THE 



MONTHLY MAGAZINE 



OF 



POLITICS, LITERATURE, AND THE BELLES LETTRES. 



Vol. XII.] OCTOBER, 1831. [No. 70- 



ENGLAND AND THE CONTINENT. 



That the whole of Europe is rapidly approaching to a crisis, is 

 altogether beyond denial. The symptoms of a fierce and total change 

 are already appearing in every monarchy of the continent; and the 

 agency of powers, whose untamed and untameable violence has formed 

 the terror of statesmen in all ages, is palpably assuming a combined and 

 systematic activity, that must end in fearful overthrow. In every part 

 of Europe the press is laying its grasp upon the public mind. Let us 

 give that press all its praise. The invention of man, or perhaps, we 

 might more justly say, the bounty of providence, never offered a nobler 

 boon to the liberties of nations, the advance of knowledge, or the general 

 control and cultivation of the human mind. But power is a good only 

 as it is used for good. The press in England may still be kept in the 

 straight way by the force of that established public opinion, which 

 crushes the traitor, and strips the libeller. But the continental press is 

 altogether furious, ignorant, and revolutionary. All its appeals are 

 to the populace, and its arguments, if they deserve the nam.e, are gross 

 and blood-thirsty incitements to the rabble passions of blood and 

 plunder. The fallen Jacobin, the obscure rebel, the man who after a 

 brief day of ferocious vengeance and dissolute revelling, has been 

 plunged down into his original obscurity, clings to the press as the only 

 instrument by which he is to be raised to the surface of society again. 

 The disbanded soldier who feels life irksome where it no longer leads 

 him into the furious riot of the passions, or pampers his desperate ambi- 

 tion with hourly massacre, and gluts his brutal rapacity with perpetual 

 spoil, clings to the press as the instrument by which he is to be drawn from 

 his beggary, and sent forth to rob and luurder once more. The infidel 

 hating God and man alike, antl longing for the return of those wild 

 times when the king and the priest were equally offered up to his sullen 

 scorn ; and the land was in a blaze, fed by the remnants of all that was 

 royal, honourable, learned, or holy within the realm, clings to the press 

 as the machine whose rapid wheels are to bear him over the wreck of 

 throne and altar, and make him master for awhile. At this hour the 



M.M. New 5cnw.— Vol. XII. No. 70. 2 U 



