From the Family Herald

England is a city of refuge for discomfited politicians; Kings, Prime Ministers, Provisional Governors, Prefects of Police, Socialists, and Mountaineers, all come to England when things go hard with them at home. Here they rest, and here they write books and publish periodicals, and carry on their respective movements with the pen, when their swords are broken or taken from them, rusted or pawned.

At present we have exiles from all European nations, —French, German, Italian, Austrian, Hungarian, Portuguese, Spanish and Polish; and here they have all their respective coteries—legitimist, monarchical, salic, and democratical. Here, they cherish their respective hopes and cheer one another as best they can; and endeavor to convince their countrymen and us that God is on their side, and that truth, justice, and they must assuredly conquer at last.

The democratic exiles have formed a committee in London, which they call the Central European Democratic Committee of all Nations, at the head of which we find the names of Ledru Rollin for France, Joseph Mazzini for Italy, Arnold Ruge for Germany, and Albert Darasz for Poland. This committee and its constituency have started a periodical in London, for the purpose of disseminating the principles of the gospel of republicanism and socialism. It is called the Proscrit, and appears once a month, with a series of articles having the names of their respective writers appended. The writers are all men of distinction and talent, men who have taken an active part in the democratical and insurrectionary movements of their respective countries. The articles, therefore, may be said to contain the very cream of continental republican philosophy. Joseph Mazzini is a host in himself; as a writer his talent is very great. He has the art of expressing his own ideas in a terse, vivid and captivating style. His pen is eloquent, and his mind is well-trained—historically, logically, poetically, and rhetorically—for giving the best possible effect to the philosophy which he represents, Ledru Rollin is evidently a man of talent, notwithstanding all his Gallican absurdities, his French patriotism, and self-blinding hatred of England. The rest of the party, of whom we know less, but whose articles in the Proscrit all seem to be draughts from the same well of philosophy, and distinguished by the same peculiarity of logical idealism which characterises all the political philosophy of the Continent, are men who, if they do not represent the great Democratical Party as thinkers, have at least advanced themselves to distinction as actors, and aimed at the honors, if not the emoluments, of Tribunes of the People.

Each of these national representatives, perhaps, regards his own country as containing the Gordian knot of the great social problem. Mazzini says, “In Italy, then, is the knot of the European question; to Italy* (See next page) the solemn work of emancipation belongs. And Italy will accomplish the work which civilisation has committed to her. Then the nations will hasten to range themselves round another principle. Then the south of Europe will be placed in equilibrium with the north. Italy resuscitated will enter the European family. Oh, how solemn her awakening will be! She will then have awakened three times since Rome, in falling, arrested the march of ancient, and became the cradle of modern civilisation. The first time, there arose from Italy a voice which substituted spiritual European liberty for the triumph of material force. The second time, she spread throughout the world the civilisation of arts and letters. The third time, she will blot out, with her powerful finger, the creed of the Middle Ages, and substitute social unity for the old spiritual unity. It is from Rome, then, that must come, for the third time, the word of modern unity; for it is from Rome alone that the absolute destruction of the old unity can proceed.”

* This is not God’s view of the matter. It is not “to Italy,” but to Jehovah’s servant the Branch,” with the Twelve Tribes of Israel as his “battle-axe and weapons of war,” the terrible work of the world’s social and political regeneration belongs—Editor.

Ledru Rollin, as is natural for a Frenchman, looks merely to France, which, he says, is a full century in advance of every other nation in civilisation. Consequently, a hundred years hence, our Ledru Rollins will be exiles in Paris, publishing a Proscrit for the English, to stir up the baffled insurgents of the British Isles. Is that what he means? Or does he mean that France, when resuscitated under the Rollin regime, will take England under her protection, and make her one of her maids of honor in the republican palace of the world, and cause her to leap one hundred years in advance in the course of one revolution of the sun? We know not. But we think it strange that the land which is so far in advance of other nations should ostracise the very best of her sons, and give the sceptre of her power into the hands of men who restore and support the mediaeval supremacy of Rome, withhold from the people and the press the Anglo-Saxon privilege of free discussion, imprison and fine the publisher of the Proscrit for its very first number, and travel back blindfold to the old-fashioned principle of brute force and military ascendancy.

There must be some mistake here. It is very natural for a Frenchman to look upon France as the mother of civilisation, and to regard her ascendancy and her preceptorship as complete. But patriotism, like hatred, is a blinding principle; and as Ledru Rollin, himself, has well remarked, in one of his articles in the Proscrit, it has a tendency to narrow the sphere of a man’s thoughts and aspirations in behalf of humanity. For this very reason he congratulates himself and his democratical brethren on the fact, that that very proscription which was intended to crush and destroy them, will, ultimately, tend to strengthen their cause, by enlarging their sympathies in exile, and converting the patriotic movements of isolated nations into one great universal movement of nations combined.

Each nation, in this case, therefore, must have its peculiar mission. Surely France cannot teach everything or do everything. She is merely part of a whole. Frenchmen are too apt to regard her as the whole itself. Every Frenchman that so regards her is in a delusion, and every revolution that he makes under the influence of this delusion will prove a failure.

Has England no mission as well as France? Is she alone an outcast from the plan of Providence? What makes all these men come over to England to conduct their schemes of universal restoration? Why should the democratical committee of all nations find greater security on English soil than on any other soil? Is there no meaning in this? Both Rollin and Mazzini are in the habit of looking abstractly at facts as the representatives of living principles of providential agency. What is the meaning of this fact? Is it not that in England, and in England alone, can be found that universality which is indispensable to settle the great controversies of the world?

Mazzini says the knot is in Rome, because the Pope is there. But this is only part of the knot. The downfall of the Pope would not settle the question. The Pope was put down in England long ago, and yet it seems that England is a hundred years behind France! But the Pope, being a religious idea, can only be put down by another religious idea, and where is the religious idea that Mazzini would substitute? Mazzini respects the religious feeling, and never fails to reveal it in his writings. He says, “Without religion political science can produce nothing but despotism or anarchy.” But where is his substitute for Popery? “God in the people!” That’s all; and what is that? God in a hundred heads, and that is a hundred gods. Popery is God in one, at least it fain would be so.

It is an old question, as old as the world—this one and many. It is the great controversy of human society: our religion and our politics all come out of it. The Jews represent the ONE in religion, the Gentiles represent the MANY. Jews worshipped one God, Gentiles many gods. Even the Christian Trinity is a Gentile idea, and the Roman saints and images are all Gentile ideas, and Mazzini himself is a representative of Gentilism. He swears by the many. Rome always belonged to the many. Rome is the converse of Jerusalem. Jerusalem expected to conquer the world by means of her ONE Messiah. Rome expected to conquer the world by means of her MANY consuls, generals, and citizens—the populus Romanus. The one is monarchical, the other is republican. Rome has borrowed the idea of a one from Jerusalem, but she cannot complete it. Her Pope is a borrowed idea; but he is a series in succession, and his system of Gentile polytheism is incompatible with the Jewish unity. He himself is a tool in the hands of the many. He is not the ONE. It is a failure. Mazzini acknowledges its failure, but he would make it succeed by getting rid of the false one, and working with the many alone. He cannot. The many cannot work alone. Gentilism is an inconclusive system. The one cannot work alone. Jewism is an inconclusive system. These two ideas the ONE and the MANY, are inseparable. They are the great male and female principles of all government.

Mazzini understands this reasoning, we doubt not. He is a thinker and can work with abstractions. Let him trace these two ideas from their beginning in the history of Western civilisation, and he will see at once the inevitable combination that will solve the European question.

Without an absolute ONE, who is the true representative of all, the MANY are immovable, except to destruction, or, what is equivalent to destruction, the continuance of the present system of social confusion. This one principle may be said to contain the soul of Jewism, and to this one point it has faithfully adhered from its origin in one man. It is the oldest philosophy extant; and what moral philosophy extant; and what moral philosophy, or French logic, will ever throw a doubt upon its perfect conclusiveness? The Jew, however, has profaned the idea, by making it patriotic, or national. It can only become sacred by its unlimited universality or impartiality.

The ONE is a religious idea, for religion means unity. The MANY is not. The one refers to divine agency, and tends to order; the many to human agency, and tends to disorder. Hence the tendency of all republicans to discard the religious idea; and the deeper they involve themselves in democratical systems the less religious they become. The ONE is always more or less religious. The ONE monarch attaches himself to the priesthood of his country. Like Henry the Great of France, perhaps he changes his religion to that of the majority. The ONE President does precisely the same; he finds it indispensable for the security of his position. Perhaps he fails. It matters not. Every man on a throne is impelled by the necessity of employing the religious element, in some mode or other, to secure his position. It attaches itself always to the one in office. Even a father finds it useful in the government of his children; and a mother never fails to increase her own influence by its mysterious means. On the contrary, the MANY as invariably discard the religious idea. If they did not, they would find a ONE at the head of them invested with a sacred authority; and that is the very authority which the many dislike. But it is only because they cannot find a one to represent them. Not being able to find this one, they wish to clothe themselves with authority and sanctity. They wish to make themselves alone the “Vox Dei.” If they set up a one as the head of a republic, he must be a tool devoid of all sanctity or divine right; for their system is, a circumference governing the centre, not a centre the circumference.

Here, then, is the great problem. The one and the many. The democrats would solve it by getting rid of the one; the monarchists, by subduing and silencing the many. They are both wrong, in so far as they deny each other’s principle. The two principles are eternal and indestructible. They will destroy all who oppose them, until they be reconciled. Their reconciliation is the marriage union of Jewism and Gentilism, and forms the great crisis of this world. Crisis means judgment, and that judgment means decision. The day of the Great Settlement, then, is the Day of Decision, when the restoration of the world begins, and its ruins are gradually restored, and its waste places begin to be peopled, or re-peopled, with inhabitants.

It is the most important of all questions, but quite insoluble by such means as the school of continental republicans are adopting. Instead of coming to England to teach, they must learn. We are far in advance of them. Our atmosphere of ecclesiastical and political life is more universal in England than in any other country. We have all the elements of human society here in preparation for the great Day of Decision, and no other country has these elements but England. Guizot, the French historian, in his work on civilisation, has enumerated these elements of society. According to him, they are, the Church, the Monarchy, the Aristocracy, and the Democracy. (There is truth in this, but they are Israelitish, not Gentile. The elements of the new society of the Age to Come are the church and monarchy of Israel, whose High Priest and king is Jesus, their aristocracy the Saints, and the democracy the Twelve Tribes and the nations. —Editor.) Nowhere can these be found except in this country. The Church may be in Rome, but where is the monarchy and democracy? Where are the sects that constitute the religious democracy? These are indispensable to the completeness of the representation. Where are they in France? Where is even the Church in France? Her Church is in Rome. Where is the monarchy in France? Where is the aristocracy? Here in England are all the knots preserved and ready for solution. They have cut, and hacked, and burned, and torn them in other countries, but they are not solved, and they cannot be solved where they are not found in preservation. Here, then, in England, and not in France, not in Rome, not in Germany, must the great Gordian knot of human civilisation be untied, and the problem solved for the era that is coming. This fact is as evident as sunshine itself; and if Mazzini cannot see it, after looking at it, his eyes are much worse than we are disposed to give them the credit for being.

But the solution of this knot is an intellectual solution. It is a revolution of ideas, not of guns, and pikes, and flagstones. Dogs and donkeys will know nothing about it. Barricade revolutions are brute revolutions—the revolutions of the irreligious and undisciplined many, without the religious and regulating one. They make dogs bark and monkeys run. They will all fail. Every steel and lead revolution will fail. It is the work of a brute power. It cannot enlighten the mind, or regulate the morals or manners. It cannot proclaim a law for the conscience, nor enforce its obedience when it is proclaimed. It wants authority, and that authority comes from the one. The French are beginning once more to think of this, and to set up a one; but they cannot find a solvent of the question, for France is not the country. Civilisation, as we have often shown, travels north-westward, with a new and distinct mission for each nation, as she advances. England is the terminus and the turning point; and here, in preparation for the great solution, are all the elements collected for the final controversy. Here also the exiles flock, like pilot balloons, from all nations; for to England Destiny points with her finger.