speech, freedom of the press, and self-government—both Socialists and Absolutists—will have to wait a long time before they see the day of her.apostacy- and her ruin."

The volume is occupied with unfolding the grounds of his confi-

dence, and in pointing out the tendencies in English society that threaten to disappoint it. M. de Montalembert grounds his hopes for England on the existence and activity of the aristocracy. But he does not mean by the term a peerage or a noble class, though these are included in his aristocracy. He has full possession of a truth familiar enough to readers of the Spectator, and to most English politicians of a speculative turn of mind, that the liberties of a nation depend on the coordination of powers—on the fact that various classes and interests exist side by side in the coun , sufficiently powerful to make themselves heard, and suciently active and intelligent both to know and to provide for their own concerns. And when he fixes on the English aristocracy as the guarantee of English liberty, and includes in this class all the territorial gentry, he simply fastens on one of the most conspicu- ous and important classes as the type of the rest. For it is in truth by the balance and conflict of the various classes that liberty is secured—by no one class being powerful enough to oppress or stifle the opinions of the others, and by intelligence and activity being fairly shared among all. With this qualification, we are perfectly ready to allow to the English aristocracy the value which M. de Montalembert attributes to it ; though we cannot but think it a serious defect in a philosophic estimate of Eng- lish political society that so important a qualification should have to be assumed. It must, however, be allowed that the terri-

torial aristocracy is in one sense the tee of liberty in a degree to which no other class can pretend. They form on the whole the class which has wealth enough, leisure enough, and the tradi- tional habits and feelings which enable them to devote their wealth and leisure to pursue public business without a view to salary for a livelihood or to office for distinction. They thus con- stitute a body that is not bureaucratic, nor yet dependent on the masses, but which can cheek both the despotism of the central government and the caprice of the populace. It is thus that M. de Montalembert describes them and their public position.

• The Political Future of England. By the Comte De Montalembert, of the -French Academy. From the French. Published by Murray. " It is a great error, too frequently committed, to think that the English aristocracy consists in the four or five hundred families of which the heads have the title of Lord and the privilege of sitting in the House of Peers : that is merely the flower, as it were, of the aristocracy • the trunk and the roots are elsewhere. If we admit that the influence of ihe House of Lords is diminished, it is nothing new, and proves nothing, or hardly anything, against the strength of the aristocratic element. For more than two centu- ries that is to say ever since England entered into the real exercise of a Par- liamentary constitution, the House of Commons has been the pre- ponderating force in the mechanism of the Government. It is nearly a cen- tury since the first and the greatest of the Pitta lost all his j opularity and almost all his influence by accepting the peerage with the title of Earl of Chatham. The importance of the Upper House has undoubtedly been de- creased since then by excessive creations, and because some of its members have lost great political power by the abolition of the rotten boroughs of which they named the representatives. But this House remains at bottom what it has long.been, and what it ought to be, the bond between the past and the present—the living archives of the constitution—the image of na- tional tradition, and at the same time a check on the sometimes too rapid movements of the machine of government. Its part remains very important ; and—the - reverse of Lord Chatham's case—the contemporary examples of Lord Liverpool, Lord Melbourne, and Lord Derby, show that public men may become the head of the Government, and remain there after having uitted the House of Commons, or even, like Lord Aberdeen, without ever belonged to it. But, once more, it is not there that resides the vital orce of the aristocracy ; and I will even go so far as to say that if the House of Lords were to be again suppressed, as it was under Cromwell, the external form of the English constitution would undoubtedly be altered in its composition, but its essence would remain• the same, and, above all, its aristocratic character and the aristocratic spirit of the nation would not be changed. The aristocracy is everywhere powerful in England, because there is everywhere a feeling of independence and of energy, and of per- sonal estimation, which is the essence of the aristocratic principle, the prin- ciple of nature and common sense, that-gives power to those who appear to deserve it most and are found to execute it best. That is the true meaning of the word aristocracy—government by the best. " The true strength of the English aristocracy and -nationality abides in many thousands offamilies of landed proprietors, and who, in virtue of their property, are the magistrates, and, to use our French phrase, adminis- trators of the country. They do.not Alfui.in, as the old' French nobility did, to accept administrative, legislative, and judicial functions. Far from it— they have almost monopolized them, and by so doing have maintained themselves at the head of all the developments of society. Men without names and without fortune often arrive at great political employment, sometimes even to the supreme management of public affairs, just as might happen iii republics or in absolute monarchies. It happens sometimes also, but with more difficulty, and rarely, that such men obtain consideration in a small or even a large town, where they may not have acquired property. But as a general rule, the higher positions, the Lords-Lieutenants, Sheriffs, and Justices of the Peace, the Grand. Jurors, • the Commissioners of Roads, the conservators of public edifices—in fact, all that in France is done by the salaried servants of our variable Government, which is seldom today what it was yesterday or will be tomorrow—all this, I say, is in England exe- cuted by the class of country untlemen. who, while they continue to live at home, regulate the Ilnanees and administer justice in their respective lo- calities, spontaneously, gratuitously, and with an admirable, degree of per- fection.

"Independent of the Court and the Cabinet, exempt, Refer as men living in society can be, from personal interests, and safe from the intrigues, af- fronts, and trammels of a system of centralization and bureaucracy, which are everywhere the head-quarters and standing army of Democracy, the English country gentlemen exhibit in their position, their habits, andtheir vigorous and-useful existence, the only example of a real and influential aristocracy that Europe possesses.

" All this, I think, is evident; but it is perhaps less so how- this gentryims had the good -fortune to escape the jealousy or the hatred of those either above or below them. This success is owing to the gentry's being, like the peerage, and still more than the peerage, accessible to all. "Every man who makes his fortune, be it in industry, commerce, "the bar, or in the medieal or any other profession, aspires to become a landed proprietor. He becomes so sooner or later • and then immediately begins to think, like a true Englishman, of founding a family and consolidating an estate. He thus becomes a member of that great corporation of .gentry which guides, governs, and represents the country, and which maintains its high station by unceasingly recruiting itself with all the wealth, the strength, and the abilities which are developed from below in the course and progress of social life. After, at latest, one generation, thissew family is recuived on a perfect equality with the most ancient of the country; for it is well known that many of the most ancient houses of England, that may be traced as far back as the Norman Conquest or the Crusades, do not belong to the Peerage, which has necessarily, properly, and largely re- cruited from the numerous ranks of those who have distinguished them- selves in more recent legal, civil, or military services to the state. No ex- terior distinction. shows this difference of origin and antiquity between the modern and the ancient 1. try—no useless title, uselessly lavished—not even that indefmable ea ..ny of names which with us attaches itself to the origin of the nobility, which still constitutes its only prestige, and which has hitherto defied all the prohibitions and survived all the proscrip- tions of our incessant revolutions.

"If Radicalism was synonymous with liberty—if it was not, valor- tunatelyr, in England as everywhere else, the snare, the obstacle, the reef on which liberty runs the risk of being wrecked—how could one understand its aversion to an order of things so favourable to the maintenance of the political rights of a great people, so inaccessible to the usurpations of either ministers or monarchs ? Here lives, in truth, the principle of that legiti- mate activity, that: fruitful and intelligent liberty, that the English em- body in the name of self-government. Thanks to it, they may leave to the great public powers—the Crown and the Parliament—the plenitude of sovereign legislation, and the care of directing all higher political interests at home and abroad, without thinking themselves thereby. obliged to abdi- cate the management of their own interests, or the profession of their own free convictions within their own proper circle, and without ceasing to keep an active and jealous eye on the general march of the. Government. Thus, moreover has been effected the marvellous alliance which combines in the minds of 'all Englishmen a profmnad respect for the rights of legal authority with the sentiment of true personal dignity and of the highest degree of in- dividual liberty."

Having thus described what this aristocracy is and does, M. de Montalembert goes on to describe- how it is trained ; and this leads him to a very able and interesting sketch of our public schools and universities. Here again the limit of his view is noticeable. He has nothing to say about the schools in which the bulk of the nation. is- trained, nothing of the mode of life of our youngmen of business, nothing of our legal and medical professions ; but so far as his view extends his insight is keen, and his remarks are ad- mirable. How enthusiastically he speaks of Eton !

" Around the -school are wide meadows, bounded by the windings of the Thames, which form as it were a park of lawns and groves, as far as the eye can see. But the pupils are not confined to their play-ground ; they pour out at all hours into the surrounding country, and in the neighbouring towns and villages ; except during the school-hours, they do pretty much what they like, and very rarely abuse this liberty, which appears BO strange to us. Vnwatched by any special superintendent, with no restrictions but those imposed by certain traditional customs and by that self-respect which every Englishman is so early taught, they thus begin their apprenticeship of public life and of self-government, as their fathers and ours did in the schools of the middle ages. "The number of studious and successful scholars is not greater probably than in our Lyciss—perhaps less ; but the study of ancient languages is with some carried very high, and is popular with all. Moreover, in the mass of these children, life, health, and intelligence, overflow with a sort of expansive and respectful serenity, which is not met with among the. pupils of our scholastic barracks. What a difference between such a residence and the houses in which we were doomed to pass our educational days —gloomy prisons; blocked up between two streets of Paris, surrounded on an sides by the roofs and chimney-pots of the neighbouring houses, with two rows of sickly trees struggling for life in a courtyard, paved or gravelled; and our only recreation a miserable walk once a week or fortnight through the pungnettes of the faubourgs! " And yet one sees no rudeness or low manners in these young people, thus-early emancipated. On certain gala-days the older boys figure in court dresses before the Royal Family and the aristocracy, and declaim some Greek, or Latin, or English speeches, with an ease and a simplicity of good taste that practised orators might envy. " But to form a just opinion of the anticipated manliness of these chil- dren of Liberty, as well as of the general and energetic vitality of the supe- rior classes in England, we must see these boys during their play-hours, under the shade of their great trees : we shall then understand the saying of the Duke of Wellington, when he returned in the decline of his days to this beautiful spot, where he had been brought up : recollecting the plays of his youth, and finding the same precocious vigour in the descendants of his old playmates and friends, he exclaimed aloud= It is hers that the battle of Waterloo was won ! "

What most strikes M. de Montelembert in the Universities—apart from their Catholic traditions—is their independence of Govern- ment, and the discipline to which the students are submitted ; France forming- in both respects a marked contrast. He finds in England the schoolboys more free than in France, and the Uni- versity students more controlled ; and traces to this gradual emancipation of the English youth much of that blended love of liberty and order which he justly attributes to the English nation. We might follow M. de Montalembert with advantage through many more chapters of his book, but we shall give only one fur- ther extract : it is on a quality of the English nation to which he

looks as a guarantee of liberty even if the aristocracy should fall, and democraey, in his sense, become rampant. Words more worthy of serious attention have seldom fallen from therm of a political writer. " Of all the qualities. which constitute the social strength of this privi. leged race, the rarest and the most essential to the political life- a a free

nation is ihe respect for the opinions of others. From this arise' the sin-

cerity that characterizes the public discussions and the guarantee of the rights of minorities, which distinguish the political acts of modern England. " It is, however, but lately, snd under the beneficial pressure of her ha- bits of discussion and of publicity, that England has arrived to this high

degree ofjustice and of impartiality. It is, therefore, not an exclusive ap-

panage of the Anglo-Saxon race ; it is the consequence of the leak and the liberties that that race has known how to preserve. It is its most rscentSy-

acquired virtue, but it is also the noblest and the most enviable, The ma-

platy, Which-him for the moment the superiority, does not make the same use of its power that it formerly did ; but the minority produces and records

its protestations, to prove that it has reason on its side, and to try to be.

come in its turn the majority. Minorities, in fact, require freedom more than majorities. Under all systems, majorities are almost always sure to

early their object. Absolute power may be established by surprise, but it

cannot last without the sympathy and the support Of the majority of those who obey. In England the majority is for liberty, because it feels that at any moment it may become a minority in its turn ; and whatever may be the transformation now in progress—whatever may be in store for this people—there is every- reason to suppose that this salutary disposition will continue to animate it.

" From this arises the desire of hearing and discussing all the sides of a question, of allowing freedom of speech to all interests, to all parties, and

to respect the opinions thus expressed, with a tolerance which sometimes seems to degenerate into accomplicity. This is what the English call fair play in their political language, impregnated as it is with the images and recollections of the pleasures of their youth.

" None amongst us can forget the calm and intrepid coinage displayed. by Lord Aberdeen, by Sir James Graham, and Mr. Gladstone, m 18$1 in de.

fending the religious liberty of the Catholics against the Ecclesiastical Titles

Bill. They were then running the risk of losing for ever their great politi- cal existence, so much was the popular and Parliamentary.passion excited 'by the reestablishment of the episcopal hierarchy ; nevertheless a year later they were all three called to fill the most important situations in-the Coalition Ministry.

" Whoever has heard. Mr. Gladstone's memorable speech against the pre- longation of the war, on the 24th of May last, might have believed that the

majority, or at least a very considerable portion of the Members- of the

House of Commons, was of his opinion—so great wag the attention, so pro- found the silence with which he was heard : yet there were no more than thirty Members out of five 'hundred who agreed with him ; and public opin- ion, as well as the whole press, were unanimous against his conclusions. It was the same when Mr. Cobden and Mr. Bright explained their theory about

peace. We have seen the much-lamented Mr. Lucas, although doubly un- popular in the House, both as a convert to Catholicism and as the represent- ative of the wannest opinions of the Irish party, make 'himself heard-with respect and attention. " Those. who have seen our political assemblies,. more especially those who have had to struggle against the excessive or simultaneous intolerance of the majorities and the minorities, are better able to appreciate the benefits of such proceedings. "This is because the English people, who have an instinctive admiration of civil coinage, recognizes and admires that virtue in any man who dares to resist, even when alone, the ascendaney of popular ideas and the current

of public opinion. Even when his passions and prejudices are the most directly contradicted, an Englishman is satisfied with the wealmess and the want of power of his opponents ; and, far from stopping their mouths, he feels that the resolution and the tenacity of such energetic adversaries are an additional glory and strength to the national character. It seems, in truth, as if there is nothing more anti-democratic than these individual re- sistances to the will of the mass. There are no more traces of it in the re- public of the United States than in the absolute monarchies of Europe. In the democracies, the boldness of him who opposes the general opinion is considered as an offence against equality—as the ne plus ultra of the abuse of privilege. It is, in fact, the height of aristocracy to dare so to hold out against the idol of the day, to strive against the precipitous torrent, and to stand alone and erect, when all are bowing down, hiding their obsequious, their cowardly heads. But nothing prevents this energy of an invincible conscience from displaying itself in a Christian and sincerely liberal demo- cracy. Besides, it is such a general and deep-rooted habit in the English, so identical with the traditions of their general and local life, that, accord- ing to all probabilities, it will, to the honour of the English race, survive any revolution, and wilrcoexist with all the new forms of political life."

Our readers will have gathered sufficient indication of M. de Montalembert's scope and manner of treatment not to mistake his book either for an exhaustive horoscope of England's future or a blind doge on our higher classes. It is a onesided view, but so far as it goes is neither exaggerated nor erroneous. M. de Tocque- ville took four volumes to discuss the political tendencies of the United States, and M. de Montalembert has a subject even more complex to treat : within his range, and from his point of view, his remarks are just and important.