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great body of the people which the righteousness of its principles so richly merits? How happens it that the false and mischievous doctrines of Whiggery are yet able to maintain so powerful an antagonism to the party of truth and justice? How happens it that Democracy still requires so much legislation, so frequent a remodelling of constitutions?

The truth is, that superior as we are to all other nations, ancient or modern, in our political institutions, and eminently excellent as they indisputably are in themselves, yet nevertheless, we hesitate not to say, that from the adoption of our constitution to the present day, from Washington to Polk, the principles of genuine democracy have never yet been carried into complete practice in this country. We have been most egregiously deceiving ourselves in mistaking words for things, sound for substance, shadows for realities. In some instances we have misapprehended if not perverted the meaning of terms. The word "freedom," for example, so constantly upon the lips of all, we suspect, is seldom correctly understood. Unless we greatly err. independence of foreign power, and the rejection in our governments of regal and aristocratical institutions, comprise the idea generally attached to that word. That, to be sure, is a great deal, but after all it is but half the truth. True political "freedom" that freedom which at once affords us the greatest security with the greatest liberty, is what we have never yet been fully blessed with. That we have the ability as well as the right to "govern ourselves," without the oppressive incumbrances of kings and lords, is a truth palpable to the mind of every individual in the country. The quo modo and the quantum are, however, questions -especially the latter-rarely taken into consideration, and still more rarely correctly answered; yet how abso. lutely necessary it is that they should be perfectly comprehended-for what is more absurd, and at the same time more hazardous to the prosperity of the country, than that men should take upon themselves the vast responsibility of denouncing or championing measures of government and political parties, and of summarily pronouncing upon their fate, when they themselves

would be exceedingly puzzled, either to give the why and the wherefore, or to advance a rational opinion as to the proper character with which a free government should be invested. In such cases free suffrage loses half its virtue; and its continued exercise fails to produce that improvement in the service of self-government, which we have a right to expect at the hands of intelligent freemen.

The annual legislators in all the states have had too much power, and most of their time has ever been occupied in dispensing favors to the few. If we look over the ponderous tomes that are the result of every session of the legislatures, through all the gradations of towns, cities, territories, states and the federal government, we are struck with the large portion applicable to individuals only, and the small attention that the public good has received. In analyzing their acts, we find nothing of positive good effected, but what a fundamental law in convention might not have permanently produced. During the last twenty years that the NewYork constitution of 1825 has been in operation, a large portion of the public attention, and a very large proportion of the labor of annual legislatures, has been occupied with corporations, which have been called into existence, not only in accordance with the constitution of 1825, but in some cases in defiance of its express terms. The abuses which grow out of the powers, real and usurped, of the state legislatures, have been a constant source of contention; and more than one election has turned upon their validity, and the people have condemned them. Twelve years ago, the gubernatorial election turned almost exclusively upon the question of monopolies of every kind and degree; and the term monopoly was applied in its broadest sense to all acts of incorporation. The triumph of Gov. Marcy over Mr. Seward, in 134, was clearly owing to the belief that all exclusive and partial legislation would cease. There can be no question but those acts which create monopolies are of unmixed evil; that they are subversive of the sacred rights of men; are calculated to create artificial inequality in human conditions; to elevate the few and depress the many; and their final operation is to build up a powerful aristocracy, and strike at

What, then, is the remedy? As we have already hinted, the chief cause of all our national difficulties arises from the unaccountable ignorance which so generally exists on the subject of what should constitute the legitimate functions, the precise duties, the true character of a free government. This being the main obstacle to our greater prosperity, the remedy is obvious Just so soon as the great majority of the people shall once have a correct understanding of this matter, the Democratic party, or in other words, political truth and justice, will become immovably and for ever established. The true theory of the whole subject lies in a nutshell.

democratic government. Notwithstand the very contemplation, the bare idea ing that that opinion of the people was of the huge, chaotic and monstrous so clearly expressed in 1834, subsequent mass, is getting to be positively frightlegislators did create monopolies, and in ful. violation of the terms of the constitution, did squander the public money upon those monopolies; and direct state taxation, in spite of the princely revenues of the canals, necessarily resulted from that treasonable violation of the fundamental law of the state. The lesson and experience growing out of those mal-practices of annual legislatures, has made the prohibition of all corporations by legislative enactments, necessary in the new constitution. Instead of allowing the legislature to pass general laws by which all persons may become associated for any purpose, by complying with its provision, the constitution itself should specify the conditions, and place the whole above the caprice of annual assemblies. The details of the public service may, with less danger, be entrusted to temporary law makers, governed by local interest and individual attachments, when the people have placed beyond their reach those great principles of public economy, the truth of which is readily recognised by the sagacity of the people.

It is a very common error, (mistaking the means for the end) that politics, like divinity, is, and necessarily must be, a permanent profession-a tradeto be followed as a regular employment, and that the country, to keep up the necessary quantum of government, is for ever destined, periodically, to undergo universal and violent convulsions, demoralizing and brutalizing as they are to the popular mind. Indeed, the notion seems to be very prevalent that the physical prosperity of the country would be arrested, that is to say, that our crops would cease to grow, the winds of heaven refuse to waft our ships from port to port, our merchants be deprived of the means of selling or exchanging their goods, our mechanics fail to obtain employment, the rapid march of science be abruptly stayed; in short, that all the various wants of man would at once and for ever go altogether unsupplied, unless, forsooth, at an annual expense of scores of millions, we continue to keep up a system of perpetual legislation, "never-ending, still beginning," piling up, year after year, laws upon laws, Pelion upon Ossa, until

It has been often very clearly shown by able writers, and every man's common sense, on due reflection, will confirm the correctness of the reasoning, that when government secures to the citizen his "natural rights," "life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness," it performs its whole duty; that to whatever degree it transcends that plain boundary, to such a degree it usurps power and becomes oppressive and unjust. That is the simple solution of the entire mystery.

Let that idea be strictly acted upon in this country, and a greater revolution in the actual working of our government would be immediately wrought, than that which was produced by the establishment of American Independence. Such an "Iliad of evils," moral and physical, would be put to instant flight, and a change so wholesome and renovating effected, as would appear absolutely magical, and such as would deprive our "Transcendental Reformers" of half their arguments, if not their flippancy. But we will illustrate this by a recurrence to first principles.

Let a colony of a thousand families be selected from all classes of our citizens, and established in some unappro priated country, in independence of all the world, having at the outset no laws nor government whatever, except the recognition and acknowledgment of private property; now, if they were all peaceable and honest members of society, they would require no other restraints whatever than public opinion

and the action of their own consciences. For "government like dress," as has been happily remarked, "is the badge of lost innocence."

After selecting their various occupations, the farmers would dispose of their crops where they could sell, or barter them to the best advantage; the mechanics would dispose of their skill in the same manner; and every individual and class of society would so conduct their business and callings, as would seem to them the most profitable and agreeable. But it is not at present very probable that so numerous a community will ever be found, at least before the millenium, whose members will all be either peaceable or honest. The fairest flower is attended with the sharpest thorn. Virtue must be contrasted with vice in order to display its full value and beauty. All such herdings of frail humanity will inevitably afford examples of each, under every variety of aspect. There will be found uprightness and refinement, as well as knavery and brutality among the poor; and unobtrusive benevolence, as well as oppression and repulsive arrogance among the rich. There will be found the dexterous sharper, and the easy dupe; specious imposture in contact with blind credulity; feebleness struggling against power; integrity and innocence against treachery and fraud in every form.

This community, then, correctly comprehending the exact measure of their wants, will delegate honest, intelligent men to a convention to form a simple constitution, establishing courts of judicature, through the agency of which the injured citizen may obtain speedy and just redress for his grievances. This done, the important question then arises and this is the point to which we wish to direct the particular attention of the reader-what more in the way of government would such a community require? What would be the necessity for additional law-making? And above all, what possible pretext could they have for anything like annual legislation? They are amply secured in the full possession of all their rights; they are under no earthly restraint in acquiring wealth and happiness to their heart's content. What more, then, could they in any way demand from the hands of government? But in truth government has nothing now to give, whatever might be de

manded. It could confer no further favor; it could bestow no especial benefit upon one individual only by the especial robbing of another. Should the organs of government, therefore, in an evil hour, so far forget the nature of their duties as to attempt to "encourage" a particular branch of trade by bounties, restrictive or 66 protective" laws, or to confer favors by acts of special incorporation, it would not only be a most unwarrantable travelling out of the sphere of the proper functions of government, but it would be a total and most atrocious perversion of its essential nature. The whole end and aim of its establishment would be lost sight of, and its power for good very greatly diminished. Instead of maintaining the character of a palladium of the liberties of the people, it would at once become their betrayer and destroyer. It could therefore have nothing whatever to do with any such matter. Should the wants of such a community, however, require works of internal improvement, private enterprise would supply them, and on the safest and best possible terms; but government must not, ought not, and we repeat, could not, in any way interfere with the private occupations of the people.

What folly it would be, then, in the members of such a society to establish and keep up a system of perpetual legislation, to go through the expensive process of enacting every twelvemonth a batch of laws, for which they could not only not have any possible honest use, but the direct tendency of which would be evil, and nothing but evil, and that too in superaddition to the incalculable mischief that would necessarily ensue from the hordes of idle drones, voracious office-seekers, and turbulent demagogues, which the system would incidentally, but inevitably produce?

If our illustration and reasoning are not at fault, it is easy to see what should be the character of our government. And by the simple comparison of what we have with what we ought to have, we are enabled to form some idea of the disastrous frequency and the flagrancy of the instances in which our governments-state and national— have passed beyond the limits of their legitimate action.

THE INDIAN LOVER.

I.

I AM a wild Lenappé chief,
And love the bloody game of life;
See yonder sumach's crimson leaf!
'Tis paler than my scalping-knife ;-
Neosho's torrent wild I stem,

Outstrip in speed the tameless roe,
And round the war-fire chaunt the hymn,
The death-song of my hated foe.

II.

But when the war-whoop on the plain,
And on the hill, is heard no more,
I snap my scalping-knife in twain,
And hie me to yon wigwam low ;—
I rob the eagle of his plume,

And gather flowers from the grove,
Strip from the musk-deer his perfume,
And bear them to my dark-eyed love.

III.

I tame the spotted fawn for her,

And pluck the fleece from mountain-goat, And weave, on tendons of the deer,

Bright garments of the wild duck's throat;

I seize the wildest mustang steed,

And lead him trembling to her door,

And string upon the slender reed
The scalp-lock of my hated foe.

IV.

I dreamed some rival at her door
Had left his love-gifts rich and rare;

I hold whoe'er he be, my foe,
And bid him of my wrath beware!

I am a wild Lenappé chief,

And love the bloody game of life ; See yonder sumach's crimson leaf! 'Tis paler than my scalping-knife.

THE ELEMENTS OF MORALITY; INCLUDING POLITY.*

FROM the acknowledged talent and learning of Mr. Whewell, as well as from some of his former publications, we were prepared to think well of the work before us. We took it up with the expectation that it would be our pleasure to speak in its praise; we did not expect, indeed, to find it characterized by a very high order of philosophical ability, but we had no doubt it would be imbued with a spirit of pure devotion to the cause of science, and that its principles (being as we supposed those of the great Butler) would be sound. Most sadly have we been disappointed. Whether the author is a pensioned or unpensioned defender of the Establishment; whether he has been rewarded beforehand or only dazzled by the glittering prospects of a mitre in expectancy, or whether he has spontaneously uttered his own sentiments, the fact itself is abundantly clear, that he has betrayed as blind a devotion to party as we have ever seen manifested in a professedly scientific work. No one can read it carefully, without being impressed with the conviction, that it was written with the special design to uphold the union of Church and State, and to maintain all established things. This is, incontrovertibly, its great scope and purpose. In order to accomplish this object, the most odious dogmas of Hobbes, which we had hoped were exploded forever, have been revived and sent forth to the world again. We wonder that a work containing doctrines so servile, should have been suffered to circulate among us, without meeting with the stern rebuke and condemnation which it deserves, from every free people and every free press in the world.

The reader who fails to notice the party object and bearing of the work, will find himself involved in the most inextricable perplexity and confusion; for the foundations and landmarks of

moral science have been broken up and confounded, in order to prepare the way for the introduction of despotic principles in both Church and State. This is the one ruling spirit and design which binds all its heterogeneous materials together. Every thing which has seemed capable of lending any support to such an object, has been pressed into the service, without regard to logical consistency or scientific method. Hence the Elements are made up of the odds and ends of all schemes, whether ancient or modern; they embrace the germs of all systems, whether true or false,— while nothing is discussed, nothing is developed, nothing is illuminated. All is dark and confused; except the one clear and manifest design to uphold and support arbitrary and despotic principles, in order to preserve and perpetuate the union of Church and State.

If the work in question had proceeded from an obscure individual, we should here dismiss it as unworthy of further consideration; but as it comes from one who occupies a high position in the world of letters, it calls for a more extended notice at our hands. This we shall proceed to give it. We gladly embrace the opportunity to vindicate the noble science, which has been so rudely invaded and laid waste, as well as to discuss some of the most profoundly interesting problems in the science of morals. We would roll back, if possible, the immense masses of undigested learning, with which the author has overlaid and oppressed the whole region of moral science, and endeavor to restore some of its great truths to their original form and beauty.

The first thing which strikes us, on opening the book before us, is the bold attempt to deduce the elements of morality from certain axioms, according to the beautiful method of geometry. He evidently supposes that the truths of science are deduced from axioms or self

*The Elements of Morality; including Polity. By William Whewell, D. D., author of the History and Philosophy of the luductive Sciences. In two volumes. New-York: Harper & Brothers, 82 Clit-street. pp. 401 and 426.

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