THE BOURBONS. 371 that order and peace would not satisfy the nation, which must have progress also. The next reign. The great characteristic of the policy which succeeded the flight of the elder Bourbons was its implicit voluntary renunciation of regular intellectual and moral government, in any form. Having become directly material, the policy held itself aloof from doctrines and sentiments, and concerned itself only with interests, properly so called. This was owing, not only to disgust and perplexity amidst the chaos of conceptions, but to the increasing difficulty of maintaining material order in the midst. of mental and moral anarchy; a difficulty which left no leisure or liberty to government to think of anything beyond the immediate embarrassment, or to provide for anything higher than its own existence. This was the complete political fulfilment of the negative philosophy, all functions of government being simply repressive, unconnected with any idea of guidance, and leaving all active pursuit of intellectual and moral regeneration to private co-operation. A system of organized corruption was the necessary consequence, as the whole structure must otherwise be liable to fall to pieces at any moment, under the attacks of uncontrolled ambition. Hence the perpetual increase of public expenditure, as an indispensable condition of a system boasted of for its economy. While closing my elucidation of the decay of the great temporal dictatorship, I must just observe on the novelty of the situation of a central power to which we may hardly apply the term royal, as all monarchical associations had vanished with the political faith that sanctioned them, and whose hereditary transmission appears extremely improbable,* considering the course of events for half a century past, and the impossibility that the function should ever degenerate into the mere sinecure that it is in England; a condition which requires that genuine personal capacity which rarely descends from father to son. Meantime the encroachments of the legislature on the socalled royal power,-the forcing of its organs upon it, without liberty of choice, so that the action of government is in reality transferred to any one who may for the moment be in a position of parliamentary ascendency,-the independence of the ministers who might presently determine the abstraction of the royal element altogether, these dangers would render the royal function a totally impracticable one if it were not administered with personal ability, confined to the maintenance of public order, and so vigilant and concentrated as to have the advantage over the desultory and contradictory ambition of men who are appeased by new distributions of power and frequent personal changes. In this provisional state of affairs, when the official system declines the spiritual reorganization for which it feels its own unfitness, the intellectual and moral authority falls into the hands of anybody who will accept it, with *Published in 1842. out any security of personal aptitude in regard to the most important and difficult problems that have ever engaged or can engage human thought: hence the reign of journalism, in the hands of literary men and lawyers, and the hopeless anarchy which some of them propose and all of them, in their collective capacity, illustrate. The power actually possessed by this illegal social authority appears to me a kind of imperfect recognition of the proper priority of intellectual and moral regeneration over mere political experiment, the efficacy of which is wholly exhausted as long as it is separated from the philosophical guidance of the higher renovating agency. The actual results of this last period consist of the extension of Extension of the crisis to the whole of the great European comthe movement. munity, of which France is merely the vanguard. The germs of progress could not but be checked everywhere while it appeared that they failed in France; and the propagation of the movement was resumed only when the cause of the failure in France was made apparent. The imitation of the English type was never carried very far; for Catholic nations observed its effect in France; and even in Germany, where the aristocratic element is least reduced, no substantial experiment was tried, while the spectacle was before the world of the revolutionary excitement penetrating the British organization itself. There was no encouragement to transplant a system whose type was attacked at home. The negative doctrine presided over political movement everywhere; but it was nowhere so put to the trial as in France; and thus its radical impotence was universally manifest, without the need of any other nation undergoing the dreadful experience which had been endured by the French people for the benefit of all others. I observe lastly, that the common movement is rendered secure by this decisive extension. The French revolutionary defence first guaranteed its safety; and it now rests upon the impossibility of any serious retrograde repression, which must be universal to be of any effect; and which cannot be universal, because the nations will never again be seriously stirred up against any one of their number, and armies are everywhere engaged, for the most part, in restraining interior disturbance. We have now reviewed the five periods of revolutionary crisis which have divided the last half-century; and the first consideration thence arising is of the necessity of a spiritual reorganization, towards which all political tendencies converge, and which awaits only the philosophical initiative that it requires. Before proceeding to discuss and supply that need, I must present a general view of the extinction of the theological and military régime, and the rise of a rational and pacific system, without regard to particular periods. It is necessary thus to estimate the natural and rapid fulfilment of the slow negative and positive movement of the five preceding centuries. THEOLOGY AND MORALITY. decay. 373 We must begin by considering the prolongation of the political decay; and the theological part of it first, as the Completion of chief basis of the old social system. The revolution- the theological ary crisis completed the religious disorganization by striking a decisive blow at the essential conditions, political, intellectual, and moral, of the old spiritual economy. Politically, the subjection of the clergy to the temporal power was much aggravated by depriving them of the legal influence over domestic life which they retain in appearance in Protestant countries; and again, by stripping them of special property, and making them dependent on the annual discussion of an assembly of unbelieving laymen, usually ill-disposed towards the priesthood, and only restrained from practically proving it by an empirical notion that theological belief is necessary to social harmony. Whatever consideration has been shown them has been on condition of their renouncing all political influence, and confining themselves to their private functions among those who desire their offices. The time is evidently near when the ecclesiastical budget will be suppressed, and the religious part of society will be left to support their respective pastors. This method, which is highly favourable to the American clergy, would be certain destruction in France, and in all countries nominally Catholic. The intellectual decay of the theological organization was accelerated by the revolutionary crisis, which spread religious emancipation among all classes. Such enfranchisement cannot be doubtful among a people who have listened, in their old cathedrals, to the direct preaching of a bold atheism, or of a deism not less hostile to ancient faith: and the case is complete when we add that the most odious persecutions could not revive any genuine religious fervour, when its intellectual sources were dried up: and any testimony of the kind that has been alleged in such instances has not been of the spontaneous sort that is socially valuable, but the result of retrograde prepossessions, imperial or royal.-A persuasion which lasted longer was that the principle of all morality was to be found in religious doctrine. After minds of a high. order had obtained theological emancipation, many private examples, and the whole life of the virtuous Spinoza for one,-indicated how entirely all virtue was independent of the beliefs which, in the infancy of humanity, had long been indispensable to its support. In addition to this case of the few, the many exemplified the same truth,-the feeble religious convictions which remained to them during the third phase having obviously no essential effect on conduct, while they were the direct cause of discord, domestic, civil, and national. It is long, however, before any habitual belief yields to evidence; especially on matters so complex as the relations of morality; and we have seen that there is no virtue which did not in the first instance need that religious sanction which must be relinquished when intellectual and moral advancement has disclosed the real foundation of morals. There has always been an outcry, in one direction or another, about the demoralization that humanity must undergo if this or that superstition were suppressed; and we see the folly, when it relates to a matter which to us has long ceased to be connected with religion; as, for instance, the observance of personal cleanliness, which the Brahmins insist on making wholly dependent on theological prescription. For some centuries after Christianity was widely established, a great number of statesmen, and even philosophers, went on lamenting the corruption which must follow the fall of polytheistic superstitions. The greatest service that could be rendered to humankind while this sort of clamour continues to exist, is that a whole nation should manifest a high order of virtue while essentially alienated from theological belief. This service was rendered by the demonstration attending the French Revolution. When, from the leaders to the lowest citizens, there was seen so much courage, military and civic, such patriotic devotedness, so many acts of disinterestedness, obscure as well as conspicuous, and especially throughout the whole course of the republican defence, while the ancient faith was abased or persecuted, it was impossible to hold to the retrograde belief of the moral necessity of religious opinions. It will not be supposed that deism was the animating influence in this case; for not only are its prescriptions confused and precarious, but the people were nearly as indifferent to modern deism as to any other religious system. This view,—of religious doctrine having lost its moral prerogatives, concludes the evidence of the revolutionary crisis having completed the decay of the theological régime. From this date Catholicism could be regarded only as external to the society which it once ruled over ;- -as a majestic ruin, a monument of a genuine spiritual organization, and an evidence of its radical conditions. These purposes are at present very imperfectly fulfilled,partly because the political organism shares the theological discredit, and partly from the intellectual inferiority of the Catholic clergy, who are of a lower and lower mental average, and less and less aware of the elevation of their old social mission. The social barrenness of this great organization is a sad spectacle: and we can hardly hope that it can be made use of in the work of reconstruction, because the priesthood has a blind antipathy to all positive philosophy, and persists in its resort to hopeless intrigue to obtain a fancied restoration. The obvious probability is, that this noble social edifice will follow the fate of polytheism, through the wearing out of its intellectual basis, and be wholly overthrown, leaving only the imperishable remembrance of the vast services of every kind which connect it historically with human progress, and of the essential improvements which it introduced into the theory of social organization. DECAY OF WARFARE. Decay of system. 375 Turning from the religious to the civic system, we find that, notwithstanding a great exceptional warfare, the revolutionary crisis destroyed the military, no less than the theological system. The mode of republican defence, in the first place, discredited the old military caste, which lost its exclusiveness; its professional practice being rivalled by the citizens in general, after a very short apprenticeship. Popular determination was proved to be worth more than tactics. Again, the last series of systematic wars,-those undertaken on behalf of Industry, -were now brought to an end. It was only in England that this old ground remained; and even there it was encroached upon by serious social anxieties. The colonial system was declining everywhere else; and its existence in the British empire is doubtless a special and temporary exception, which may be left to find its own destiny, unmolested by European interference. The independence of the American Colonies introduced the change; and it went forward while the countries of Europe were engrossed with the cares of the revolutionary crisis: and thus disappeared the last general occasion of modern warfare. The great exceptional warfare that I referred to as occasioned by an irresistible sway of circumstances must be the last. Wars of principle, which alone are henceforth possible, are restrained by a sufficient extension of the revolutionary action through Western Europe; for all the anxiety and all the military resources of the governments are engrossed by the care of external order. Precarious as is such a safeguard, it is yet one which will probably avail till the time of reorganization arrives, to institute a more direct and permanent security. A third token of military decline is the practice of forced enlistment, begun in France under the pressure of the revolutionary crisis, perpetuated by the wars of the Empire, and imitated in other countries to strengthen national antagonisms. Having survived the peace, the practice remains a testimony of the anti-military tendencies of modern populations, which furnish a few volunteer officers, but few or no volunteer privates. At the same time it extinguishes military habits and manners, by destroying the special character of the profession, and by making the army consist of a multitude of antimilitary citizens, who assume the duty as a temporary burden. The probability is, that the method will be broken up by an explosion of resistance; and meantime it reduces the military system to a subaltern office in the mechanism of modern society. Thus the time is come when we may congratulate ourselves on the final passing away of serious and durable warfare among the most advanced nations. In this case as in others, the dreams and aspirations which have multiplied in recent times are an expression of a real and serious need,-a prevision of the heart rather than the head, of a happier state of things approaching. The existing peace, long beyond example, and maintained amidst strong incitements to |