madness of the people; by the insolvency it induces that the barrier is formed, which as a matter of necessity forces back society to its habitual forms and relations. In the complicated state of social relations in which we live, it is by the capital of the rich that the industry of the poor is put in motion; by their expenditure that it is alimented. However specious and alluring the projects may be which are brought forward by the popular leaders, they involve in them one source of weakness, which inevitably ere long paralyses all their influence. Directly or indirectly, they all tend to the destruction of property. To excite the passions of the working classes, they are obliged to hold out to them the prospect of a division of property, or such a system of taxation as practically amounts to the same thing: the immediate effect of which is a cessation of expenditure on the part of the affluent classes; a hoarding of capital; a run upon the banks for specie; universal scarcity of money, general distrust, and a fearful decrease of employment. These evils are first felt by the working classes, because, having no stock, they are affected by any diminution in their daily wages; and they are felt with the more bitterness that they immediately succeed extravagant hopes, and highly wrought expectations. Invariably the effects of revolutions are precisely the reverse of the predictions of its supporters. No man is insensible to his own suffering, however much he may be so to that of his predecessors; and thence the universal and general reaction which, sooner or later, takes place against revolutions.

That this reaction would take place to a certainty, in the end, with the French revolution of 1848, as it had done with all similar convulsions since the beginning of the world, could be doubted by none who had the least historical information: and in our first article on that event, within a few weeks of its occurrence, we distinctly foretold that this would be the case.[2] But we confess we did not anticipate the rapidity with which the reaction has set in. Not two years have elapsed since the throne of Louis Philippe was overturned, and a republic proclaimed in Paris amidst the transports of the revolutionary party over all Europe, and the gaze in astonishment of all the world; and already the delusion is over, the transports are at an end, the Jacobins are silent, and the convulsed commonwealth is fast sinking back to its pristine monarchical form of government. Every country in Europe felt the shock. The passions were universally let loose; sanguinary wars arose on every side; and while the enlightened Free-traders of England were dreaming, amidst their cotton bales, of universal and perpetual peace, which should open to them the markets of the world, hostilities the most terrible, contests the most dreadful, dissensions the most implacable, broke out in all quarters. It was not merely the war of opinion which Mr Canning long ago prophesied as the next which would desolate Europe: to it was superadded the still more frightful contest of races. The Lombard rose against the German, the Bohemian against the Imperialist, the Hungarian against the Austrian; the Celt and the Saxon stood in arms against each other. Naples was rent in twain; a revolutionary state was established in Sicily; the supreme pontiff was dethroned at Rome; Piedmont joined the innovating party; Lombardy rose up against Austria, Bohemia was in arms against Vienna, the Magyars revived against the Germans the fierce hostility of five centuries; Prussia was revolutionised, Baden ravaged, Denmark invaded; the Poles could with difficulty be restrained amidst the general effervescence; the Irish openly made preparations for rebellion and separation from Great Britain. England itself was shaken: the gravity and practical tendency of the Anglo-Saxon character in part yielded to the general contagion. London was threatened with a revolutionary movement; the Chartists in all the manufacturing towns were prepared to follow the example; treasonable placards, calling on the people to rise, were to be seen on all sides; and the mighty conqueror who had struck down Napoleon exerted his consummate skill in baffling the rebellion of his own countrymen, and won a victory over anarchy not less momentous than that of Waterloo, and not the less memorable that it did not cost a drop of human blood.

What a contrast, within the short period of eighteen months, did Europe afterwards exhibit! France, the centre of impulsion to the civilised world, was restrained; the demon of anarchy was crushed in its birthplace; the visions of the Socialists had been extinguished in the blood of the barricades. Dispersed, dejected, in despair, the heroes of February were languishing in exile, or mourning in prison the blasting of their hopes, the ruin of their prospects, the unveiling of their sophistries. Revolution had been crushed without the effusion of blood in Berlin: law had regained its ascendency; rebellion had quailed before the undaunted aspect of the defenders of order and the throne. Naples had regained the dominion of Sicily; the arms of France had restored the Pope at Rome; the Eternal City had yielded to the assault of the soldiers of Louis Napoleon. Austria had regained her ascendency in Italy; the perfidious aggression of Charles Albert had been signally chastised by the skill and determination of the veteran Radetsky; Milan was again the seat of Imperial government; the dream of a Venetian republic had passed away, and the Place of St Mark again beheld the double-headed eagle of Austria at the summit of its domes. Baden was conquered, Saxony pacified; the fumes of revolutionary aggression in Schleswig had been dissipated by the firmness of Denmark, and the ready, although unexerted, support of Russia. Poland was overawed by the Colossus of the North; and even the heroic valour of the Magyars, so often in happier days the bulwark of the Cross, had yielded to that loyalty and tenacity of purpose which has so long distinguished the Austrian people, joined and aided by the support which, on this as on many previous occasions, Russia has afforded to the cause of order in Europe. Though last, not least, Great Britain was pacified: the dreams of the Socialists, the treason of the Chartists, had recoiled before the energy of a people yet on the whole loyal and united. Ireland, blasted by the triple curse of rebellion, pestilence, and famine, had ceased to be an object of disquietude to England, save from the incessant misery which it exhibited; and its furious patriots, abandoning in multitudes the land of their birth, were carrying into Transatlantic regions those principles of anarchy, and deathless hatred at civilisation, which had so long laid waste their own country.

Acknowledging, as all must do, with devout thankfulness, that it is to the Great Disposer of events that we are to ascribe so marvellous a DELIVERANCE FROM EVIL—so blessed an escape from a fate which would have renewed, in Europe, a devastation as wide-spread, and darkness as thick, as occurred during the middle ages—it may yet, humanly speaking, be discerned how it is that our salvation has been effected. The days of miracles are past; the law is not now delivered amidst the thunders of Mount Sinai; the walls of fortresses do not fall down at the sound of the Lord's trumpet; there is no longer a chosen people, over whose safety the eye of Omnipotence watches, and whom, in the last extremity, the destroying angel rescues from their enemies. The direction of human affairs by Supreme Wisdom; the coercion of wickedness; the support of virtue; the ceaseless advance of the race of man, amidst all the folly and selfishness with which its concerns are conducted, have not, indeed, passed away: all these