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We are not induced to pronounce this opinion by any resentment towards M. Rubichon; for he is one of the most lenient detractors whom England has found for a long time among his countrymen. We are quite sure too that he is sincere in what he says, and that he is not warped by any voluntary prejudices. Hejudges England and France just as he would a book, or a prospect, or a ballet; and is not more in an error about them than he would be about the merest trifle. He appears to possess one of those minds which cannot see any thing exactly where it is; but living in a strongly refracting medium, never looks at it in a straight line, or beholds it otherwise than distorted; and taking the prismatic colours of his inflected vision for the tints of nature, is always the more convinced by the lengthened spectrum of his imagination, the more it differs from the object of which he conceives it to be the exact representation. We should not indeed have introduced him to the acquaintance of our readers, were it not that in point of false but well-meaning judgment he is a kind of phenomenon. His work too has had some success in France, and is even referred to by persons of a certain class there as their political creed concerning the countries which he compares; and many who imagine they have just notions upon England and her feudal system, quote M. Rubichon, perhaps, as Tacitus De Moribus Germanorum might have been quoted at the court of Domitian. Our object then is to let the English public know what the state of belief and knowledge is among our neighbours concerning our country, and that among persons more respectable than the fond sectaries of General Pillet.

M. Rubichon allows that the English had by nature many excellent qualities, but says that our institutions, our internal policy, have injured them. A representative government, the reformation, the revolution, have prevented us from running the same career of prosperity which we might have reached in common with France. He is a strenuous advocate for divine rights, which he asserts not only in favour of kings, but of the whole human race. It is by divine right that every man is what he is; and this is the true doctrine, because it is the doctrine of liberty. The representative system is adverse to liberty and civilization-a system to which the people have as much right as Caligula's horse had to the consulship. Such a mode of legislation can be advantageous only when the framers of the laws are not parties interested; when laws for England are made in Paris, and laws for France in London. Trial by jury is held in the highest contempt by English jurists, yet not so much as it deserves. The current price for a seat in parliament is 5000l. Montesquieu and Voltaire (for he has coupled these names together) were wrong in calling the

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House of Commons a democratic institution. In England the pular party is weaker than the aristocratic or the monarchical; but in old France stronger, because in the latter the parliaments were not elected. The feudal system is, at this hour, maintained in its full vigour in England, and without it she must have long since fallen. The Catholic religion is more conducive to morality, liberty, civilization and prosperity, than the protestant; and hence the Protestant electors are obliged (not enabled) to keep on foot more numerous armies than the Catholic. The reformation was undertaken for the purposes of confiscation and spoliation in the three kingdoms. Presentations to livings are usually sold by auction, or played for at the gaming table. All improvements in modern literature, science and the fine arts are due to learned corporations, such as once existed in certain Catholic religious orders; and wherever these have been suppressed, learning has uniformly declined; hence the bourgeoisie of England is the most ignorant in the world; and no nation so little knows its own constitution as we do, and no men from their early youth are imbued with such contracted ideas as the English. Hence, too, we never have possessed one good publicist; for Coke, Hale and Holt were vast but vicious minds; Blackstone was one of the most illjudging intellects that fertile Britain ever has produced; Pitt was a ninny and coxcomb, and Dundas the only statesman of the country who never had a wrong idea. The territory of England twenty-five years ago might have been divided into terres roturieres, nobles and communales. In France the lawyer, the merchant, the citizen, possessed much landed property; in England scarcely any. Want of taste in such things as the Catholic religion made common, has dreadfully increased the immorality of England-so much so that no man can purchase any thing unseen, or trust in another's word. What distinguishes the females of this country from all other European women, is—a bunch of keys at their sides; and even the most fashionable, she who has no pockets to carry her handkerchief, puts on a gaoler's girdle whenever she goes out from home, attached to which, at every step she takes, the pendant keys that protect her property from domestic spoliation, jingle in the ears of her admirers: and, to crown all, public spirit is the bane of empires.

We wish we could sometimes confide in M. Rubichon, for he is occasionally flattering and consolatory. The power of England, already colossal, is only in its dawn. The average yearly consumption of meat in England is 220lbs. per head; in France 16lbs.: of wheat, 34 hectolitres per head, yearly, in England; in France, 12. The product of labour to a southern Frenchman is 8; to an Italian, 22; to a northern Frenchman, 26; to a northern German,

VOL. XXIII. NO. XLV.

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40; to an Englishman, 140: hence the labour of one Englishman produces 8 times as much as the labour of one FrenchAn English scarcity, compared to a French scarcity, is as the noces de Gamache to Count Ugolin's tower (this indeed we must vouch for, as also for this ;-that what is called ruin and poverty in England, bears an aspect of more real comfort, than all the splendour we ever saw elsewhere.) In England thirty horses are kept for pleasure to one in France. England has not yet the tenth part of the wealth she will have. The first question Frenchmen ask in England is, 'Where is the peasantry ?** All this certainly wears a very satisfactory appearance; but, coming from M. Rubichon, it is quite alarming; and we could almost fear that our poor country is fast verging to its ruin. Another eulogium of his we must concur in- L'histoire de l'Angleterre est si belle et si pure quant à ses relations extérieures, que les Anglois, comme tels, jouissent d'une grande considération.' In whatever sense he uses this phrase, we rejoice to find that a Frenchman, who speaks ill of us in other respects, does not cast in our teeth the hackneyed phrase of Punica fides.' It is quite inconceivable how many upon the continent, urged on by the vociferations of France, believe, or affect to believe, as they once did, the story of Thionville, that we led the emigrants to Quiberon to be slaughtered; that we were accessary to the murder of the Emperor Paul; that we winked at the invasion of France by Buonaparte, from Elba. It is in vain that we say it would have been less perfidious and less expensive too, to leave the emigrants to perish from want and misery, in those very countries which bear but a small portion of French hatred, than to equip a costly expedition, for the purpose of betraying them to the revolutionary swords of their countrymen. It is in vain to urge, that the hundred days of Buonaparte's last reign cost us 8,000,000l. sterling.

We shall take leave of M. Rubichon and his innocuous absurdity, with two extracts from his work, the one containing some strictures upon modern French glory, the other upon the actual state of policy, since the return of Louis XVIII. They will serve as a specimen of his style, which, as might be expected in a mind deprived of all sound judgement, must, if it has any sound quality, possess some glow.

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Qu'est devenue, hélas! cette malheureuse France, depuis qu'elle s'est laissée balotter entre les mains de tant d'avanturiers? Ils l'ont dépouillé de ces biens ecclésiastiques qui entretenoient, dans les campagnes, ce culte qui répandoit des jouissances morales, des consolations,

*We heard a similar question asked in Sir Francis Burdett's riot. A Frenchman newly arrived in England went to see what was going forward, and conceiving that the crowd consisted of spectators like himself, asked, where is the mob?

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et élevoit l'ame de l'agriculteur; des biens de ces oratoriens, et de tant d'autres congrégations zélées, qui présentoient au peuples des villes l'appas d'une instruction gratuite dans la latinité, l'histoire, la poésie, l'éloquence; des biens de ces Bénédictins, &c. . . . . des biens de ces Frères de la Charité,' (the well known Père Elisé was one of these!)' auxquels la chirurgie, la médecine et l'anatomie doivent tout.....Tant de prospérité détruite, ces nobles villes de Lyons, de Marseille, de Bourdeaux, qui, par leur splendeur, feroient croire quelles avoient été fondées par des hommes qui avoient à jouir, et non à acquerir, furent désertées; la navigation, cet art qui demande tant de combinaisons qu'à lui seul il fait la gloire d'un empire, et prouve combien l'essor des modernes est supérieur à celui des anciens, fut abandonnée. L'Inde, témoin si longtems de la gloire de nos armées navales, voit fuyant notre marine militaire devant une marine marchande; les colonies, à qui notre pavillon annonçoit naguère de si belles lois, une si douce administration, un commerce si probe et si prospère, des voyageurs si sçavans, demandent (our author has written demande in the singular,) si la France existe encore; et où tant de gloire flétrie a-t-elle trouvé des compensations?-dans la gloire militaire

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Mais, je le demande, est-ce que l'art des Condé et des Turenne a été avancé par ces gens-ci? Quoique des myriades d'hommes aient sacrifiés à leur apprentissage dans une profession que ces deux grands hommes furent comme obligés de deviner, est-ce qu'au milieu de leurs forfanteries, aucun de nos parvenus a osé se comparer à eux? Je dis, forfanteries, parce que lorsqu'on leur a fait observer qu'ils n'avoient jamais exercé cet art, ni dans ses finesses ni dans ses difficultés, puisqu'ils ont toujours eu de nouvelles armées à consommer, sans jamais combiner leur nourriture, leurs vêtemens, leurs hopitaux ou leurs tentes, ils ont toujours prétendu y avoir supplée par leur bravoure. les entendre, ne croiroit-on pas que les Français, pour compter parmi les militaires de l'Europe, avoient les mêmes conditions à remplir qu'un cadet qui entre dans un régiment; qu'ils avoient leurs preuves de bravoure à faire? Certes, si Mars, aveugle comme Cupidon, doit aussi se laisser conduire par la folie, la France, depuis vingt ans lui, a fourni de dignes conducteurs. Mais est-ce que nos parvenus ont obtenu quelque supériorité dans cette bravoure sublime qui consiste à supporter les défis, les sarcasmes, les insultes d'une armée qui a intérêt de combattre ; dans cette bravoure qui dédaigne de corrompre les ennemis; qui, dans l'adversité, ne cède à aucune alarme, n'abandonne pas ses blessés; ne se livre, ni à une retraite désordonnée, ni à une fuite inutile? La France, je le sçais, a de belles pages à ajouter à son histoire militaire; mais elles ne sont pas plus belles que leurs précédentes. Elle en a, au contraire, d'une ignominie sans exemple; car, jusqu'à présent, elle n'avoit jamais confié ses armées à tel général qui ait voulu les livrer à l'ennemi; ou à tel autre qui, pour sauver son pillage, en ait sacrifié la sûreté et l'existence; ou à tel autre qui l'ait secrètement et lâchement abandonnée dans ses désastres.'

With the general tone of the sentiments contained in the follow

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ing extract, we most heartily concur. He says that, on the return of the Bourbons

'La Majesté Royale reparoissoit aussi forte qu'éclatante. La France et son roi devoient pardonner à tant de crimes' (the crimes of the revolution,) mais ils pouvoient les punir; ils devoient les oublier, mais devoientils les récompenser? Devoit-on voir des prêtres apostats, incestueux, ou mariés, des professeurs d'athéisme, de cyniques spéculateurs, s'emparer du sceptre? Devoit-on voir les hommes les plus souillés des hommes, près de qui les sénateurs de Caligula faisoient honneur à l'espèce humaine, partager les fonctions publiques les plus élevées avec les familles les plus pures par leur fidélité et les plus illustres par leur naissance? Qu'en estil arrivé? Ils ont réveillé ces mêmes vices qui depuis longtems réduits à l'engourdissement par l'usurpateur lui avoient, (avoit in the author, who is frequently ungrammatical) fait pardonner sa sombre tyrannie; ils ont rappellé toutes les doctrines populaires; ils ont excité de nouveaux rugissemens contre la légitimité ou l'autorité du souverain, contre les devoirs de la religion et l'influence des pasteurs, contre les pouvoirs et les droits de la noblesse. Ils ont fait parade de colère, de haine, de jalousie qu'ils n'éprouvent pas; c'étoit peut-être pour la première fois dans ce monde que des sentimens si criminels étoient factices; ils n'avoient rien de vrai, rien de fondé, rien de naturel; la corruption n'avoit jamais demandé tant de science, l'atrocité tant de calculs; mais il falloit obtenir de grands complices dans de nouveaux sacrilèges.'-Farther on he says 'Il revient ce monstre qui pendant si longtems ne s'est comme Moloch abreuvé que de larmes maternelles ; il revient, mais il ne revient pas seul; il ramène cet ignominieux Barrère, celui qui fit renverser les autels, revêtir les animaux immondes des ornemens de nos pontifes, employer des vases sacrés aux orgies les plus dégoûtantes, prendre des prostituées pour la déesse Raison, et rendre nos temples le théâtre de tant de Bacchanales; il ramène ce sanguinaire Carnot qui, sans distinction de crimes, de vertus, d'age, de sexe, ou de rang, jeta tant de victimes dans la même charrette-il ramène surtout ce hideux Fouché qui, accusant la lenteur des échafauds, leur substitua le canon à mitraille pour la destruction des habitans de Lyon, et qui, pour celle de leurs maisons et de leur ville jusque dans ses fondemens, demandoit de substituer le volcan des mines et des flammes aux travaux tardifs des hommes.'

M. Rubichon has turned over the leaves of a great many books, and has collected just the kind of knowledge which such a brain can pick from such a mode of study. His memory, however, has not always been faithful; for example, when speaking of the massacre at Beziers, (p. 314.) in the year 1209, he attributes to a military commander the words of horrid destruction which were uttered by a Catholic priest. The facts were as follows: when Beziers was taken by Simon de Montford, who commanded the Crusaders against the Albigenses, the Abbé de Citeaux, legate to the Pope, and not general of the forces, being

consulted

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