THE

EDINBURGH REVIEW,

APRIL, 1853.

No. CXCVIII.

ART. I. History of Europe, from the Fall of Napoleon in 1815 to the Accession of Louis Napoleon in 1852. By Sir ARCHIBALD ALISON, Bart. Vol. I. 8vo. pp. 603.: 1852.

SIR

IR ARCHIBALD ALISON has just published a new Book of Fallacies.' Not content with two volumes on Population and three volumes of Miscellaneous Essays, filled with ponderous error, and enriched by a formidable outwork of statistics drawn out in defence of indefensible positions, he has commenced the publication of what he is pleased to term a History, but which is mainly a cold rechauffée and tedious iteration of theories a hundred times refuted, and now nearly obsolete. He seems resolved to hold the place in literature which Colonel Sibthorp has so long and chivalrously filled in political life; and, while all other men are busy acknowledging past mistakes, learning from experience and observation, and building new conclusions upon new facts, Sir A. Alison is still to be seen fast imbedded in antiquated prepossessions, and clinging with pathetic and desperate fidelity to the skirts of departing misconceptions and the fragments of exploded error. While the cry, even of the clergy, is for more and better schools; while every statesman of every party agrees in proclaiming the necessity and the blessing of extended and improved instruction; and while an Administration embracing nearly every man whom the country is accustomed to honour and to trust, has announced the furtherance of this great object as among its first aims,-Sir A. Alison sets himself with marvellous gallantry to maintain the thesis that crime and

VOL. XCVII. NO. CXCVIII.

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education naturally go hand in hand, and that the ratio which they bear to one another is not, as usually supposed, inverse, but direct! While England is rich and prosperous, and the people well fed and clothed, to a degree seldom if ever known before; while in spite of our enormous expenditure in railways and the vast activity of the commercial world, money is so plentiful that it can with difficulty find employment at 3 per cent. on mortgage, or at 2 per cent. on call; while Protection is abandoned even by a Protectionist Ministry as fallacious and untenable; and while the currency school of Messrs. Attwood and Cobbett, once so noisy, is now silent, deserted, and forgotten, Sir A. Alison devotes all his energies to writing history with a view to prove not only that the country is ruined, pauperised, and doomed, but that this, its well deserved fate, is distinctly traceable to the adoption of Free Trade, and the crippling effect of a contracted paper circulation! Finally, while every living statesman of the least pretension, without, we believe, a single exception, either was concerned in framing the first Reform Bill, or is prepared to introduce a second, Sir A. Alison still persists in dating the fall of the British Constitution from the fatal year

1832.

In selecting such a period as the thirty-seven years of peace which Europe has enjoyed since 1815, the historian has shown a strange misapprehension of the line in which lay his peculiar powers. His forte lies in narrative: his deplorable weakness, in sagacious induction and philosophical reflection. His first work embraced a period more crowded than any other of equal duration with startling events, with rapid vicissitudes, with sanguinary battles and brilliant campaigns, with glorious achievements in statesmanship and war. These he described with great spirit, with passable fidelity, and in a flowing and agreeable though redundant style; hence his narrative, though awfully wordy and disfigured by the most merciless and careless repetitions, was not only readable, but really entrainant; and its own actual merits, added to the fascinating interest of the scenes and times of which it treated, obtained for it an extraordinary degree of popularity. The work, of which the opening volume is now before us, relates to an epoch of far different character, and demanding far rarer and higher powers in its historian. Its interest is not less profound or vivid than that of the former one, but it lies less upon the surface. Its events are no less momentous, but they run in a deeper and more silent current. It abounds in political crises of singular significance, and fraught with lessons of wisdom and of warning to the statesman, such as only a statesmanlike intellect could fittingly expound. It is rich in

social changes, of which the secret and remoter causes had to be traced out, and the further progress and future bearings to be discerned, with all the impartial sagacity and philosophical acumen which could be summoned to the task. And Sir A. Alison has brought to this massive undertaking little beyond a dogmatism, all the more strange and unbecoming because he differs on nearly every subject of importance with every great thinker of his age; a mind filled with crotchets, enamoured of paradoxes, wedded to bubbles long since burst or blown away; a fancy so engrossed with the bugbear of a contracted currency that he can scarcely see any other cause in operation; and an industry and facility which, being under the rule neither of a high standard nor a pure taste, display less of the artist than of the literary manufacturer.

One merit, however, we must concede to Sir A. Alison; and it is a somewhat remarkable one. He intends to be, and generally is, fair and candid. Though his political economy is of the most peculiar description, his assertions often loose and wide of the mark, and his statistics and the conclusions he draws from them strangely unsound, yet his mere narrative is, we think, in the main correct, and his summary of the arguments of opposing parties very impartial. Satisfied with setting at defiance the reasonings of his antagonists, he does not attempt to garble or misrepresent them. He shows, too, a generous appreciation of merit in rivals and opponents. In saying thus much we have nearly exhausted all that we can pronounce in the way of eulogy. As a literary performance this new history will assuredly not add to the author's reputation. The merits of his first work are but faintly discernible in the second, and all its faults are aggravated and confirmed. He has profited neither by the judicious criticism nor by the large indulgence which he met with. The work is defaced by slovenly and wearisome repetitions; the style is often careless, sometimes obscure, and not always grammatical; there are several mistakes in tabular matters which greatly confuse the reader; the wordiness is excessive and unpardonable; scarcely a dozen consecutive pages can be found free from the recurrence of pompous observations and remarks - a sort of cross between the weakest and washiest moralising of the pulpit and the most childish declamation of the schoolboy; and the whole volume is overflowed by a perfect diarrhoea of vapid and grandiose reflections - sometimes impertinent, always trite

even to nausea.

These are harsh words, but a very cursory perusal of the book before us will not fail to justify them. For example, what can our readers make out of the following strange and clumsy

passage? Speaking of the improvements in steam navigation, the discoveries of gold, and the political excitement of the period, as promoting emigration, the Author proceeds:

'No such powerful causes, producing the dispersion of the species, have come into operation since mankind were originally separated on the Assyrian plains; and it took place from an attempt, springing from the pride and ambition of man, as vain as building the Tower of Babel.

That attempt was the endeavour to establish social felicity, and insure the fortunes of the species, by the mere spread of knowledge, and the establishment of democratic institutions, irrespective of religious influence or the moral training of the people. As this project was based on the pride of intellect, and rested on the doctrine of human perfectibility, so it met with the same result as the attempt, by a tower raised by human hands, to reach the heavens. The whole history of Europe, from 1789 to the period with which this history closes, is but the annals of the unsuccessful efforts of man to reach this unattainable object. Everywhere it [Quære they] met with the most signal failure. Carried into execution by fallible agents, it was met and thwarted by their usual passions [if thwarted, how could it have been carried into execution'?]; and the selfishness and grasp ing desires of men led to a scene of discord and confusion, unparalleled since the beginning of the world. It terminated in the same result in Europe as in Asia: the building of the political tower of Babel in France was attended by consequences identical with those which had followed the construction of its predecessor on the plains of Shinar. The dispersion of mankind followed in both cases-though in the latter [which ?] after a long interval-the vain attempt; and after, and through the agency of a protracted period of suffering, men in surpassing multitudes found themselves settled in new habitations, and for ever severed from the land of their birth, from the consequences of the visionary projects in which they had been engaged. The development of the way in which this effect took place, and the means by which it was worked out by the unconscious agency of free agents [?], forms the great object of this history.' (Pref. p. ix.)

In illustration of our charge of needless and slovenly repetitions, we may refer to the Author's peculiar notions as to the relation between crime and education; which, we believe, he first propounded in Blackwood, and republished in the collected volumes of his Essays (i. 557., to which he is careful to refer us); which he states again in the book before us at p. 47., and once more at p. 397.; to the remark that the real rulers of 'mankind are now the philosophers and literary men, rather than generals and statesmen,' which closes his preface, and is twice reproduced in the body of the work ;-and finally to the merciless use which he makes of Shem, Ham, and Japhet, and the destinies of their supposed descendants,-references to them

occurring five times in 150 pages; viz., first at p. 9.; a second time at p. 12.; a third time at p. 67.; a fourth time at p. 73.; and a fifth time at p. 155.*

We quarrel still more with Sir Archibald's carelessness in figuresa fault peculiarly inexcusable in a writer who relies so largely on statistics. In p. 108. of vol. xx. of his first History, he gives a series of tables, to which he repeatedly refers in the work immediately before us, and which therefore we might expect to be scrupulously accurate and free from oversights; yet in these very tables we find the official exports of Foreign and Colonial Merchandise' given as exports of British and 'Irish Produce.' We presume that this is a mere blunder arising from carelessness or haste; but it surely ought not to be found in the seventh edition of an elaborate work. But this is not all. In the volume we are reviewing, we find figures of great importance given three times, and each time with considerable variations.

Thus:

Again, not only does our author give the official value of imports as their declared value (pp. 339. and 364.); but he cannot be consistent even in his statement of the figures thus erroneously described. For example:

Compare also chap. i. § 10.43. and 45. And again, § 43.28. and 10. At p. 350. the author appears to have entered the year wrong: he gives the exports of 1817 as those of the year ending 5th 'January 1817,' i. e. the year 1816.