We earnestly trust that no further delay will take place that no feelings of party will be allowed to interfere; but that when it is distinctly shown, that it is for the young and helpless that the interference is made, (at present, perhaps, doomed to an untimely death, but capable of being made germs of future commercial greatness,) no further enquiry into any yet undiscovered evils will delay the remedy of those which are fully known; and that we shall no longer be obliged to bear the ills we have,' while, through the somewhat tedious process of a Commission, we are searching for others that we know not of.':

We have said nothing about the relief which emigration to our colonies may afford, in places where the amount of the popu lation is excessive; because we have tried to show, that if the demand for labour and the supply of food be allowed to take their natural course, no deficiency in either need require that compulsory or unwilling departure for foreign shores-that tearing asunder of home ties, which we have always held to be the consequence and the sign of misgovernment, or of improper interference with the natural laws of society. That an increase of population as rapid as that which takes place in this kingdom, admits of the hardy, the enterprising, and the unencumbered, whether alone, or with the newly-chosen partners of their fortunes, to devote their energies to the improvement of our colonies, without causing any void at home, we rejoice to think. that that increase requires, as its antidote, the asportation of whole families of helpless and desponding paupers liberos, conjuges, et graves senio parentes'-bought off by the overburdened poor-rates from the overloaded labour-market of agricultural districts, we must deny.

But

As long as the human mind remains what it is, and has been, there is no danger of our colonies being deprived of the additional vigour which, from time to time, British enterprise and industry infuses into them; but we should wish to look for that supply, not to the necessary relief of home misery, but to that which the Roman philosopher calls 'naturalem quandam irritationem com'mutandi sedes et transferendi domicilia.'* Of all the causes of emigration to which he alludes, including among them the favourite one of modern times, nimia superfluentis populi frequentia,' we would, while our manufactures continue to flourish, acknowledge but one, viz. fertilis oræ et in majus laudatæ fama.'t

6

* Seneca. De Consol. ad Helviam.

† On subjects like this, of great importance, but where opinion is not yet sanctioned conclusively by science that is, grounded upon established principles we reserve to ourselves, while giving currency to

We trust, however, that such statistical facts as we have been examining, will invite attention to the exaggeration with which the necessary evils of an increasing population have been dressed up; and to the advantages which we may all derive from it, if the additional labour which it supplies be but allowed to take its natural direction. We trust that when it is seen that no forced emigration, no excessive mortality, no unanswerable demands upon public charity, are its necessary or even natural consequences, we shall, as a nation, as a united people, determine upon proceeding in that course of policy which will remove all chance of these evils. Let us not be scared by predictions of agricultural distress, which we venture to say will never be realized, if we shall wisely enlarge the demands for labour and for food, in those districts which have already supported so large a portion of our surplus rural population, and so enormously increased the consumption of our agricultural produce. Let us give up that practice of class legislation, which, like the ivy, checks the growth of those branches it would seem to shelter and protect. Let us disregard all questions of private interest, which cannot be long separated from those of the public advantage; and when once the right course of policy is set before us, let us, as a united people, follow wherever it leads. Alacres et erecti, quocunque

res tulerit, intrepido gradu properemus.'

ART. IV.-Mémoires Authentiques de Jacques Nompar de Caumont, Duc de la Force, Maréchal de France; et de ses deux fils, les Marquis de Montpouillan et de Castelnaut: suivis de documents historiques, et de correspondances inédites de Henri III., Henri IV., Catharine de Bourbon, Louis XIII., Marie de Medicis, Condé, Sully, Villeroy, Pontchartrain, Bouillon, Biron, Montespan, Du Plessis Mornay, Schomberg, Chatillon, D'Effiat, Fouquières, Richelieu, Servien, Des Noyers, et autres personages célèbres, depuis la Saint Barthelemy jusqu'à la Fronde. Publiés, mis en ordre, et précédés d'une Introduction, par M. le MARQUIS DE LA GRANGE. 4 Tomes. 8vo. Paris: 1843.

JACQUES NOMPAR DE CAUMONT LA FORCE was one of the

toughest of that tough provincial aristocracy, of the sixteenth century, who fought for so long a period in effect to divide France amongst themselves, whether under the colours of the Catholic

views that have any strong support, the fullest liberty to state, or to adopt any others, that may appear to us worthy of our notice or advocacy.

League, or by aid of the organization of the Protestant towns and provinces.

In other great states of Europe the grand religious movement of that age, whether by its suppression or its recognition, had turned to the immediate aggrandizement of the secular powers which had achieved either result. In Spain, the Inquisition became the political and fiscal tool of the King's government: whomsoever that government desired to punish or plunder, without any legal pretext, it handed over to the Inquisition, and obtained sentence and condemnation for heresy. The sending of military stores to France was, on one occasion, condemned as heresy. In Germany, England, and Scotland, on the other hand, we need not recall to our readers how the secular powers which promoted, found their account in, the Reformation.

In

In France neither result took place. She had not, like Germany, independent Princes, who made the Reformation their work. She had not, like England, Princes, Parliament, and a People, who took successive shares in that work. France, the great mass of the population remained attached to the old faith, the church retained its proprietary and monastic preaching power; so much at least of the former as the sovereign did not permit himself to appropriate for the gratification of his courtiers, under the complaisant terms of the Papal Concordat with the above-named monarch. That Concordat had, in fact, transferred to the crown, from the papal see, a power nearly as absolute over the church and its revenues as reform could have given it; and, on the other hand, the government was soon alarmed by the iconoclastic and innovating spirit which showed itself in company with the new doctrines.

The ferment excited by the Reformed opinions in France, had the effect of re-opening all the old wounds which had seemed to be closed under the more vigorous regimen of the monarchy, since the period of the English invasions, and the reign of Louis XI. It was a relapse from the Renaissance into the middle ages-from monarchy into quasi-feudalism-the wars of the Roses thrust forwards amidst the journalism and artillery of modern Europe-aristocratical and popular barbarism warring with the improved weapons of civilization. Modern diplomacy, tactics, and the press have begun their work, while courts and camps still exhibit an extraordinary mixture of rudeness and corruption; the great nobles revive the factions and feuds of the middle ages, and the people are sunk in ignorant apathy, except when roused to superstitious crimes.

Every external motive might have seemed to designate France, in the sixteenth century, for the political and military head of the

European revolt against the ecclesiastical power. Her national interests pointed distinctly in that direction; as being the direction in which she could enlist the most effective forces against the house of Austria. This motive was so clear, powerful, and positive, that, in spite of bigotry, it governed the foreign policy of France at every lucid interval; while the Protestant party, which she aided and subsidized abroad, was persecuted and crushed at home.

The French sovereigns, vacillating between European and Italian policy, took no consistent part, from the first, on either side of the great struggle; and by letting the reins of government slip out of their hands, (under Henry III.,) permitted independent powers and jurisdictions to re-appear in the provinces. The great families of feudal times were indeed for the most part extinct; but their place was supplied by those Princes who had obtained appanages from the Crown-by the governors of provinces and towns, who maintained themselves in defiance of royalty and finally, by the royal favourites raised by the last Valois sovereigns to wealth and command, which rendered them formidable so soon as they found cause to be discontented. Under such leaders, crowds of small gentlemen, disbanded soldiers, and adventurers were, at all times, ready to serve. The ferment introduced by the new opinions set all these unquiet spirits in motion; and the Catholic or Protestant cause furnished excellent watchwords to those who wanted nothing else.

The Memoirs before us, beginning with the Saint Bartholo mew,* end within a few years of the Fronde. They embrace, therefore, a whole political and military chapter of French history, and traverse some of the most important epochs which occur in that history, from the commencement of what are commonly distinguished as modern times, to the Revolution. But those

* Of course, they begin first of all with the genealogy of the house of Caumont. We need not ascend to its remote honours; and the only circumstances in their later descent which are worth remark at present, are, first, that the editor of these volumes (who has prefaced them with a well-written introduction) states in a note that his connexion with the family is by marriage to Mademoiselle de Caumont la Force, daughter of the Duke de la Force, Peer of France, and descendant of the Marshal de la Force; secondly, that the noble family of Beaupoil, from which the Marshal de la Force was descended on the mother's side, has for one of its representatives at the present day the Count de Sainte Aulaire, ambassador of France at the court of London, and author of the History of the Fronde.

epochs were traversed by the principal personage of these Memoirs, more in the manner of Sancho Panza with his tenacious ambition for governorship, and of Captain Dugald Dalgetty with his equal fidelity to all masters, (and paymasters,) than of any higher or more heroic model. M. de la Force is the sort of hero that is formed in civil discords, and gets well through them, These movements are begun by the Quixotes; but it is the Sancho Panzas that see the end of them, and comfort their little 'carcasses' amidst the wreck of devotion and enthusiasm.

The existence in MS. of these Memoirs in the family archives of the House of La Force, has long been known. Voltaire, in the second book of the Henriade, has given, as follows, the popular version of the escape from the Saint Bartholomew of the young Caumont, afterwards Duke of La Force, who prolonged a life, spent in warfare, to the mature age of ninety-five:

"Quelques-uns, il est vrai, dans la foule des morts
Du fer des assassins trompèrent les efforts.
De Caumont, jeune enfant, l'étonnante aventure
Ira de bouche en bouche à la race future,
Son vieux père, accablé sous le fardeau des ans,
Se livrait au sommeil entre ses deux enfans;
Un lit seul enfermait et les fils et le père:
Les meurtriers ardens, qu'aveuglait la colère,
Sur eux à coups pressés enfoncent le poignard:
Sur ce lit malheureux la mort vole au hasard.

Son père à ses côtés, sous mille coups mourant,
Le couvrait tout entier de son corps expirant;
Et du peuple et du roi trompant la barbarie,
Une seconde fois il lui donna la vie.'

Voltaire thus corrects the above romantic narrative in his Notes to the poem: It was on the faith of Mézerai that I put 'this adventure in verse. That historian asserts that the young Caumont, his father, and brother, lay in the same bed; that his father and brother were massacred, and that he escaped as 6 by miracle. The circumstances by which Mézerai sup'ports his story, did not suffer me to doubt the truth of the fact " as he states it; but M. the Duke de la Force has since shown me the MS. Memoirs of that same Marshal de la Force, written by his own hand. The Marshal there relates his adventure in a different manner. Cela fait voir comme il faut se fier aux 'historiens.'

This was Voltaire's favourite moral from all such occurrences; and it must be acknowledged that it derives additional confirmation from the fact, that Sismondi has repeated the little romance