SIR ARCHIBALD ALISON'S HISTORY OF EUROPE IN THE PRESENT AGE.

Lyttelton Times, Volume III, Issue 125, 28 May 1853, Page 8

SIR ARCHIBALD ALISON'S HISTORY OF EUROPE IN THE PRESENT AGE.

(From the Times.)

Sir Archibald Alison has ventured on the difficult problem of bringing down his History of Europe not only to what in common parlance we term our " own days," but to the days of this very year; so that a work which details the creation of one French Empire will actually conclude with the apparition of another. The first volume of this continuation has just appeared, aud iu its preface we are favoured with a general view of European transactions, as ihey offer themselves to the author's eyes between 1815 and 1852. The tenacity of Sir Archibald's politics is well exemplified in this brief, but characteristic survey. During the last 30 years, under the influence of education, the extension of civil rights, and the growth of public opinion, his favourite theories of government, legislation, and finance have been somewhat rudely discarded. Iu this respect his lot has not, perhaps, been singular; but there are not many writers, we imagine, who would attempt to demonstrate, at this stage of popular experience, that the principles of what we have been accustomed to consider our political reforms have been essentially unsound and destructive. It is, perhaps, however, rather desirable than otherwise that the two sides of every question should find exponents, and if an author of Sir Archibald's popularity is bold or consistent enough to select the weaker for his own, there can be no objection to his choice. Reserving a proper right of expression for his private opinions, Sir Archibald pledges himself to a strict impartiality of narrative, and in this respect we are bound] to recognise the general justice of his pretensions. His historical faults are rarely those of omission, and we are fully prepared to find in his forthcoming volumes an "abstract of the arguments in favour of Parliamentary reform, a contracted currency, or free trade in corn and shipping, as forcible"—or, at any rate, as copious—" as are to be met with elsewhere." But there are tivo general propositions affirmed in the preface before us which are remarkable enough to suggest some little anticipative discussion. It is, of course, impossible to say what arguments a history may not contain which commences with the depreciation of Free Trade and Parliamentary Reform at the very moment when the latest of these political canons has been reluctantly recognised by the last of its adversaries, but we acknowledge an extreme curiosity to discover by what reasons " the second dispersion of mankind" can be proved to have originated in democratic extravagance, or the British monarchy be shown, " on a retrospect of the last 30 years," to have '' passed the period of its greatest national eminence."

Sir Archibald views in the present emigration a dispersion of people equivalent to that which succeeded the construction of the Tower of Babel—an estimate which may, or may not, be extravagant, but in what way it " took place from an attempt springing from the pride and ambition of man as vain as the building of this tower" we are at considerable loss to understand ; nor are we much enlightened by the author's own exposition of his views. ''"That attempt," says he, " was the endeavour to establish social felicity and insure the fortunes of the species by the mere spread of knowledge and the establishment of democratic institutions, irrespective of the moral training of the people. As this project was based on the pride of intellect, and rested on the doctrine of human perfectibility, so it met with the same result as the attempt by a tower raised by human hands to reach the heavens. Carried into execution by fallible agents, it was met and thwarted by their usual passions, and the selfishness and grasping desires of men led to a scene of discord and confusion unparalleled since the beginning of the world. But it terminated iu "the same result in Europe as in Asia ; the buildinoof the political Tower of Babel in France was attended by consequences identical with those which had followed the construction of its predecessors on the Plains of Shinar. The dispersion of mankind followed in both cases the vain attempt; and, after and through the agency of a protracted period of suffering, men in surpassing multitudes found themselves settled in new habitations, and for ever severed from the land of their birth, from the consequences of the visionary projects in which they had been engaged."

Any reader who can discern the relation between the causes and effects thus specially conjoined will enjoy a very decided advantage over ourselves. It is perfectly true that Socialistand Democratic clubs overthrew the existing Government of France, and created what is very truly described as a scene of confusion. It is also true that people in extraordinary numbers have been recently swarming on the shores of California and Australia, but we do not well see how this emigration can be even remotely connected with the teaching of M. Louis Blanc. Doubtless certain delinquents or victims have been" expelled from France in consequence of the revolutionary troubles, but, though die number of these exiles, considered as political sufferers, is certainly great, yet they form no appreciable proportion of those expatriated from all causes together; they have not, generally speaking, sought any distant shores, nor do they, in all probability, consider their banishment as final. There is "no reason for presuming that the political refugees of all countries, wheresoever harboured, amount in the aggregate to half as large a body as the emigrants to Australia who left this kingdom in the course of last September from the port of London alone. The three or four thousand proscrits in Algeria and Noukahiva are certainly not likely to found enduring Christian settlements, nor have we heard of any commonwealth in any country which has been instituted or peopled by 'fugitives from France. That the famine drove thousands from Ireland to America, and that gold is luring as many from England to her Australian colonies, are well-known facts, as is likewise the influence of this exodus on the social condition of those left behind ; but how these events are to be coupled with the French Revolution occurring some years before, or how any parallel for the result is to be found in the building of Babel, we must wait for Sir Archibald to inform us in his concluding volume.

Equally undiscernable do the grounds appear on which the British Monarchy maybe thought to be on its decline. England is still incontestably a first-rate power. It has extended its colonial possessions over vast tracts of Africa and Asia, and has never yet encountered an enemy too strong for its arms. Within the last four years it has conquered the most warlike people of India, and displayed to the world what Sir Archibald himself terms a ''brilliancy of triumph,"and an " immense superiority" of power. It possesses a marine of astonishing extent and excellence, and its military resources have been exemplified by the voluntary enrolment Avithin a few weeks' space of 35,000 picked soldiers in aid of an army 100,000 strong. If we have placed these facts in the front of our argument as peculiar indications of national prosperity, it has been with the idea that they might so be regarded by the writer whose conclusions we are contesting. But, if we turn to other proofs of well-doing, what do we discover ? We are in the enjoyment of a surplus revenue, combined, with a relief from the most oppressive of our former taxes, and no financier has ever yet overcalculated the elasticity, in this respect, of our public resources. We raise a large income with greater and greater ease every year, and, if all our taxation is not based on sound principles, it is at any rate defined on pure motives. The condition of our trade and manufactures exceeds that of any former period, and if our population has this year decreased, it has been only when such decrease had become desirable, and then not from the repulsion of calamity, but the attraction of gain. There is no single class of society of which the members are not now infinitely better educated, better housed, better clothed, better fed, and bettter treated by the laws than in any year of Sir Archibald's former history. The year 1815 may have been a brilliant one for our arms, but the social and political views then prevailing, compared with those which now influence society, were as cruel, as tyrannical, and as oblique as the views of any Government under the Plantagenets or Tudors. We give Sir Archibald credit for conscientious speaking, and we are sure he will not deny that there is now incomparably more religious teaching and feeling, more general education, more general propriety of thought, and more geueral decorum of behaviour in this country than at any time between the death of Louis XVI. and thebattle of Waterloo. Perhaps he may conceive that this species of progress is consistent with the decay of " national eminence," but in this case it will devolve on him to explain in what such eminence may be held desirably to consist.