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Untitled Article
an anxious wish even by sacrifices to preserve the peace of Europe and the world , are blended with a most felicitous magnanimity . If the backwardness evinced by the aristocracy of this country in those expressions of joy , sympathy , and encouragement , towards the French
people , which they ought to have been foremost to promote , is to be as > cribed to any apprehension of the instability of the present government , we think the fear will prove to be as groundless as the conduct which it occasioned has been disgraceful . To our apprehension , the government of France as now constituted contains the surest principle of perpetuity in that of improvement ; while it is so far in accordance with the wants and wishes
of the people , and with the present state of political knowledge , as not to require any great or speedy change even in the way of improvement . Stability is not now to be sought as it might be in ruder times , by raising certain classes of society into power and continuance , and by securing the aid of endowed and unchangeable establishments . The interests of nations are so much more clearly and commonly understood 3 that what were once the guarantees of permanency are now become the elements of mutability .
Ihose governments aTe most likely to last which best commend themselves to the intelligence of a people , and which shall be found by experience most efficiently to secure the people ' s common interests . The present government of France is machinery which promises to work well for these purposes . The King ' s grant of a charter has become the nation ' s own bill of ri ghts . The insult of its preamble is expunged , the sovereignty of the people is full y recognized , the censorship of the press , the introduction of
foreign troops , the erection of arbitrary tribunals ., and the unlimited creation o ^ peers , are finally abolished ; and there is for these and other great and manifest improvements , the security , not only of a public contract to which the sovereign is solemnly syirorn , but the much firmer security of an armed population , the National Guard , to whom is distinctly and legally confided the protection of the constitution . France is no longer , in any of its public forms , the patrimony of a family , but is become obviously and avowedly , though with an hereditary chief magistrate , a commonwealth ,. Public
opinion will and must be the ruling power : and with the means which are possessed for the formation , for the gradual correction , and for the peaceable but availing expression of that opinion , there can be no doubt that it is well for France and for the world that it should be the sole ruling power . Its influences may be expected to conduct with rapid steps towards political , literary , and commercial greatness . There seems no reason to apprehend instability from the operation of any cause except external force . That has been once tried on France , under circumstances far more favourable than the present , and the sovereigns of Europe will probably hesitate before they
venture upon a second experiment . In these changes , religious liberty has been extended by the suppression of that article of the former charter which declared the Roman Catholic religion to be the religion of the state . The fact merely is recorded , that it is the religion " professed by the majority of Frenchmen ; " and that its ministers , " together with those of other Christian doctrines , shall be supported at the public expense . "
A failure , probably only temporary , attended an attempt to put the Jews upon the same footing . We trust that the times will prove not less propitious to religion than to religious liberty , that the extension which has been made will not be the mere freedom of indifference , but that theology is about to become in France a practical science . There have been many
Untitled Article
France . 623
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Citation
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Monthly Repository (1806-1838) and Unitarian Chronicle (1832-1833), Sept. 2, 1830, page 623, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse.ac.uk/periodicals/mruc/issues/vm2-ncseproduct2588/page/39/
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