guided by the works to which they refer. We have selected this article, not because it contains the best account of Dr. Taylor's work, but because it is better suited, than any of the reviews we have seen, to stir up the reader's mind to a wakeful and profitable consideration of several important facts and principles relating to the history of society.

We may remark also that, on one or two points, our own views accord with the sentiments of the author, rather than with those of the reviewer. We refer especially to his observations on the history of religion. The Apostle Paul perceived that the heathen, in their worship, had "changed the truth of God into a lie ;" but this writer imagines there is "an inner and vital truth which every worship contains enshrined within it,"—" an everlasting principle of faith and reverence, which has never ceased to exist through all time, among all nations." On this point we would turn the censure upon himself, which the reviewer bestows upon his author. And we dissent from his views of the origin of civilization and government. But we commend the article in general as just and forcible. In style as well as thought, it resembles the wri tings of Carlyle on Chartism, and is fitted to make lasting impressions on the mind of the reader.-SR. ED.

From the Westminster Review, October, 1841.

The Natural History of Society in the Barbarous and Civilized State. By W. Cooke Taylor, Esq., LL. D., M. R. A. S. of Trinity College, Dublin. 2 Vols. London, 1840.

Many writers of history and of politics have wished to begin their narratives with the very" beginning of things," and have evinced a natural desire to trace back the life of mankind to its earliest years, endeavoring philosophically to assign the period when the various relations of society were first established; to describe the mode in which the governor and the governed originally commenced the fulfilment of their mutual duties of authority and obedience, and to develop the gradual process by which law began to supersede strength.

They have also done more, for they have actually begun before the beginning, and spoken of these relations, not only in their first movements, but in the act of their creation, as if there were a time when they did not exist, or that they were not recognized as soon as Adam smiled over his first-born.

However, we are to imagine that not only Adam, but Noah, has passed away, and the earth has got peopled; and then fixing the period in those primitive times when man was a "noble savage," unvitiated by corruption, and free from crime and passion, and setting out with the maxim that "all men are equal," our philosophers proceed to assemble a concourse of these equal men, and make them elect the most worthy for their king and the most reverend for counsellors-to enact laws-to declare rights and to act, in short, just as so many Solons, or as themselves, these same philosophers, with all the perfection of reasoning of this nine

teenth century, might possibly act, but certainly as no savages ever did or could.

These speculations might be harmless enough, were it not for the danger that by such false statements of, the commencement of government a false principle is admitted into its theory, and an equally false result becomes deduced from its history. As that patriarchal system, when submission was unforced and reverential, and the ruler almost merged in the father, has never been really known, it has been pronounced undesirable, and indeed impossible, for an advanced state of society; while a more accurate account would inform us that the first government was one altogether of fear, influenced by the terror of might, not the desire of protection; that the first law was the law of the strongest, and resulted only in tyranny, spoliation, and barbarism. From this beginning we may reasonably infer that the state of voluntary submission and parental rule is one towards which the advance of society is tending, instead of that from which it has departed, and is becoming separated by a still-widening interval; we may mark the periods when man first awoke to a consciousness of his rights, and a desire for liberty; when he first acknowledged that the weak had their privileges, and that justice should be sacred, as notable eras in the progress of the race. We may trace the form of the supreme authority through all the changes into which the varying phases of society have thrown it, from the despotic chieftain of the savage tribe to kings by the grace of God and the representative assembly. But the history of government is yet to write.

Another history is also yet to write-the history of the lowest class; and it will be one quite as important as the first, and even yet more strange. In the chronicles of the powers of this world there is a terrible sameness, a tedious repetition of the same phases and cycles of revolution ever recurring. We learn how they change their forms, how they are called by different names, and attired in various colored robes, with some variations in the extent of their prerogatives; we are told that authority sometimes wears a helmet, sometimes a tiara, or a crown, or, as we have seen, a red cap; that it is at one time distributed among several, at another concentrated upon an individual. But amid all these changes of exterior the thing remains the same-ever sitting in its own high place, pronouncing its own decrees, and then seeing them executed, which execution it calls justice-listening to the honied speeches of its dependents, which it calls popularity; but waging perpetual wars for supremacy or existence with the strong, the rich, or the cunning. And these wars are history, flowing on in page after page of the same round of dull though bloody conflict between stronger and strongest.

Turning to the other extremity of the social scale, we find a vast, unnamed multitude, of whom the historian seldom speaks, but whose annals would relate of vicissitudes far greater than those endured by the mighty ones, and will, if written true, exhibit many a curious phase of human nature, showing how the changes that are almost nominal to the higher classes become stern realities to them, and the faults or vices of governors are reflected in shadows of startling magnitude upon their remote dwelling

places. In the beginning of history, when man had not yet emerged from the state of wandering, savage life, the lowest class was doomed to death before it had hardly come into existence. For when man's only possession was his strength, the weakest were the poorest, and these were either purposely destroyed, or perished in infancy from natural inability to support their life. A little later and the doom of death was changed for that of slavery; and to this state were reduced, for many ages, the lowest and weakest the prisoners in battle--the hostile nation, when vanquished— the feeble sex among all nations. Afterwards they existed under different names-bond-servants, plebeians, serfs, Egyptian fellahs, Hindoo pariahs, English paupers always remaining in the same position of historical insignificance; a class to whom war brought destruction and peace oppression; whom the ruler used while they were useful as hewers of wood and drawers of water, and then swept away without account at his own good pleasure.

We know that all this is very likely to be called common-place; for the name of the people, like that of other powers, has so often been taken in vain, that it has degenerated into a catchword, and he who speaks of their wrongs is supposed to be seeking only for some clap-trap popularity. But we shall never be silenced by such considerations. Why should truth be left unspoken because some have ridiculed it for jest, and others perverted from selfishness? And who that has seen bread-tax meetings, and Chartism, but must confess that there is reality in the voice of "the masses," and that their history will not, henceforth, be insignificant?

It is one great point gained when the discovery is first made that this question of the "wrongs of the people" can be calmly discussed, and the evils rectified by peaceable and reasonable process of cure. Hitherto it has been taken for granted, that the highest and the lowest would never look each other in the face, and live-that majesty and the mob could meet in no other fashion than as water and fire; one flowing on in its calm and cold sublimity; the other, not calm, but tumultuous, explosion, destruction; yet sometimes equally sublime from its very destructiveness; and that, thus meeting, they must perish, one or both. Therefore the two have been most carefully kept apart; the first guarded by steel warriors and fenced around with state and ceremony; the latter, bowed down under a vast weight of pressure from above, restraining it with Dragonnades, curfew bell, and riot act, not only from rising, but even from attempting to rise. Yet every now and then has it forced its way through all this compression; bursting up like a submarine volcano with fire and ashes; and every time more fiercely. The first time that we hear of this lowest class, as in a state of eruption, is in that Scythian city where the slaves rebelled during the absence of their masters; who, on their return, saith the legend, drove them back to their obedience with whips, like hounds. Since then there have been servile wars, popular rebellions, insurrections of the Jacquerie, till we arrive at a black empire, and a sans culottic revolution. Such have been the results of the system of suppression. In England, ever since the days of Elizabeth, when the first poor law was enacted, the lowest class have had a legal and acknowledged existence; a provision of some

sort or other has been made for their support; and, at certain intervals, their condition has formed the subject-matter for debates and acts of parliament; not without effect; for England has been spared, on this account, many of those scenes of terrible destitution whence have arisen in other countries long series of convulsion and savage crime. Still we proceed too much on the suppression principle; legislating not upon the poor, but against them; treating them as nuisances that ought to be abated, and their poverty as a crime that ought to be punished-instead of considering them as men, enduring much, wanting much; knowing little good; instructed only in evil, and in the sorry shifts of pauperism; yet still susceptible of improvement, having capacity for knowledge and for virtue; and waiting only the guidance of some who shall in gentleness and good faith search out the cause of their evils and wisely root it out; abating not themselves, but their poverty; and instructing their ignorance with other kind of tuition than that to be found in a house of correction.

Look again at the lowest class in another point of view-not only as suffering and wanting, but as possessing and inflicting; as a distinct race-a lower empire-whence issue perpetually the swarms of men whom necessity almost compels to crime; whom every opportunity of instruction renders perfect in its practice; and yet to whom is given no one principle of resistance to its temptations except the mere terror of punishment. With a mass like this corrupting in the hold, who will say that the only method is to tightly batten down the hatches, in order that we may manage the vessel and inhabit the cabins with security?

Let us then beware; and not merely trust to our endeavors to suppress the outward tokens of disease, but try to cure the patient. Above all, let us beware of quacks, with their fair, deceitful remedies; many such there are: demagogues, pharisees; charter-dealers, humanity speechmakers; who set each some brazen serpent on high, and bid the sick look to that and be healed. These have done evil work.

Society is now rich in many possessions; of employment, of comfort, of amusement; can it afford nothing to its larger half but a bare life sustenance? Among other riches, it is most rich in knowledge; let this, at least, be freely imparted to all, and it will go far to bring with it all other advantages. But as yet the very abundance of our own possessions has only made us more exacting in our demands upon others. We are a nation of capitalists, and require every member to contribute some quota of capital to the common stock; if not in cash, then at least in skill or in character. But for those who have none to contribute-what is to become of them? Must the multitudes of such be left to stand idle, because no man will hire them; in want of every thing, because they have nothing already-and when idleness meets want in hundreds of thousands, what result can be expected? "Instruct, employ, don't hang them," was the quaint, but significant, title of an excellent volume written some years ago. We should rejoice to see that sentence pass into a proverb.

"But," argue some, "if you instruct these people, you give only still further addition, by this education, to their already sufficient capabilities for doing mischief—if you put tools into their hands, you furnish them

with instruments which they will use as weapons of aggression." It is even so—as when a kettle is set to boil there is always danger, lest the vent should become stopped and an explosion ensue. Now, did those who propound this argument ever reflect upon the condition of the country with its standing army, composed of men taken for the most part from these very classes; instructed deliberately in all the arts of destruction, and furnished with the weapons best fitted for the purpose? We think that, if the danger from this source is dared, all other may be safely overlooked.

Besides, these multitudes-these hundreds of thousands of whose existence and powers we have given us, every few years, such fearful tokens are dangerous as they are; and it will not do to go on trusting for ever in an increased police force, or an occasional proclamation of martial law, to repress the outbreak of their explosion. Prudence would teach how far better it will be to incur some temporary risk for the purpose of regulating their energies, and making them still explode, but in a safe direction; and for purposes beneficial, not destructive. Mankind have brought into subjection the powers of other explosive materials-the blast of gunpowder, the expansion of steam; have each been bound into their service; they have thrown the magic of their spells around these omnipotent demons; have yoked them to their chariots, and sent them to perform their bidding. And may not men, at length, conquer man? with gentle, but irresistible, restraint, compelling him to do what, indeed, is but that which his high destiny has appointed him to dc-make himself and others better and happier?

We have entered upon the discussion of these topics because they are of vast importance in the natural history of society; and because, in fact, no perfect view can be taken of society, not perhaps as it was, but certainly as it is, and no means be pointed out to make it what we hope it will be, without tracing the history of its two extremes; without chronicling the lives of its highest and its lowest classes from their earlier position of extreme divergence through all their contests and mutual interchanges of injury and danger-this divine right of kings being sometimes superseded by a sacred right of insurrection, and then restored again, though with sadly diminished glories-till we arrive at the fact of a nearer approximation, and the hope of a perfect accordance; when the history of the government and of the poorest will be identical with that of the nation.

In the volumes before us we find little or nothing of this. There is little mention of the part played by the governments, in their different forms, upon the progress of the human race, growing as they do out of the growth of society, and influencing that growth in return in a perpetual flux of action and reaction: there is no distinction made between the various classes of society; nor any account of the modes in which they have mutually acted upon each other from the earliest times, producing by this action changes quite as important as those arising from external causes. Is it not written in the prophecies of history that no nation ever fell, or will fall, but from its own decay? Would the fate of Persia, when Alexander invaded it, have been decided by the event of two battles and the treachery of two satraps, if the condition of the empire had not