No. CCXVI.

Ir is ever the fate of genius to be in advance of its age--too often to be rewarded only by its neglect or its censures. Galileo in the dungeon of the Inquisition was no unapt type of high intellect persecuted by the dull-sighted many. When Divine wisdom often failed to obtain a hearing on earth, genius in the creature cannot look to fare better. "Go up, bald head!" has not seldom been the cry of the would-be wise of the Gentiles, as it was of the children of Israel. Disasters have come upon nations, ruin to empires, not because there was no voice to warn, but no wish to listen--not from the absence of wisdom, but from its neglect. Who listened to Demosthenes, when he strove to save Athens from her blindness? Did not six generations neglect the warnings of the great Sobieski, ere Poland fell? Who listened to Burke, when with prophetic eye he scanned the future of the French Revolution, and in the brilliance of the meteor beheld the gathering of the storm? Yet Burke lived to hear his éloge begun, and posterity has completed it. Nations live faster, as well as longer, now than in ancient times; the increased vigour of the species hurries on society from stage to stage; and in the rapidity with which disaster follows error, and retribution crime, we not only behold the means by which Providence now preserves the nations by purifying them, but by which wisdom and virtue are rewarded, folly and

passion punished, in the lifetime of a single generation. An erring people now no longer escapes misery by handing it over to posterity; the impostor or deluder rarely reaches his grave unmasked; the Present seldom bequeathes a golden idol which the Future finds to be brass. This is a comforting assurance to the honest and wise, a benefit to the species, a terror to evil-doers, a warning to fools. The day of dupes, the reign of folly, is shortened; and if men still go astray (as assuredly they ever will) it will not be from the mists of ignorance, but from the allurements of passion. Time, now-a-days, speedily winnows error from truth, and falsifies theories and predictions in the lifetime of their authors.

There is no more difficult task for genius than to detect in their secret springs the issues of future events. This can only be attempted after scanning keenly and widely the pages of history, and generalising from an extensive view of the workings of human passion; and the attempt is never successful, save when seconded by tran scendent natural abilities. The mere fact of the reprinting of Mr. Alison's political essays proves that he possesses this prescient faculty in a very high degree; and when we examine them in detail, the coincidence of events with his predictions is marvellous. The fact that all these essays were written for the monthly press,

VOL. XXXVI.-NO. CCXVI.

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most of them of course hastily, still further heightens our admiration for the accuracy of his views and the ability with which they are developed. We have nothing similar in our language: they stand forth alone in the world of letters. We have recently had reprints of critical and historical essays of first-rate excellence, but in the department of politics, not one. Among the published selections of articles from the Edinburgh Review, no series of political essays has found a place. Praised to the skies on their first appearance, not unfrequently changing the politics of Government, they have nevertheless been left behind by the march of the world. Time has weighed them in his balance, and found them wanting.

"Open one of the political essays of the Blue and Yellow, which were read and admired by all the world thirty or forty years ago, and what do you find? Loud declamations against the continuance of the war, and emphatic assertions of the inability of England to contend at land with the conqueror

of Continental Europe; continual reproaches of incapacity against the Ministry who were preparing the liberation of Spain and the battle of Waterloo; ceaseless assertions that the misery of Ireland was entirely owing to misgovernment that nothing but Catholic emancipation, and the curtailment of the Protestant Church were required to make that island the most happy, loyal, and contented realm, and its Celtic inhabitants the most industrious and well-conditioned in Europe; loud denunciations that the power of the Crown had increased, was increasing, and ought to be diminished;' lamentations on the evidently approaching extinetion of the liberties of England, under the combined action of a gigantic war expenditure and a corrupt selfish oligarchy; strong recommendations of the speedy abolition of slavery in our West India Colonies, as the only mode of enabling our planters to compete with the efforts of slave sugar-states. Time has enabled the world to estimate these doctrines at their true value; and amidst great efforts at bolstering them up, subsequent times have quietly consigned them to the tomb of all the Capulets."

Besides their prescient sagacity, what is well worthy of remark in Mr. Alison's political essays, is their eminently practical nature. Not a plan which he proposes, not a remedy which he suggests, but bears the stamp of efficacy and

simplicity. Well versed in the affairs of men and in the functions of civil administration, no crude theory or speculative plan escapes him; and he makes his views as intelligible to others as they are manifest to himself. One would think he had been Premier for as long a period as he has been Sheriff although, in these days, we fear this is but a doubtful compliment. Of his intimate acquaintance with the science of government and the actual state of the nation, these volumes furnish redundant proof. Not to mention his splendid essays on Parliamentary Reform and the British Constitution as to the sagacity of which the last eighteen years have been one long sad commentary-we would say to a sceptic, look at his article on Crime and Transportation. Does he not lay bare the fearful progress of crime amongst us as with the scalpel of the anatomist, and probe the devouring gangrene with the skill of a Cooper? When and how has Government, with all its gigantic aid from commissions and committees, ever attempted to legislate for this monster malady? The attempt has never been seriously made. Arrest it by secular education !-as well arrest the Thames with sand. The spectacle of crime multiplying ten times faster than the population, and every seventh person in these islands a pauper, hanging a dead weight on the arm of Industry, should rouse one and all to the portentous aspect of the future. He who can read that essay, and still shut his eyes to the crime accumulating in the heart of the State, and sapping the foundations of its prosperity, would not be convinced though one rose from the dead; he who can imagine a simpler or more effectual series of alleviations than is there set forth, had better divulge it. Or look at his essay on Direct Taxation. Could the present errors of the income-tax be more convincingly exposed, or the true principles of the system more clearly explained? What a depth of sagacity, what a practical knowledge of politics and human nature, in his reasons for extending the property-tax to a lower class than it now affects!-not merely for justice-sake, as at present all property under £200 a-year is virtually exempted; not for the sake of any

great addition to the revenue, but in order to interest the majority of the nation in opposing its undue extension. Without such a safeguard, he says, and says most truly, this tax will become an insidious engine of confiscation. The Ten-pounders, paying nothing to it, will selfishly urge on its progressive increase, till the whole landed aristocracy will be despoiled to gratify the urban constituencies. He shows how this tax ought to be lowered one-half upon income, and suggests a feasible plan for the delicate operation of rating professional men. He shows how heavily the present tax bears upon landlords and the agricultural classesbecause they canamong other reasons, not possibly conceal their revenue; while commercial men and capitalists can do so readily, and actually do so to an enormous extent. His words are especially worthy of attention at the present moment, when the removal of the Income Tax is about to be discussed in parliament, and when our whole system of taxation imperatively calls for reconsideration, and a re-adjustment of its burdens. Finally, look at almost the last article in his third volume, "Free-Trade Finance and Reform," dated April and May, 1850. Could there be an abler elucidation of the present state of the country, or a more crushing exposure of the numberless errors and flimsy fallacies of the Whig Ministry? We would gladly transcribe, for the enlightenment and discomfiture of that owlish party, his graphic picture of the prostration of Britain under Liberal misgovernment. But the passage is too long to be extracted, and will not bear curtailment. "Future ages," he says, in concluding it, "will ask what were the devastating wars, the stunning calamities, the loss of provinces, the severance of colonies, which inflicted such deep and irremediable wounds on the British nation, during these memorable periods; and they will be answered, it was thirty years of unbroken peace at home, a series of brilliant "colonial conquests abroad, and ONE SYSTEM. We likewise pass over, with regret, his counter-picture of what we might have been under other government, in order to make room for a warning that should interest even the dullest ear.

"To the modern rulers of the British nation, to the constituents of the majority of the House of Commons, to buy cheap and to sell dear is the great object of ambition. They have gained the first-let them see whether they will secure the last. Let them see whether, amidst the ruin of the agricultural interest, and the declining circumstances of all trades which are exposed to the effects of foreign competition, they, the sellers of commodities, will make their fortunes. If they do, it will be a new era in society; for it will be one in which the trading class amass riches in consequence of the ruin of their customers.

"There is no monitor, however, to nations as to individuals, like suffering. Let Free Trade, therefore, have a fair trial. Let the shopkeepers see what benefit they are likely practically to gain by the ruin of their customers. They have the government in their hands, for they have the appointment of a majority in the House of Commons. The agricultural interest, the colonies, the shipping interest, the small manufacturer, are, to all practical purposes, disfranchised. Let the trading classes, then, feel the effects of their These will be such that they cannot continue. Ere long a change of policy, and probably of rulers, will be forced upon Government by the universal cry of suffering. But let them recollect that it is their measures which are now upon trial; that theirs will be the responsibility if they fail; and that, if the empire be dismembered and the national independence lost, theirs will be the present loss, and theirs the eternal infamy."

own measure.

The whole essay is a proof that we have "fallen upon evil days,"-a melancholy confirmation of the saying of the old senator, when he sent his youthful heir one day to the council board"My son, I would have you learn with how little wisdom a great nation may be governed!"

But circumscribed as we are in our limits, it is less Mr. Alison's politics that we mean to review, than the general character of his writings, and his peculiarities of mind and opinion. We find these fully developed in the recent issue of his History and Essays; so that we need not enter upon any examination of his brilliant" Military Life of Marlborough," and various works on social and political economy, further than to state that they all bear the same impress of profound reflection and vivid and vigorous thought. His Essays are a splendid supplement to his His