narchy, we found that so to intermix our iron with clay would incongruously weaken the whole constitutional fabric, and hasten its fall.

The establishment of the American union of republics, in a vast and unlimited territory in the new world, was coeval with an attempt to erect democracy amid the crash and wreck of an ancient kingdom, in the centre of Europe. France, far unlike England, was greatly misgoverned. But instead of aiming to improve their government wisely, gradually, and lawfully, the French revolutionists set up the wild cry of liberty and equality, and rushed forward in a career, from which the best and most moderate, who had hoped for rational freedom without the destruction of existing establishments, would have shrunk back with horror, could they have foreseen the disorder and havoc that ensued.

The first leaders of the movement were hurried on impetuously to participate in crimes which they could not prevent. They were soon pushed aside or trampled down, to make way for atheists, murderers, regicides, who, when society had been stirred to its darkest depths, came up to rule by the torch, the dagger, and the guillotine. They worshipped the image of departed liberty. The wicked were unchained: fair France became a place of prisons and massacres, a field of blood, a land of discord, obscenity, and profaneness. Infuriated anarchists, in the pride of their perverted reason, like men possessed with devils, stalked fiercely among fragments of desolation and the tombs of the slain, and no man could bind them. The civilized world stood aghast at the tremendous spectacle. Without that agitation of spirit which overwhelmed the first spectators, we, at the distance of more than half a century, can view, in every part and in its full dimensions, that awful scene. Yet there are some for whom it has been transacted and recorded in vain; for still they would

not hesitate, with unteachable folly, to plunge headlong through the same errors and calamities to a similar catastrophe.

Under the best government, full and constant employment cannot always be obtained, for a numerous manufacturing and agricultural population, with uninterrupted peace and plenty. But turbulence aggravates those evils, by rendering property insecure, and interfering with the regular employment of capital and labour. Any system that should raise to power men of inferior principle and capacity, instead of removing those ills which a good government in tranquil times may alleviate, would multiply our disorders and distresses tenfold.

Liberty has been the darling theme of poets and orators; and doubtless the love of it is ennobling, when founded on a patriotic attachment to wise, good, and venerable institutions that have stood the test of experience; and when it consists in a righteous indignation against flagrant injustice, oppression, and slavery. When Buonaparte had brought many nations under his yoke, and was preparing his armaments against this island, we believed and we felt that our homes and altars were well worth defending; domestic troubles were forgotten; strife was hushed; one pervading sentiment animated every breast; and one strong desire nerved every arm to drive back the tyrant's legions from the British strand.

By oppression's woes and pains,
By our sons in servile chains,
We will drain our dearest veins,
But they shall be free.

Then a great nation's mighty heart throbbed with that generous emotion, the love of liberty,-dearer than life, which impelled all her true sons to prolong the

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death-struggle rather than survive her ruin. But was it the same liberty which they idolatrously worshipped in the Champs de Mars and throughout France, when her infatuated people swore to adhere for ever to the constitution planned by their national convention, -a constitution which lasted one short year? Was it the liberty in whose name so many crimes have been committed? No more so, than vile hypocrisy is true religion. The liberty of mob orators and anarchists is impatience of controul and lust of power. It is the self-same passion that we should mightily resist in a military tyrant,-the robber and spoiler of nations. The political incendiary must gloss over his ambitious projects with the fair names of freedom, and of zeal for the people's good; for he is not able to persuade with vollies of musketry and the deep-mouthed cannon. But "the tongue is a little member and boasteth great things. Behold how great a matter a little fire kindleth. And the tongue is a fire, a world of iniquity,—and setteth on fire the course of nature." With that he kindles the pride, the discontent, the contentious spirit, smouldering in many a breast. He seduces to his standard his country's fretful and rebellious sons. beguiles them with false motives and delusive hopes; he chafes them into fury. They burn, they glow, but not with the pure flame of heaven-descended liberty: For whence,

But from the author of all ill, could spring
So deep a malice.

For neither do the spirits damn'd
Lose all their virtue; lest bad men should boast
Their specious deeds on earth, which glory excites
Or close ambition, varnish'd o'er with zeal.

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Those restless longings after absolute freedom, what are they, but the cravings of the unsatisfied soul that has missed its road to happiness? Perfect liberty is

never to be enjoyed but in union with perfect virtue, unattainable here, though striven after by the wise and good, and seen radiant with surpassing glory, in the bright vista of immortality.

But those that with steadfast feet pursue, although imperfectly, the liberty they hope for, clamour not for equal rights, nor goad the heady multitude to treason's brink, nor urge them headlong down the steep, to ruin. None but the Divine government is perfect. When that which we supplicate, "Thy kingdom come, thy will be done on earth, as it is in heaven," shall come, then only will exist entire obedience to a perfect law, which is true happiness and true liberty. The systems of all human lawgivers, necessarily imperfect in theory, must be still more so in practice. The government of nations is therefore at best an endeavour to overcome evil with good. Happy are the people whose political constitution is on the whole well adapted to their circumstances, character, customs, and real welfare. Still happier are they, who possessing such advantages, have the wisdom to value and the power to preserve them from violent changes and convulsions, which must ever occasion incalculable suffering, and endanger, if not destroy, true freedom. The first British colonists in North America well defined it to be "the liberty of doing, without fear, all that is just and good;" and Montesquieu says that "political liberty does not consist in an unrestrained freedom. In governments, that is, in societies directed by laws, liberty can consist only in the power of doing what we ought to will, and in not being constrained to do what we ought not to will." Very different is the democratic idea of liberty, namely, that the people ought to have the power of doing what they please. That indeed would be freedom in a society of angels. But political reformers have too commonly erred, in dealing with men as if they had an

angelic nature, overlooking the characteristic of our fallen race; the fatal tendency, especially in masses and bodies of men, to be misled by ignorance, error, prejudice, and passion. The wise, just, amiable, kind, and beneficent, are naturally in a minority. Unrestrained freedom would not be liberty, but licentiousness. It would be worse than despotism—a multitudinous tyranny, foul and fiend-like.

But we must turn now to a far different theme. A people that aim to carry freedom to its utmost limits, nevertheless keep two millions four hundred and ninety thousand of their fellow creatures, in the midst of their territory, in slavery. If in America all white men are assumed to be equal, the coloured race are placed below the common level of humanity. With nature's

indelible brand upon them, they are generally despised as outcasts and shunned as lepers. England, however, must take shame to herself, for having introduced this vicious anomaly into her North American colonies.

The slave trade is unlawful in the United States, although some of the citizens, it is supposed, carry it on clandestinely. But domestic slavery and the sale of slaves are allowed and practised. The most favourable view we can take of its continuance is, that while it is openly condemned by many of the inhabitants of the northern states, and secretly disapproved by many more, the southern states are inured to the evil, and all are deterred from attempting to get rid of such a blot on their institutions and their national character, by the extent of the sacrifice which they apprehend its abolition would involve. The states that hold slaves, and those that do not, are equal in number; and consequently, one half of the senators represent slave holding states of the union; and those states take good care to elect no one favourable to the abolition of slavery, to any public office.