BLACKWOOD'S
EDINBURGH MAGAZINE.

No. CCCXCII.         JUNE, 1848.         Vol. LXIII.

CONTENTS

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HOW TO DISARM THE CHARTISTS.

The tempest which has lately passed over the moral world has begun to subside,—we no longer hear of empires revolutionised, monarchies overturned, by every post. The states which were to be prostrated by the blast have already fallen; those which have withstood the shock, like a cannon which has borne a double-shotted discharge, are only the more firm from having escaped uninjured from such a trial. France has been utterly revolutionised: Prussia, to all appearance, scarcely less thoroughly convulsed: Italy has been thrown into transports: the smaller states of Germany have, more or less, become republican: Austria has been violently shaken: the seeds of another bootless democratic convulsion sown in Poland. This is enough for three months. Even M. Ledru Rollin and Louis Blanc could scarcely, in their wildest imaginations, have figured a more rapid consummation of their wishes. But other states have stood firm. England, the firstborn of freedom, has shown herself worthy of her glorious inheritance:—she has repelled tyranny in the form of democracy, as she has repelled tyranny in the hands of kings. Russia is yet unshaken;—her people have responded to the call of the Czar, and are preparing on the Vistula for a crusade into western Europe. Belgium, contrary to all expectation, has withstood the tempter; the hordes sent down from Paris to carry desolation into its beautiful plains have been repelled with disgrace. Denmark has boldly thrown down the gauntlet to revolutionised and spoliating Prussia, and is striving to maintain its comparatively inconsiderable dominions against its gigantic aggressor; and even the rickety and half-revolutionised monarchy of Spain has survived the shock, and the streets of Madrid have witnessed the overthrow of a power which the arms of France proved unable to combat.

The worst, therefore, is over, considering the convulsion as one affecting the internal government and social concerns of nations. The wild-beast has made his spring: he has cruelly lacerated some of the party, but many have repelled his claws, and against others he has missed his blow. But, even more than that, we derive consolation from this reflection, that the force of the cosmopolitan and general transports has been weakened, and they are rapidly turning into their ordinary and comparatively regulated evils of war, conquest, and military devastation. The polyglot fervour, for the present at least, is stilled: the national are fast resuming the ascendency over the social passions. Prussia is at open war with Denmark, in the hope of wresting from it the German possessions of the Danish crown: Piedmont, Tuscany, and Lombardy are combating Austria on the Adige: Naples has declared war against Sicily, and Russia is only waiting till its gigantic strength is collected in Poland to crush the efforts of revolution in the Grand-duchy of Warsaw and Duchy of Posen. Thus revolution is leading every where to its natural and oft predicted result of universal hostility. The robbery of the weak by the strong, as in a nation where the authority of law is at an end, has become general. Spoliation is the order of the day. Nation is rising up against nation—people against people; civil war has already broken out in many parts of France—in others it is threatened: Paris is openly preparing for the conflict: and the reign of liberty, equality, and fraternity in France is, to all appearance, about to deluge the world with a stream of blood; second, perhaps, only to that which followed and punished the first revolution.

God forbid that we should speak lightly of the calamities which such general warfare must bring in its train. None know them better, or deplore them more deeply than ourselves. But they are light in comparison of the evils of successful revolution. War, even in its bloodiest form, is under some control; it is conducted according to fixed usages, and by men subject to discipline. But revolutions have no customs: happily they have not been so frequent in history as to have induced any consuetudinary usage. They are subject to no discipline; the principle on which they proceed is the negation of all authority. They are preceded by the destruction of all those barriers which experience had erected, and found necessary to restrain vice's baneful influence. If they bear any resemblance to war, it is to the universal burst of passion which follows the storming of a fortress or sack of a city. The murder, rape, and conflagration which then invariably