reach of chance, or change among "the canon laws of their foundation."

So who does not see from Captain Hall's, own shewing, that the reason why a greater number do not become literary men by profession, is, that they have something, at least, more agreeable to do.

"Every thing in America, as I believe I have before mentioned, appears to be antedated-every thing and every body is on the moveand the field is so wide and so fertile, that no man, whatever be his age, if he possess the slightest spark of energy, can fail to reap from the virgin soil an adequate harvest. By the word adequate, I mean a sufficient return for his own maintainance and that of a family. Thus the great law of our nature, be fruitful and multiply, having no check, supersedes every other, carrying before it classics, science, the fine arts, letters, taste, and refinements of every description, in one great deluge of population.

A

and

"This is hardly any figure, being almost literally the fact. As applied to education, its effects are somewhat of the following nature. boy who hears and sees nothing at all around him but independence individual license to do almost any thing, very soon becomes to wild for his father's house; and off he is sent to school. When there, he is restless himself, and the cause of restlessness in others; for he worries his parents till he accomplishes his purpose of going to college. This point gained, his object is to run through the required course as fast as possible, get his examination over, and take his degree, that he may be at liberty to follow the paths of his predecessors, and scamper away to the fertile regions of the West or South, where, whatever betides him, in whatever line of industry his taste or talents may be cast, he is sure of being able to support a wife and children.

"This appears to be going on, with slight shades of difference, over the whole United States, and is, in truth, the inevitable consequence of their geographical and political situation. The Americans assure us that it cannot possibly be altered, Perhaps not.. At all events, it must be submitted to, but whether for good or for evil is not now the question. The real point is, whether or not any modified restraint can be placed upon the operation of such powerful principles of human action in the case of the young men of that country, so as to give them, along with their present advantages, those also which spring out of classical knowledge ?—I fear not.

"What answer, for instance, can be made to a lad of sixteen, who sees before him so wide and tempting an area for his immediate exertions to expand themselves in-who is certain that if he marries tomorrow, with scarcely a dollar in his pocket, he may rear up half-adozen children in as many years, and maintain them in abundance, till they are in a state to shift for themselves? Or who begs you to tell him in what respect Greek and Latin, or the differential calculus, will advance his project of demolishing the wilderness, and peopling the ground where it stood? Or how a knowledge of the fine arts will improve the discipline of a gang of negroes on a rice or cotton plantaVOL. IV.-No. 8.

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tion? You can really say nothing in reply. For what instruction you give him in reading and writing he is most grateful; but for all the graces of literature, or the refinements of science, or the elegancies of polished societies, he cares not half a straw. In fact, they are so much in his way, that if he chanced to have picked any of them up, he feels tempted afterwards to fling them from him as troublesome encumbrances, only tending to excite distrust in those unqualified to appreciate such attainments." Vol. i. pp. 304-305.

If, however, this young Rapid had been made nolens volens to acquire an adequate fund of classical learning while he had yet nothing else to do, and before he got such high-flying notions into his head, viz. at a grammar-school, we will answer for it, the whole complexion of his destiny had been altered. But educated as we are in this country, it is too late to think, at eighteen or nineteen, of going back to our accidence. None but those who are very fortunately circumstanced, can attempt such a laborious and disheartening enterprize, and even they may have cause to repent of their aspiring efforts at improvement, when they come to discover how unequal a chance they stand in a country where there are so few to sympathize with them. But what, we ask again, has democracy to do with this? It is human nature that is to blame-it is those feelings which Milton so feelingly alludes to in one of his letters-" Why should not all the fond hopes, that forward youth and vanity are fledge with, call me forward more powerfully, than a poor, regardlesse and unprofitable sin of curiosity should be able to withoid me, whereby a man cuts himself off from all action, and becomes the most helpless, pusillanimous and unweaponed creature in the world, the most unfit and unable to do that which all mortals aspire to, either to be useful to their friends, or to offend their enemies." How can we wonder then, that active life, with all the present and tempting rewards which it holds out to ambition and enterprize, should draw into its vortex almost all the available talent of the country. If, even under the most favourable circumstances, literary pursuits, however elevated, and ennobling, and congenial to his own incomparable spirit, were felt by Milton to require an effort of self-denial, what shall be said of them in such a country as this? under all these disadvantages, inseparable and accidental, a life of contemplation would have vastly more attractions, were each of our larger cities filled with gentlemen, well-grounded in classical learning at school, though they went no further, giving countenance and support to literary men.

But

Upon the whole, the question about the operation of a government, is a practical one, and can be decided only by experience.

Who would suppose, à priori, that the much injured close boroughs should have been so often, we may almost say uniformly, the refuge of distressed parliamentary reform-men, driven off the field of a county election by an ungrateful people, with "sad overthrow and foul defeat?" Who would imagine that a tribunal of justice could owe its independence to the very venality of its places-as was undoubtedly the case with the Parliament of Paris? The causes which produce any given effect in politics, are far too complicated and obscure, to be discovered by the coup d'œil militaire of a philosopher of the quarter-deck, galloping through a country at the rate of twentyodd miles a-day, Sundays included. There is no experimentum crucis to detect them, even for the benefit of more cautious inquirers; and the highest wisdom amounts here to no more than a sage empiricism-acquiesing as our fathers did in an established order of things until its evils become insufferable, and then making just such changes as the occasion calls for, and no more. Those who judge from superficial appearances or general maxims, will be forever blundering. Every republic will pass with them for a licentious democracy, and every republican "have the manners of a Swiss bred in Holland." While, on the contrary, to those accustomed to popular institutions, the very name of royalist will be synonimous with sycophant and slave, and the whole scheme of monarchical government appear incompatible with dignity and virtue. Would the rudest and coarsest citizen of this country gain by exchanging places with the creature, painted by Count Hamilton in the following sentence, as best fitted to make his way to preferment in an English court?"Il jugea qu'au milieu d'une cour florissante en beautés et abondante en argent, il ne devait s'occuper que du soin de plaire à son maitre, de faire valoir les avantages que la nature lui avait donnes pour le jeu et mettre en usage de nouveaux stratagêmes en amour." Yet even Captain Hall would scarcely venture to deny that many hundreds of such men hold up their heads with all the insolence of conceded superiority in Bondstreet and the Park, and that a stranger in England is apt to hear more of them than of any other class of people. As a further illustration of the danger of trusting to first appearances, we would add, the changes that are made at every election in the composition of Congress and the State Legislatures. Captain Hall has very naturally exaggerated the importance of this fact. He takes the mean ratio, and finds it less than three years: then infers that there can be no experience at all in our statesNow this may be very good arithmetic, but it is very bad politics. The fact is, that these changes are almost exclusively

men.

confined to the inferior men-the cyphers of the house. It very rarely happens, that a representative of conspicuous talent or services, fails of a re-election, if he desire it. In the Southern States, at least, there is as much stability in this respect, as could be expected or even desired. Neither must it be forgotten, that most of our politicians in Congress, go through a previous noviciate in the Legislatures of the States, and bring with them into their new business, a considerable stock of experience. Although, therefore, there be some inconveniences arising out of this frequency of change in the constitution of those bodies, they do by no means amount to any very serious evil.

On the subject of Southern institutions, we have been most agreeably surprised by the opinions of Captain Hall. We had every reason to expect, from what we heard was his manner of expressing himself while among us, a far more uncompromising hostility to this part of our social polity, even than to the spirit of democracy itself. We were aware, however, that he was doing all he could to inform himself fully upon the subject-that he conversed freely and frequently about it with some of our most experienced and intelligent men, and that he went "poking about," as he terms it, into every hole and corner where anything connected with the condition of the slave or the master, was to be seen or heard. It is gratifying to us to be able to state, that the result of this investigation, thus undertaken with a prejudice against us, is precisely such as we think all reasonable men must come to, who examine the question in any other spirit than that of a jacobinical and murderous fanaticism.

It is, indeed, one of the most extraordinary revolutions that have ever occurred in the history of the human mind-the change of opinion on this subject within the last forty years. Before that time, the voice of a few philanthropists was heard, here and there, amidst the busy hum of a prosperous commerce, pleading for the victims of that infernal traffic, by which the great trading nations of Europe were endeavoring to swell the mass ¡of colonial produce for their own benefit. Virginia, now so deeply intent upon the means of getting rid of this evil, in vain exerted herself to prevent it. It was decreed by those who had our destinies in their hands, that the Southern regions of America should be crammed with this barbarous and abominable population-the commercial navy of the whole world vomited it forth upon us by hundreds of cargoes-every capitalist embarked in the profitable speculation-every insurance office greedily snatched at the premium paid for indemnity against the chances of this traffic in blood and tears—and in the most rational department of modern jurisprudence, the question was seriously

entertained whether "these beings with immortal souls," might not, in case of necessity, be flung overboard like any other merchandize, according to the Lex Rhodia de Jactu! As long as colonial possessions were held in high estimation, there was no portion of mankind worth mentioning, but partook in the guilt, whatever it was, of this commerce. The whole world was implicated in it. It was a conspiracy of all Europe and the commercial part of this continent, not only against Africa, but, in a more aggravated sense, against these Southern regions. The sternest justice can demand no more than that we should be thought as bad as those who brought this evil upon us. But, in a more considerate view of the case, the pander even of a confessedly vicious appetite, is worse than the libertine whose lusts he is base enough to subserve; and it is an absurdity without a parallel in the whole history of human extravagance and folly, to hear the people of Old England or New England, or of any other portion of Christendom, coolly lecturing us upon the sin of keeping our fellow-men in bondage! They accuse us of violating the law of nature, who, by the law which they themselves prescribed, drew us into this supposed offence! They talk about the imprescriptible rights of mankind, and question the very titles which they became bound to warrant, by selling us the property! A father, whose vices had entailed disease upon his offspring, and who should cast him off for this hereditary uncleanness, presents something like a parallel-the only one we have been able to imagine-to this instance of prodigious ef frontery.

Whether slavery is, or is not reconcileable with what is called by philosophers the law of nature, we really do not know. We find the greatest theoretical publicists divided upon the subject, and it is, no doubt, a very good thesis for young casuists to discuss in a college moot-club. We shall not undertake it, for we have no taste for abstractions. We will not quote Grotius or Huber. It is enough for us, that when the Southern people consented to receive the African race into their territory, it was upon the express condition of perpetual service, and that this condition was then as lawful as any other arrangement of civil society. Servitus est constitutio juris gentium. It was a Christian Emperor, zealous above all men, to promote the manumission of slaves, who laid down this rule five centuries after Christ had positively enjoined obedience upon slaves, eo nomine.* It was emphatically the law of nations. No people, from the

This is the proper translation, and were the Bible read in the original Greek or in a literal version, we should, probably, be less troubled with the ravings of fanatics upon this subject.