as a national institution, for the diffusion and maintenance of vital Christianity. With a quotation from Baxter's beautiful exhortation to the nonconformists of his day, I shall now conclude.

'If you love the COMMON GOOD of England, do your best to keep up sound and serious religion in the public parish churches; and be not guilty of any thing that shall bring the chief interest of religion into private assemblies of men merely tolerated, if you can avoid it. * * * * * Let us, therefore, lose

*

no possession that we can justly get, nor be guilty of disgracing the honest conformists (or churchmen), but do all we can to keep up their reputation for the good of souls."

SOCIAL INFLUENCE OF POLITICAL

INSTITUTIONS.

LECTURE VI.

The will of the majority-The periodical press-Manners— Liberty-Slavery.

IN the United States the legislative and the executive powers are so dependent on the will of the majority of the people, that the majority may be said to rule, which is a democratic but a false principle. The multitude is a capricious and IRRESPONSIBLE master. In its calmer moods it may follow what is just and lawful, but it is easily excited, and when roused and impelled by strong prejudice and passion will commit enormous wrong, without reason, or pity, or remorse. Where there is a powerful and enlightened government, which honestly aims to promote the public welfare, even in opposition to the will of the majority, mobs are awed and subdued and their ringleaders are punished. But it is otherwise when the people have assumed the sovereignty, and have decreed that their will shall be paramount. Then they will act not only through their regular legislative assemblies, but they will sometimes do what they please, and with impunity, in their irregular and turbulent meetings, where the dictates of

judgment, and mercy, and conscience, are overborne by temporary feelings, whether right or wrong.

Many examples might be given of this wild exercise of irresponsible power in America. In the year 1812, a Baltimore mob sacked the printing office of a newspaper which opposed the war with England, assaulted one editor and killed another. The offenders were tried, and the jury acquitted them. Thus, through the tyranny of the majority, the liberty of the press was interfered with, innocent blood was shed, and the guilty were set free, in open violation of the laws of the country. There were the riots in New York and Philadelphia, when the houses of the abolitionists, the schools and churches of the black population were destroyed,, the public approving or omitting to punish those flagrant enormities. There were similar riots at Cincinnati; and in the less civilized districts, there have been executions by what is called Lynch-law, not unlike the summary executions at the lamp posts of Paris, during the revolution. Miss Martineau, after describing a breach of the peace, which happened during her stay at Boston, and an assault on some of the advocates for the abolition of slavery, mentions that no prosecutions followed. She asked an eminent judge, why, and whether there was not a public prosecutor, who might prosecute for a breach of the peace. said, it might be done: but he had given his advice against it. Why? The feeling was so strong against the abolitionists; the rioters were so respectable in the city, it was better to let the whole affair pass over without notice." Thus the ordinary safeguards of freedom and innocence are rendered unavailing by the arbitrary will of the people.

"He

M. De Tocqueville truly and beautifully remarks, that men are not fit to be entrusted with unlimited power; "and that omnipotence properly belongs to

L

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."

"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