Page:American Historical Review vol. 6.djvu/801

From Wikisource
Jump to navigation Jump to search
This page needs to be proofread.

Noble: Russia and the Russians ygi unholy ambitions. At times he falls into political disquisitions ; one of the most instructive passages of this kind is that in which he discourses on Liberals and liberalism (without the capital, I. 199). The terms altar and throne are usually found together in his pages ; opponents of the monarchical supremacy are i/>si> facto atheists ; government is effec- tive just in proportion to its identification of the interests of Church and State. He is a strong supporter of all the distinctive Ultra-Royalist measures of the Villele period, and a bitter opponent of the press ; he condemns the removal of the censure at the beginning of the reign of Charles X. and advises the government to make use of its exceptional powers to punish the courts for not condemning journals. In this intolerance of public opinion our author deviates from the anti-Villele Ultras, for the simple reason that he is Ministerialist and they are in opposition. It is necessary to keep in mind the split in the Royalist ranks that became pronounced in the new Chamber of 1824 ; the dismissal of Chateaubriand and Bellune from the ministry converted a latent hostility to Villele into active opposition, and from this time on these " Royalistes de la Defection" attacked Villele and his measures on every occasion. This opposition was undoubtedly factious and un- principled : but it is evident that Salaberry in his condemnation of it (almost as marked a feature of the Souvenirs as hatred of the Liberals) is equally impelled by personal influences. His positions differed in no important degree from the extreme Ultra ones, and he repeatedly urges measures fully as unwise and arbitrary as those finally adopted. He con- tinues loyal to Villele to the end. The Martignac administration he condemns as one of concessions by which only the revolutionists profited, while that of Polignac, while monarchical and religious, is weak and disunited (II. 276, 284). The divergence of M. de Salaberry as a close adherent of Villele from the party with which he is really in sympathy, brings him into some difficulties and inconsistencies, especially in connection with the Spanish war. But perhaps it is not particularly profitable to dwell on the vagaries of this weak-headed and narrow-spirited, though undoubtedly upright and gallant gentleman. On the whole it would seem that his admiring posterity were ill-advised in permitting his paper to go to publication in this form, and that we need not be moved by any acute sense of gratitude for their oversight. Victor Coffin. Russia and the Russians. By Edmund Noble. (Boston : Hough- ton, Mifflin and Co. 1900. Pp. 285.) Mr. Noble is one of the very few American writers who have at- tempted to make a serious study of Russia, present and past, and we hail him as such. To be sure, the fact that he is the author of Tlie Rus- sian Revolt and the correspondent of Free Russia will in itself suggest the likelihood of certain limitations to his capacity as an historian. It is not, however, a history strictly speaking that he has tried to give us in