The North British Review

THERE is always something to be learnt in accurately discovering the how, the why, the wherefore of certain historical events. Peoples, in our day, have taken the place of persons; and if it might still be an error to "nation" did this or that, that say it is certainly none to ascribe to the collective action of large popular bodies or masses, what, in the history of some two or three hundred years ago, would have been attributable solely to the initiative of such or such an individual. No one has any right now-a-days to disdain the acts of the many, and contemporary history may well be styled the Chronicle of the Crowd.

It is important for us in these islands to know, as correctly as we can, the contemporary history of France, and, above all, the origin of facts that have occurred within the last forty years. About nothing do we know less; and our ignorance comes fully as much from a certain self-willed spirit of our own as from any lack of trustworthy documents to guide us. It is all very well to say to those who seek for information, "See with your own eyes. But we have not so much watched the various acts of the revolutionary drama in France with "our own eyes," as we have persisted in doing so by the aid of British spectacles. We have invariably applied the most absurdly, exclusively John Bullish criterions to things, to judge which impartially it is indispensable that we should lay aside every vestige of national prejudice that may be lurking about us. We have done this more towards those with whom it accorded least, than we have towards any others we have now and then shown ourselves capable of judging Greeks, Turks, Spaniards, Mexicans, or Caffres from their point of view; we never see our neighbours on the other side of the Channel as they really are.

VOL. XXXI. NO. LXI.

Not a few of our mistakes, and certainly the greater portion of our deceptions, have arisen from our remarkable misapprehension of almost everything connected with the Revolution of July 1830. We were wrong in nearly all our appreciations of that event: undervaluing what was overthrown, over-estimating that which overthrew it, and ignoring at once the character of the chief actors in the drama, the manner in which they acted, and the exterior circumstances whereby they were acted upon. If we had known better what the Revolution of 1830 really was— what it did, and what it left undone upon what bases it reposed, and what dangers threatened it, we should not have been taken unprepared by the insurrection of February 1848; nor should we, perhaps, have been so exceedingly surprised at the behaviour of Louis Philippe in '48, if we had had clearly presented to our minds what he went through in '31 and '32. We knew Louis Philippe no better than we knew the intimate characteristics of the movement that placed him on the throne; and it was very difficult for us to know either, seeing that we persisted in judging both, not from their point of view, but from

our own.

Britain put more than the usual amount of British pride, and British indifference to an accurate knowledge of what occurs in foreign countries, into the task of appreciating the sudden change of government in France in the year 1830; and instead of even attempting to be minutely well informed as to what had taken place amongst our neighbours, we preferred believing that they had imitated us, and that the July Revolution was a copy of the act by which Great Britain, after deposing the Stuarts, and crushing Absolutist tendencies in the person of James II., yet respected tradition and upheld the monarchical principle by calling James' daughter to the throne, conjointly with her Dutch consort. This was the quickest, easiest mode of making ourselves familiar with what had happened in France; it saved trouble, and was pleasant to us; and we chose to adopt it without ever caring to examine the differences that existed between the two revolutions. The superficial resemblances satisfied us. A king had been beheaded in either case; his heirs had in either case been restored to the throne; his descendants were again thrown down from their high estate by the uprising of the country, whose liberal tendencies they resisted; and, to complete the parallel, whilst the Stuarts went to the court of the Bourbons, and lived in state at St Germain, the Bourbons came over to the British shores, and took refuge at Holyrood. Nothing could seem more similar, yet never was anything less like. With that we appeared to have nothing to do. It mattered not to us that, whereas throughout our revolutionary movement the great Whig

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The North British Review, Volumen31