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    NOTES AND EXTRACTS. The Toiling Millions...

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    POSITION OF SCIENCE. We frequently hear ...

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    Historians Op Tub Revolution Op 1848. 1 ...

    demonstrable in the whole of the Revolution as that . It is avowed by those who planned the Ateliers , and repeatedly stated by Emile TLomas himself , and as he had the direction of them surely he is a comp nt au thority in such a case . Yet these Ateliers . 1 amzed in a spirit hostile to Louis Blanc have become so identified with his name that he bears the infamy of the June insurrection in consequence .

    An ample and explicit statement of tins case is to be found in the work before us . Unhappily little more than that is to be found there ; and if any reader opens it with a view of being instructed in the history of the Revolution he will be grievously disappointed . 2 £ . Louis Blanc is of course at liberty to choose his own subject , yet we cannot but think his aim , would have been belter attained had he given us a narrative of events in his coloured style , instead of the present passionate vindication of himself . To speak frankly , increased admiration of

    this vindication has not our him . Its statements are sufficiently decisive to have stood upon their own authority without calling to their aid the vehement diatribes and universal execrations which are meant to prove that there was no honesty and good faith many one . Want of generosity , so conspicuous as in this volume , implies—to use the mildest interpretation—ft want . of that intellectual honesty which forms the first and indispensable condition of a true , writer . We have little faith in those vehement apostles who have no faith in others . If anything could make us doubt M . Louis Blanc ' s

    integrity it is the doubt he always throws on the integrity of others , coupled with such assertions of his own . ** Out , lea molhonnetes gens , " he exclaims , " c'itaient bienld tnes adversaires , " and the whole book is but an eloquent variation of this theme : " I am opposed only by scoundrels , whoever refuses to accept my views , refuses from selfishness or from hatred against me . " Since Rousseau we have seen no one so convinced that the whole world was conspiring against him . His only defensor is the People—a vague abstraction about which eloquent periods may be turned .

    This is not the spirit in which to write history , nor in fact to write anything worth reading . In Lamartine ' s History of the Revolution , people were disagreeably affected by the tone of universal praise which , by being extended to men of all parties and all capacities , became absolutely null . It was a fault , yet a fault on the right side . It is perilous to sit in judgment on the motives of men , yet he will be nearer the truth by infinite degrees who believes all men honest , than he who believes no man honest but

    himself . Lamartine , with a poet s sympathy , could understand diversities of belief , and respect the motive while condemning the doctrine . But Louis Blanc really seems to admit no variety in creed , and even those who share his own views extort from him no generous enthusiasm . Lamartine was the hero of his own book : there was something grandiose and naive at the same time in the wuy he sculptured his own statue , for which a magnificent revolution was the pedestal ; he painted as giants those upon

    whose shoulders he was raised ; the greater they were the greater he who looked down upon them . Louis Blanc is equally the hero of his book ; but instead of raising himself by raising others , ho towers above them by lowering them to the mud . A word of praise scattered here and there , is like Falstaff ' s h , a ' pennyworth of bread beside tho enormity of his bill for sack . If M . Louis Blanc really and truly believes that he is hated by all who oppose his doctrines , we beg to suggest that the cause lies in his

    own want of trust in others . That he has enemies we know ; that there are men who would not scruple tq send him to the galleys for his opinions , we arc disposed to admit , but does not this arise from the very fault we blame in him , namely , the unwillingness to believe that others are sincere ? And of tnpsewho are not personally his enemies , but who oppose his views , does he not think they hate him because he hates them ? If ho trusted in their

    integrity would he not believe they trusted in his ? To us it seems that Louis Blanc's enemies are the product of his own intemperate style . However one might criticise his doctrines as impracticable or even dangerous , yet had he stood calmly and manfully defending them he would have extorted sympathy and respect even from his antagonists . But ho threw about vehement accusations of egotism and heartless spoliation , and roused the passions of his antagonists . Sowing the wind he reaped the whirlwind . His

    exile is his own fault . He acted like a bold , like a wise , like an honest man , when he insisted on putting his ideas into practice as soon has he came into power . True or false those ideas were his , and he would have been false to his own soul had he hesitated to use his utmost in realizing them because others saw their " danger . " But much as we admire him in that respect , we as distinctly condemn his

    perpetual excitation of the passions of men by his intemperate polemics , and by his reckless , foolish , nay almost monstrous system of attributing bad motives to opponents . With remarkable powers of style he has latterly always written as if in a fever . Yet any critic—merely as a critic—would tell him that rant is not eloquence , and that he has impaired even the finer notes of his voice by the continued vehemence of his declamation . Daniel Stern ' Histoire de la Revolution has the merit of being a narrative of events , and not the pedestal on which he raises himself . It is the only book on the subject which has yet appeared in which the writer was not more or less the hero of the revolution . Amidst great inexactitude of statements and somewhat too rash a style of generalizing , there are excellent pages in this book animated by real convictions . Daniel Stern is a Socialist blue-stocking ; and

    though belonging to one of the most ancient families of Brittany , her democratic tendencies are no new result of events , for some years she has been at war with the patrician class to which she belongs . We mention this because it may give a piquancy to the perusal of her work to know that its terrible onslaughts upon the old regime proceed from a patrician . Were it our cue to raise the very transparent mask we might perhaps add to the piquancy ; but the book is really interesting enough , without needing a biographical explanation .

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    Notes And Extracts. The Toiling Millions...

    NOTES AND EXTRACTS . The Toiling Millions and the Debt . — If we imagine that in 1815 a monomania had seized the whole English nation ; that they had , as far as possible , destroyed by the pickaxe or by blasting , by flood and fire , all the fixed or elaborate capital in Great Britain , leaving only food for one year , and the rudest tools and aids known to semi-barbarous times ; and had at the same time destroyed the debt , but preserved political harmony , —it is , at least , a tenable opinion that the country would in consequence already be richer than it has actually become , and yet have no debt . For five years there would

    have been great private and public poverty ; before ten years there would have been high and rapidly advancing prosperity ; and , by 1830 , the country would have been competent to commence the railway system , as she actually did . In the last twenty years , with the same taxation , and the same lavishness , the Exchequer would have had twenty-six millions yearly to spare on reconstructing and beautifying all that had been overthrown . Thus there appears not a shadow of argument on the side which alleges that our working millions are the better for the property bequeathed with the debt . —Newman on the Constitutional and Moral Right or Wrong of our National Debt .

    Tin ? German Baijel . —There is in a Church in Silesia a painting of the building of Babel . The builders are in tlie utmost confusion . From a window in the calm sky above them God looks smilingly . Under the picture is this inscription : " From a window in heaven looks the Lord , and says—gentlemen , nothing will come of that " A Polish paper advises the Germans to remove this picture to the Augustine church , in which the Erfurt Parliament is planning the new German unity . The Divisions in tiik Church . —The Anglican talks in high strain of the Catholic consent , as if he were not contradicted by the Bible-Society preacher in the next parish church . The Evangelical glorifies the

    Lutheran reformation , which his Iractarian neighbour denounces as an npostney ; and the communion , to which thpy both have taken vows , is praised by the one as the great ally , by the other as the ? appointed barrier , to the Protestantism of Europe . Both parties affect to be ignorant that the Church of England is the product of compromise , and , in its scheme of doctrine and usage , has been voted into its form of existence by the accidents of party ami the confused action and reaction of opinion . They pretend that it is constructed around an " Idea" : as well might you look for such a thing in a parliamentary resolution framed to catch votes . It is a dangerous employment to hunt for theories in a system of pacified discrepancies ; for , while such theories are sure

    to be mutually destructive , each necessarily insists on having the whole system to itself , and will let no lodgings under the same roof to its contradictory . Hence , differences , wide as those which ront Christendom asunder in the sixteenth century , co-exist in the national Church ; but co-exist only till one class is strong enough to expel the other , or the nation provoked enough to silence both . — Westminster Review for April . England in 1850 . —Epochs sometimeR occur , in the course of the existence of a nation , at which the ancient customs of a people arc changed , public morality destroyed , religious belief disturbed , and the spell of tradition broken , whilst the diffusion of knowledge is yet imperfect , and the civil rights of tho community are ill secured , or confined within very narrow limits . The country then assumes a dim aud dubious shape in the

    eyes of the citizens ; they no longer behold it in the soil which they inhabit , for that soil is to them a dull inanimate clod ; nor in the usages of their forefathers , whic h they have been taught to look upon as a debasing yoke nor in religion , for of that they doubt ; nor in the laws ! which do not originate in their own authority ; nor in the legislator , whom they fear and despise . The country is lost to their senses , they can neither discover it under its own . nor under borrowed features , and they intrench , themselves within the dull precincts of a narrow egotism . They are emancipated from prejudice , withouthaving acknowledged the empire of reason ; they are neither animated by the

    instinctive patriotism of monarchical subjects , nor by the thinking patriotism of republican citizens ; but tbey have stopped half-way between the two , in the midst of confusion and of distress . In this predicament , to retreat is impossible ; for a people cannot restore the vivacity of its earlier times , any more than a man can return t o the innocence and the bloom of childhood : such things may be regretted , but they cannot be renewed . The only thing , then , which remains to be done is to proceed , and to accelerate the union of private with public interests , since the period of disinterested patriotism is gone by for ever . —De Tocqueville .

    Benevolence and Selfishness . —Some value their fellow-creatures by what they can get out of them , others value them for themselves . And that is the difference between benevolence and selfishness . Of course , there are various shades of intensity in each of these varieties . Some use their human tools in a rougher and har sher manner than others , some use them , indeed , so pleasantly , that they are hardly felt to be using them at all ; and amongst those to whom the happiness of others is waste

    the material of their own happiness , some this material quite unintentionally , and make such blunders in management that they produce discomfort where they mean to produce happiness . Then , again , some there are who have one person whose happiness is to them the material of their own , whilst all the rest of the world are but to them as instruments , and thus benevolence and selfishness mingle in the same character . —Compton Merivale .

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    Position Of Science. We Frequently Hear ...

    POSITION OF SCIENCE . We frequently hear the lament that there are now no great men . We hear of no man to whom we look up to as an authority , few men who can even call themselves leader of a party . There were times when an opinion spoken by a great man would be taken as a point of departure , as a datum line for a calculation , as a basis for a great superstructure : this has ceased to be . No authority

    can now be quoted unless something more than a mere opinion be given ; the reasoning must be known , and the opinion must be so digested as to become our own opinion before we can believe . We have authorities for facts ; but even these we must compare with other facts , with the facts as observed by other men , before we can receive them , and they must bear internal evidence of truth , they must show themselves to be consistent with the

    universal order of things , or the testimony of eyewitnesses themselves will be very guardedly used . The authority of individuals has had its time ; it has arisen wherever a man has shown himself to be more gifted than his fellow-men , when he has shown that , however he got his wisdom or his knowledge , he has been right when others have been wrong ; or when others have not seen the way

    he has had power to show a way which his fellows have recognised as the right one . In all these cases authority has arisen from individual greatness of mind , and men have been led right or wrong by the power of the individual . It is long before we can put down an authority whatever the mode of its rise may have been ; and the familiar illustration drawn from the

    schoolmen who quoted their great teachers as we now quote the well-known laws of nature , has its parallel in all countries and in all times . Men scarcely know why they obey the usual laws , many of them the same in all countries ; each nation has derived them from a different source ; some have looked to their lawgivers , some to their heroes or divinities , and the great necessities of man ' nature have made themselves known by various methods , forming themselves into laws by the most wonderful and numerous devices . In cases where the power of the individual has been great , he has been found to be a man in whom the lessons he has

    given have existed as firm and exalted instincts , to which those who have been inferior have leaned ; and the instincts of man have guided him where his reason has not seen the way . This individual authority wielded by hands neither good nor wise , by rights which accident has devolved on them , has been the cause of many complainings in society , nnd of much dissatisfaction among thinking men . The want has always been to find n guide from whose path we shall have no wish to deviate , a

• Citation
  • Leader (1850-1860), April 27, 1850, page 16, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse-os.kdl.kcl.ac.uk/periodicals/l/issues/cld_27041850/page/16/