Our first impression in reading this passage was that the author had done more than justice to the wisdom of the English people. On second thoughts, however, we believe what he says to be substantially true. There are obvious exceptions on both sides. For instance, nothing can be more remarkable than the manner in which France has succeeded in attaching to herself the German provinces, stolen by Louis XIV. less than two centuries ago; while, on the other hand, England has held Ireland at least since the accession of James I., partially since Henry II., and has never managed for a single day to attach it to herself. The last case is explained, because England, however it may be accounted for, adopted in Ireland exactly the opposite course to that described by M. de Champagny, and forced her own institutions upon a people for whom they were quite unfit. Mr. Gladstone evidently hopes that it is not too late to reconcile Ireland, by allowing it (as the Romans certainly would have done) to be governed by Irish ideas. The loss of the English colonies in America is another instance, for which M. de Champagny, we think, imperfectly accounts. The other instances he mentions seem in point. We do not believe that Frenchmen would have allowed the people of India to retain their institutions, manners, &c., as they have actually done under English government. As for Alsace, Lorraine, and Franche Comté, it is to be observed that they were not held as dependencies, but were at once made an integral part of France: and we believe that M. de Montalembert was right in the opinion he expressed, that they had remained intensely anti-French, until after the great Revolution, which for the first time melted down the whole of France into one nationality. This may easily be accounted for. Englishmen who think of that revolution are apt to remember only the hideous crimes by which it was sullied. To the French peasants, and perhaps more especially in the German provinces, the revolution meant the abolition of the feudal system; a system always oppressive to all classes, and most of all to those lower classes on whom the whole weight of the enormous structure rested and pressed.
But we must return to the Roman Empire. By the system we have described it avoided what is ever the most grinding of tyrannies, the domination of race over race. The conquered races, while retaining their national institutions, very easily attained a place among the Romans themselves, and before long, felt that the Empire and all it contained was their own. Before the fall of the Republic, all Italians either enjoyed the full privileges of Romans or knew that they could very easily obtain them. Julius Cæsar had no sooner conquered Gaul than he admitted some Gauls to the senate. This seems to have been premature, and they are said to have been excluded from it by Augustus. But the policy was steadily continued. Claudius, who was an antiquarian, made a well-known speech on the occasion of admitting more Gauls to the honour. Later we find men of almost every province in the highest offices, and even attaining the imperial dignity.