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1845.]

ones.

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pose to grace some of our earliest future He is well known, too, to those who have been thrown into much contact with him, as a man of great goodness of heart and liberality of disposition. An admirable narrator and anecdotist, extensively and well read in the literatures of his two languages, English and French, as well as the ancient classics, and one of the best observers of men and things, he can be at once the most entertaining and most instructive of conversationists. In regard to his political character, we can testify from intimate intercourse in the same legislative councils, as well as much

other political association, that he is one
of the most thoroughly ingrained Demo-
crats we have ever known. It is not
only a thought in his head, but a deep-
rooted feeling in his heart. And as the
English queen said that the name Calais
would be found visibly impressed upon
her heart after her death, so do we al-
most believe that Democracy may be
found stamped on that of our venerable
friend; unless, indeed, that of Andrew
Jackson should have monopolized the
whole surface of the organ--a point of
no great importance, synonymous as
the latter may almost be regarded as
being for the former.

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Go-while the spirit of thy youth is breathing
Like the sweet airs of this delicious June;
Go-while her freshest garlands Hope is wreathing,
And Joy's light touch all Fancy's chords attune.

Go-and gaze fondly on the crested billow,
When sunset warms it with a rosy light,
Or ebon clouds the silver moonbeams pillow,
With fearful loveliness to deck the night.

Go-when the wind of summer yet delayeth

To leave the gardens it so blithely fanned;
Go-and drink in the meadow gale that playeth
O'er the fair dwellings of thy fatherland.

Go-and flit gladly through the halls of pleasure,
Where blend the wit and mirth of sunny France;
Look on her cheerful haunts, her blood-stained treasure,
And thread the mazes of her lightsome dance.

Go-and muse pensively amid the fountains

That still keep green Italia's hallowed earth,
Pause by her ruined shrines, her purple mountains,
And bless the skies that gave her genius birth.

Go-but forget not all that thou are leaving—
Thy country, home and friends-a three-fold spell;
And while from others welcomes kind receiving,
O, still remember those who said "farewell!"

Go-and as with reverent joy, beholding

The scenes of Nature, and the gems of Art,
Like the young harvest round us now unfolding,
May deathless flowers blossom in thy heart!

REVOLUTION IN ENGLAND.

IT is to us plainly evident that there must be, sooner or later, a radical, sweeping revolution in England. We have seen few things of late years that do not seem to portend such a result. The real "movement party is gaining ground, and enlists a great share of the considered or unconsidered population. There is an incessant rumbling and grumbling beneath the show of national strength. The old system, the old yokes, the old burdens lie, however gallingly, yet lightly on the necks of the subjects. There is a spirit beneath which needs only a powerful stirring up to shake off, one by one or all together, the old abuses of the government. The oppressive burdens are borne, and may be, and probably will be, for time yet to come, but there is not one that is not unloosed in its cords, racked in its joints, and ready to be scattered when the mine of a revolution shall be sprung.

When all this or a part of this shall come, surely none can tell. Perhaps a short time will witness it, and it may be that it shall not come within the knowledge of child now living. But that it will come, no manner of man can doubt. Its time will of course be hastened or retarded by the course and force of existing circumstances. An unpopular monarch, on whom the hatred of the masses can be concentrated, who should have perversity enough to set up the royal prerogative against the tide of popular movement, would undoubtedly bring matters to a speedier crisis than one whose sex and habits have led her reign to be regarded as assurance of mildness and peace. It is not improbable that the births of princes royal which have kept the court journals busy of later years, and which have been hailed with such wild acclamations of delight, may tend to postpone for yet a longer time, the period of revolution. Had the Elector of Hanover, upon whose right these events seem to have placed a "broad seal," succeeded to the throne in the stead of a daughter of his elder brother, we doubt if England would at this day have exhibited signs of quiet. A prince of so arbitrary a temper, and

already in the worst odor, could hardly have asserted the higher prerogatives of the crown and been assured of their safe continuance.

A draining war, such as it is not unlikely that England may yet get involved in by her rapacious attempts in the East, might accelerate the progress of a revolution at home. The imposition of new burdens would not be a far remote cause of outbreak for relief from old ones, at least of serious inquiry into their " 'binding force." The glitter of military renown, the pride, and pomp, and circumstance of glorious war, might attract the eyes of the groaning millions from the causes of their wrongs; but the day of settlement in full would come when the gilding of the bauble would have to be paid down in yellow gold. A man's back already burdened to the extent of his power a pin may break.

But more than a monarch's assertion of his crippled prerogative, more than the casual event of a burdensome war, can do, the holders of English Church and Aristocratic power, the lords spiritual and temporal, can, and we opine, will do. The spirit of the age is against the continuance of their mocracy, the democracy they rail at so supremacy. Debitterly, and point warning fingers at, is asserting the rights of man; bye and bye, it will They will take up arms against the sea the power prove of man. of troubles, and, by opposing, endthemselves. They will resist a progress that never can be stayed, and the wheel will grind beneath it whatsoever might of man's shoulder may be set against it. Much of good might be done, much of power saved, by such a compromise as could be early and graciously made. But it will be new if the British aristocratic power lacks perversity. Like the criminal who admitted only what was clearly proved, they will yield little of real importance but what the force, or the fear, of arms may extort.

Among the institutions upon whose wreck a new order of things may le built, the Church will not be likely to fill last. It is plain that its days are nun

1845.]

Revolution in England.

bered. The English Hierarchy must fall, and great will be the fall; for with it, the stoutest and most formidable buttress that supports the shell of the "constitution," will have been destroyed.But, we repeat, fall it must. Inroads upon its strength have already been made. The crumbling mortar between its heavy stones hardly serves any purpose but to keep open the seams, and but a slight quaking of the earth will leave not one upon another. And as if determined that there shall be no hope left for ecclesiastical authority, its wirepullers have been doing those things which can but ensure and materially hasten its demolition. To retain its supremacy, or the shadow of a shade of its power, the Church of England, of all institutions, should be so imbued with plastic spirit, as to mould itself somewhat to the times-the "form and color of occasion." Firmness in public affairs is a great virtue, but there are times when obstinacy ceases to be a merit, when generous compromise would save a balance of power that else must crumble. The movements of the age will never go backward. It has already demanded and obtained the surrender of numerous dogmas, pertaining to secular power, that once were thought essential to the church establishment. The Church should have prepared itself to surrender yet more, and by yielding with such grace as it might best be able to show, to the gradual encroachments of jealous freedom, stretched its power Inthrough many successive years. stead of this, its leaders and those assuming to be its oracles, have only been advancing and endeavoring to maintain doctrines two or three centuries ago wholly exploded-powers which hardly even the despotic authority of an Eighth Henry could have secured to it.

A recent English writer, in defending the Catholic nature and power of the Church, commences a discussion of the threatening appearances against it by saying: "If any one had prophecied, twenty, or even ten years back, that in 1839 we should be seriously discussing the propriety of maintaining a national religion, he would have been looked on as an idle alarmist." The writer holds up both hands in utter amazement at the hardihood of asserting "the right of private judgment, without reference to any society or human authority whatever; in other words, the absolute su

premacy in religion of the will and fan-
cy of the individual." The same writer
points to the people of this country, "as
developing, even in their infancy, a ma-
turity of crime, and a calculating selfish-
ness which makes even crime more for-
midable. They have wealth, commerce,
arts, intellect, everything which can en-
able them to cast their shadows on the
old empires of Europe and even to turn
the balance of the world. But," he
mourns, "we have given them no reli-
gion. All sects have been fused togeth-
er in their formation. The government,
to meet the popular will, has abdicated
its own religious functions. And we
may see in them as in a glass, the reflec-
tion of our own coming fate; with these
differences indeed, that we have thrown
away, while they never, possessed, a
church; and that when the storm falls
upon us, it must fall with ten-fold fury,
and find us without any shelter." With-
out having time to discuss the necessi-
ty or policy of a union of church and
state, we can only pause to say that we
are well enough satisfied with our own
repudiation of it to hope that the pious
prediction of the writer may prove true,
and that in England may, ere long, be
established "the right of private judg-
ment, without reference to any society
or human authority whatever.'

The prospect of a radical revolution
in England, such as we predict and de-
voutly pray for, presents not a few
subjects for serious consideration.
Among the most important of these is
the National Debt. There is hardly an
evil which may not be disposed of with
less difficulty, injustice and wrong.
The crown may vanish, or rest, as its
power once has, on republican heads,
with the violation of no right but that
which is attached to hereditary succes
sion. The church may crumble with-
out offence, save to those who yet would
persist in forging mental shackles at
every capital. The pensions and over-
grown salaries may be stricken from
the roll, and the roll itself be burned,
without shocking any but a most fasti-
dious, if not affected, sense of justice.
The army may be disbanded by act of
parliament, or swept away with the be-
som of revolutionary wrath, and few weep
in these days of more millennial thoughts.
But about the National Debt hangs a
different garb. What shall be done
with it in the day of revolution? Shall
its validity be acknowledged in the new

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order of things, or shall the wet sponge be applied to the heavy score at once? A shudder arises at the idea of a summary repudiation of the debt. Good faith prompts to a redemption of claims, however unjustly incurred by the government, yet justly due to the holders of stock. Nor is the debt due to a few wealthy capitalists, whom public sentiment might hold in little comparative consideration with the release of the mass from so galling a yoke. The widow's mite and the orphan's inheritance are invested in the national stock. It has been the great safe for the deposite of little earnings and little leavings, and thousands and tens of thousands would be involved in ruin by its destruction.

The public debt of Great Britain in 1836, was 787,638,916 pounds, or about 3,660,000,000 of dollars. How incredulously would this array of figures have been looked upon when the revolutionary government of the third William contracted the first debt of a little more than 600,000 pounds to meet its temporary wants! And how has this debt been swollen until the arithmetic hardly has terms for its intelligible expression. Over 121 millions were required for the prosecution of the American war. Over 600 millions were contracted in the last great war with France. Nearly the whole of this vast, grinding, never-to-be-paid debt, has arisen from the unholy lust of empire. When the subjugation of Asia shall have been completed, and one thing "celestial" added to the British Empire, what new system of numerative process shall tell the amount of British National Debt?

The interest of this debt is £29,143,517 per annum, or about $145,000,000 -an amount larger than the debt of the Government of the United States at any one period. We have an estimate before us, showing that the payment of this interest would impose an annual tax of about twenty-nine dollars on every head of a family in England, Scotland, Ireland, and Wales. This to pay the interest alone. A capitation tax, including old and young, of six dollars per head, would fall with heavy weight on some poor laborers whose rate of addition to the census has not been regulated by Malthusian notions. And how much better than a capitation tax is the method now in use? In

finitely worse! Among the articles most taxed we find sugar, molasses, tea, soap, houses, windows, post-office, probate of wills, wood, bricks, paper, glass, receipts, stage coaches, newspapers, advertisements, coffee, cocoa, seeds, currants, raisins, spices, butter, tallow, and divers other articles of daily consump tion. The amount of taxation upon these articles (nearly all free with us) is about $131,000,000. Nothing that the poor man wants but the air he breathes, is exempt from impost or excise, and yet it all falls fourteen millions short of simple interest on the National Debt. And all this has come of John Bull's pruriency to have a cudgel-bout with every other sovereignty-to keep up the balance of power. We have enumerated these statistics merely to impress in some manner an idea of the burdens which this unhallowed debt heaps upon the English people. Really, there is a nation of Jobs-barring their habit of grumbling.

What shall be done with this debt of three thousand six hundred millions of dollars, in the day of Revolution? It is not ours to say, nor, thank God, to settle the question of what it is right to do with it. It will be done with as coolness or phrenzy prompt. It may yet impose taxes for a century, or another Burke may have opportunity to inveigh bitterly against the violation of a nation's honor. We should be less surprised at the latter than at the former. Without presuming to justify it, we may fancy a few considerations which may weigh in that day of accounts, or obliteration of accounts.

The idea of the final payment of the debt can hardly enter the head of any. Shall it, then, be a perpetual drain, an eternal dead-weight attached to the progress of national prosperity and happiness? Despite the promptings of good faith, the question will arise, how far it is in the power of one generation to bind its successor in worse than foreign bondage, by the creation of an unnecessary, over-burdening national debt. Our laws between man and man do not recognize the right of one to bind his heirs in debt. He may mortgage his estate, for he is bound to transmit property to his children, and the incumbrance only rests upon that property which he is possessed of. But he may not incumber their labor, mortgage the sweat of their brows. What generation of men

shall say that this earth is theirs, to cumber with burdens, disease, and death, that future races shall in no wise live beneath the same skies, without paying therefor a crushing tax to the ruling powers? We said too hastily that the air was not taxed. Is not a national debt transmitted to us, a tax upon the air we breathe? Does not the binding force of British debt compel the sons born upon her soil to toil and sweat under its heavy load, or seek the fair fruits of labor in other less noxious atmospheres? Then God's freest gift, which we inhale without volition, is loaded with disease and the bitter foretaste of death, by men going before and abandoning themselves and us to the desire of fruitless conquest. enough grew in immediate consequence Misery from England's wars, without their iniquity being visited upon remotest generations, doomed to sweat and toil, and bear bondage and stripes for the consummate folly and wickedness of centuries before.

But the body politic never dies." The British government drew upon its own future resources, for the preservation and improvement of its powers. that it might transmit with usury God's heritage along to its own maturer years. Maturer years! Then with how much more justice than that with which the law permits an adult to plead infancy against a claim foisted upon his inexperience, may a nation avail itself of a similar bar against a ruinous debt created when its new soul was not only in its nonage but absolutely not born. But nations have no infancy which they may plead in bar. Then may we not have a bankrupt law to relieve our insolvency? England has a legal process for the discharge of an unfortunate debtor in his lifetime. May not the creator exercise the power it can create? The British nation is irremediably in debt; its whole energies are crippled and destroyed by the discharge even of the interest; once free and clear it may acquire wealth and strength, and build anew a fortune glorious and grand. Shall it take the benefit of the act, or go on biting dust for ever?

If we question the validity of an onerous national debt to bind nations unborn, we are told of the shocking injustice to creditors that must arise from violation of the national honor. To this the masses may say, with truth, we incur

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red no debt. If wealth has come to England from the debt, let the wealth of England pay the debt. It was hard enough for us and our fathers to be sent out to shoot and be shot for poor pay. If a footpad has now robbed you, do not levy upon us to make up for the loss. If the debt is not in the High Court of Justice of binding effect, which shall affect us to readiest sympathy, England's two or three hundred thousand creditors turned out to labor and short commons, like other men, or her twenty millions of producers, drinking the dregs of misery for successive centuries?

ing (in almost geometrical progression), If a national debt, steadily increasis to be for ever binding, wheresh all be now reached, when the interest is paid the end? If there is limit, is it hot down in the coined tears and blood of a starving population? God forbid that in all time to come the history of so many poor laborers should be summed up in three duties-to be born, to be taxed, to be starved!

blessed country of ours, we would see We are not "repudiators." In this every debt of the individual or the State paid. We are rich enough to do it, in this generation, which has seen the debt contracted. That it is hard to pay the debt, should only warn us against contracting more. Ours is not the dark and desperate situation of our motherland. If there was room to hope, we might trust that the British debt would be paid. As it is, we have only been expressing less of what should, than of what will, be.

reform in England, we strike upon the Running hastily over the subjects of Crown. In extending the elective franchise (and we take this to be one of the inevitable and first consequences of a civil revolution), what branches or parts of the government shall be subject to the direct will of the people? Why not submit the chief magistracy to their choice? It is the opinion of many ardent reformers, that the people are not yet to be trusted with a power so new and so radical; and they would form a provisional government after the monarchy surrounded by republican scheme of La Fayette for France-a institutions. Unwilling as we should be to assume the decision of precisely what reforms are, and precisely what are not, suited to the temper and habits of the British people, we may yet offer

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