I am rendering a service to those who are not sufficiently versed in the French language to enjoy the original. French being, as it were, my native language, I hope I have in no instance mistaken the author's meaning; though, I fear, that as a foreigner, I may not always have expressed it so elegantly as I could wish. I have to regret that my distance from a public library has rendered it impossible for me, in many instances, to verify M. Guizot's references and give the very words of the author whom he quotes. I should certainly not have failed in this had the works been within my reach; as it is, I hope the reader will pardon a deficiency which I have supplied by the best means in my power-a strict fidelity to the author's text.

LOUISE H. R. COUTIER.

ENHAM, JANUARY, 1838.

THE AUTHOR'S PREFACE.

I HAVE published the original memoirs of the English revolution; I now publish its History. Before the French revolution this was the greatest event that had happened in Europe.

I am not afraid that its importance will be forgotten; the French revolution, in surpassing, did not lessen its greatness; both are victories in the same war, and to the profit of the same cause; glory belongs to both, and instead of eclipsing they enhance each other's merits. My fear is rather that their true character should not be understood, and that the proper place which belongs to them in the history of the world, should not be assigned to them.

If we adopt an opinion now widely diffused, it would seem that the two revolutions are strange events emanating from principles and conceived in designs unheard of before, which have thrown society out of its ancient and natural course; that they were hurricanes, earthquakes, in short, that they belonged to those mysterious phenomena which mẹn cannot explain, that burst suddenly from the will of Providence either to renovate or destroy. Friends and enemies, panegyrists, and detractors, all hold this same language. According

to some, these glorious events have for the first time brought truth, liberty, and justice to light; before they happened, all was absurdity, iniquity, and tyranny; by them the human race has been saved. According to others, these deplorable events have interrupted a long golden age of wisdom, virtue, and happiness; the perpetrators of them having proclaimed maxims, put forward pretensions, and committed crimes, till then without example or parallel. Nations, in a fit of insanity, forsook their accustomed road; an abyss suddenly gaped beneath their feet. Thus all parties, whether they bless, deplore, or condemn revolutions, agree in forgetting every thing else in their presence. By all they are entirely cut off from the past, and are themselves regarded as responsible for the destiny of the world. In short, they are either loaded with unmitigated anathema or with glory.

It is time to forsake these puerile and unfounded declamations.

Far from having interrupted the natural course of events in Europe, neither the English nor the French revolution either said, wished, or did anything that had not been said, wished, done, or attempted, hundreds of times before. They proclaimed the illegality of absolute power. Free concurrence with regard to laws and taxes, and the right to resist with arms and force, were among the constitutive principles of the feudal administration; and the church has often repeated these words of St. Isodorus, found in the canons of

the fourth council of Toledo: "He is king who rules his people with justice; if he act otherwise he shall no longer be king." These canons attacked prerogative and laboured to introduce a greater degree of equality in social order. Every king in Europe has done the same; and down to the present day, the progress of civil equality has been founded and measured by the progress of royalty. These canons required that public offices should be accessible to every individual, that merit alone should be the standard of their distribution, and that power should be conferred by election. This is the fundamental principle of the interior government of the church; and the church has not only acted upon it, but loudly proclaimed its virtue. And whether we consider the general doctrines of the two revolutions, or the things to which they were appliedwhether the government, the state, or the civil legislation are spoken of, property or persons, liberty or power-nothing will be found altogether peculiar to them, nothing but what may likewise be met with, or but what had at least its origin in what are called peaceable times.

This is not all. The principles, the designs, the efforts, which are exclusively attributed to the English and to the French revolutions, not only preceded them by several centuries, but are precisely those to which society in Europe owes all its progress. Was it by their disturbances, and their privileges, by the brutality of their strength, and by crushing men beneath their

yoke, that the feudal aristocracy took a part in the moral growth of nations? No; but the feudal aristocracy struggled against royal tyranny, exercised the right of resistance, and maintained the maxims of liberty. For what have nations blessed kings? for their pretensions to divine right and to absolute power? for their profusion, for the splendid pageantry of their courts? No; but for combating the feudal system and aristocratical privileges, for having introduced something like unity in legislation, and in the administration; in short, for having aided the progress of equality. Whence, again, do the clergy derive their power? how have they advanced the march of civilisation? Is it by separating themselves from the people, by opposing the growth of human reason, and sanctioning tyranny in the name of heaven? No; but the clergy have always gathered together in their churches, and under the law of God, the great and small, the poor and rich, the weak and the powerful of the earth; they have honoured and cultivated science, instituted schools, favoured the propagation of knowledge, and the development of mind. Look into the history of the conquerors of the world, examine the influence of the several classes that have decided its destiny, and wherever any good is perceptible, whenever the tardy gratitude of man testifies of some great service rendered to humanity, it will be found that a step was taken towards the same object, sought by the English