scale of general prevention, mild in its operation, effective in its results; having justice and humanity for its basis, and the general security of the state and individuals for its ultimate object,

Bragonetti, in his Treatise On Virtue and Rewards, makes the following philosophical remark,-"The science of the politician consists in fixing the true point of happiness and freedom. These men would deserve the gratitude of ages, who should discover a mode of government that contained the greatest sum of individual happiness with the least national expense."

And the Marquis de la Fayette, on the conclusion of the American struggle for liberty, in which he took a most prominent part, in his affectionate address to Congress upon his departure for France, delivered the following sublime apostrophe :-" May this great monument, raised to Liberty, serve as a lesson to the oppressor, and an example to the oppressed," which so highly gratified the cultivated taste and independent judgment of the celebrated Dr. Franklin, that he applied to the French Ambassador in America to have it inserted in the French Gazette, but could never obtain his

consent.

And as the practice of virtue and the relative social duties must be initiated early in the minds of men, to make them useful and upright citizens, firm and constant friends, and, in fact to form the nucleus of civil society-it has always been the study of moral philosophers, and the autient satirists of the foibles and turpitude of mankind, to inculcate the exercise of these duties, both by precept and example. In fine, liberty cannot be enjoyed in any great degree unless we are just and honourable among ourselves. The eloquent Volney, in his Law of Nature, says "That all wisdom, all perfection, all law, all virtue, all philosophy, consists in the practice of the following axioms, which are founded upon our natural organization-preserve thyself; instruct thyself; moderate thyself: live for thy fellow creatures, in order that they may live for thee." Notwithstanding which, indecent feuds and hostilities have been, of old, the reproach of human kind, for Juvenal says

-Saevis inter se convenit Ursis;
Homo homini Lupus.

And our apathy and indifference seem of the stamp which Horace complains of—

Nos numerus sumus et fruges consumere nati.

"We all of us complain of the shortness of time," says Seneca, “and yet have much more than we know what to do with. Our lives are spent either in doing nothing at all, or doing nothing to the purpose, or in doing nothing that we ought to do. We are always complaining our days are few, and acting as though there would be no end of them."

A contemporary political writer makes the following just remarks on the deplorable state of society in England in the present day :-"The laws of Athens enacted no punishment for parricide, conceiving it a crime too horrible for human agency: but the experience of the Christian world has taught us, that parricides, and murders equally dreadful, can be committed by all classes, from the sovereign to the mendicant. We have seen a sovereign caressed and respected among us, who was privy to the murder of his father-who was in an adjoining room during the horrible struggle in which the assassin trod

out the eyes of his victim, and who afterwards received all the assassins into his friendship. No profession is so glorious as that in which men live themselves to murder others, with every horrible circumstance of carnage and mutilation. The whole Christian world, and this country in particular, teems with every thing calculated to familiarize us to fraud and bloodshed. It is only when murder is unauthorised, or unpatronised, that it excites our abhorrence.

It has always been the plea of tyrants for coercive measures, that mankind had not arrived at that state of moral perfection, to render them capable of exercising liberty without descending into licentiousness and anarchy. However paltry this subterfuge may be as a motive for crushing the rights and liberties of the people, it is not altogether devoid of a claim for consideration. Liberty can never be justly considered as the foundation of licentiousness, for it is the origin of all moral improvement in the people. It is the foundation of knowledge, and Lord Bacon says, knowledge is power." It is bad laws that tend to corrupt the minds of men, and make them dishonest, suspicious, and barbarous ; and liberty placed upon this fragile and tottering basis most ultimately end in licentiousness and turbulence. Liberty, aided by science and morality, like the river in its meandering course, improves and cultivates the human mind; expands the intellect; and make the heart sus. ceptible of the most noble and amiable impressions of our nature. Tyranny on the contrary, like the effects of a storm, blights and renders barren the human mind; debases the intellect; and hardens and brutalizes the feelings. Education, free from the trammels of superstition, and consonant with the principle of science, in all its ramifications, is the only sure corner-stone for the super-structure of knowledge and morality. There can be no true enjoyment of happiness or liberty without, and Gellert says:-"The desire of becoming happy is an indispensible portion of our nature, and the desire of making others so is the greatest pleasure of an honest man." And what Archimedes said of the mechanical powers, may be applied to liberty and education "Had we a place to stand upon, we might raise the world." Although the Greeks and Romans were strongly imbued with the spirit of liberty, but not the principle, for at the time they were resolved not to be slaves themselves, they adopted every measure to enslave the rest of mankind; still they produced several orators who devoted the chief part of their lives in endeavouring to promote the universal principle of liberty.

Demosthenes, as an orator, was endowed with a sublimity of thought, a Justness of sentiment, a propriety and energy of expression, and a sincere regard for truth and justice-yet was unable, by his eloquence and patriotism, to resist the torrent that was overwhelming his country through the insiduous arts and open hostility of Philip of Macedon. And he appears to have been, for some time, the only public man in Greece, who was able to withstand the

more seductive arts of Philip and his myrmidons, who, by bribes, promises, and intrigues, were able to corrupt the majority of her best citizens, and ultimately undermine and overthrow her best and noblest institutions, and prepare the way for Alexander the Great, who, by his conquests in Greece, Persia, and India, ex hibited himself as one of the greatest madmen and murderers that the world ever beheld. It is much to be regretted, that he suffered himself to be bribed by a small golden cup from Harpalus; this caused his banishment from Athens. But to show the respect which the Athenians had for his shining abilities and wonted patriotism, it need only be mentioned, that when Antipater made war against Greece, he was recalled. This triumph over his enemies was short, for Antipater and Craterus were near Athens, and demanded all the orators to be delivered into their hands. Demosthenes, with all his companions, fled to the temple of Neptune in Calauria; and when he saw that all hopes of escape from his persecutor s were visionary, he poisoned himself. Notwithstanding his being open to this single instance of bribery, he may be justly considered, on the whole, as the brightest ornament of his country; and is deservedly entitled to a niche in the temple of liberty.

Cicero was another noble and undaunted advocate in the cause of liberty, and by his masterly eloquence as an orator, his erudite acquirements as a scholar, and his highly cultivated and refined taste as a critic, has caused his orations and criticisms to be admired as standards of excellence by all learned and liberal minded men. Cicero was a determined enemy to Sylla, for the cruel means he adopted to gain the ascendancy in the affairs of the Romans, particularly in his revenge towards the citizens of Rome, for their supporting the cause of his rival Marius; and though he had a good opinion of his cause, yet he hated the cruelty of his victory, and never speaks of him with respect, nor of his government, but as a proper tyranny, calling him "a master of three most pestilent vices, luxury, avarice, and cruelty." After the memorable delivery from the Catiline conspiracy, Cicero was styled "the father of his country, and a second founder of Rome." But the great enmity which existed between him and Antony proved fatal. When Cæsar was stabbed in the senate, Cicero recommended a general amnesty, and was the most earnest to decree the provinces to Brutus and Cassius; but when Antony came into power, he retired to Athens; he shortly afterwards returned to Rome, but lived in perpetual dread of assassination. When the triumvirs, Augustus, Antony, and Lepidus, to destroy all cause of quarrel, and each to despatch his enemies, produced their lists of proscriptions, about two hundred were doomed to death, and Cicero was amongst the number on the list of Antony. Cicero fled in a litter towards the sea of Caieta; and when the assassins came up to him, he put his head out of the litter, and it was severed from his body by Herenicus.

Cato was certainly a great and worthy man, and a real friend to truth, virtue, and liberty, as was fully proved in many cases during the intestine commotions which took place in Rome previous to the extinction of the republican form of government especially in his opposition to Pompey, when he wanted to assume the dictatorship. But being unfortunately a disciple of the Stoic philosophy, he measured all his actions by the absurd rigour of the rules of that sect. The last act of his life accorded with his nature and philosophy; for when the ills of his life overbalanced the good, which, by the principles of his sect, was a proper cause for dying, he put an end to his life with a spirit and firmness which might make one conjecture, that he was pleased to have found an opportunity of dying in his true character.

Junius Brutus, delivered the following sentiments in favour of liberty, over the dead body of Lucretia, who had stabbed herself in consequence of the rape of Tarquin, the last of the Kings of Rome, and which was the origin of the consulate: "Yes, noble lady, I swear by the blood which was once so pure, and which nothing but regal villainy could have polluted, that I will pursue Lucius Tarquinus the Proud, his wicked wife, and their children, with fire and sword. There, Romans, turn your eyes to that sad spectacle! the daughter of Lucretius, Collatinus's wife, she died by her own hand! See there a noble lady, whom the lust of a Tarquin reduced to the necessity of being her own executioner, to attest her innocence. Hospitably entertained by her as a kinsman of her husband, Sextus, the perfidious guest became her own brutal ravisher. The chaste, the generous Lucretia, could not survive the insult. Glorious woman! but once only treated as a slave, she thought life no longer to be endured. Lucretia, a woman, disdained a life that depended on a tyrant's will; and shall we, shall men, with such an example before our eyes, and after five-and-twenty years of ignominous servitude, shall we, through a fear of dying, defer one single instant to assert our liberty? And shall those warriors who have ever been so brave when foreign enemies were to be subdued, or when conquests were to be made, to gratify the ambition and avarice of Tarquin, be then only cowards, when they are to deliver themselves from slavery? Some of you are perhaps intimidated by the army which Tarquin now commands; the soldiers, you imagine, will take the part of their general. Banish such a groundless fear: the love of liberty is natural to all men. Your fellow citizens in the camp feel the weight of oppression with as quick a sense as you that are in Rome; they will as eagerly seize the occasion of throwing off the yoke. But let us grant there may be some among them, who through baseness of spirit, or a bad education, will be disposed to favour the tyrant: the number of these can be but small, and we have means sufficient in our hands to reduce them to reason. They have left us hostages more dear to them than life; their wives, their children, their fathers, their mothers are here in the city.'

So it evidently appears that a brutal ontrage upon female chastity was the cause of the Roman form of government under the consuls. What an awful and melancholy specimen of monarchy does this odious and unmanly crime exhibit !!!

The speech of Brutus to the Romans, in extenuation of the moral guilt of the murder of Cæsar, is a fine specimen of the sacrifice that a brave and honourable man will make from a love of freedom.-Much, however, as we may lament the crime of murder in any shape or circumstances, we cannot help applauding his motive for this act, and the candour in avowing it; and he deserves a higher eulogium from all sensible and humane men than any of the conquerors since his time, who have superstitiously and wickedly, even according to their own creeds, ascribed all their bloody and cruel victories over the inherent rights of mankind, to the providence and mercy of their God!!!

To conclude, I consider that in pointing out the advantages and necessity of liberty to the welfare of society throughout the world, and supported, as I am, by some of the brightest luminaries that ever shone in the political hemis phere-I have shown a little loyalty, and I flatter myself, I may say, without vanity, in the language of Nebuchadnezzar, “Is not this great Babylon, that I have built for the honour of my majesty."

Clerkenwell, Aug. 19th, 1828.

HUMANITAS.

SUPERSTITION.

From Dr. Blundell's 31st Lecture on Midwifery. Delivered to the Students at Guy's Hospital.

"A GREAT fish has a large swallow; but Superstition-grave, argumentative, insolent, arrogant, silly Superstition, has a swallow still larger ; it enjoys a sort of omnipotence this way: nothing is too big for it, nothing too small. Alas! poor human reason! According to the mood of the mind, we may weep or laugh at thee."

Lancet, 19 July, 1828, p. 432.

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