for the countries in which they exist. What a blessing in these cold climates, where the water is turned into dust and rock, and the feathers that fall from heaven's birds and winged geniuses are colder than sea-shells, that the higher and nobler part at least of the inhabitants can conjure up into their eyes, and between their cheeks, such a quantity of flame and heat.

Peel. Was that for us?

Int. No, sir.

Peel. If your Sandwichian majesty is graciously disposed to enter into any treaty with his Britannic majesty, my royal master, 1 am empowered by his aforesaid, to wit, his Britannic majesty, to receive, consider, and lay it before his said majesty, for his majesty's further consideration, by and with the advice of his privy council.

King. The very thing for his privy council. His majesty sticks a new and brighter and loftier plume in my hair, at every word of your discourse with me. On the court-day I would decorate his majesty with a noble dress, suitable to his dignity, with my own hands, declaring upon my royal word that I have worn the same dress twenty times on the greatest ceremonies of religion and state. Now I request from his majesty, I being a less powerful king, a dress which his majesty shall have worn only twice or thrice on public festivities, and once only in dalliance with some favourite; and that his royal hands shall invest me with nothing more of it, than that part which the most active man in the world could not leap into by himself, and which no other nations than the most civilized and ingenious have discovered the means of putting on: this being the principal, if not the only distinction between the polished and the rude. After the surmounting of such a difficulty in science, I do not wonder that you can count the stars, and measure their sizes and distances, which I think I could do myself, if I had leisure and they would wait for me.

Crok. Does the rascal quizz us? he looks in earnest. Peel. He really is serious, and expects an answer. Sire, I will communicate to his majesty the heads of your majesty's communication, and I entertain no doubt that his majesty will most graciously pay that attention which is due to so ancient and faithful an ally, and which is conser. vative of the harmony that happily exists between the two nations.

SECTION LXII.

EXTRACT FROM REV. W. E. CHANNING'S ELECTION
DISCOURSE, 1830.

FREE institutions contribute in no small degree to freedom and force of mind, by teaching the essential equality of men, and their right and duty to govern themselves; and I cannot but consider the superiority of an elective government, as consisting very much in the testimony which it bears to these ennobling truths. It has often been said, that a good code of laws, and not the form of government, is what determines a people's happiness.

I know that tyranny does evil by invading men's outward interests, by making property and life insecure, by robbing the labourer to pamper the noble and king. But its worst influence is within. Its chief curse is, that it breaks and tames the spirit, sinks man in his own eyes, takes away vigour of thought and action, substitutes for conscience an outward rule, makes him abject, cowardly, a parasite and cringing slave. This is the curse of tyranny. It wars with the soul, and thus it wars with God. We read in theologians and poets of angels fighting against the Creator, of battles in heaven. But God's throne in heaven is unassailable. The only war against God is against his image, against the divine principle in the soul, and this is waged by tyranny in all its forms. We here see the chief curse of tyranny; and this should teach us that civil freedom is a blessing, chiefly as it reverences the human soul, and ministers to its growth and power.

Without this inward, spiritual freedom, outward liberty is of little worth. What boots it, that I am crushed by no foreign yoke, if, through ignorance and vice, through selfishness and fear, I want the command of my own mind? The worst tyrants are those which establish themselves in our own breasts. The man who wants force of principle and purpose, is a slave, however free the air he breathes.

We speak of the patriot as sacrificing himself to the public weal. Do we mean, that he sacrifices what is most properly himself, the principle of piety and virtue? Do we not feel, that, however great may be the good, which, through his sufferings, accrues to the state, a greater and purer glory redounds to himself, and that the most precious fruit

P

of his disinterested services, is the strength of resolution and philanthropy which is accumulated in his own soul?

Our great error as a people is, that we put an idolatrous trust in our free institutions, as if these, by some magic power, must secure our rights, however we enslave ourselves to evil passions. We need to learn that the forms of liberty are not its essence; that whilst the letter of a free institution is preserved, its spirit may be lost; that even its wisest provisions and most guarded powers may be made weapons of tyranny. In a country called free, a majority may become a faction, and a proscribed minority may be insulted, robbed, and oppressed. Under elective governments, a dominant party may become as truly an usurper, and as treasonably conspire against the state, as an individual who forces his way by arms to the throne.

I know that it is supposed, that political wisdom can so form institutions, as to extract from them freedom, notwithstanding a people's sins. The chief expedient for this purpose has been, to balance, as it is called, men's passions and interests against each other, to use one man's usefulness as a check against his neighbour's, to produce peace by the counteraction and equilibrium of hostile forces. This whole theory I distrust. The vices can by no management or skilful poising be made to do the work of virtue. Our own history has already proved this. Our government was 'founded on the doctrine of checks and balances; and what does experience teach us? It teaches, what the principles of our nature might have taught, that, whenever the country is divided into two great parties, the dominant party will possess itself of both branches of the legislature, and of the different departments of the state, and will move towards its objects with as little check, and with as determined purpose, as if all powers were concentrated in a single body. There is no substitute for virtue. Free institutions secure rights, only when secured by, and when invigorating that spiritual freedom, that moral power and elevation, which I have set before you as the supreme good of our nature.

According to these views, the first duty of a statesman is to build up the moral energy of a people. This is their first interest; and he who weakens it, inflicts an injury which no talent can repair; nor should any splendour of services, or any momentary success, avert from him the infamy which he has earned. Let public men learn to think more reverently of their function. Let them feel that they are touching more vital interests than property. Let them fear

nothing so much as to sap the moral convictions of a people, by unrighteous legislation, or a selfish policy. Let them cultivate in themselves the spirit of religion and virtue, as the first requisite to a public station. Let no apparent advantage to the community, any more than to themselves, seduce them to the infraction of any moral law. Let them put faith in virtue as the strength of nations. Let them not be disheartened by temporary ill success in upright exertion. Let them remember, that while they and their cotemporaries live but for a day, the state is to live for ages, and that time, the unerring arbiter, will vindicate the wisdom as well as the magnanimity of the public man, who, confiding in the power of truth, justice, and philanthropy, asserts their claims, and reverently follows their monitions, amidst general disloyalty and corruption.

SECTION LXIII.

EXTRACT FROM THE SAME.

I FEEL, as I doubt not many feel, that the great distinction of a nation, the only one worth possessing, and which brings after it all other blessings, is the prevalence of pure principle among the citizens. I wish to belong to a state, in the character and institutions of which I may find a spring of improvement which I can speak of with an honest pride, in whose records I may meet great and honoured names, and which is making the world its debtor by its discoveries of truth, and by an example of virtuous freedom. O save me from a country which worships wealth, and cares not for true glory; in which intrigue bears rule; in which patriotism borrows its zeal from the prospect of office; in which hungry sycophants throng with supplication all the departments of state; in which public men bear the brand of private vice, and the seat of government is a noisesome sink of private licentiousness and public corruption. Tell me not of the honour of belonging to a free country. I ask, does our liberty bear generous fruits? Does it exalt us in manly spirit, in public virtue, above countries trodden under foot by despotism? Tell me not of the extent of our territory. I care not how large it is, if it multiply degenerate men. Speak not of our prosperity. Better be one of a poor people, plain in manners, revering God and respecting themselves, than belong to a rich country which knows no high

er good than riches. Earnestly do I desire for this country, that, instead of copying Europe with an undiscerning servility, it may have a character of its own, corresponding to the freedom and equality of our institutions. One Europe is enough. One Paris is enough. How much to be desired is it, that separated as we are from the eastern continent by an ocean, we should be still more widely separated by simplicity of manners, by domestic purity, by inward piety, by reverence for human nature, by moral independence, by withstanding that subjection to fashion, and that debilitating sensuality, which characterize the most civilized portions of the old world.

Of this country I may say with peculiar emphasis, that its happiness is bound up in its virtue. On this our union can alone stand firm. Our union is not like that of other nations, confirmed by the habits of ages, and riveted by force. It is a recent, and still more, a voluntary union. It is idle to talk of force as binding us together. Nothing can retain a member of this confederacy, when resolved on separation. The only bonds that can permanently unite us, are moral ones. That there are repulsive powers-principles of discord, in these States, we all feel. The attraction which is to counteract them, is only to be found in a calm wisdom, controlling the passions, in a spirit of equity and regard to the common weal, and in virtuous patriotism, clinging to union as the only pledge of freedom and peace. The union is threatened by sectional jealousies, and collisions of local interests, which can be reconciled only by a magnanimous liberality. It is endangered by the prostitution of executive patronage, through which the public treasury is turned into a fountain of corruption, and by the lust for power, which perpetually convulses the country for the sake of throwing office into new hands; and the only remedy for these evils, is to be found in the moral indignation of the community, in a pure, lofty spirit, which will overwhelm with infamy this selfish ambition.

SECTION LXIV.

WILLIAM WALLACE-EDWARD I..... W. S. Landor,