ALC. I have given all necessary orders for the fête. SGAN. That isn't what I came for. ALC. The musicians are engaged, the dinner is ordered, and my daughter is quite ready dressed to receive you. SGAN. It isn't that which brings me here. ALC. In short, everything has been arranged to your full satisfaction; nothing can delay your happiness. SGAN. It is another thing. I tell you that I have come upon other business. ALC. Come in, son-in-law. SGAN. I have a word or two to say. ALC. Ah! I beg of you, don't let us stand upon ceremony. Come in, I entreat. SGAN. No, no, I tell you; I want to speak to you first. ALC. You have something to tell me? SGAN. Yes. ALC. What is it? SGAN. It is true, sir, that I have asked your daughter in marriage, and that you have agreed to give her to me, but I think myself a little too old for her, and I consider that I am not at all the kind of husband she ought to have. ALC. Excuse me. My daughter is perfectly satisfied with you, and I am certain that she will live very happily with you. SGAN. Oh dear, no. I have sometimes terrible whims, and she would have to suffer greatly from my bad temper. ALC. My daughter is of a sweet and yielding disposition, and you will see that she will get on beautifully with you. SGAN. I have some bodily infirmities which might disgust her. ALC. That is of no consequence; a virtuous woman is never disgusted with her husband. SGAN. In short, shall I tell you what? I do not advise you to give her to me. ALC. Are you joking? die than break my word. I had rather SGAN. On my conscience, I free you from your promise. ALC. Certainly not. I have promised her to you, and you shall have her in spite of all the offers I receive from other quarters. SGAN. (aside). The devil I shall! ALC. I assure you I hold you in such great esteem, and have such real friendship for you, that I would refuse my daughter to a prince in order to give her to you. SGAN. Sir, I am deeply indebted to you for the honour you do me; but I must tell you plainly that I will not marry. ALC. Not marry, you say? SGAN. The reason is that I find myself unfit for marriage, and that I wish to do like my father and all the rest of the Sganarelles, who never would marry. ALC. Very well. Will is free; and I am not the man to force anybody. You were engaged to marry my daughter, and everything is ready for the wedding; but since you wish to withdraw, I will see what can be done. You shall soon hear from me. SGAN. Sir, I am yours with all my heart. ALC. My father has told me, sir, that you have come to withdraw your promise to marry my sister. SGAN. Yes sir; it is with regret, but . . ALC. Oh, there is no harm in it, sir. SGAN. I assure you that I am very sorry about it, and I wish ALC. It is of no consequence at all, I tell you. (ALCIDAS presents two swords to SGANARELLE.) Sir, will you kindly say which of these two swords you will have? SGAN. Which of these two swords I will have? ALC. If you please. SGAN. What's the object of doing that? ALC. As you refuse, sir, to marry my sister after having given your word, you will not, believe, take amiss the compli ment I have come to pay you? SGAN. What do you mean? ALC. There are some people who would make a great ado, and would get in a passion with you; but we prefer doing things in a more quiet way, and I have come to tell you very politely that we must, with your permission, cut each other's throat. SGAN. A very ill-turned compliment this. SGAN. Yes, I mean it. [WILLIAM MORRIS, an English poet, born in 1834, haa published "The Life and death of Jason" (1865,)" The Earthly Paradise" (1868,) "Love is enough" (1872,) a translation of Virgil's "Eneid," and several other volumes. His poems are marked by freshness, strength ALC. (after beating him with his stick). At least, sir, you have no reason to complain; you see that I do things in the pro-and classic diction. It may be said of him that he has You break your word, and I wish devoted his pen to the celebration of the beautiful.] per way. to fight you; you refuse to fight, and I thrash you. All this is according to rule, and you are too much of a gentleman to disapprove of my behaviour. SGAN. (aside). What a devil of a man! ALC. (presenting him the swords again) Come, sir, do the thing properly, and with a good grace. SGAN. What! again? ALC. Sir, I do not force anybody, but either you will marry my sister or you will fight. SGAN. Sir, I assure you that I can do neither the one nor the other. ALC. Positively? ALC. With your permission, then. (Beats him again.) SGAN. Oh! oh! oh! ALC. Sir, I am exceedingly sorry to be obliged to treat you in this manner; but I shall not leave off until you promise me, if you please, either to fight me or to marry my sister (raises his stick). SGAN. I'll marry, I'll marry. ALC. Ah, sir, I rejoice to see you restored to reason, and that it is all settled quietly; for, in short, sir, I assure you that you are the man I esteem the most in the world,,and that I should have been in despair if you had compelled me to ill-use you. Now, I will call my father and tell him that it is all right. SCENE XVII-ALCANTOR, DORIMENE, And if the gods care not for you, To win some mortal's feeble heart? O fools! when each man plays his part, Than these blue waves that kiss the shore. O brooder on the hills of heaven, WILLIAM MORRIS. their spirit. Power vegetates with more vigor after these gentle prunings. A slender reform amuses and lulle the people: the popular enthusiasm subsides; and the moment of effectual reform is irretrievably lost. No important political improvement was ever obtained in a period of tranquillity The corrupt interest of the governors is so strong, and the cry of the people so feeble, that it were vain to expect it. If the effer. vescence of the popular mind is suffered to pass away without effect, it would be absurd to expect from languor what enthusiasm had not obtained. If radical reform is not, at such a moment, procured, all partial changes are evaded and defeated in the tranquillity which succeeds. The gradual reform that arises from the presiding principle exhibited in the specious theory of Mr. Burke, is belied by the experience of all ages. Whatever excellence, whatever freedom is discoverable in governments, has been infused into them by the shock of a revolution; and their sub DEFENCE OF THE FRENCH REVO- sequent progress has been only the accu LUTION. mulation of abuse. It is hence that the most enlightened politicians have recognized the necessity of frequently recalling their a statesman, historian, and political and philosophical first principles;-a truth equally suggested [SIR JAMES MACKINTOSH, (1765-1832) distinguished as writer, was a powerful advocate of liberal principles. His chief works are " Vindicis Gallics," a defence of the French Revolution against the accusations of Edmund Burke (1791), "A Dissertation on Ethical Philosophy," (1830), "A History of England, and of the Revolution of 1688," and numerous essays in the Edinburgh Review.] The three Aristocracies-Military, Sacerdotal, and Judicial-may be considered as having formed the French Government. They have appeared, so far as we have considered them, incorrigible. All attempts to improve them would have been little better than (to use the words of Mr. Burke) "mean reparations on mighty ruins." They were not perverted by the accidental depravity of their numbers; they were not infected by any transient passion, which new circumstances would extirpate; the fault was in the essence of the institutions themselves, which were irreconcileable with a free gov ernment. But, it is objected, these institutions might have been gradually reformed; the spirit of freedom would have silently entered; the progressive wisdom of an enlightened nation would have remedied in process of time, their defects, without convulsions. To this argument I confidently answer that these institutions would have destroyed Liberty, before Liberty had corrected to the penetrating intellect of Machiavel, by his experience of the Florentine democracy, and by his research into the history of ancient commonwealths. Whatever is good ought to be pursued at the moment it is attainable. The public voice, irresistible in a period of convulsion, is contemned with impunity, when spoken during the lethargy into which nations are lulled by the tranquil course of their ordinary affairs. The ardour of reform languishes in unsupported tediousness it perishes in an impotent struggle with adversaries, who receive new strength with the progress of the day. No hope of great political improvement-let us repeat it-is to be entertained from tranquillity; for its natural operation is to strengthen all those who are interested in perpetuating abuse. The National Assembly seized the moment of eradicating the corruptions and abuses which afflicted their country. Their reform was total, that it might be commen surate with the evil: and no part of it was delayed, because to spare an abuse at such a period was to consecrate it; and as the enthusiasm which carries nations to such enterprizes is short-lived, so the opportunity of reform, if once neglected, might be irre vocably fled. But let us ascend to more general princi ples, and hazard bolder opinions. Let us rience, man is degraded to the unimproveagrant that the state of France was not so ble level of the instinctive animals. But desperately incorrigible. Let us suppose in the second acceptation, an artist is said that changes far more gentle-innovations to be guided by experience, when the infar less extensive, would have remedied spection of a machine discovers to him the grosser evils of her government, and principles which teach him to improve it; placed it almost on a level with free and or when the comparison of many, both with celebrated constitutions. These conces respect to their excellences and defects, sions, though too large for truth, will not enables him to frame one different from convict the Assembly. By what principle any he had examined, and still more per of reason or of justice, were they precluded fect. In this latter sense the National As from aspiring to give France a government sembly have perpetually availed themselves less imperfect than accident had formed in of experience. History is an immense colother states? Who will be hardy enough lection of experiments on the nature and to assert, that a better constitution is not effect of the various parts of various gov attainable than any which has hitherto ap-ernments. Some institutions are experipeared? Is the limit of human wisdom to mentally ascertained to be beneficial; some be estimated in the science of politics to be most indubitably destructive; a third alone, by the extent of its present attain- class, which produces partial good, obments? Is the most sublime and difficult viously possesses the capacity of improveof all arts, the improvement of the social ment. What, on such a survey, was the order, the alleviation of the miseries of the civil condition of man,-to be alone stationary, amid the rapid progress of every other-liberal and vulgar-to perfection? Where would be the atrocious guilt of a grand experiment, to ascertain the portion of freedom and happiness that can be created by political institutions? dictate of enlightened experience? Not surely to follow any model in which these institutions lay indiscriminately mingled; but, like the mechanic, to compare and generalize, and guided equally by experience, to imitate and reject. The process is in both cases the same; the rights and the nature of man are to the legislator what That guilt (if it be guilt) is imputable to the general properties of matter are to the the National Assembly. They are accused mechanic, the first guide,-because they of having rejected the guidance of expe- are founded on the widest experience. In rience, of having abandoned themselves the second class are to be ranked observato the illusion of theory, and of having tions on the excellences and defects of all sacrificed great and attainable good to the governments which have already existed, magnificent chimeras of ideal excellence. that the construction of a more perfect ma If this accusation be just,-if they have chine may result. But experience is the indeed abandoned experience, the basis of basis of all:—not the puny and trammelled human knowledge, as well as the guide of experience of a statesman by trade, who human action,-their conduct deserves no trembles at any change in the tricks which longer any serious argument: but if (as Mr. he has been taught, or the routine in which Burke more than once insinuates) their con- he has been accustomed to move; but an tempt of it is avowed and ostentatious, it experience liberal and enlightened, which was surely unworthy of him to have ex- hears the testimony of ages and nations, pended so much genius against so prepos- and collects from it the general principles terous an insanity. But the explanation of which regulate the mechanism of society. terms will diminish our wonder. Expe We are boldly challenged to pro rience may, both in the arts and in the duce our proofs; our complaints are as conduct of human life be regarded in a serted to be chimerical; and the excellence double view, either as furnishing models or of our government is inferred from its principles. An artist who frames his ma- beneficial effects. Most unfortunately for chine in exact imitation of his predecessor us, most unfortunately for our country, is in the first sense said to be guided by ex- these proofs are too ready and too numer perience. In this sense all improvements ous. We find them in that "monumental of human life have been deviations from debt," the bequest of wasteful and profli. experience. The first visionary innovator gate wars, which already wrings from the was the savage who built a cabin, or cov- peasant something of his hard-earned pit ered himself with a rug. If this be expe-tance,-which already has punished the in * * these oppressions is the same :-no branch dustry of the useful and upright manufac-| be said, that the mind of a country is turer, by robbing him of the asylum of his slain. The admirers of Revolution principles house, and the judgment of his peers, to naturally call on every aggrieved and enwhich the madness of political Quixotism lightened citizen to consider the source of adds a million for every farthing that the his oppression. If penal statutes hang over pomp of ministerial empiricism pays, and our Catholic brethren,-if Test Acts outrage which menaces our children with convul- our Protestant fellow-citizens,-if the resions and calamities, of which no age has mains of feudal tyranny are still suffered to seen the parallel. We find them in the exist in Scotland, if the press is fettered,black and bloody roll of persecuting stat-if our right to trial by jury is abridged,— utes that are still suffered to stain our if our manufactures are proscribed and code; a list so execrable, that were no hunted down by excise, the reason of all monument to be preserved of what England was in the eighteenth century but her Statute Book, she might be deemed to have been then still plunged in the deepest gloom of superstitious barbarism. We find them in the ignominious exclusion of great bodies of our fellow-citizens from political trusts, by tests which reward falsehood and punish probity, which profane the rights of the religion they pretend to guard, and usurp the dominion of the God they profess to revere. We find them in the growing corruption of those who administer the government, in the venality of a House of Commons, which has become only a cumbrous and expensive chamber for register ing ministerial edicts, in the increase of a nobility degraded by the profusion and prostitution of honours, which the zealous partisans of democracy would have spared them. We find them, above all, in the rapid progress which has been made in silencing the great organ of public opinion, that Press which is the true control over the Ministers and Parliaments, who might else, with impunity, trample on the impotent formalities that form the pretended bulwark of our freedom. The mutual control, the well-poised balance of the several members of our Legislature, are the visions of theoretical, or the pretext of practical politicians. It is a government, not of check, but of conspiracy, a conspiracy which can only be repressed by the energy of popular opinion. The co This tranquil and legal Reform is the ultimate object of those whom Mr. Burke has so foully branded. In effect this would be amply sufficient. The powers of the King and the Lords have never been formidable in England, but from discords between the House of Commons and its pretended constituents. Were that house really to become the vehicle of the popular voice, the privi leges of other bodies, in opposition to the sense of the people and their representatives would be but as dust in the balance. From this radical improvement all subaltern reform would naturally and peaceably arise. These are no visionary ills,-no chimeri- We dream of no more, and in claiming this, cal apprehensions: they are the sad and sober instead of meriting the imputation of being reflections of as honest and enlightened men apostles of sedition, we conceive ourselves as any in the kingdom. Nor are they alle- entitled to be considered as the most sincere viated by the torpid and listless security into friends of tranquil and stable government. which the people seem to be lulled. "Sum-We desire to avert revolution by reform,mum otium forense non quiescentis sed sene scentis civitatis." It is in this fatal temper that men become sufficiently debased and embruted to sink into placid and polluted servitude. It is then that it may most truly subversion by correction. We admonish our governors to reform, while they retain the force to reform with dignity and security; and we conjure them not to wait the moment, which will infallibly arrive, |