We had also intended to notice the regulations recently made for the introduction of emigrants into Western Australia on payment of a bounty, but we have already exhausted our space. We believe that great advantages will be derived from the consolidation of the establishments hitherto existing for the promotion of emigration, because this will tend to secure a concentrated instead of a divided responsibility, and an impartial and disinterested source from which authentic information may be obtained on a subject of such extensive public interest, and respecting which so many exaggerated and conflicting accounts have been circulated. We trust that under

the superintendence of the Board, abuses will be remedied, judicious regulations enforced, accurate knowledge with respect to the real state and prosperity of the colonies diffused, all just causes of complaint removed, good local government extended, and every means adopted likely to secure the welfare and happiness of the settlers in our distant colonies, and promote the true interests of the Empire. The duties of the new Commissioners are most extensive in their scope, and serious in their character. It will be incumbent on them to put an end to jobbing and malversation,-to secure the settler against the capricious exercise of arbitrary power, and any infringement of the conditions upon the faith of which he may have embarked his capital in the new field of enterprize; to reduce to fixed and well defined rules, and give a character of permanency to a system which promises to render emigration one of the most important of the national resources, by opening new channels of employment to the people, and new sources of revenue to the state; and to add another branch of knowledge to the sum of useful information now spreading so rapidly amongst the community, by means of which vast portions of the wilderness may be brought within the pale of civilization, and made the seat of an industrious and thriving population.

ARTICLE VI.

De la Démocratie en Amerique, Tomes III. et IV. Par ALEXIS DE TOCQUEVILLE, Membre de l'Institut. Gosselin: Paris, 1840.

Democracy in America, Vols. III. and IV. Translated by HENRY REEVE, Esq. Saunders and Otley: London,

1840.

IN the introduction to the first volumes of this work, which have now been five years before the world, M. de Tocqueville stated that it was his intention "to depict, in a second part, "the influence which the equality of conditions and the rule "of democracy exercise on the civil society, the habits, the "ideas and the manners of the Americans." The accomplishment of this design, and the conclusion of the book, are contained in the volumes which we now bring before the notice of our readers.

The difficulties which are known to attend all continuations of literary productions increase in proportion to the success which the former parts of such works have obtained in the world. In the present case these difficulties were unquestionably very great: M. de Tocqueville's previous volumes have conferred upon him the highest rank as a political writer; his practical observations have been tested by the most competent judges, namely, the Americans and the English; and his speculative inquiries have been applauded and cited by the first statesmen of the age, whilst they have taken their place amongst the most valuable results of modern political science. The time which has been devoted to the preparation of the concluding portion of his work is sufficiently protracted to have taken off the freshness of impressions upon a less acute and reflecting mind; whilst the rapid course of events in democratic communities, especially on the other side the Atlantic, might have weakened or belied premises less secure or inferences less sound. Nevertheless these difficulties, in addition to all those which are

the present volumes are in all respects worthy, not only to sustain the reputation of their author, but to complete the most arduous part of his undertaking.

This book, as some of our readers may remember, was not written for the purpose of describing the peculiarities of the American people, or even of analyzing their social and political institutions. Still less was it the author's intention to compose a panegyric on those institutions, or upon the great social revolution to democracy which M. de Tocqueville assumes to be a general, incontrovertible, providential fact. His object was to seek in America the image and exposition of democracy itself,-to trace its influence, not on a particular people, but on mankind, and to prepare the human mind by a dispassionate survey of the truth, for that condition which the future holds, as he thinks, in store for all civilized communities. The first volume, containing a strict analysis of American political institutions, is in fact only the groundwork of the more abstruse and philosophical structure of the work. The conclusions which the writer arrived at in the second volume were, for the most part, derived from these American premises, or directed to explain the causes of the present and future prosperity and peace of the United States. The full accomplishment of the plan, and the final application of all that precedes to the widest social questions which are agitated in the world, will be found in the part now before

us.

Its execution is characterized by the same remarkable absence of party-spirit and the same consistency as the former volumes display, with still greater precision of thought and concentration of style. These indeed are the characteristics of those minds-unhappily so rare in our days-which deal with fixed principles instead of fleeting incidents, which disdain to court applause by anything that approaches to declamation, and which solidify the turbid waters of controversy into the clear and exact crystals of truth. In this work, the only tendency which we can discern to the one side or to the other of the great question at issue, is to be inferred, rather than detected, from the close method, the polished diction and the laborious perseverance, which are the highest

of the wisest men have thought and taught, not for themselves, but for all time. It treats of democracy with all the calmness, the dignity and the elegance of which aristocratic writers can boast. Such qualities indeed are not less strange to writers than to readers in democratic ages; and it may require the influence of a high reputation, and the interest of a subject which no man can affect to treat as foreign to his own concerns, to draw the mass of the reading public to receive this performance as it deserves; for it unquestionably demands a much larger share of active thought than men are wont to bestow upon the ordinary productions of modern literature. These difficulties are rather increased than diminished as the work proceeds: in the former part the reader was encouraged by the direct interest which we feel in the history, institutions and probable destiny of a people deriving from ourselves their origin, and in part their laws; in the volumes now before us the subject is handled more abstrusely, and the practical illustrations and the aim of the writer are drawn from, or directed to, a state of society far more democratic than any which an Englishman can have observed at home. Our own history and associations furnish little that can aid us, except by way of contrast, to apply the principles here traced to their source.

None will refuse to this work a very high character for clear insight and strong logical powers. But when an author enters upon the purely dogmatical and didactic part of a subject, which directly touches or indirectly involves so many various elements of men's opinions, he must have made up his mind to encounter a very large amount of prejudice, infinite diversities of judgement, and all the degrees of assent which his reasoning may produce in different minds. He is no longer sheltered by an array of facts which the critic is not prepared to dispute; but he takes the open field of controversy upon which almost every reader is apt to consider him as a companion whom he may shake off at their first dispute, or as an antagonist whom he meets upon equal terms.

A further source of difficulty to the English reader is to be found in the fact that this book, although its title-page connects it with America, has obviously been written in France,

ville, naturally relying upon the readiness with which his own countrymen may apply his remarks to the known phænomena of their own social condition, which they are for ever discussing, has not thought it necessary to enlarge upon the facts which that social condition has engendered. There is hardly a page in the work in which France does not appear to be meant, or a page in which French society and opinions are specifically mentioned. Such is the profound ignorance of the mass even of the more enlightened minds in this country on the real state of our neighbours, and so difficult is it to surmount the barriers which divide the opposite peculiarities of the two nations, that many English readers will find themselves at a loss to trace the propositions and inferences of this work to their source in fact. Occasionally we think (labouring perhaps ourselves under the disadvantage of imperfect knowledge, to which we are adverting) that the author has allowed circumstances and opinions peculiar to France to intermingle with his considerations of American institutions, and to affect his conclusions on democracy in general. We shall point out one or more instances of this as

we proceed.

But when this element of the work is duly taken into the account it tends very materially to increase the value and importance of the whole production. The opinions here put forth on the nature and effects of the democratic element, are not the speculative results of observations made several years ago in a remote country, but they spring directly from a close acquaintance with the state of men's minds in an old country, whose political and social condition is indissolubly bound to the political and social condition of Europe. In the political institutions, and in the great natural advantages of the United States, M. de Tocqueville found opportunities for remarking the means by which democracy might become the parent of flourishing and enlightened communities. France, the scene presented to the eye is of a sadder and less auspicious kind. Democracy is there the offspring not of the calm and virtuous spirit of freedom, but of a fierce revolution. Its progress has been attended by all the devastating passions which can agitate the human heart or divide

In