li NIGHT'S HISTORY or ENGLAND DURING THE THIRTY YEARS' PEACE.
* TILLS is a valuable publication, conceived in a large and liberal spirit, executed with industry and ability. The manner is a good mixture of the old mode of looking at public men and political events as history proper, with the new theory (for it has hardly yet been re- duced to practice) of giving the masses, the social condition of the peo- ple, and the progress in the useful arts, an importance equally great with that usually assigned to monarchs, ministers, courtiers, and generals. Exclusive novelty of matter there cannot be ;—the press and published family papers are as accessible to one writer as to another: but the documents of the time have been well digested, and good use has been made of such original authorities as the Sidmouth and Eldon papers, without any overdoing : the materials are used, not paraded. The first volume, which alone is completed, extends from 1816 to 1830; and though Miss Martineau's name stands alone in the titlepage, various writers have contributed to the work. The first book, ending with the death of George the Third, and occupying more than a third of the whole, was undertaken by Mr. Knight ; but the episodical account of the South American Revolution is written by a friend, and the narrative of Indian affairs has been abridged from Macfarlane's book on "Our Indian Empire." Although Mr. Knight only treats of European affairs during four years, he is entitled to the merit of originating the plan of the work and also of fixing its tone. The wide sympathies, the large allowances for nature and necessity, the English spirit of fair play and aversion to humbug, (mingled, no doubt, with some respectable prejudices,) that characterize Charles Knight, are not merely visible in Isis own part but to a great extent throughout. It is obvious that Miss Martineau, in her history of George the Fourth, has set herself a copy ; and according as she keeps to it, in a spirit of perfect freedom, so is the value of her work. At starting, perhaps, she is a little constrained : when she has so long left her model behind her as to illustrate * The History of England during the Thirty Years' Peace : 1616-1846. By Harriet Maruneau. Vol. L Published by Knight. the proverbial effects of "out of s4ht," or when either her feminine or habitual sympathies are appealed to,—as in the case of Queen Caroline, Slave-trade matters, Canning's dissolution of the Holy Alliance, or the per- secution he suffered on attaining the Premiership,—Miss Martineau's cha- racteristic faults come out. The platform mind is visible in her style of censure and the infallibility of her judgments. Sometimes we meet with commentary rather than narrative. "She is then as much of an essayist as an historian, and occasionally with a dogmatism of manner as if history were enacted for her to write about. Where the subject is less associated with her feelings, and she bears her manly model more in mind, her esti- mate is often deep and just. As an example, we may instance her ex- planatory defence of the Wellington Ministry on Catholic Emancipation, and quote as a specimen of the composition her character of Peel. "The Catholic question might be considered as settled as the exposition of the measure fell from the lips of the speaker: and in regard to the political cha- racter of Mr. Peel, the most important man in the country at that time and to this day, the case was clear to the eyes of the impartial and philosophical ob- server; and all subsequent events have been but illustrations of what was that night revealed. Mr. Canning was wont to say that Mr. Peel was his rightful successor in statesmanship; and so he has proved himself: but the method of his procedure has been as different from that of Canning as the nature of the man. Each has been an inestimable blessing to his country in a singular and perilous period of transition; the one in spite of the drawbacks which attend upon all hu- man agency ; the other apparently. in consequence of them. Mr. Canning had a glorious apprehension of the principle of freedom, clouded and intercepted by pre- judices full of insolence and perverseness. He toiled and made sacrifices for the relief of the Catholics, and used all the influence of his office and his character for the promotion of political liberty abroad; but he opposed Parliamentary Reform and the relief of the Dissenters. Mr. Peel appears never to have had, in his youth and early manhood, any conception of popular freedom at all. What he has is the result of a political experience which has emancipated him from the mis- fortunes of his early political training and connexions. If any man could be said
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to have been born in a condition of political opinion, it was be. He was born into Conservatism, and reared in it, and stationed to watch over and preserve it: and herein lies the misfortune which probably alone has prevented his taking rank as a first-rate statesman. But that which is his personal misfortune has been, in the opinion of many of the wise, the saving of our country from revolution in an age of revolutions. He has been our bridge 'over the abyss in which the state might ere this have been lost. A statesman who, set- ting out on his course without high and definite aims, finds his principles by the wayside as be proceeds, can never be the highest of his order, however faithful and courageous he may be in the application of the truths which he has appro- priated: but, in the absence of the loftiest statesmanship. which can be conceived of, and which no reasonable nation expects at any given time to enjoy, the great- est blessing which can be desired is that of a statesman who can understand and guide the time; that guiding—that leading on—supposing him ahead of the aver- age wisdom of his generation. " And this is what. Mr. Peel has been to his country from the day of his bring- ing in the Catholic Relief Bill. He was not then what he has since proved him- self capable of being; but his explanation on that day showed to sagacious oh- servers precisely what he was, and what he' might be expected to become. At that time, he was sorry that changes on behalf of Liberalism were required. It would have pleased him better to have been able to go on in the old ways, which he believed to be safer for rulers, and happier for the people, than the new me- thods which compelled their own adoption. But he saw the necessity: he saw that to preserve the peace of society, and to respect the convictions of the ma- jority, was a higher duty than to rule according to his own predilections. It was an irksome and a humiliating duty; but it was a clear one; and be did it. He had much to bear from the rage and contempt of old connexions, and from the jealousy and scorn of the Liberals who had hitherto been his opponents: but these visitations were penalties on his former and lower opinions—on his previous false position, and not on his new enlightenment. The enlightenment was not yet great; but when once the clouds begin to part, there is no saying how much sunshine may be let down: a rent was made in the educational prejudice which had hitherto Ca- ,nopied his mind; and such rents are never closed. The cry at the time was, about this speech, in the market-places and by firesides, that it was not the speech of a great man; that it assumed a tone no higher than that of reluctant yielding to an irresistible necessity. And this was quite true. Such was the tone of the speech; hot it was this very characteristic which gave hope to the wise that the speaker would become, or would prove himself, a great man hereafter. They liked the simple truth of the explanation better than any sudden assumption of a higher ground. There was honesty and heart enough in it to afford an expecta- tion that he would soon attain a higher ground, while there was an assurancethat he would not pretend to any other ground than that which he actually held. From that time his expansion and advancement have been very remarkable. His mind sad heart have kindled with an enthusiasm of which he was twenty years ago supposed unsuseeptible ; an enthusiasm of popular sympathy, and in favour of a pervasive justice. The union of this liberal sympathy with former habits of political con- duct has made him a statesman precisely adapted to his age; to serve his country and his time, though not to reap the immediate rewards of popularity, or adequate gratitude. The mischief of his early false position has followed hint through- out, and must ever follow him. Even such services as his, in themselves so un- questionable, have been received, up to the latest period, with a certain degree of mistrust. And this is right; not because the man deserves it, for he has long shown that he merits, and from the most thoughtful. he certainly enjoys, the fullest confidence that can be reposed in any man'who has proved himself fallible in his vocation: but because it is inevitable that a man who has once been in a false position must forego the unhesitating trust which is reposed in a man of equal qualifications, who has always recognized, taken, and held his own trae po- sition. We have not, however, any other man of equal qualifications. We can- not have one of a more unquestionabledisinterestedness ; and Mr. Peel. stands pro- nounced beyond all controversy the greatest statesman of his age. To him we owe our rescue or exemption from the political calamities which perhaps no one else could have averted; and to him we are indebted for so many homely and sub- stantial benefits of good government, and such ,brilliant renovations of our Mo- tional resources, that it seems impossible for the national gratitude to overtake his deserts. if he was at first the victim, he has since shown himself the conqueror, of time and cirentnstanee; and, for many you'd past, it'has been clear to the un- prejudiced, that all fault-finding with Mr. Peel's character and political Conduct, as a whole, resolves itself into a complaint that he was not made another sort of man than he is..", For some reason connected with the periodical publication of the work, the volume is in quarto ; and its messy page is agreeable after the smaller form in which history sometimes comes before us. The work is well illustrated by maps, and embehinhed by portraits-; but its main source of interest-is independent oftnecha nice, The History of England during the Thirty. Years' Pearls not only fills up a want in our literature, but fills it up in a manner that will not be exceeded except by an historical genius : the. peeuIiariiiee,tund even the defects of the work, contribute to impart both force and freshness.
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