SPECTATOR'S LIBRARY.

PRIXCIPLEI or Pourtes.

Political Philosophy- Principles of Government : Monarchical Government: East- ern Monarchies European Monarchies. l'ublished under the Superintendence of the Society for the Diffusion of Useful Knowledge Chapman and Hall. Ittoonarnv, Lives of the Queens of England, from the Norman Conquest; with Anecdotes of their Courts, now first published from Official Records and other authentic documents, private as well as public. By Agnes Strickland, Vol. IV.. Coffitort.

PUBLIC MORMA4.

War and Peace: the Evils of the first, and a Plan for preserviue the last. By Wil- liam Jay Wiley and Putnam, New York.

POLITICAL PHILOSOPHY OF THE USEFUL KNOWLEDGE 80 CI ET Y.

TEE authorship of the series of tracts which forms this goodly volume has been ascribed to Lord BROUGHAM; and the assertion is probably correct. The first essay, "On the Objects, Pleasures, and Advantages of Political Science," is a repetition of the title of the lucubration with which he opened the career of the Diffusion of Useful Knowledge Society : but this is an easy enough imita- tion. The style and mode of treatment are better evidence. Political Philosophy exhibits the general qualities of Lord BROUGHAM'S composition. It has his long and somewhat involved periods; his one-sided and advocate-like manner, as if the author -were rather making out a case, or establishing a preconceived view, than expounding what patient and impartial research had convinced him vas the truth. But as Lord BROUGHAM, if he is the author, appears to have considered that a philosophical treatise should be written in a sober strain, he has subdued his forcible though exaggerated style to a more level mode : the result, however, is rather flatness than calmness. The work is also strongly tinctured with the particular views upon the forms of politics which Lord BROUGHAM entertains, and exhibits some of his weaknesses. The remark that 'of one branch of the fine arts, the highest of all, not a trace of course can be found in abso- lute monarchies—we mean oratory," is BROUGHAM all over. Passing from the author to the work, Political Philosophy is of no great value as a philosophical exposition of the principles of politics and a fair and unbiassed estimate of the numerous and varied forms of government that are passed in review. With a few exceptions, most of the general principles in the volume are com- monplace, or questionable, if not absolutely false ; bearing the marks of undigested read;ng, repeated more like an echo than a judgment, or of views taken up without due consideration. Neither is the writer always so careful of preserving consistency as to avoid The error of contradicting himself. The best thing to be said of the political philosophy of the volume is, that its bearings are in the right direction—opposed to individual power in government, and in favour of popular freedom. Here, however, a bad habit of balancing too nicely, leads the author into the announcement of a principle partly false, and whose modified truth he does not discern. Re- sistance, he says, should never be offered to tyranny unless it is nearly sure of success ; because a crushed resistance strengthens the hands of the successful government, and injures the cause it professes to have at heart. This enunciation, besides the cowardice lurking at the bottom of it, exhibits a total want of consideration upon the principle of the matter, and a pretty entire disregard of facts. Resistance is of two kinds, indigenous and imitative. 'rhat which is indigenous is based in nature : it arises spontaneously in minds in advance of their age, from a consideration of the evils onder which society is labouring : the remedy proposed, if not effectual, has the popular appearance of being so ; and its mere propagation finds an echo in countless bosoms, however the fears of people may keep the mass of society quiescent. The history of the world shows that such resistance may be offered at any time, not perhaps with safety to the persons resisting, but with certain benefit to the cause. The Lollards in England, and Huss in Ger- many, are examples of this in religious affairs—the insurrections of WAT Timm and JACK CADE in secular; the foundation and propagation of Christianity as well as of Mahometanism are instances upon a still greater scale. In all which, and other

cases of a similar kind, though particular severity may follow the first suppression, the truth itself is more widely disseminated and

more deeply impressed; whilst power, conscious of the evil, does something to mitigate it, or rushes blindly on to eventual destruc- tion. But what may be called imitative resistance should never be offered, for it is almost sure to fail; or if by any chance it should be successful, it could never furnish a remedy for the evils of the go- vernment it overthrew. Deriving its views from abstract theory, or the practice of other states under perfectly different circumstances, its proposals have no attraction for the people, and are probably distasteful to them. Hence the failure can disseminate no truths, for, practically speaking, it has none to disseminate • and in such cases the bad government is undoubtedly strengthened by the useless resistance : it can not only punish the active resisters, but crush the entire party. The various Italian conspiracies, and some of the German and Russian, planned from English practice, foreign treatises, or their own fancy, by well-meaning natives or trading adventurers, are examples of this kind of resistance. Of the twenty separate chapters into which this publication is divided, five consist of exposition ; and they are, as we have said, of very slender value. Two chapters are devoted to an account of Feudalism and its effects; in which there is not much of novelty, though they are done with clearness, and lawyer-like knowledge. The other chapters are of greater merit, and much greater use ; con- sisting of a resume of the history and an account of the govern-

ments - ments of the existing monarchies n the world with the exception of

Great Britain. This sketch of Asiatic and European history may sometimes be superficial, from the haste or insufficient research of the author ; and sometimes dry, from an endeavour to pack more information into a small compass than it is possible to effect : but the work presents the results of a wide reading, by a person accustomed to grasp the striking points submitted, although not addicted to search for latent truths ; and it runs over, though in a cursory way, the history of the absolute monarchies of Turkey, Persia, India, the Indo-Chinese countries beyond the Ganges, China, Japan, and Russia, as well as the more restrained (the writer calls them) constitutional monarchies which sprang from the Feudal system—those of France' Germany, Italy, including the Papacy, Spain, Portugal, Denmark, and Sweden. A better view of general history we do not know, either as an introduction to the subject or to give a smattering to those who desire nothing more. It is broad, clear, and readable.

The extracts we can take from Political Philosophy will be for the most part of an incidental kind, as more capable of separate exhibition. From the earlier examples it will be gathered that the author does not always stick rigidly to his text. On the contrary, he often makes his text a vehicle for matter that has small relation to it ; treating the subject more according to his humour than its own nature.

GOOD BREEDING.

The same observations which were made on the arts are applicable to a certain refinement of manners, which is common to all highly civilized states, but which perhaps arises in despotic countries at an earlier stage of society. This refine- ment is in itself of little merit or value, if indeed it is not rather to be ac- counted a defect. Its chief characteristic is luxurious indulgences of various kinds, and a politeness which consists so much in suppression of the natural feelings that is nearly akin to falsehood. Never to say any thing that may give pain, unless where our duty requires it, is a rule of sound morals as well as of good manners. But never to say any thing which those present may die- like, nay, from which they may dissent, is the rule of refined and courtly breeding. Absolute command ot countenance and figure—calm, placid deport- ment, unbroken ease, sustained dignity, habitual smiles, indiscriminate re- spect, nay, the semblance of esteem or even love for every thing that ap- proaches, and the taking a ready interest in whatever concerns every one, but showing none at all in what regards ourselves merely—these are the consti- tuents of highly-refined and courtly manners ; and these imply such an un- natural suppression of feelings, such an habitual restraint upon the emotions of every kind, such a false position of the mind at all times, as is most easily learnt under the sway and the dread of a despotic prince or his provincial representa- tive. Accordingly, the manners of the Orientals are known to be polite in an extravagant degree ; while there is a want of polish in the subjects of free states which has made the roughness of a Republican almost proverbial.

PARTIALITY OF BRITISH JUDGES: AN EPISODE.

So of the administration of justice ; none of our judges receive bribes, or submit to being solicited by the parties in secret. But does it follow, because we have not the worst of all corruptions, bribed justice, or canvassed justice, that therefore all judges hear all causes without bias, and that consequently we may dispense with the control of juries, or let juries be packed, or suffer them to forget their duties and follow blindly the judge's direction ? Or does it follow, that a law for keeping judges independent of the Crown, by prevent- ing their translation, is absolutely superfluous ? Or in France, does it follow that the practice of soliciting judges is harmless, because bribery, a far worse corruption, is never known in our day ? Again, among ourselves as well as our neighbours, no one supposes that the judge is always partial, and no one gives him very great credit for being quite pure and unbiassed in the vast majo- rity of cases which he tries. In all these he has neither interest nor feeling to mislead him ; for the parties are absolutely unknown to him, and he can have no kind of interest in the event of the cause. But where he happens to know the parties, where one is very powerful, respectable, and a favourite with the profession, or is defended by an advocate who is a favourite with the court, is it quite certain that the judge never gives him, not indeed an unjust judgment in the main parts, but some of those little interlocutory advantages which may operate, taken together, very materially on the result. At any rate, is it quite clear that he always makes the same unfavourable remarks on his conduct, or omits the same laudatory and respectful observations which he would in the case of a person wholly indifferent ? Above all, in questions where the Church, the Crown, the great Institutions of the state are parties, or are referred to, does the judge always keep his mind quite equal between power and dignity on the one side and unprotected obscurity on the other? It is certainly not every judge now in this country who will try a cause between the Sovereign or the Bishops, or the Houses of Parliament, or the Universities, and an unknown in- dividual, precisely as he would both in manner and in substance between two private parties, whose names he heard for the first time when the pleadings were opened. Yet these are a very small number of questions compared with the thousands in which the judge can feel no kind of bias any way ; and yet this enormous disproportion by no means destroys the force of the remarks upon the grievous effects of the partialities we have been referring to, as often as they do operate. In this respect, the argument is the same in regard to the

i abuses n the institutions of England, of Russia, and of Turkey.

NEPOTISM OF THE POPES.

Connected with this is the nepotism, or care to provide for their own fami- lies, generally their nephews, but not unfrettuently their own natural children, which has become inseparably associated with the idea of the Papacy. For many ages it was the constant course to endow those relatives with lands the property of the see, or enable them to amass large sums by holding offices and extorting enormous c oluments through means at which the Sovereign connived, or by direct gifts of money. Paul the Fifth bestowed on Cardinal Borghese 150,000 scudi a year in preferment of various kinds; that and the Aldrovan- dini branch of the family obtained each a million of capital from him; and though these are scudi of 48. 6d., it would be a low estimate to reckon the sums in the beginning of the seventeenth century equal to only half as many pounds at this day. Clement the Eighth, in the space of thirteen years, gave above half a million sterling to his family ; and Sixtus the Fifth, who had begun his reign by refusing to hold any intercourse with his relatives, soon fell so far into the common track as to bestow on one nephew, in lands and money, a revenue of 50,000/. The Barberiuis are reported to have received from Urban the Eighth the incredible sum of 105,000,000 scudi, equal to above 40,000,000/. sterling of the present time. Thus much, however, is certain, that the Pope was himself staggered with the enormous wealth which he had heaped on his family, and appointed a commission in 1640 to examine the legality of hi. grants. The report was that the Holy Father, being a secular as well as sr- ritual prince, might justifiably apply to his family's use whatever ming* be

could make; and that to the extent of 80,000 scudi a year (30,000/. or 40,000/. at present) he might reasonably endow as an estate for each nephew, and give 70,000 or 80,000 portion to each niece. The General of the Jesuits, being likewise consulted, was of opinion that such allowance to family affection and Papal munificence was perfectly moderate.

But the lavish grants of lands and money were the least part by far of the mischief. These only took place after a much worse evil had been put down by positive docrees,—namely, conferring on sons or nephews principalities which were thus alienated from the see, except the feudal superiority that was re- served, beside involving it in quarrels with other powers. Indeed, the sacrifices made to the Monarch's personal interests of all the best interests of the state, were never in any country so ample or so apparent as under the Romish go- vernment. Not only the whole policy, foreign and domestic, of such reigns as those of the infamous though able Borgia, (Alexander the Sixth,) turned en- tirely upon the plan of exalting the Papal family ; but a man comparatively respectable, as Paul the Third, could change his whole course and alter the whole policy of the country in the conflicts between Charles the Fifth and Francis the First, upon a speculation of obtaining the Milanese for his nephew, who bad married the Emperor's natural daughter, and his subsequent quarrel with that Sovereign, by which the Reformation gained incalculably and the see suffered in proportion, originated altogether in the disputes respecting an in- demnity for Parma and Placentia, the principality given to the Pope's son Pietro Luigi. Paul the Fourth, enthusiastic reformer as he was, suffered his course during great part of his reign to be perverted by the influence which he gave Cataffa, his nephew, a mere soldier, devoid of principle and conduct, whom he had made Cardinal, and who was executed by the succeeding Pope. Even Sixtus the Fifth, howmuchsoever lie might be above the weakness of a vulgar nepotism, made some of his greatest exertions to enlarge the obscure towns of his native province, and load it with new archbishoprics and bishoprics. Nay, the influence of family connexion had become so established a part of the system, that not only Lorenzo de Medici could pen a serious remonstrance to Innocent the Eighth, who, unlike his predecessor Sixtus the Fourth, was scrupulous about promoting his relations hut if a Pope by sonic unaccountable accident or peculiarity of constitution refined to have a nephew in the conclave with supreme influence over the Administration and the Pontiff himself, Cardi- nals and even foreign powers would make formal remonstrances against an omission that subjected them to inconvenience in carrying on their wonted in- trigues in the sacred college.