of any country, that can be compared with three of which this island boasts, Hume, Robertson, and Gibbon. They are historians whom no age but such a one as the present could produce: it is in vain to look for any thing ancient to be opposed to them. It is only among future generations that rivals to them can be found. One remark has struck us forcibly, in looking over the second and third reports, that no mention is made of the works on political economy, commerce, statistics, and the like, that in different parts of Europe, have, within these few years, increased the mass of knowledge on all these subjects. Works on legislation are mentioned; but no enumeration is subjoined. We do not observe that Malthus's Essay on Population is any where taken notice of. All this looks as if there were a class of subjects, and one too of the highest importance to society, that is at present interdicted in France. This is weak policy, and unworthy of a great monarch. The subjects prohibited will be only so much the more forcibly imprinted on the minds of the people. They will be like the statues which the jealousy of a Roman emperor excluded from a procession in which they had a right to appear-" Præfulgebant Cassius atque Brutus,-eo ipso quod effigies eorum non visebantur." But whatever be the case with this branch of knowledge, it is but fair to state, that the physical and mathematical sciences, and many parts of literature, have been cultivated in France and in the rest of Europe, to great effect, during the last nineteen years, notwithstanding the agitation and distress which have every where prevailed. We are certainly not of the number to whom the Emperor alludes, who pretend that science is retrograde, because they wish it to be extinguished. We rejoice to think that it cannot be extinguished; and that this is a revolution which no individual is sufficiently powerful to effect. Indeed, we have reason to think, that those branches of knowledge that are least favoured by the Emperor, and to which his protection is not extended, are at this moment studied in France with great assiduity. FINIS. |
