decline of that organ. I admonished him of his danger, and advised him to resort to remedies promptly; such as the medicinal waters, and a course of alterative medicine. His reply was, he had not time to take physic! (He had been one of the severe pecuniary sufferers by the late war with Great Britain, and was now compelled to devote his personal exertions daily and hourly, to provide a support for his numerous family.) But said I, at this rate your family will soon be deprived of your services altogether! Accordingly, in this frame of mind he unfortunately persisted, no doubt hoping that a slow poison would never come to a fatal issue! He not only neglected the proper remedies, but accelerated the decline of his health by unremitting application to an arduous calling, and in less than two years found himself labouring under a confirmed scirrhus of the liver, which soon terminated in universal disorder, dropsy, and death!

I could also recite numerous cases from the more hopeless class of immedicable disorders to which the human system from improvident conduct or original malformation is liable; but which may nevertheless be palliated and stayed in their career to dissolution. Of these I will only cite a case or two from the more rare disorder of ANEURISM; which consists of a morbid enlargement or dilatation of an artery, thereby impairing its power in circulating the blood. These aneurismal enlargements arise either from a natural debility of the part of the artery affected; which is generally at the curve of the artery, where the action of the current of blood is strongest and most liable to aggravation whenever the circulation is preternaturally hurried-or they arise from local injuries to the coats of the artery, such as slight wounds, punctures, contusions, or contiguous ulcerations. The aneurisms from natural debility most frequently occur at the great curves of the aorta and the pulmonary artery. Of the latter, or aneurism of the pulmonary artery, I have incidentally known a case of a Mr. Denny, formerly a clerk in the post office department, which, from continual uneasiness and frequent anxiety in respiration, was for a long time mistaken and treated for asthma or rheumatism: and its fatal issue was surely not retarded by the regimen adapted to a mistaken diagnosis, instead of the proper palliative course of treatment for the true disorder. Of the former description, or aneurism of the aorta, was that of the late Mr. Storrs, some years past a member of congress from New York, who died suddenly at New Haven, about twelve months ago, in consequence of the bodily exertion made in ascending a long flight of steps to the roof of a pavilion, producing a rupture of the aneurismal sack, by the force of the hurried circulation against that weak part. Mr. Storrs, also, might have brought his life to an end much earlier after the enlargement of the artery had commenced, by unusual or violent bodily exercise of any sort, hurrying the blood upon this weak part of its circulation. On the other hand he might probably

have protracted his life for some considerable period longer, had he carefully abstained from any activity that gives preternatural impetus to the circulation.

But professional illustrations apart, I may be permitted to remark, that it is not in the healing art alone, where the neglect of salutary precaution and measures of prevention are most conspicuous and prolific of evil, or most disastrous in their devastations on human life. These calamities flow most profusely, indeed, of late years, from our improvidence against the casualties of steam and storm, of flood and fire; which deadly agents have swept off thousands of our most valued and enterprising fellow-citizens, within the painful recollection of us all, and to the inconsolable grief of thousands of friends and family connections. Shall I instance the heart-rending case of the steamer Home, by whose wreck on a voyage from New York for Charleston, a year since, so many valuable lives were lost! There were not only flaws and defects in the construction of that vessel which would have condemned her as unseaworthy when she went from the stocks, not only supervening disorders of her timbers hourly making her fate the more apparent to skilful seamen at every voyage-but worse than all, there were flaws in the consciences of her builders, her owners, and her commander, which their MAKER alone can mend hereafter! But is this and a thousand of the same description of disasters, also immedicable disorders? Yes, indeed, I awfully fear, if they be not soon taken in hand by the doctors of the senate and the other house.*

*It appears to be a very natural suggestion, that the construction of all descriptions of vessels, machinery, &c. with which safety to human life is closely involved, be as fit subjects for a board of inspection, as those of flour, cotton, tobacco, and other articles of mere merchandise: and that their commanders or superintendents should be as properly subject to an examination to obtain a diploma or certificate of qualification, as physicians, lawyers, or other professional men. And above all, that proprietors of such vessels or machinery, should be liable to heavy damages for all disasters that arise from the incompetency or negligence of the persons they employ for, without such a provision, the perfection of machinery and of architecture, will be of no guaranty against the evil consequences of the unrestrained depravity of low ambition in their proprietors or conductors. Witness the case of the captain of the steamer Moselle, who actuated by the frivolous desire of acquiring for his crack-steamer the honorary cognomen of Eagle-of-the-waters, actually sacrificed the lives of hundreds of his fellow-beings, himself among the rest!

Since the above was written, a penal law has been enacted by Congress, about the close of the last session, with still more severe provisions than those above suggested, the purport of which would, in all probability have been enacted nearly ten years ago, had the late Mr. Dodridge, of the Virginia delegation in Congress, not been cut off in his useful career by sudden death, when laboriously engaged in collecting facts and information preparatory to reporting a similar bill. Mr. Dodridge happened, with myself, to be an eye-witness of the explosion of the boiler of the Potomac steamer in Hampton Roads, which scalded to death four of her crew, obviously occasioned by the intemperance of the captain and racing with the Richmond steamer. The following extract from a Mobile paper, is strongly corroborative of the necessity for the law, and augurs well for its good results:

The inspectors of steamboats in Mobile are playing the deuce among the boilers. Nearly all of the boats which run to the interior are under condemnation; and ALL those to New Orleans are in the same predicament. It is certainly inconvenient for the present; but who can regret it when such a momentous end as the preservation of life is to be attained by it? As soon as they shall commence running, steamboat travelling will be as safe as sleeping in one's bed.'-Examiner.

Nay, worse than immedicable, because they have an ingredient of wilful perpetration, to aggravate them with the compound heinousness of SIN and CRIME.

But should it now be objected-that there is a want of that analogy I have been supposing to exist, between the frailties or casualties incident to the subjects and productions of general science and art, and those of the systems of government-or even between the institutions of monarchical governments, or of the ancient and modern republics of the old world, and those of our own confederated republic-I would, in relation to these objections, remark, first of the latter, that human nature is the same throughout the world, and that though your institutions are, in the main, if fairly administered, more salutary and conformable to the inherent individual and covenanted social rights of man, than most other political institutions have ever been; yet wherever there may happen to be a weak or unguarded point in your system (however more numerous, or more gross, the defects be in other systems) upon that point are the efforts of weak or wicked men surely TEMPTED to make their assaults: and in regard to the former more general analogies, it is equally true, that in all manner of frailties or weaknesses they may present, their temptations operate alike upon all the elements of destruction applicable to them, whether they appertain to human, natural, or artificial productions. And of course it is these frailties, these defects, these weaknesses, and liabilities to decay, which pervade all nature, that tempt the demon of destruction to set his elements to work; and therefore they constitute a very material and striking analogy in all systems, or individual productions, however different their general construction, material or origin, may be. And the process of destruction under such liabilities will as surely bring an otherwise well devised system to a speedy end, as it would a worse conceived one-nay, more speedily too, if the temptations should set the elements of destruction into more active operation; for a crazy vessel may ride out a benign sea, while a more staunch one with some defect unheeded, may go to wreck in a tempest, which would yet be harmless to another that is well appointed and equipped in all its parts. How then can you close your eyes to the rational deduction, sustained too by abundant facts, that under similar circumstances in regard to your political system, these assaults on its weaker parts will be made and repeated by the same all-pervading spirit of temptation, which in the human breast ever seeks to accomplish the sinister ends of the CENTRAL SELF, be the emergency what it may, regardless too of the direful consequences they may threaten-yes, whether subversive of their country's best hopes, and of the best hopes of the world besides; nay, were they even sure ultimately to jeopard their own sordid object, it would matter not to them, if that be but postponed or kept from their view by a present intoxicating gratification.

And need I here remind you, that the quintescence of that universal prayer of the LORD JESUS, which is in the mouths of all men, women and children, throughout the christian world, is, 'LEAD US NOT INTO TEMPTATION, BUT DELIVER US FROM EVIL!'

Though it be obnoxious to the reproach of universal remark, that the malign temptations of private life are abundant in all grades of society, and that the evils which flow from them are in almost as full proportion as if there were no corrective power either in the municipal or corporate authorities, nor any redeeming virtue in the solemn emphasis and spirit of our daily prayer; yet, that there should be public temptations latent in your popular political institutions, which stealthily seduce your public functionaries from their official propriety, and through them, even cozen the people, yourselves, the democracy of numbers, from their fidelity to their reserved and unalienable rights, thereby creating on the one hand, public delinquencies innumerable, and on the other, sapping the very foundations of popular sovereignty, or rather transferring all sovereignty from the people to a despotwould hardly be for a moment suspected by the incidental observer, notwithstanding the daily increasing evils of government abuses, which must, in the nature of things, derive their origin from the system itself, from its agents of administration, or from BOTH.

Truly your great and good Washington resisted temptation in its most imposing form. And if it be a natural weakness to yield to temptation, how ennobling is the virtue to resist it! But alas, how few are there who can summon the fortitude, or the self-denial, to profit by so illustrious an example? Unfortunately too, the soothing monotony of seemingly unimportant events awaken you not from the repose of delusive security, thereby adding to the existing temptations to you unobserved, incentives the most insidious and dangerous of all, as they are the more congenial and propitious to the clandestine operations of artful aspirants and their adroit coadjutors.

To begin then to entertain the first surmise of a doubt, in regard to any defects of your political system, and the temptations they afford to your unfaithful public servants to assail its integrity, would require something more than the casual observation of isolated facts and disconnected occurrences. Under such circumstances it becomes incumbent upon the true statesman to take up his political TELESCOPE and draw all the lights of pertinent facts from the boundless expanse of time and space into one concentrated Focus, in order to see and note their bearings, and profit by the inductions they would teach. Without such precaution, he would be liable to flounder in a sea of perplexity without definite object, or to fight against shadows without winning a single valuable trophy to add lustre to his statesmanship, or advance the prosperity of his country and insure the stability of her institutions. But with the lights of

such a concentration of intelligence and pertinent facts, he would be able to lay before the world the meanderings and the sinuosities of party operations and demagogue pretensions, and establish to the clear conviction of every mind the secret springs of party intolerance, party inconsistency, party devotion to self, glossed over with a sycophantic exterior towards the great democracy of numbers-the people-who are of no party but their country's but who are nevertheless courted and humbugged by all party leaders in order to win the glorious plurality over to their side-whether in advocating to-day the political landmarks which the same leaders would demolish to-morrow, or at any subsequent time, to proclaim others whenever their personal views and those of their new coalitions shall tempt them to persuade the people that they embrace the true republican creedno matter how often they have been abandoned and resumed, scoffed at and new burnished alternately by the demagogues of every party to suit the emergency of the moment. And yet the most hypocritical of all parties are those who gratuitously assume, without truth, to be the exclusive republicans, and the only trust-worthy guardians of the people's rights-who eternally thunder forth the most wrathful denunciations against divisions, or rather the freedom of opinion even among themselves, and pledge every man to swim or sink with their party leader right or wrong-zany or knave-of which we have had more than sufficient illustration of late years, in the party advocacy of the pseudo-Jefferson, and afterwards his LEGATEE to the presidency, through the flickering jack-with-a-lantern practices of the former, and the professions of the latter to follow the ignis fatuus footsteps of the false Jefferson, and directly at variance with all the leading Jeffersonian doctrines, on whose republican fame they have foisted themselves, as the delusive means of recommending themselves to the people, while they have been busily engaged in searching out, and springing leaks in the weak parts of your majestic CONSTITUTION.

From such a state of the case, it is obvious, that 'POLITICAL SKETCHES OF EIGHT YEARS IN WASHINGTON,' drawn up with a view to important practical deductions, whether they contemplate the recently past, or any other DYNASTY of your nominally elective government, must remount far beyond the designated period, in order to catch the connecting clue, which gives a character to the whole train of causation designed to be developed. Pursuing such a course with a discriminating eye, this clue will be found to run through a kindred series of facts and circumstances, modified by contingent casualties co-operating on the inherent predispositions of your system, thus constituting a chain of reciprocal causation-impressing and impressed-which tempt the cupidity and strengthen the purposes of ambitious actors, who would fain impart their peculiar roll, stamp and heresy, to the great scheme of your POLITICAL drama. Drama'