| render treason in the army destructive to lasting freedom. It terminates the struggle at once, before any impulse has been communicated to the unarmed citizens, or they have acquired the vigour and military prowess which is alone capable of controlling them. The people merely change masters; instead of the king and his ministers, they get the general and his officers. The rule of the sovereign is looked back to with bitter regret, when men have tasted of the severity of military license, and experienced the rigour of military execution. Whereas, during the vicissitudes of a civil war, the energy of all classes is brought into action, and the chance of obtaining ultimate freedom improved by the very difficulty with which it has been won. The British constitution, the gradual result of repeated contests between the crown and the people, has subsisted unimpaired for centuries-the French, effected at once by the treachery of the army, has been as short-lived as the popularity of its authors. There is no royal road to freedom any more than to geometry; it is by patient exertion and progressive additions to their influence, that freedom is acquired by nations not less than eminence by individuals. What then, it may be asked, are soldiers to do when a sovereign like Charles X. promulgates ordinances subversive of public freedom? Are they to make themselves the willing instrument in enslaving their fellow citizens? We answer, Certainly; if they have any regard for the ultimate maintenance of their liberty. If illegal measures have been adopted, let them be repealed by the civil authorities or by the efforts of the people; but never let the soldiers take the initiative in attempting their overthrow. The interests of liberty require this as indispensably as those of order. Nothing short of an unanimous declaration of the national will by the higher classes, should lead to a defection from loyalty on the part of its sworn defenders. Liberty in France was endangered for the moment by the ordinances of the Bourbons: it has been destroyed by the insurrection planned to overthrow them. Freedom, supported as it then was, by an energetic and democratic press, and a republican population, ran no risk of permanent injury from the intrigues of the court. A priest-ridden monarch, guided by imbecile ministers, could never have subjugated an ardent, high-spirited, aad democratic people. But the danger is very different from the energy of the republicans, and the ambition of the soldiers. Marshal Soult and his bayonets are not so easily dealt with as Prince Polignac and his Jesuits. The feeble monarchy of Louis XVI. was overturned with ease; the terrible Committee of Public Safety, the despotic Directory, the energetic sway of Napoleon, ruled the Revolution, and crushed freedom, even in its wildest fits. Three days' insurrection destroyed the feeble government of Charles. A revolt ten times more formidable was crushed with ease by the military power of the Convention. Had the soldiers not revolted in July, what would have been the consequence? The insurrection in Paris, crushed by a garrison of twelve thousand men, would have speedily sunk. A new Chamber, convoked on the basis of the royal ordinance, would have thrown the ministers into a minority in the Chamber of Deputies, and by them the obnoxious measure would have been repealed. If there is any truth in the growing influence of public opinion, so uniformly maintained by liberal writers, this must have been the result. No representatives chosen by any electors in France, could have withstood the odium which supporting the measures of the court would have produced. Thus liberty would have been secured without exciting the tempest which threatens its own overthrow. Public credit, private confidence, general prosperity, would have been maintained; the peace of the world preserved; the habits conducive to a state of In former times, no doubt, many examples have occurred of the incipient efforts of free-national freedom engendered. dom being entirely extinguished by military What have been the consequences of the execution; but no such catastrophe need be boasted treachery of the troops of the line in apprehended in countries where the press is July? The excitation of revolutionary hopes; established; the republicans themselves have the rousing of democratic ambition; a ferment everywhere proclaimed this truth. The opi- in society; the abandonment of useful indusnions and interests of the many must prevail try; the government of the mob; the arming where their voice is heard. The only thing to of France; the suspension of pacific enterprise. be feared for them is from their own passions. A general war must in the end ensue from its The only danger to liberty in such circum-effects. Europe will be drenched with blood, stances is from its own defenders; the violence and whatever be the result, it will be equally to be apprehended is not that of the throne, fatal to the cause of freedom. If the aristobut of the populace. cracy prevail, it will be the government of the sword; if the populace, of the guillotine. No stronger proof of this can be imagined than has been furnished by the recent revolution in France and Belgium. The revolt of the soldier at once established the rule of the mob in these countries, and put an end, for a long time at least, to every hope of freedom. What security is there afforded for property, life, or tharacter? Confessedly none; every thing is determined by the bayonet of the National Guard and army; neither the throne nor the people can withstand them. Freedom was as ittle confirmed by their revolt, as at Constaninople by an insurrection of the Janizaries. A civil war in France would have been far more serviceable to the cause of real liberty than the sudden destruction of the government by the revolt of the army. In many periods of history, freedom has emerged from the collision of different classes in society, in none from military insubordination. If Charles I. had possessed a regular army, and it had betrayed its trust on the first breaking out of the great Rebellion, would the result have been as favourable to the cause of liberty, as the long contest which ensued? Nothing can be clearer than that it would not. No greater consequences would have followed such a revolt, than any of the insurrections of the barons against the princes of York and Lancaster. A revolution so easily achieved, would as easily have been abandoned: liberty would never have been gained, because the trials had not been endured by which it is to be won. The only security for its continuance is to be found in the energy and courage of the citizens: it is not by witnessing the destruction of government by a mutinous soldiery that these habits are to be acquired. The citizen soldiers, headed by Lafayette were under arms in great force on the 5th Oc tober, 1789, when a furious rabble marched to Versailles, broke into and plundered the palace, attempted to murder the queen, and brought the Royal Family in captivity to Paris, preceded by the heads of their faithful Body Guards. They refused for five hours to listen to the entreaties of their commander to march to protect the palace of the king against that atrocious insult; and when they did go, were too irresolute to prevent the violence which followed. They stood by on 20th June, 1792, when a vociferous rabble broke into the hall of the Assembly, threatening the obnoxious deputies with instant death; when they rushed into the Palace of the Tuileries, pushed their pikes at the breast of Louis, placed the Cap of Liberty on his head, and brought the Royal Family and the monarchy into imminent danger. Soldiers, therefore, who adhere to their honour and their oaths, are in reality the best friends of the cause of freedom. They prevent the struggle for its maintenance from being converted into a mortal combat, in which the victory of either party must prove fatal to the very object for which they are contending. They prevent the love of independence from being transformed into the spirit of insubordi- They assembled at the sound of the générale, nation, and the efforts of freedom blasted by when the Fauxbourgs rose in revolt on the the violence of popular, or the irresistible 10th August, and their dense battalions, plenweight of military ambition. They turn the tifully supported by cavalry and artillery, acspirit of liberty into a pacific channel; and cumulated in great force round the Tuileries. averting it from that direction where it falls But division, irresolution, and timidity, paraunder the rule of violence, retain it in that|lyzed their ranks. First the Gendarmerie dewhere wisdom and foresight duly regulate its movements. The institution of a National Guard, of which so much is now said, is not less the subject of delusion, than the boasted treachery of regular soldiers. serted to the assailants; then the cannoneers unloaded their guns; several battalions next joined the insurgents, and the few that remained faithful were so completely paralyzed by the general defection of their comrades, that they were unable to render any effective Citizen soldiers are most valuable additions support to the Swiss Guard. From amidst a to the force of a regular army, and when actu- forest of citizen bayonets, the monarch was ated by a common and patriotic feeling, they are dragged a captive to the Temple, and the gocapable of rendering most effective service to vernment of France yielded up to a sanguinary the state. The landwehr of Prussia, and the vo- rabble. Seven thousand National Guards, on lunteers of Russia, sufficiently demonstrated that that day, yielded up their sovereign to a despitruth during the campaigns of 1812 and 1813. cable rabble; as many hundred faithful regular They are a valuable force also for preserv-soldiers in addition to the heroic Swiss Guard ing domestic tranquillity up to a certain point, would have established his throne and prewhen little real peril is to be encountered, and vented the Reign of Terror. a display of moral opinion is of more weight than the exertion of military prowess. But they are a force that cannot be relied on during the shades of opinion which take place in a revolution, and still less in the perilous strife which follows the actual collision of one class of the state with another. This has been completely demonstrated during both the French Revolutions. The National Guard of Paris was first embodied on the 20th July, 1789, a week after the capture of the Bastile. During the first fervour of the revolutionary ardour, and before the strife of faction had brought the opposite parties into actual contest, they frequently rendered effective service to the cause of order. On more than one occasion, headed by Lafayette, they dispersed seditious assemblages, and once, in June, 1792, were brought to fire upon the Jacobins in the Champ de Mars. But whenever matters approached a crisis, when the want and suffering consequent on a revolution had brought forward angry bodies of workmen from the Fauxbourg; when the question was not one of turning out to parade, but of fighting an exasperated multitude, they uniformly failed. When Lafayette, indignant at the atrocities of the Jacobins, repaired to Paris from the army, and assigned a rendezvous at his house, in the evening of June 27, 1792, to the National Guard, of which he had so lately been the popular commander, in order to march against the Jacobin club, only thirty men obeyed the summons. The immense majority evinced a fatal apathy, and surrendered up their country, without a struggle, to the empire of the Jacobins. When Louis, Marie Antoinette, and the Princess Elisabeth, were successively led out to the scaffold; when the brave and virtuous Madame Roland became the victim of the freedom she had worshipped; when Vergniaud and the illustrious leaders of the Gironde were brought to the block; when Danton and Camille Desmoulins were destroyed by the mob whom they excited, the National Guard lined the streets and attended the cars to the guillotine. When the executions rose to a hundred daily; when the shopkeepers closed their windows, to avoid witnessing the dismal spectacles of the long procession which was approaching the scaffold; when a ditch was dug to convey the They had the history of the former Revolttion clearly before their eyes; they knew well, by dear-bought experience, that when popular violence is once roused, it overthrows all the bulwarks both of order and freedom; they were supported by all the weight of government: they had every thing at stake, in keeping down the ferment of the people. With so many motives to vigorous action, what have they done? blood of the victims to the Seine; when France | far the cause of order and rational liberty has groaned under tyranny, unequalled since the gained by their exertions. beginning of the world, forty thousand National Guards, with arms in their hands, looked on in silent observation of the mournful spectacle. When indignant nature revolted at the cruelty; when, by a generous union, the members of all sides of the Assembly united, the power of the tyrants was shaken; when Robespierre was declared hors la loi, and the générale was beat to summon the citizen soldiers to make a last effort in behalf, not only of their country, but of their own existence, only three thousand obeyed the summons! Thirty-seven thousand declined to come forward in the contest for their lives, their families, and every thing that was dear to them. With this contemptible force was Robespierre besieged in the Hotel de Ville; and but for the fortunate and unforeseen defection of the cannoneers of the Fauxbourgs in the Place de Greve, the tyrants would have been success ful, the Assembly destroyed, and the reign of the guillotine perpetuated on the earth. They permitted an unruly mob of thirty thousand persons to assemble round the Palace of Louis Philippe, on October 25, 1830, and so completely shatter his infant authority, that he was obliged to dismiss the able and philosophic Guizot, the greatest historian of France, and the whole cabinet of the Doctrinaires, from his councils, to make way for republican leaders of sterner mould, and better adapted to the increasing violence of the popular mind. At the trial of Polignac, the whole National When the reaction in favour of the victors, Guard of Paris and the departments in the on the 9th Thermidor, had roused the Parisian neighbourhood, seventy thousand strong, was population against the sanguinary rule of the assembled in the capital; and what was the Convention; when, encouraged by the contempt-proof which the government gave of confidence ible force at the disposal of government, forty in their loyalty and efficiency in the cause of thousand of the National Guard assaulted five order? Albeit encamped, as Lafayette said, at thousand regular soldiers, in position at the the Luxembourg, amidst twenty thousand NaTuileries, on Oct. 31, 1795, Napoleon showed tional Guards, four thousand troops of the line, what reliance could be placed on the citizen three thousand cavalry, and forty pieces of arsoldiers. With a few discharges of artillery he tillery, the government did not venture to withchecked the advance of the leading battalions, draw the state prisoners to Vincennes in dayspread terror through their dense columns, light; and, but for the stratagem of Montalivet, and a revolt, which was expected to overthrow in getting them secretly conveyed away in the the tyranny of the delegates of the people, ter- middle of the night, in his own caleche, from minated by the establishment of military des- the midst of that vast encampment of citizen potism. soldiers, they would have been murdered in the street, within sight of that very supreme tribunal which had pronounced that sentence, and saved their lives. When Augereau, on 4th Sept., 1797, at the command of the Directory, seized sixty of the popular leaders of the legislature; when the law of the sword began, and all the liberties of At that critical moment, the cannoneers of the Revolution were about to be sacrificed at the National Guard, placed with their pieces at the altar of military violence, the National the Louvre, declared, that, if matters came to Guard declined to move, and saw their fellow-extremities, they would have turned their cancitizens, the warmest supporters of their liber- non against the government. Great part of ties, carried into captivity and exile, without attempting a movement in their behalf. When Napoleon overthrew the government in 1800; when, like another Cromwell, he seized the fruits of another Revolution; when he marched his grenadiers into the council of Five Hundred, and made the stern rule of the sword succeed to the visions of enthusiastic freedom, the National Guard remained quiet spectators of the destruction of their country's liberties, and testified the same submission to the reign of military, which they had done to that of democratic violence. The National Guard was re-organized in August, 1830, and their conduct since that time has been the subject of unmeasured eulogium from all the liberal journals of Europe. The throne was establisned by their bayonets; the Citizen King has thrown himself upon their support; they were established in great force in every quarter of Paris, and the public tranquillity intrusted to their hands. History has a right to inquire what they have done to justify the high praises of their supporters, and how the infantry, it was found, could not be relied on. The agitation occasioned by these events produced another change in the ministry, but no additional security to the throne. In February last, the National Guard joined the populace in pillaging the palace of the Archbishop of Paris; and joining in the infernal cry against every species of religion, scaled every steeple in Paris, with sacrilegious hands tore down the cross from their summits, and disgraced their uniforms by effacing the image of our Saviour in all the churches in the metropolis. The apathy and irresolution of the National Guard in repressing the disorder of the populace on this occasion, was such as to call for a reproof even from the most ar dent supporters of republican institutions. The consequence has been a third change of minis ters in little more than six months. The Paris journals are daily full of the dis tress of the labouring classes, the stagnation of commercial enterprise, the want of confidence, and the disgraceful tumults which in cessantly agitate the public mind, and have prevented the resumption of any industrial occupation. All this takes place in the midst, and under the eye of fifty thousand National Guards, in the city alone. History will record that the National Guard of France was instituted in 1789, for the consolidation of free institutions, and the preservation of public tranquillity. That since its establishment, the government and prevailing institutions have been the subject of incessant change; that they have had in turn a constitutional monarchy, a fierce democracy, a sceptre of blood, a military constitution, a despotic consulate, an imperial throne, a regulated monarchy, and a citizen king. That during their guardianship, a greater number of lives have perished in civil wara greater number of murders taken place on the scaffold-a greater extent of confiscation of fortune been inflicted-a greater quantity of wealth destroyed-a greater degree of violence exerted by the people-a greater sum of anguish endured-than in an equal extent of time and population, in any age or country, since the beginning of the world! That it has almost invariably failed at the decisive moment; that, instituted for the defence of property, it has connived at unheard-of spoliation; appointed for the preservation of order, its existence has been chiefly signalized by misrule; charged with the defence of life, it nas permitted blood to flow in ceaseless tor rents. Nothing therefore can be more unfounded in fact, than the applause so generally bestowed on this popular institution, considered as the sole or principal support of government.-It has been of value only as an auxiliary to the regular force; it is utterly unserviceable in the crisis of civil warfare; and is then only of real utility when some common patriotic feeling has sunk all minor shades of opinion in one general emotion. It is impossible it ever should be otherwise -citizen soldiers are extremely serviceable when they are subjected to the bonds of discipline, and obedient to the orders of the supreme power. But when they take upon themselves to discuss the measures or form of government, and instead of obeying orders to canvass principles, there is an end not only of all efficiency in their force, but of all utility in their institution. Fifty thousand legislators, with bayonets in their hands, form a hopeless National Assembly. democratic cast, from their superior numbers, acquired a fatal ascendency. The case would be the same in London if a similar crisis should arrive. The battalions from the Regent Park, Regent Street, Piccadilly, the West End, and all the opulent quarters, might be relied on to support the cause of order; but what could be expered from those raised in Wapping, Deptford, St. Giles, Spitalfields, or all the innumerable lanes and alleys of the city, and its eastern suburbs! If the National Guard of London were an hundred thousand strong, at least twenty thou sand of them would, from their habits, inclinations, and connections, side, on the first real crisis, with the democratic party. It is a fatal delusion to suppose that at all events, and in all circumstances, the National Guard would be inclined to support the cause of order, and prevent the depredation from which they would be first to suffer :-They unquestionably would be inclined to do so up to a certain point of danger, and as long as they believed that the ruling power in the state was likely to prove victorious. But no sooner does the danger become more urgent, no sooner does the government run the risk of defeat, than the National Guard is paralyzed, from the very circumstance of its being in great part composed of men of property. The great capitalist is the most timid animal in existence; next comes the great shopkeeper, lastly the little tradesman. Their resolution is inversely as their wealth. In all ages, desperate daring valour has been found in the greatest degree amongst the lowest class of society. multiplied enjoyments of life render men unwilling to incur the risk of losing them. The No sooner, therefore, does the democratic party appear likely to become victorious, than the shopkeepers of the National Guard begin to think only of extricating their private affairs from the general ruin. Sauve qui peut is then, if not the general cry, at least the general feeling. The merchant sees before him a dismal vista of sacked warehouses and burnt stores; the manufacturer, of insurgent workmen and suspended orders; the tradesman, of pillaged shops and ruined custom. Despairing of the commonwealth, they recur, as all men do in evident peril, to the unerring instinct of selfpreservation; and from the magnitude of their stake, fall under the influence of this apprehension long before it has reached the lower and more reckless classes of society. Admirable, therefore, as an auxiliary to the regular force in case of peril from foreign invasion, a National Guard is not to be relied on during the perils and divisions of civil conflict. It always has, and always will fail in extremity, when a war of opinion agitates the state. This is the circumstance which, in every decisive crisis between the opposing parties, paralyzed the National Guard of Paris, and to the end of time will paralyze all volunteer troops in similar extremities: They shared in the opinions of their fellow-citizens; they were members of clubs, as well as the unarmed multitude; they were as ready to fight with The only sure support of order in such each other, as with the supporters of anarchy. unhappy circumstances is to be found in a The battalions drawn from the Fauxbourg St.numerous and honourable body of regular solGermains or the quarters of the Palais Royal, and the Chaussee d'Antin, were disposed to support the monarchy; but those from the Fauxbourg St. Antoine and St. Marceau, were as determined to aid the cause of democracy; and in this divided state, the battalions of a diers. Let not the sworn defender of order be tainted by the revolutionary maxim, that the duties of the citizen are superior to those of the soldier, and that nature formed them as men, before society made them warriors. The first duty of a soldier, the first principle of military honour, is fidelity to the executive | quillity: nothing is so fatal to its establishment power. In crushing an insurrection of the as the violence exerted for its extension. In populace in a mixed government, he is not this as in other instances, it is not lawful to enslaving his fellow-citizens; he is only turn- do evil that good may come of it; and phiing the efforts of freedom into their proper losophy will at length discover, what reason channel, and preventing the contest of opinion and religion have long ago taught, that the from degenerating into that of force. Liberty only secure foundation for ultimate expedi bas as much to hope from his success as tran-ence, is the present discharge of duty. ARNOLD'S ROME.* THE history of Rome will remain, to the latest age of the world, the most attractive, the most useful, and the most elevating subject of human contemplation. It must ever form the basis of a liberal and enlightened education; it must ever present the most important object to the contemplation of the statesman; it must ever exhibit the most heart-stirring record to the heart of the soldier. Modern civilization, the arts, and the arms, the freedom and the institutions of Europe around us, are the bequest of the Roman legions. The roads which we travel are, in many places, those which these indomitable pioneers of civilization first cleared through the wilderness of nature; the language which we speak is more than half derived from Roman words; the laws by which we are protected have found their purest fountains in the treasures of Roman jurisprudence; the ideas in which we glory are to be found traced out in the fire of young conception in the Roman | writers. In vain does the superficial acquirement, or shallow variety, of modern liberalism seek to throw off the weight of obligation to the grandeur or virtue of antiquity; in vain are we told that useful knowledge is alone worthy of cultivation, that ancient fables have gone past, and that the study of physical science should supersede that of the ancient authors. Experience, the great detector of error, is perpetually recalling to our minds the inestimable importance of Roman history. The more that our institutions become liberalized, the more rapid the strides which popular ideas make amongst us, the more closely do we cling to the annals of a state which underwent exactly the same changes, and suffered the consequences of the same convulsions; and the more that we experience the insecurity, the selfishness, and the rapacity of democratic ambition, the more highly do we come to appreciate the condensed wisdom with which the great historians of antiquity, by a word or an epithet, stamped its character, or revealed its tendency. There is something solemn, and evidently providential, in the unbroken advance and ultimate boundless dominion of Rome. The history of other nations corresponds nearly to the vicissitudes of prosperity and disaster, of good History of Rome. By Thomas Arnold, D. D., Head Master of Rugby School; late Fellow of Oriel College, Oxford; and member of the Archæological Society of Bome. London: B. Fellowes. 1838. Blackwood's Magazine, August, 1838 and evil fortune, which we observe in the nations of the world at this time. The brilliant meteor of Athenian greatness disappeared from the world almost as soon as the bloody phantasmagoria of the French Revolution. In half-a century after they arose, naught remained of either but the works of genius they had produced, and the deeds of glory they had done. The wonders of Napoleon's reign faded as rapidly as the triumphs of the Macedonian conqueror; and the distant lustre of Babylon and Nineveh is faintly recalled by the ephemeral dynasties which have arisen, under the pressure of Arabian or Mogul conquest, in the regions of the east in modern times. But, in the Roman annals, a different and mightier system developes itself. From the infancy of the republic, from the days even of the kings, and the fabulous reigns of Romulus and Numa, an unbroken progress is exhibited which never experienced a permanent reverse till the eagles of the republic had crossed the Euphrates, and all the civilized world, from the wall of Antonius to the foot of Mount Atlas, was subjected to their arms. Their reverses, equally with their triumphs-their defeats, alike with their victories-their infant struggles with the cities of Latium, not less than their later contests with Carthage and Mithridates-contributed to develope their strength, and may be regarded as the direct causes of their dominion. It was in the long wars with the Etruscan and Samnite communities that the discipline and tactics were slowly and painfully acquired, which enabled them to face the banded strength of the Carthagenian confederacy,-and in the desperate struggle with Hannibal, that the resolu tion and skill were drawn forth which so soon, on its termination, gave them the empire of the world. The durability of the fabric was in proportion to the tardiness of its growth, and the solidity of its materials. The twelve vul tures which Romulus beheld on the Palatine Hill were emblematic of the twelve centuries which beheld the existence of the empire of the west; and it required a thousand years more of corruption and decline to extinguish in the east this brilliant empire, which, regenerated by the genius of Constantine, found, in the riches and matchless situation of Byzantium, a counterpoise to all the effeminacy of oriental manners, and all the ferocity of the Scythian tribes. It is remarkable that time has not yet pro |