The great expedition against Russia, in 1812, was called by Napoleon his second Polish war. It was his professed object to restrain Russia, and to circumscribe her limits. A proclamation to the Poles promised the restoration of their state, with larger boundaries even than under their last king; and the Poles rose with their wonted enthusiasm. It was a point of honour with their young men to serve in the army; the middling class would accept no pay, while the rich lavished their fortunes, and the women their ornaments, for the defence and restoration of their nation.

Yet, when in June, Napoleon entered Wilna, the Lithuanians showed little disposition to unite with their brethren of Warsaw; and the emperor's answers, as to the future condition of Poland, were too vague to inspire confidence. The eventual defeat of Napoleon, brought the Russians into the pursuit, and the Grand Dutchy was occupied by their armies.

In the close of 1814, the fate of Poland was at issue on the deliberations of the congress of Vienna. While Prussia demanded the cession of all Saxony, Russia claimed Poland, including Austrian Galicia. Encountering strong opposition, the emperor Alexander in his turn formed a Polish army, and issued a proclamation to the Poles, inviting them to arm under his auspices for the defence of their country, and the preservation of their political independence, while Austria, Great Britain, and France, formed a treaty for resistance. But for the return of Napoleon from Elba, the congress of Vienna would probably have issued in a war between its members. A compromise ensued, it conformity with which, Russia retained nearly all which in had gained of Prussia in the peace of Tilsit, and of Austria in 1809, and further acquired all the Grand Dutchy of Warsaw, except Posen, which fell to Prussia, and Cracau, which was left in neutral independence. Constitutions were promised to the respective parts, and have been, after a manner, conceded.

The constitution issued for Poland, November 27, 1815, by the emperor Alexander, was an attempt to conciliate the liberal sympathies of the people. Religious equality, freedom of the press, security of personal liberty against arbitrary procedures, the responsibility of all magistrates, and an assurance of all civil and military offices in Poland to Poles, were the leading features of the compact. The power of making treaties, of declaring war, of controlling the armed force, and of pardoning, was assured to the king; but all his commands were to be countersigned by a minister, who should be held responsible in case of any violation of the constitution. The diet, composed of two chambers, was to be assembled once in two years; the king had the initiative and a veto.

At the opening of the diet, April 27, 1817, Alexander de

clared his intention of gradually introducing into his immense empire, the salutary influence of liberal institutions; and promised security of persons, and of property, and freedom of opinions. "Representatives of Poland," said he, "rise to the elevation on which destiny has placed you. You are called upon to give a sublime example to Europe, whose eye is fixed upon you." The Poles have in this latest period of their existence, shown no reluctance to be true to themselves and to the world; but the revolution of Spain, and Naples, and Greece, struck terror into the cabinet of Alexander, and led him to abandon the sympathies which he had professed for ameliorated forms of government. Accordingly, by an arbitrary decree, February 13, 1825, he abolished the publicity of the assemblies of the diet, and taught the Poles the true value of an apparently liberal form of government, of which the fundamental principles might be altered according to the caprices or the fears of an individual.

We have thus endeavoured, by a careful reference to numerous and exact authorities, to which we have had access, to give some historical explanations of the present Polish question. It seems plain, that there is little room to hope for the re-establishment of Polish independence. The provinces belonging to Austria, have most of them been under the Austrian rule for nearly sixty years; and so, too, a large portion of Polish Prussia has belonged to the Prussian monarchy, since 1773. The still larger parts, which have been incorporated into the Russian monarchy, seem to have learnt acquiescence in their condition. A kindred dialect, and a sort of national relationship, have always rendered Russian supremacy more tolerable to the Polish provinces, than that of the dynasty of Hapsburg, or the court of Berlin. It is only in that portion of Poland, where, by the establishment of the Grand Dutchy of Warsaw under Napoleon, and by the erection of a nominally independent kingdom, a spirit of irritation and change has fostered the honourable passion for national existence, that the present revolution has been supported with enthusiasm. The world will do honour to this last effort of determined patriotism; but the liberties of Poland will be reconquered only by the gradual progress of the moral power of free-opinions, which is advancing in the majesty of its strength over the ruins of centuries and the graves of nations.

ART. IX.-A Historical View of the Government of Maryland, from its Colonization to the present day. By JOHN V. L. M'MAHON. Baltimore: 1831. Vol. 1. pp. 539.

THE history of Maryland under the proprietary government is little known, says our author, even to her own people. Yet, as that government was the mould of her present institutions, the school of discipline for her revolutionary men, it is to its history we must go back for just notions of both. The revolution was not wrought by a few master minds, miraculously born for the occasion, but was the natural development of a train of causes which leave us less surprised at our ancestors' manful and accordant resistance of usurpation, than at the strange ignorance of them which seems to have begot the unwise designs of the mother country.

Montesquieu has observed, with his usual antithesis, "In the infancy of societies, it is the leaders that create the institutions; afterwards, it is the institutions which make the leaders." Perhaps, the former event has in truth happened less often than received history would persuade us. The more dim the dawn of tradition, the oftener we find ascribed to the Lycurguses, the Numas, the Alfreds, either such original establishments or such fundamental changes as would seem to have created the civil or religious polity of their people anew. We know not how much they were indebted to precedent and concurrent circumstances; and thus obscurity may magnify their renown, as distant objects, according to a figure of our author's, are exaggerated to the eye in a misty morning. The vulgar, who do not trouble themselves with cavils, resolve the result they perceive into the effort of some moral hero, just as the Greeks referred to Hercules the feats which transcended the ordinary limits of physical prowess.

The same thing takes place in a less degree, at periods whose history is more authentically written. The leaders of revolutions may transmute, so to speak, into personal merit, some of the results which, more narrowly considered, are referrible to the pervading spirit and general movement of the occasion. To weigh justly these elements of their renown, is not invidiously to derogate from it, but only to vindicate the truth of history. It still leaves them the highest merit to which, perhaps, the leaders in any kind of reform can truly lay claim, that of seizing the spirit of their age, and employing and directing it with a just energy and discernment. As it has been said that Luther might have ineffectually preached the Reformation in the twelfth century, and Napoleon, if he had not been, in fact, but "the little corporal," might have been no more than a leader of Condottieri in the fourteenth; so our revolutionary sages could hardly, in the

circumstances of the crisis, and amidst the men of the age, have been other than what they were. Though they fought in the van of the war, they had, however, their Triarii to sustain them, a nation, namely, accustomed to the discipline of liberty. The wave of opinion rolled high, and they had the praise of launching their barks on it, with strength and skill indeed, but yet with a propitious gale and a favouring current. The notices in the volume before us, of the character and history of the colonists of Maryland, show how the principles of liberty which they brought with them to "this rough, uncultivated world," (such is their own description of it,) they maintained with a uniform constancy and understanding. Though colonial dependence has seldom been less burdensome in point of fact than in their case, the abstract doctrines of political right were not on that account guarded with the less vigilance. Thus, in our author's language, "they were fitted for self-government before it came, and when it came, it sat lightly and familiarly upon them;" the first moments of its adoption being marked with little or none of that anarchy and licentiousness which mostly deform political emancipations. Their institutions had moulded them; a conclusion not more apparent from our colonial and revolutionary history, than apposite for estimating at least the immediate results of revolutions effected under moral circumstances less propitious. The political structure has often, as in our own case, been pulled down by an excusable impatience of the people; but seldom has it been repaired with such solidity, and just adaption to their wants.

We have said that the obscurity of history may have magnified the pretensions of some of its heroes; it is certain that it quite quenches the light of others. The state whose early transactions our author records, furnished its full share of the intelligent minds that contributed their impulse to the general movement of their time; and as the execution of his task has led him to a closer contemplation of their influence on its issue, he laments the comparative obscuration of merited fame, even in this brief lapse of time, in individuals who were the theme and boast of contemporaries. This is the law of our fate. As the series of events is prolonged, the greater part of the actors in them sink out of their place in the perspective, though their lesser elevation might be scarcely observable to their own age. In the twilight which falls on all past transactions, the rays of national recollections fade from summit to summit, and linger at length only on a few of the more "proudly eminent." Our author sketches some of these forgotten worthies in the melancholy spirit of a traveller who finds a stately column in the desert. With the reverence of "Old Mortality," he re-touches the

inscription to the illustrious dead, that they may not wholly perish.

The first volume of the present work, the only one yet published, brings down the history of Maryland to the establishment of the state government. Besides a historical view of the transactions preceding this era, it contains, in an introduction, a view of the territorial limits of the colony as defined in the first grant to the proprietary, and of the disputes with neighbouring grantees by which they were successively retrenched. Two other chapters of the introduction are occupied with a sketch of the civil divisions of the state, and an essay on the sources of its laws. Appended to the historical sketch is a view of the distribution of the legislative power, of the organization of the two houses of assembly, their respective and collective powers, and the privileges of their members. This plan involves a critical inquiry into the political laws of the state, and a laborious examination of its records. The diligence with which the writer seems to have executed his task, is a voucher of his accuracy; and the body of information thus collected with painful research, will probably establish his work as one of authentic reference. This original collation of the materials from which history is distilled, includes a labour, and deserves a praise, which readers can hardly estimate competently. The writer's style is vigorous, but wants compression; he is occasionally inaccurate, but is often lively and striking; his scriptural phraseology is superabundant. As he understands the period and the men he describes, his views and reflections are just. The narrative would have been enlivened by a little more individuality in the portraits of the actors; but though some of the materials for this were probably at his command, at least as to the more recent ones, we are aware of the reasons which impose on this head, a partial silence on the historian of an age not remote. It is respecting its personages that Christina's saying of history is more emphatically true;" Chi lo sa, non scrive; chi lo scrive, no sa.". "The one who knows it, does not write; the one who writes it, knows it not." It was this Mr. Jefferson meant, when he said the history of the revolution had never been written, and never would be written. On the whole, Mr. M'Mahon's is a valuable contribution to an interesting theme, and we must increase the obligations we are under to him, by borrowing the copious materials he supplies, for a hasty sketch, or rather some selections of the colonial history of Maryland, in which we shall take the liberty to make, without scruple, free use both of his language and thoughts.

The present state of Maryland is embraced within considerbly narrower limits than those described in the original grant. By the charter which bears date the 20th of June, 1632, the