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God alone, because He is also infinitely wise and infinitely just." He considers the main imperfection of the democratic institutions of the United States to arise, not from their weakness, but from their uncontrolled power, and the inadequate securities which exist against tyranny. "In the United States," he says, "when an individual or a party suffers injury, from what quarter can redress be obtained? From public opinion that is controlled by the majority;-from the legislature? it represents and is subservient to the majority;-from the executive? it is the official instrument of the majority. The soldiers and the militia are a military majority; in trial by jury the same power influences the verdict; and in certain states even the judges are elected by the majority."

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I do not say," he continues, "that tyrannical abuses are frequent in America at present, but I affirm that there is no effectual security against them, and that the causes which mitigate arbitrary power are to be found in the circumstances and manners of the country more than in its laws."

We might be so infatuated as to adopt so much of the American constitution as to erect among us the tyranny of the majority; but we could not also adopt the "circumstances and manners of the country," which M. De Tocqueville says, are the chief mitigations of that tyranny. If, as Miss Martineau informs us,* many of the American rioters are respectable and welldressed persons, the circumstances and manners of England would not lead to the same result. Who would feel himself safe, or free, or happy, if the embodied will of the majority of the inhabitants of London, or Birmingham, or Bristol, might set aside the statutes, and the decisions of the judges,

Society in America.-Chapter on Allegiance to Law.

dispense with the habeas corpus act, and trial by jury, on the plea of the French anarchists and of Tom Paine, that a majority of men, told by the head, ought to govern? It is marvellous that so irrational a delusion should be gravely supported, as that the highest political wisdom and social virtue reside in the greatest number; -that there is more of both in the mob of Westminster, than in the parliament assembled there;-that the cabinet ought to take no measure without first consulting the collective wisdom of those heads that are accustomed to deliberate on the constitutions and the affairs of nations, in the beer shops and gin palaces of Whitechapel and St. Giles's. Yet even the illustrious Burke found it necessary to expose such a fallacy, in the following noble passage.

"Neither in France nor in England has the original or any subsequent compact of the state, expressed or implied, constituted a majority of men, told by the head, to be the acting people of their several communities. And I see as little of policy or utility, as there is of right, in laying down a principle that a majority of men, told by the head, are to be considered as the people, and that as such their will is to be law. What policy can there be found in arrangements made in defiance of every political principle? To enable men to act with the weight and character of a people, and to answer the ends for which they are incorporated into that capacity, we must suppose them (by means immediate or consequential) to be in that state of habitual social discipline, in which the wiser, the more expert, and the more opulent conduct, and by conducting, enlighten and protect, the weaker, the less knowing, and the less provided with the goods of fortune. When the multitude are not under that discipline, they can scarcely be said to be in civil society. Give once a certain constitution of things, which produces a variety

of conditions and circumstances in a state; and there is in nature and reason, a principle which, for their own benefit, postpones, not the interest but the judgment, of those who are numero plures, to those who are virtute et honore majores.......... The state of civil society which necessarily generates this aristocracy is a state of nature; and much more truly so than a savage and incoherent mode of life. For man is, by nature, reasonable; and he is never perfectly in his natural state, but when he is placed where reason may be best cultivated, and most predominates. Art is man's nature. We are as much, at least, in a state of nature in formed manhood, as in immature and helpless infancy. Men, qualified in the manner I have just described, form in nature, as she operates in the common modification of society, the leading, guiding, and governing part. It is the soul to the body, without which the man does not exist. To give, therefore, no more importance in the social order, to such descriptions of men, than that of so many units, is a horrible usurpation. When great multitudes act together under that discipline of nature, I recognize the people. I acknowledge something that, perhaps, equals, and ought always to guide, the sovereignty of convention. In all things the voice of this grand chorus of national harmony ought to have a mighty and decisive influence. But when you disturb this harmony; when you break up this beautiful order, this array of truth and nature, as well as of habit and prejudice; when you separate the common sort of men from their proper chieftains, so as to form them into an adverse army, I no longer know that venerable object called the people, in such a disbanded race of deserters and vagabonds."-Appeal from the New to the Old Whigs. The truth which is here so beautifully explained and expanded by Burke is to be found in a book of

infinitely higher value even than his-expressed with the weight, the brevity, the wisdom, and authority of holy writ, "THOU SHALT NOT FOLLOW A MULTITUDE TO DO EVIL." And the history of the people, to whom that command was addressed, affords a standing and most memorable proof of the consequences ensuing from the violation of it. The Jewish multitude prevailed on their Roman governor to liberate a robber and crucify the Saviour of the world. "His blood," they cried, "be on us and on our children." Then there fell upon their nation the judgments they had imprecated;-the unparalleled horrors of the siege of Jerusalem; the destruction of their city and temple; war and massacre, and the dispersion of their wandering and afflicted race, who are a living commentary on the emphatic precept-" Thou shalt not follow a multitude to do evil.”

The equality of mankind and the alleged right of the majority to govern are kindred fallacies, the latter springing out of the former, and they have ever been favourite topics with demagogues and agitators. Like the doctrines of infidels, they are old and worn, but decked out anew with modern facts and circumstances, to suit the times.

In the Kentish rebellion, about four hundred years ago, in the reign of our Henry the Sixth, which was headed by Jack Cade, an Irishman, Dr. Ball, one of his followers, harangued many thousands of the rebels on Blackheath, and took the following rhyme for his

text:

"When Adam delved and Eve span,
Who was then a gentleman ?"

Doubtless all men were equal when there was only one man; but he was the monarch of an earthly paradise, which he forfeited, by becoming a rebel against his

heavenly King. Could Dr. Ball, or any of his modern followers, prove that, when the human family were driven out to till the blighted earth, there was equality even in the second generation? Was the murderer Cain, who was accursed, a fugitive, and a vagabond, equal to his righteous brother Abel ?

Men are equal in their liability to common evils, rather than in their enjoyment of possessions. Change, calamity, disease, and death, warn the wealthiest, the proudest, and the highest, that they must be stripped of every thing, and return to their original dust. But throughout the sacred volume which inculcates these lessons, in conformity with our daily experience, diversities of station, of intelligence, of authority, and of wealth, are acknowledged. It represents the possessors of these things as neither originally greater nor finally happier than their fellow-men; but as stewards responsible to a far higher power, for the use or abuse of the gifts committed to them. "For unto whomsoever much is given, of him shall be much required," is a condition inseparable from moral and accountable agents, and it involves the commonly neglected consideration that power is not in itself good and desirable, irrespective of the motives for which it is sought after, and the way in which it is employed.

Can it be supposed that those who are most eager to unsettle the established order of things, and to wrest authority from the more competent hands to which it has been committed, are themselves sufficiently impressed with the immense importance of the trust they aspire to? Are their motives selfish or beneficent? and can they calculate the consequences, perhaps the irremediable mischief, which would attend the rash experiments and violent changes they propose to make? They who follow such leaders, would also do well to reflect, that those miseries will "be on them and on

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