Various

“ Shall they and their posterity be for ever subjected to the most miserable of all conditions, the inhuman barbarity of masters, who may beat, mutilate, torture, starve, or kill, so great a number of mankind at pleasure? Shall the far greater part of the commonwealth be slaves, not that the rest may be free, but tyrants over them? With what face can we oppose the tyranny of princes, and recommend such tyranny as the highest virtue, if we make ourselves tyrants over the greatest part of mankind? Can any man, from whom such a thing has escaped, ever offer to speak for liberty? ”

“ The wind blew for Sicily, much to the discontent of some of the barons, and to the secret and profound joy of the King. After a prosperous voyage of only three days' duration, Don Pedro landed at the port of Trapani. The inhabitants received him as a liberator, and he proceeded to Palermo, where his stay was one unbroken triumph." He did not remain there long. He was as active and indefatigable as Charles of Anjou; like him sleeping little, and rising before the sun. He resolved to march to the succour of Messina, and to intercept the French army's communications with Calabria. ”

“ But the old Parisian flaneur, with his easily satisfied curiosity, his desultory wanderings, his careless movements—and what Parisian of the street-crowds, man, woman, or child, had not formerly more or less of the spirit of a true flaneur?—is gone from the streets of Paris. A citizen has something else to do than flaner: he feels all the weight of the interests of the country on his own individual shoulders; and he has no time now but for making harangues, on which the welfare of France depends, and discussing political or social questions, equally for the welfare of all humanity. ”

“ Hark! how it peels along the Boulevards! It comes, and the senses swim as the host goes by, marching on, and on, and on—confusing the sight with the incessant passing of such a stream of living beings, and its waving banners; deafening the ears with the menacing cries of "Down with the aristocrats!" and the discordant chorussing of confused patriotic songs—for the Marseillaise now gives way to the fearful Ca Ira. It comes, and it seems as if it never would end. Awful, indeed, is the display of a people's force, thus excited and inflamed by designing leaders! ”

“ It is not the weakness, it is the irresistible strength of a democratic government which is its greatest evil. It is the iron grasp it never fails to lay on the property of others which is its principal danger, the never-failing instrument of its speedy overthrow. Property is soon swept away by it, but liberty is swept away still more quickly. A Cæsar, a Cromwell, a Napoleon, arises like an avatar to stay the wrath of Heaven let loose in the unbridled passions of men ”

“ Hardly was M. Lamartine's hymn of "liberty, equality, fraternity," chanted, when the reign of internal spoliation and external violence commenced in France, and rapidly extended as far as its influence was felt throughout the world.
"And this, too, shall pass away." The reign of injustice is not eternal: it defeats itself by its own excesses: the avenging angel is found in the human heart. In the darkest days of humanity, this great law of nature is unceasingly acting, and preparing in silence the renovation of the world. ”

“ It is in the eternal warfare between these opposite principles, that the true secret of the whole history of mankind is to be found: in the alternate triumph of the one and the other, that the clearest demonstration is to be discerned of the perpetual struggle between the noble and generous and selfish and corrupt desires which for ever actuate the heart of man.
"To rouse effort by the language of virtue," says Mr Alison, "and direct it to the purposes of vice, is the great art of revolution." ”

“ The unwary wanderer in Paris streets by night, in search of romance, may have had visions of theft, assassination, misery, crime, before his eyes, in the dark silent thoroughfares, but always visions of a most positive earthly nature; now he cannot help fancying himself transported into some old town of mystic Germany, with some fantastic, mysterious, unearthly, Hoffmannish deed going on near him. Are the headless dead, among the victims of a prior revolution, risen from their bloody vaults, to beckon unto their ghastly crew new victims of another? ”

“ The name of Sicily is illustrious in history. If the reputation of a people had for sole foundation and measure the number of inhabitants, the extent of its territory, the duration of its influence, the Sicilians, impoverished by continual revolutions, decimated by sucessive tyrannies, more isolated from the general progress by their internal organisation, than from the mainland by their geographical position, would hold, perhaps, in the annals of the world, no more room than their island occupies on the map of Europe. ”

“ The acclamation is great: shouts, shrieks, cries rend the air: the religious benediction is over: the priests hurry away as quietly as they can: the members of the Government retreat, escorted by a deputation of delegates, after an oration: and now the Marseillaise, or the Mourir pour la Patrie, are again screeched in discordant chorus, amidst the incessant firing off of guns. All day the tumult lasts throughout the city: to a late hour of night the firing in the air is incessant. ”

“ A barricade of stones and poles is erected round the precious emblem of liberty: the surrounding houses are constrained by threats of window-breaking to illuminate in honour of King-People: pitch fires are bright at each corner of the barricade: and patriotic boys, who devote themselves for their country's weal, are posted, with muskets on arm, to do sentry-duty all night round the tree—lest any audacious enemy of the country should compromise the safety of the republic by attempting to pull down one of the many hundreds of its emblems that now disfigure the streets of Paris. ”

“ No Saxon soldier pollutes her soil; but not a Saxon shilling glistens in her purse. The British Viceroy is no more; neither is the British Chancellor of the Exchequer any more—THERE. Ireland has got its own parliament. Also Ireland has got its own poor. Not a stiver of English millions now crosses St George's Channel. Not for one death by starvation now is England or the Saxon answerable. Ireland has her own exuberant Exchequer. Ireland pours abundance into the myriad mouths of her famine-stricken People. Shout, then, O Ireland! ”

“ There is not a letter in the alphabet of self-government—there is not a syllable in the code of municipal law—there is not a sentence in the charter of political liberty—of Ireland, which is not the lesson, the example, or the boon of the Saxon. Every thing that Ireland now demands is an imitation of a Saxon institution. And Ireland only demands these things, because for ages Saxon institution have pervaded her soil, and imbued her people. Grattan and Charlemont are Saxon names. In all the principles for which these remarkable men contended, no vestige of a Celtic idea can be traced. ”

“ The National Guard, two hundred and twenty thousand strong, mustered on the streets of Paris: they shouted out, "A bas les Communistes!"—"A bas Blanqui!"—"Vive le Gouvernement Provisoire!" and the Parisians flattered themselves the thing was done. Is not the remedy worse than the disease? What were fifteen thousand unarmed workmen spouting socialist speeches in the Champs de Mars to 200,000 armed National Guards, dictating their commands alike to the Provisional Government and the National Assembly! Was ever a capital handed over to such a lusty band of metropolitan janissaries? ”

“ At the best, the vanishing for ever of a language which has been spoken for thousands of years is a deeply touching event. There is a melancholy grandeur in the very idea, to which even its bitterest enemies cannot be wholly insensible. What, then, must the actual fact be to those who have worshipped and loved in its accents from the earliest hours of childhood, and all whose fondest recollections and hopes are bound up in its existence?'"
Mr Johnson, the third inspector, publishes a most curious list of all the books now circulating in the Welsh language. ”

“ On the opposite side of the way, that fatal building, the Hotel of Foreign Affairs, before which so frightful a scene of carnage was acted, looks much as it did of yore—perhaps only a little dirtier, a little more public-office-like—although young citizens en blouse mount guard before its gates instead of soldiers of the line, and on its walls, smeared with blood-dipped fingers, glare before one's eyes, unwashed away by rain, the startling capitals—"Mort a Guizot." ”

“ Old habits will in the end return—old affections revive—old desires resume their sway—old necessities become imperious. Institutions may be modified—dynasties overturned—forms of government altered—monarchs sent into exile; but the human heart remains, and will for ever remain, the same. That foundation being unaltered, the social necessities of men will in the end compel them to the old establishment of authority, under names perhaps new. Old power will revive, old rule be established, old authority be confirmed. The great body of men will still remain hewers of wood and drawers of water ”

“ The offenders exposed in Peter Williamson's history, were grave, sober burghers—bailies and town-councillors of one of the most worshipful and respectable corporations in the United Kingdom—men of peace, staid in their demeanour, cautious in their walk of life—careful not to rub their smooth, well-brushed broad-cloth against any impure thing. Their proceedings had the fairest and most innocent appearance: men of industry and business themselves, keepers of their bonds and engagements, they were but somewhat rigid in exacting industry and punctual performance of obligations from others. ”

“ Nations may rise in insurrection; they may destroy the existing government; they may establish a democratic or republican institution;—but that will not alter the nature of things; it will not compensate the incapacity for self-government of the great body of mankind; it will not relieve them from the first of human necessities, that of being directed by a few. Under one name or another—that of Decemvirs, a Triumvirate, a Committee of Public Salvation, a Directory, or a Provisional Government, the old authority is speedily evolved, only the more powerful that it has been cradled in violence. ”

“ Most greet the fall of the social edifice with triumph; but few, if any, let you know how they would reconstruct anew: some boldly state their object to be "the enlightenment of a well-intentioned but ignorant Government, which it is their duty to instruct:" others call down "the celestial vengeance, and the thunders of heaven, on their head, if ever they should deceive or lead astray the people." ”

“ Until the Saxon—conqueror as he was—touched the Irish soil, there did not grow, blossom, or bear fruit any intelligible notion of social order, or public liberty. But the gratitude of nations is not different from the gratitude of individuals. Away with the Saxon!
Can nothing cure the madness? Large practical wisdom in legislation, exuberant boundless prodigality of munificence, are equally unavailing. Away with the Saxon! But disgust may at length do what force never could have done. Honest, sober, orderly folks in Britain begin to cherish strange thoughts. ”

“ Let the higher orders and the government of the country show, the former more enlightened and more energetic patriotism, and the latter more intelligence and foresight than hitherto. Let them provide the people with the materials of education and instruction; let them call forth the numerous learned men to be found amongst the clergy of the Principality; let them require and pay for the formation of an elementary literature, and the nucleus thus originated will grow betimes into a goodly mass, fit for the work required, and itself generating the means of its future increase. ”

“ In that community where the people, marked off by any distinction in race or appearance—where persons born in serfdom, or of a particular line, or speaking a peculiar language—are doomed to slavery, the laws may be unjust and barbarous in the extreme, but it does not follow that they are feeble. The slavery exists by them, not in spite of them. It is in the country where the person, free by the law, is seized, and, in defiance of the law, held in forced bondage, in obedience to the interest or the malevolence of individuals, that this characteristic of feebleness is so prominently developed. ”

“ A dim crowd, in this "darkness visible," is fermenting, thronging, struggling, and pushing in the aisle. At the further end, in that vaulted semicircle where once stood the altar of the Lord, rises a complicated scaffolding behung with black cloth. With your imagination already excited, you may fancy the dark construction a death-scaffold for the execution of a criminal—it is only the death-scaffold of the social state of France. ”

“ Old feelings will revive, old ideas return, old habits retain their ascendancy; foreign warfare will make the national supersede the social passions. It will be with them as was said of the first French Revolution in La Vendée,—giving privileges to the people is like casting water on a higher level—it speedily finds its way to the lower. The Revolution of 1848 in Vienna will be—like that of Jack Cade in England, or Rienzi in Italy, and all similar movements in countries not prepared for them—a brief and painful effort which leaves not a trace behind. ”

“ It requires that time to be free of the craft of liberty; there is no royal road to freedom any more than geometry. England has preceded other nations by two centuries in this glorious path; it would ill suit the masters to recede, and imitate the follies of such as are only becoming tyros in the attempt to follow it. Those who have long ago reached the summit, and know with what difficulty it was attained, can afford to smile at the young aspirants who invite them to descend and renew the toil of the ascent. ”