by the tendency of the human mind, and the | yond all doubt the overthrow of Rome by the tide, either of flow or ebb, by which human Goths was the most momentous catastrophe affairs were at the time wafted to and fro. The which has occurred on the earth since the dedesperate struggles of war or of ambition in luge; yet, if we examine either the historians which they were engaged, and in which so of antiquity or the earliest of modern times, much genius and capacity were exerted, are we find it wholly impossible to understand to swept over by the flood of time, and seldom what cause so great a catastrophe had been leave any lasting trace behind. It is the men owing. What gave, in the third and fourth who determine the direction of this tide, who centuries, so prodigious an impulse to the imprint their character on general thought, northern nations, and enabled them, after bewho are the real directors of human affairs; it ing so long repelled by the arms of Rome, is the giants of thought who, in the end, go- finally to prevail over it? What, still more, vern the world. Kings and ministers, princes so completely paralyzed the strength of the and generals, warriors and legislators, are but empire during that period, and produced that the ministers of their blessings or their curses astonishing weakness in the ancient conqueto mankind. But their dominion seldom begins rors of the world, which rendered them the till themselves are mouldering in their graves. easy prey of those whom they had so often Guizot's largest work, in point of size, is subdued? The ancient writers content themhis translation of Gibbon's Rome; and the just selves with saying, that the people became and philosophic spirit in which he viewed the corrupted; that they lost their military coucourse of human affairs, was admirably cal- rage; that the recruiting of the legions, in the culated to provide an antidote to the skeptical free inhabitants of the empire, became imsneers which, in a writer of such genius and possible; and that the semi-barbarous tribes strength of understanding, are at once the on the frontier could not be relied on to upmarvel and the disgrace of that immortal hold its fortunes. But a very little reflection work. He has begun also a history of the must be sufficient to show that there must English Revolution, to which he was led by have been much more in it than this, before a having been the editor of a valuable collec- race of conquerors was converted into one of tion of Memoirs relating to the great Rebellion, slaves; before the legions fled before the bartranslated into French, in twenty-five volumes. barians, and the strength of the civilized was But this work only got the length of two vo- overthrown by the energy of the savage world. lumes, and came no further down than the For what prevented a revenue from being death of Charles I., an epoch no further on in raised in the third or fourth, as well as the the English than the execution of Louis in the first or second centuries? Corruption in its French Revolution. This history is clear, worst form had doubtless pervaded the higher ucid, and valuable; but it is written with ranks in Rome from the emperor downward; little eloquence, and has met with no great but these vices are the faults of the exalted success: the author's powers were not of the and the affluent only; they never have, and dramatic or pictorial kind necessary to paint never will, extend generally to the great body that dreadful story. These were editorial or of the community; for this plain reason, that industrial labours unworthy of Guizot's mind; they are not rich enough to purchase them. it was when he delivered lectures from the But the remarkable thing is, that in the decline chair of history in Paris, that his genius shone of the empire, it was in the lower ranks that forth in its proper sphere and its true lustre. the greatest and most fatal weakness first appeared. Long before the race of the Patricians had become extinct, the free cultivators had disappeared from the fields. Leaders and generals of the most consummate abilities, of the greatest daring, frequently arose; but their efforts proved in the end ineffectual, from the impossibility of finding a sturdy race of followers to fill their ranks. The legionary Italian soldier was awanting-his place was imperfectly supplied by the rude Dacian, the hardy German, the faithless Goth. So completely were the inhabitants of the provinces within the Rhine and the Danube paralyzed, that they ceased to make any resistance to the hordes of invaders; and the fortunes of the empire were, for several generations, sustained solely by the heroic efforts of individual leaders Belisarius, Narses, Julian, Aurelian, Constantine, and many others-whose renown, though it could not rouse the pacific inhabitants to warlike efforts, yet attracted military adven turers from all parts of the world to their standard. Now, what weakened and destroyed the rural population? It could not be luxury; on the contrary, they were suffering under excess of poverty, and bent down beneath a load of taxes, which, in Gaul, in the time of

His Civilisation en France, in five volumes, Civilisation Européenne, and Essais sur l'Histoire de France, each in one volume, are the fruits of these professional labours. The same profound thought, sagacious discrimination, and lucid view, are conspicuous in them all but they possess different degrees of interest to the English reader. The Civilisation en France is the groundwork of the whole, and it enters at large into the whole details, historical, legal, and antiquarian, essential for its illustration, and the proof of the various propositions which it contains. In the Civilisation Européenne and Essays on the History of France, however, the general results are given with equal clearness and greater brevity. We do not hesitate to say, that they appear to us to throw more light on the history of society in modern Europe, and the general progress of mankind, from the exertions of its inhabitants, than any other works in existence; and it is of them, especially the first, that we propose to give our readers some account.

The most important event which ever occurred in the history of mankind, is the one concerning which contemporary writers have given us the least satisfactory accounts. Be

Constantine, amounted, as Gibbon tells us, to nine pounds sterling on every freeman? What was it, then, which occasioned the depopulation and weakness? This is what behoves us to know-this it is which ancient history has left unknown.

each a dependent territory, all independent of each other, arose the absolute necessity for a central and absolute government. One municipality in Rome might conquer the world : but to retain it in subjection, and provide for the government of all its multifarious parts, was a very different matter. This was one of the chief causes of the general adoption of a strong concentrated government under the empire. Such a centralized despotism not only succeeded in restraining and regulating all the incoherent members of the vast dominion, but the idea of a central irresistible authority insinuated itself into men's minds everywhere, at the same time, with wonderful facility. At first sight, one is astonished to see, in that prodigious and ill-united aggregate of little republics, in that accumulation of separate municipalities, spring up so suddenly an unbounded respect for the sacred authority of the empire. But the truth is, it had become a matter of absolute necessity, that the bond which held together the different parts of this heterogeneous dominion should be very powerful; and this it was which gave it so ready a reception in the minds of men.

"But when the vigour of the central power declined during a course of ages, from the pressure of external warfare, and the weakness of internal corruption, this necessity was no longer felt. The capital ceased to be able to

It is here that the vast step in the philosophy of history made from ancient to modern times is apparent. From a few detached hints and insulated facts, left by the ancient annalists, apparently ignorant of their value, and careless of their preservation, modern industry, guided by the light of philosophy, has reared up the true solution of the difficulty, and revealed the real causes, hidden from the ordinary gaze, which, even in the midst of its greatest prosperity, gradually, but certainly, undermined the strength of the empire. Michelet, in his Gaule sous les Romains, a most able and interesting work-Thierry, in his Domination Romaine en Gaule, and his Histoire des Rois Merovingians-Sismondi, in the three first volumes of his Histoire des Français-and Guizot, in his Civilisation Européenne, and the first volumes of his Essais sur l'Histoire de Francehave applied their great powers to this most interesting subject. It may safely be affirmed that they have got to the bottom of the subject, and | lifted up the veil from one of the darkest, and yet most momentous, changes in the history of mankind. Guizot gives the following account of the principal causes which silently under-provide for the provinces; it rather sought promined the strength of the empire, flowing from the peculiar organization of ancient society: "When Rome extended, what did it do? Follow its history, and you will find that it was everlastingly engaged in conquering or founding cities. It was with cities that it fought with cities that it contracted-into cities that it sent colonies. The history of the conquest of the world by Rome, is nothing but the history of the conquest and foundation of a great number of cities. In the east, the expansion of the Roman power assumed, from the very outset, a somewhat dissimilar character; the population was differently distributed from the west, and much less concentrated in cities; but in the European world, the foundation or conquest of towns was the uniform result of Roman conquest. In Gaul and Spain, in Italy, it was constantly towns which opposed the barrier to Roman domination, and towns which were founded or garrisoned by the legions, or strengthened by colonies, to retain them when vanquished in a state of subjection. Great roads stretched from one town to another; the multitude of cross roads which now intersect each other in every direction, was unknown. They had nothing in common with that multitude of little monuments, villages, churches, castles, villas, and cottages, which now cover our provinces. Rome has bequeathed to us nothing, either in its capital or its provinces, but the municipal character, which produced immense monuments on certain points, destined for the use of the vast population which was there assembled .ogether.

[tection from them. During four centuries, the central power of the emperors incessantly struggled against this increasing debility; but the moment at length arrived, when all the practised skill of despotism, over the long insouciance of servitude, could no longer keep together the huge and unwieldy body. In the fourth century, we see it at once break up and disunite; the barbarians entered on all sides from without, the provinces ceased to oppose any resistance from within; the cities to evince any regard for the general welfare; and, as in the disaster of a shipwreck, every one looked out for his individual safety. Thus, on the dissolution of the empire, the same general state of society presented itself as in its cradle. The imperial authority sunk into the dust, and municipal institutions alone survived the disaster. This, then, was the chief legacy which sa the ancient bequeathed to the modern world— for it alone survived the storm by which the former had been destroyed-cities and a municipal organization everywhere establishedBut it was not the only legacy. Beside it, there was the recollection at least of the awful ma jesty of the emperor—of a distant, unseen, but sacred and irresistible power. These are the two ideas which antiquity bequeathed to modern times. On the one hand, the municipal régime, its rules, customs, and principles of liberty: on the other, a common, general, civil legislation; and the idea of absolute power, of a sacred majesty, the principle of order and servitude."-Civilisation Européenne, 20, 23. The causes which produced the extraordinary, and at first sight unaccountable, depopu"From this peculiar conformation of societylation of the country districts, not only in Italy, in Europe, under the Roman dominion, consisting of a vast conglomeration of cities, with

but in Gaul, Spain, and all the European provinces of the Roman empire, are explained by

of the barbarians in the frontier provinces exposed to their incursions; and the depopulation of the rural districts was as complete in Italy and Gaul, before a barbarian had passed the Alps or set his foot across the Rhine, as in the plains between the Alps or the Adriatic and the Danube, which had for long been ravaged by their arms.

Guizot in his Essays on the History of France, | districts; for, as the taxes of each municipality and have been fully demonstrated by Sismondi, remained the same, every one that withdrew Thierry, and Michelet. They were a natural into the towns left an additional burden on the consequence of the municipal system, then shoulders of his brethren who remained behind. universally established as the very basis of So powerful was the operation of these two civilization in the whole Roman empire, and causes-the fixity in the state burdens payable may be seen urging, from a similar cause, the by each municipality, and the constantly deTurkish empire to dissolution at this day.clining prices, owing to the vast import from This was the imposition of a certain fixed agricultural regions more favoured by nature duty, as a burden on each municipality, to be that it fully equalled the effect of the ravages raised, indeed, by its own members, but admitting of no diminution, save under the most special circumstances, and on an express exemption by the emperor. Had the great bulk of the people been free, and the empire prosperous, this fixity of impost would have been the greatest of all blessings. It is the precise boon so frequently and earnestly implored by our ryots in India, and indeed by the cultivators all over the east. But when the empire was beset on all sides with enemies-only the more rapacious and pressing, that the might of the legions had so long confined them within the comparatively narrow limits of their own sterile territories-and disasters, frequent and serious, were laying waste the frontier provinces, it became the most dreadful of all scourges; because, as the assessment on each district was fixed, and scarcely ever suffered any abatement, every disaster experienced increased the burden on the survivors who had escaped it; until they became bent down under such a weight of taxation, as, coupled with the small number of freemen on whom it exclusively fell, crushed every attempt at productive industry. It was the same thing as if all the farmers on each estate were to be bound to make up, annually, the same amount of rent to their landlord, no matter how many of them had become insolvent. We know how long the agriculture of Britain, in a period of declining prices and frequent disaster, would exist under such a system.

Domestic slavery conspired with these evils to prevent the healing power of nature from closing these yawning wounds. Gibbon esti. mates the number of slaves throughout the empire, in its latter days, at a number equal to that of the freemen; in other words, one half of the whole inhabitants were in a state of servitude ;* and as there were 120,000,000 souls under the Roman sway, sixty millions were in that degraded condition. There is reason to believe that the number of slaves was still greater than this estimate, and at least double that of the freemen; for it is known by an authentic enumeration, that, in the time of the Emperor Claudius, the number of citizens in the empire was only 6,945,000 men, who, with their families, might amount to twenty millions of souls; and the total number of freemen was about double that of the citizens.† In one family alone, in the time of Pliny, there were 4116 slaves. But take the number of slaves according to Gibbon's computation, at only half the entire population, what a prodigious abstraction must this multitude of slaves have made from the physical and moral strength of Add to this the necessary effect which the the empire! Half the people requiring food, free circulation of grain throughout the whole needing restraint, incapable of trust, and yet Roman world had in depressing the agricul- adding nothing to the muster-roll of the legions, ture of Italy, Gaul, and Greece. They were or the persons by whom the fixed and immovunable to withstand the competition of Egypt, able annual taxes were to be made good! In Lybia, and Sicily-the store-houses of the what state would the British empire now be, world; where the benignity of the climate, and if we were subjected to the action of similar the riches of the soil, rewarded seventy or an causes of ruin? causes of ruin? A vast and unwieldy domihundred-fold the labours of the husbandman. nion, exposed on every side to the incursions Gaul, where the increase was only seven-fold of barbarous and hostile nations, daily increas-Italy, where it seldom exceeded twelve-ing in numbers, and augmenting in military Spain, where it was never so high, were crushed in the struggle. The mistress of the world, as Tacitus bewails, had come to depend for her subsistence on the floods of the Nile. Unable to compete with the cheap grain raised in the more favoured regions of the south, the cultivators of Italy and Gaul gradually retired from the contest. They devoted their extensive estates to pasturage, because live cattle or dairy produce could not bear the expense of being shipped from Africa; and the race of agriculturists, the strength of the legions, disappeared in the fields, and was lost in the needy and indolent crowd of urban citizens, in part maintained by tributes in corn brought from Egypt and Lybia. This augmented the burdens upon those who remained in the rural

skill; a fixed taxation, for which the whole free inhabitants of every municipality were jointly and severally responsible, to meet the increasing military establishment required by these perils; a declining, and at length extinct, agriculture in the central provinces of the empire, owing to the deluge of cheap grain from its fertile extremities wafted over the waters of the Mediterranean; multitudes of turbulent freemen in cities, kept quiet by daily distribution of provisions at the public expense, from the imperial granaries; and a half, or twothirds of the whole population in a state of slavery-neither bearing any share of the public burdens, nor adding to the strength of the

* Gibbon. + Ibid.

Plin. Hist. Nat. xxxiii. 47

"This principle has for its foundation, in the first instance, at least in a certain degree, the great principles of moral legitimacyjustice, reason, truth. Then came the sanction of time, which always begets the presumption of reason having directed arrangements which have long endured. In the early periods of society, we too often find force and falsehood ruling the cradles of royalty, aristocracy, democracy, and even the church; but every where you will see this force and falsehood yielding to the reforming hand of time, and right and truth taking their place in the rulers of civilization. It is this progressive infusion of right and truth which has by degrees developed the idea of political legitimacy; it is thus that it has become established in modern civilization. At different times, indeed, attempts have been made to substitute for this idea the banner of despotic power; but, in doing so, they have turned it aside from its true origin. It is so little the banner of despotic power, that it is in the name of right and justice that it has overspread the world. As little is it exclusive: it belongs neither to persons, classes, nor sects; it arises wherever the idea of right has developed itself. We shall meet with this principle in systems the mosi opposite: in the feudal system, in the municipalities of Flanders and Germany, in

lence which overwhelmed society at that pe riod. Had the Christian church not existed, the world would have been delivered over to the influence of physical strength, in its coarsest and most revolting_form. It alone exercised a moral power. It did more; it

worthless ephemeral literature with which they, | tions and moral feelings, established amidst as we, were overwhelmed; and nothing has that deluge of physical force and selfish viostood the test of ages, and come down to us through a series of generations, of their ideas or institutions, but what had some utility in human feelings and necessities, and was on the whole expedient at the time when it arose. Its utility may have ceased by the change of manners or of the circumstances of society-spread abroad the idea of a rule of obedience, that may be a good reason for cautiously modifying or altering it—but rely upon it, it was once useful, if it has existed long; and the presumption of present and continuing utility requires to be strongly outweighed by forcible considerations before it is abandoned. Lord Bacon has told us, in words which can never become trite, so profound is their wisdom, that our changes, to be beneficial, should | resemble those of time, which, though the greatest of all innovators, works out its alterations so gradually that they are never perceived. Guizot makes, in the same spirit, the following fine observation on the slow march—the separation of the spiritual and temporal of Supreme wisdom in the government of the world

“If we turn our eyes to history, we shall find that all the great developments of the human mind have turned to the advantage of society all the great struggles of humanity to the good of mankind. It is not, indeed, immediately that these efforts take place; ages often elapse, a thousand obstacles intervene, before they are fully developed; but when we survey a long course of ages, we see that all has been accomplished. The march of Providence is not subjected to narrow limits; it cares not to develope to-day the consequences of a principle which it has established yesterday; it will bring them forth in ages, when the appointed hour has arrived; and its course is not the less sure that it is slow. The throne of the Almighty rests on time-it marches through its boundless expanse as the gods of Homer through space-it makes a step, and ages have passed away. How many centuries elapsed, how many changes ensued, before the regeneration of the inner man, by means of Christianity, exercised on the social state its great and salutary influence! Nevertheless, it has at length succeeded. No one can mistake its effects at this time."-Lecture i. 24.

In surveying the progress of civilization in modern, as compared with ancient times, two features stand prominent as distinguishing the one from the other. These are the church and the feudal system. They were precisely the circumstances which gave umbrage to the philosophers of the eighteenth century, and which awakened the greatest transports of indignation among the ardent multitudes who, at its close, brought about the French Revolution. Very different is the light in which the eye of true philosophy, enlightened by the experience of their abolition, views these great distinctive features of modern society.

Immense," says Guizot, "was the influence which the Christian church exercised over the civilization of modern Europe. In the outset, it was an incalculable advantage to have a moral power, a power destitute of physical force, which reposed only on mental convic

a heavenly power, to which all human beings,
how great soever, were subjected, and which
was above all human laws. That of itself was
a safeguard against the greatest evils of society;
for it affected the minds of those by whom
they were brought about; it professed that be-
lief-the foundation of the salvation of hu-
manity-that there is above all existing insti-
tutions, superior to all human laws, a perma-
nent and divine law, sometimes called Reason,
sometimes Divine Command, but which, under
whatever name it goes, is for ever the same.
"Then the church commenced a great work

power. That separation is the origin of liberty of conscience; it rests on no other principle than that which lies at the bottom of the widest and most extended toleration. The separation of the spiritual and temporal power rests on the principle, that physical force is neither entitled to act, nor can ever have any lasting influence, on thoughts, conviction, truth; it flows from the eternal distinction between the world of thought and the world of action, the world of interior conviction and that of external facts. In truth that principle of the liberty of conscience, for which Europe has combated and suffered so much, which has so slowly triumphed, and often against the utmost efforts of the clergy themselves, was first founded by the doctrine of the separation of the temporal and spiritual power, in the cradle of European civilization. It is the Christian church which, by the necessities of its situation to defend itself against the assaults of barbarism, introduced and maintained it. presence of a moral influence, the maintenance of a Divine law, the separation of the temporal and spiritual power, are the three great blessings which the Christian church has diffused in the dark ages over European society.

The

"The influence of the Christian church was great and beneficent for another reason. The bishop and clergy ere long became the principal municipal mägistrates: they were the chancellors and ministers of kings-the rulers, except in the camp and the field, of mankind. When the Roman empire crumbled into dust, when the central power of the emperors and the legions disappeared, there remained, we have seen, no other authority in the state but the municipal functionaries. But they them selves had fallen into a state of apathy and despair; the heavy burdens of despotism, the oppressive taxes of the municipalities, the incursions of the fierce barbarians, had reduced them to despair.. No protection to society, no revival of industry, no shielding of innocence, could be expected from their exertions. The clergy, again, formed a society within itself; fresh, young, vigorous, sheltered by the pre