the Carlyle and Ruskin order (if to be termed opinions at all) are likely to prove very misleading. It seems that Fredericthough by what miracles of economy and self-denial he effected it remains, as we say, unexplained-contrived, at the beginning of every year of war, to have funds in hand to meet the estimate for that year. At the Peace of Hubertsburg, accordingly, he had, we are told, twenty-five million of thalers in his treasury, or enough for the consumption of three or four years of peace. The course which sound financial principle, special reasons apart, would have indicated, would have been to remit his subjects' taxation to that amount, and allow the twenty-five millions to 'fructify' in their pockets. Nature would then, to use Mr. Carlyle's simile, which is certainly more in the vein of Ruskin than Ricardo, have clothed the ruins with lichen' in her own good time in plainer English, capital would have found its way to render productive the districts which had suffered most by the war, because, in those districts there would probably have been found (with returning security) the most effective demand for it. Frederic, therefore, by spending this money according to his own notion of what was most required, may have been only interfering with, and retarding, the wholesome sanative process of nature. So apparently thought Mirabeau (the father, in his Monarchie Prussienne'), and so have thought many others. Nevertheless, it is certain that there are considerations on the other side fairly to be taken into the account. One of these is the propensity to hoard money, universal in times of insecurity and terror, such as were likely, in a backward country like Prussia, long to outlast the immediate pressure of an exhausting war. Much of the twenty-five millions, had Frederic left it to the taxpayers, would probably have found its way way into mere dead accumulations of treasure, to the evident damage of the body politic. Other reasons might be given in his favour without any disloyalty to the Dismal Science,' for which we have not space here; and, on the whole, there is no heresy in believing that Frederic, with his stern economy and genius for stewardship, may have done more good in these exceptional circumstances with his subjects' money than his subjects would themselves have done with it.

The topic, however, is one which opens a much wider field of thought, and one to which economical writers, so far as we have remarked, have not yet devoted the attention which it deserves. How far is the principle of mutual insurance between members of the same body politic likely to extend itself with advancing civilisation? There is no reason, in theory, why it should not do so, until every loss sustained by an individual were made to Vol. 118.-No. 235. fall

R

fall on the general fund. But, stopping short of such far-reaching speculations, it is certain that the measure and manner in which national relief, in case of local catastrophes, or supposed local wants, may be afforded with advantage by contributions from the State at large, has never been made, as it ought to have been, the subject of definite political investigation. This is one of the directions in which absolute sovereigns, especially Oriental sovereigns, have loved to exercise their capricious benevolence, if that can be called so which is exercised at the expense of others. Remissions of taxation and conscription to provinces thought deserving of relief-which, of course, only means supporting them at the expense of other provinces-these are among the commonest features of Eastern sovereignty in its milder moods, and have constantly called forth the praises of the ignorant, as if they were real acts of generosity. So, when the rulers of Russia and of Prussia spent large sums in reclaiming wastes and planting colonies, they were only carrying into execution the old fashioned Oriental pattern of paternal government, sometimes, it may well be, with advantage, more often, probably, to the general loss. This principle, or rather occasional usage, of compulsory insurance, if it may be so termed, has always been less practised in the Western States of Europe, a circumstance which may arise from their early Roman education in some of the more important elements of self-government. In our own country, it has been chiefly confined to occasional Parliamentary grants in aid of local distress, generally (and rightly) bestowed with grudging, often degenerating into mere jobs in the administration. But on some great occasions-the Irish distress of 1847, the Lancashire distress of 1863-the principle of insurance has been carried out in a still more irregular, though perhaps more efficacious, way, through voluntary contributions on a scale befitting national efforts. The problem, which may possibly be one day elaborated by the best heads devoted to the Dismal Science, is that of satisfying the social need of mutual assurance against local calamity by some approach to general arrangement, and not leaving it either to the caprices of a monarch, even though accidentally a hero,' or to those of an impulsive public.

The next crisis of importance in the reign of Frederic is that of the first partition of Poland in 1772. As to Mr. Carlyle's singular views on this subject, much might be said. Though history is the most irrefragable of moral teachers, it by no means follows, in our opinion, that it is the duty of every historian to improve her texts by getting up into the pulpit on all occasions and preaching for himself. It is too common a belief among this class of writers, that they are bound to let no great

action or event pass by them without calling the attention of their public to its various moral phases, and apportioning praise and blame in their own scales. This we hold to be a misapprehension, and we know full well that its consequences are too often exceedingly wearisome, and very useless. We should, for our own parts, be perfectly well pleased to dispense with any fresh repetition of what Mr. Carlyle calls the 'shrieks, the foamlipped curses of mistaken mankind' over such events as the partition of Poland, in the pages of modern historians, and content ourselves with the calm verdict of one who should simply say, without mouthing or emphasis, 'Thus did Frederic, and Catherine, and Joseph, and thus suffered the Poles.' But, it is quite unnecessary to say, such passionless exposition must not be sought for from Mr. Carlyle. It would be to require of him a self-discipline absolutely contradictory to the laws of his nature. And, more than this, it would take 'half his worth away.' His peculiar charm lies in that hearty resolution not only to lead, but to drive if needful, the reader along with him-to cram him with doctrine without stint or reticence-to compel him to enter, and not leave go of him until the very last rinsings of Mr. Carlyle's own judgment and feelings have been thoroughly infused into him. Our author's vocation is to teach the nations how to live,' not by merely laying examples before them, still less by gentle persuasion, but by laying down the only true faith on pain, as we have said, of intellectual damnation. He must preach, or hold his tongue altogether. Such being the conditions of his literary existence, nothing could be more unfortunate than that he should be forced by his position to handle such a subject as the partition of Poland; and to make his views on it fit in, by every conceivable Procrustean process, with those which impel him to canonise one of the arch-robbers, his hero. The result is to our mind a strangely disjointed, and very inconsistent, series of half vaunts and half apologies.

'August 5, 1772. These are our respective shares. We take possession on the 1st of September instant; and actual possession, for Friedrich's share, did on the 13th of that month ensue. A right glad Friedrich, as everybody, friend or enemy, may imagine him! Glad to have done with such a business; had there been no other profit in it: which was far from being the case. One's clear belief, on studying these books, is of two things: first, that, as everybody admits, Friedrich had no real hand in starting the notion of partitioning Poland: but that he grasped at it with eagerness, as the one way of saving Europe from war: second, what has been much less noticed, that under any other hand, it would have led Europe to war; and that to Friedrich is due the fact that it got effected without such accom

paniment' (why, if Friedrich had held aloof and left Russia and Austria to execute the measure, an European war must have followed, is what we cannot divine). Friedrich's share of territory is counted to be, in all, 9465 English square miles: Austria's, 62,500: Russia's, 87,500; between nine and ten times the amount of Friedrich's' (vi. 479).

Surely the figures are incorrect as to the partition of 1772. But the passage seems to be inserted to diminish Frederic's guilt, by making out that his share was such a little one.' But independently of the moral fallacy of this argument, it is very misleading in fact. Russia got a large slice indeed, but of the very worst and most unpeopled country in Europe-a region almost wholly of morass and forest. The share of Prussia was, besides its peculiar adaptation to Prussia's wants, of high commercial value. But Austria was the real gainer by the first partitionacquiring a slice only less than that of Russia, and comprising the most fertile and available parts of the whole Polish territory. A little farther on, the question is taken up in rather a higher strain, and Mr. Carlyle's favourite notions of Providence come into play.

'Considerable obloquy still rests on Friedrich in many liberal circles (why confined to "liberal"?) for the partition of Poland. Two things, however, seem by this time tolerably clear, though not known in liberal circles: first, that the partition of Poland was an event inevitable in Polish history: an operation of Almighty Providence and of the Eternal Laws of Nature, as well as of the poor earthly sovereigns concerned there: and secondly, that Friedrich had nothing special to do with it, and in the way of originating or causing it, nothing whatever. It is certain the demands of Eternal Justice must be fulfilled: in earthly instruments, concerned with fulfilling them, there may be all degrees of demerit, and also of merit from that of a world-ruffian Attila the Scourge of God to that of a heroic Cromwell. If the laws and judgments are verily those of God, there can be no clearer merit than that of pushing them forward, regardless of the barkings of gazetteers and wayside dogs, and getting them, at the earliest time possible, made valid among recalcitrant mortals! Friedrich, in regard to Poland, I cannot find to have had anything considerable either of merit or of demerit, in the moral point of view; but simply to have accepted, and put in his pocket without criticism, which Providence sent! He himself evidently views it in that light, and is at no pains to conceal his great sense of the value of West-Preussen to him!' (vi. 482).

If we were ourselves to mount the pulpit, and distribute blame in the matter, regardless of 'inarticulate shriekings' on the one side, and of new developments of 'eternal justice' on the other, we should be inclined to arrive at a conclusion, which, we fear,

is

is not the common one: namely, that of the three allies in the partition of 1772, Russia had by far the best apology, if not justification. The provinces on the Dwina and Dnieper, which she then wrested from Poland, had been for ages debatable land between two fierce and barbarous monarchies; a half waste region, almost without towns or fortresses, or natural limits. Sometimes they had been Russian, sometimes Polish: as late as 1660, Polish annexations' had reached almost to the gates of Moscow; and these repeated invasions from the West had left a strong vindictive feeling rankling in the spirit of Russia. But the balance of victories and defeats had left one mischievous and anarchical result-these provinces were peopled almost entirely by a Polish Catholic aristocracy domineering over some millions of Greek, and chiefly Russian, serfs. And the so-called commonwealth of Poland, so far from doing anything to redress the inequalities of their condition, had aggravated it to the utmost extent. The claims of the Dissidents' to equality of rights, grounded on old constitutional principle, were over and over again contemptuously rejected. And while pressed down by the sense of religious inferiority, the unhappy Boors were handed over to the uncontrolled dominion of a serf-holding aristocracy, in which all the ordinary faults to which that order is prone were aggravated by fanaticism. The reader must descend far below the level of such histories as Mr. Carlyle's, or any others which we have read-must dive deep in the stratum of obscure books of travel and biography-if he would form the slightest conception of the state of oppression in which the serfs of the Polish Ukraine and neighbouring provinces existed immediately before 1772. All these injured millions were the daily clients of the great Czarina-supplicating her, the mistress of their race and of their religion, to come to their deliverance from that chaos of bondage. She did so and in the only way in which she could effectually have done it; and had it not been that her conduct in this instance has been judged, and naturally judged, by the light of that subsequent course of fraud and violence towards Poland into which she was carried away, we believe that posterity would have taken her part. Thinking thus, we to a certain extent-though not unreservedly-adopt the very characteristic view which Mr. Carlyle takes of Catherine and her doings.

So far as can be guessed and assiduously deduced from Rulhière, with your best attention, Russian Catherine's interference seems first to have been grounded on the grandiose philanthropic principle. Astonishing to the liberal mind; yet to appearance true. Rulhière

nowhere