higher ranks; the aristocracy would be incapable of defending itself by its own arms, and the middle class alone could speak the language of justice and reason to the people with any authority.'

The Baron is so much struck with the arrangement of the House of Commons, that he gives an engraving of it, and attributes to it many peculiarities, and advantageous peculiarities, of our debates, and in our opinion justly. His remarks on the defects of the French system of debate, their tribunes, their written speeches, the reporting past debates, their squabblings about phraseology,- are penned with a masterly hand, and must produce a useful effect in France. He gives also an excellent report of the famous county meeting in Kent, in 1822, at which Cobbett proposed and carried his insane resolution for the reduction of the national debt, by declaring the nation a bankrupt.

Our readers may judge, from the extracts which we have given, of the Baron's style. He is in general very correct in his statements, making no other mistakes than those which it is almost impossible for a foreigner to avoid: such as, p. 83., where he attributes to Mill the article Cottage Economy in the Edinburgh Encyclopædia, which was in fact written by Mac Culloch; and in p. 159., where he makes the strange assertion, that Mr. Whitbread's mother, (Lord Grey's sister,) is of the blood royal of England; in consequence of which, p. 161., Mr. Whitbread claimed and obtained some royal privileges at Cambridge. But these blunders are not in general very material.

We have met with no foreigner since De Lolme who has evinced so clear and perfect an acquaintance with our political institutions as Baron DE STAËL. He has truly delineated their peculiar and delicate features, has traced their connection, even in the minutest shades, with the substantial existence of liberty, and has held them up with generous applause, to the admiration and (if possible) to the adoption of his countrymen. He proposes to extend his views hereafter to the opinions and habits of Englishmen; and we make no doubt that his observations will be marked by the same truth, candor, liberality, and gentleman-like spirit, which shine in every one of these pages, and give them so much value.

Nor are we without hopes that his labors will diffuse in France more enlarged and manly notions of the representative system, than those which at present prevail there, and which are by no means confined to the court or the minis

terial side of the Lower Chamber. The French of every party are as yet school-boys in the tactics of civil freedom, and their ideas of religious liberty are, we fear, equally immature and short-sighted. On both these points they cannot fail to receive a great deal of instruction from the Baron's letters, and the seed being sown, we may in due season expect the harvest.

The version of this work is full of Gallicisms, and executed in a creeping and slovenly manner. It must be owned, that the people who translate now-a-days for the booksellers, are very humble laborers in the vineyard of literature.

ART. IV. Note sur la Grèce. Par M. le Vicomte DE CHATEAUBRIAND, Membre de la Société en Faveur des Grecs. pp. 48. Paris. Le Normant, Père, Rue de Seine. 1825.

INCE M. DE CHATEAUBRIAND's unceremonious dismissal from the department of Foreign Affairs, he has been diligent in keeping his name before the public by occasional brochures. The accession of the present sovereign of France gave him an opportunity of soliciting the royal favor by a panegyric, which if it did not rival that of Pliny on Trajan in elegance of style, far surpassed it in the measure of its adulation. Nevertheless M. de Villele still maintained his ascendancy: M. DE CHATEAUBRIAND, was not recalled to office; and, like some disappointed courtiers of our own country, he turned patriot. Now he is as clamorous for liberal principles, as he was before for ultra-royalism; and he laudably exercises his talents in opposing every measure, and embarrassing every negotiation, of his former colleagues.

When in the cabinet, M. DE CHATEAUBRIAND was made acquainted with all the diplomatic difficulties of the Greek question, and he concurred with M. de Villele and the Autocrat of Russia, in allowing those imaginary impediments to be of greater importance to Europe, than the emancipation of a Christian people from the intolerable yoke of the Sultan. But now that he is no longer a minister, he has resumed his feelings as a man, and his genius as a writer; and he brushes away, with infinite ease, those cob-web obstacles which he formerly would not have ventured to examine. He has even become a member of a French society in favor of the Greeks; and the object of this slight publication is to vindicate their cause, and to obtain subscriptions for their treasury.

This is indeed a noble duty, and worthy of M. DE CHATEAUBRIAND. He has, with more than his usual modesty, intitled his brochure A Note on Greece:' it is something better; for it contains, within a brief space, a statement of the difficulties with which the continental courts surround the claims of the Greeks, and a complete refutation of the arguments upon which those objections are founded. Such a work, from the pen of so distinguished a writer, is particularly valuable at this moment, when the contest in the Morea seems hastening to a crisis.

M. DE CHATEAUBRIAND assumes that there is nobody, at least in Christian countries, who does not wish for the emancipation of the Greeks: but there are public writers, he observes, who, without being inimical to the freedom of that people, insist that foreign powers ought not to interfere in the matter, for these four reasons:

The Turkish empire has been recognized at the Congress of Vienna as an integral part of Europe: the Grand Signor is the legitimate sovereign of the Greeks, whence it follows that the Greeks are rebellious subjects: the mediation of interposing powers might raise difficulties of policy; and it is not expedient that a popular government should be established in the east of Europe.'

M. DE CHATEAUBRIAND answers these objections in detail. With respect to the first, he asks;

Did the Congress of Vienna guarantee to the Grand Signor the inviolability of his dominions? What! ensure them even against the fortunes of war? Did ministers from the Porte attend the Congress? Did the Grand Vizir sign the protocol? Did the Mufti engage to protect the supreme Pontiff, and the supreme Pontiff the Mufti ? It is scarcely possible to consider such extraordinary and erroneous assertions with the gravity which they require. Further, the Porte would be exceedingly surprized to hear that any thing was guaranteed to it by a foreign power. The Sultan reigns by the Koran and his sword; it is even casting a doubt on his rights to recognize them. But the writers who insist that the dominions of the Grand Signor have been placed under the safeguard of the Congress of Vienna, do they remember that the possessions of the Christian princes, including their colonies, were really guaranteed by the acts of the Congress? See, then, to what this argument would lead. When the Spanish colonies are spoken of, who refers to the proceedings of the Congress of Vienna?'

As to the legitimacy of the Sultan, M. DE CHATEAUBRIAND observes ;

The legitimate subjects of the successor of Mahomet are Mahometans. The Greeks, as Christians, are neither legitimate

nor

nor illegitimate subjects, they are slaves, dogs born only to die beneath the lash of the true believers. The Greek nation is not incorporated with the Turkish by an equality of civil and political rights; she is therefore not bound by any of the ties which connect a sovereign with his subject. Submitting, from the beginning, only to the right of conquest, she obtained a few privileges from the conqueror in exchange for the tribute which she agreed to pay. She has paid, she has yielded obedience, so long as her privileges were respected, nay, even after they were violated. But when her sacred ministers were executed, her temples defiled, when thousands of her children were assassinated, burnt, or drowned, when her women were given up to prostitution, and her children taken away and sold in the markets of Asia, whatever remained of blood in her heart, after so many sufferings, rose up against her oppressor. These slaves, slaves by compulsion, began to defend themselves with their irons. The Greek, who never was a subject according to the law of nations, became free by the law of nature: he has shaken off the yoke without being a rebel, without breaking any legitimate tie, for no such tie had been formed with him. The Mussulman and the Christian in the Morea are two enemies who had concluded a truce on certain conditions: these conditions the Mussulman violated, and the Christian resumed his arms: they both now find themselves in the position in which they were when they were first committed in combat, 300 years ago. Will Europe permit this effusion of blood to go on for ever?'

This is close and powerful reasoning. With respect to the objection that the interference of foreign powers might be attended with difficulties of policy, M. DE CHATEAUBRIAND contends, that no European powers dream at this day of dismembering and appropriating to themselves the dominions of the Grand Signor. Who thinks of a war with the Porte?

It is not proposed to obtain the independence of Greece by making a joint attack on Turkey, and then fighting for the spoils; the only thing proposed is, that all the powers should unite in requesting the Porte to treat with the Greeks, to put an end to the war of extermination which afflicts the Christian world, interrupts commerce, embarrasses navigation, obliges neutrals to obtain convoys, and disturbs the general peace. If the Divan declined to lend an ear to these just representations, the recognition of the independence of Greece might be the immediate consequence of that refusal by this simple proceeding Greece would be saved, without firing a single gun for her; and the Porte, sooner or later, would be obliged to follow the example of the Christian states.'

Besides, it should be recollected, as M. DE CHATEAUBRIAND shews, that Turkey recognizes foreign governments only as governments de facto, and that she does not feel herself bound by the international law of Europe. The Sultan does not hesitate,

hesitate, for instance, to imprison the envoys of nations with which he commences hostilities. The traveller is protected in Turkey rather by the hospitable manners of the people, and the charitable precepts of the Koran, than by the laws. In his commercial dealings the Mussulman honestly adheres to his contract, but the exchequer is a tyrant and an extortioner. The Turks give no quarter in the field, and the people whom they conquer they enslave. The right of sovereignty in the Porte can only be legitimately exercised in its Mahometan provinces. Its presence in the Christian states is not a social establishment, but a pure military occupation. Neither would the separation of Greece from Turkey cause any material injury to the latter power; on the contrary, its strength would be augmented by such a change, since a continuance of the civil war must necessarily harass its resources. The politicians of the Porte say, and with some reason, that the Ottoman government will never recover its pristine strength until it returns wholly to Asia. The Sultan might even gain a subsidy from the Greeks, if he were disposed to consent in time to their independence. They may soon be in a condition not to require his recognition, and if they be, they will be little disposed to pay for it. They are already far advanced in the career of freedom; they have only to look to their history, to their seas, and their mountains, for incitements to devotion to that great cause; they are already organized; they have fleets and armies; their blockades are respected; they contract loans; they coin money and promulgate laws; their government is quite as much a government de facto as that of the Grand Signor.

As to the last objection, that it might be inexpedient to establish a republican power in the east of Europe, M. DE CHATEAUBRIAND gets rid of it by recommending the Greeks to adopt a representative monarchy. To this recommendation we trust they will never accede. The soil of Greece has ever been unfriendly to monarchy; and its local character, composed of peninsulas and islands, evidently indicates the system of a federative republic as the only form of government which can render them united, free, and prosperous. The leaders and the people have, besides, been already too long accustomed to practical democracy to feel contented under a throne, even if it were limited by liberal restrictions. The country is too poor to sustain the pomp of royalty; and a povertystricken sovereign is the most rapacious and cruel of mankind. Such is Ferdinand of Spain.

In every other point we fully agree with M. DE CHATEAUBRIAND: we sincerely applaud his enthusiasm in the cause of

the