and able of the speeches of Mr. Webster, a member from the north. I do not now enter into the subject of the Tariff, and I may not agree with the opinions of Mr. Webster, as a political economist, but I can perfectly sympathise with his animated effusions on the subject of the permanency of the federal union.

The maintenance of this federal union has been always the great difficulty in the American constitution. Provision was made to meet this difficulty by Franklin, and the other framers of the constitution; but amidst the impatience of control that is generated by the American system, and the variety of local interests among the states, the difficulty is insuperable.

upon

the

A certain analogy appears to me to exist between this great difficulty in the American constitution, and the great difficulty in our own. In the American, you have the state governments and you have the general government, each with their separate interests, at least with their appropriate temptations to infringe So is it in our own. of each other. We have powers the royal power, the House of Peers, and the Commons House, each with propensities, feelings, and prejudices of their own; but, as in the American constitution, all, nevertheless, fitted to harmonize into a whole, for the general benefit of the community and neither in America, nor with us, can any writer or statesman be so ill employed, as in exciting animosity, creating causes of dissension, exaggerating the faults, diminishing the reputation, or weakening the constitutional importance of either or of any of these great component and necessary parts of the whole. Such conduct on either the one side of the Atlantic or the other, can proceed only from thoughtless, giddy, irritable, superficial men, who know not what they are doing, or from wicked and unprincipled men, who know too well.

:

With reason did Mr. Webster exert his utmost eloquence in animating his countrymen to the maintenance of the federal union of America; and there is scarcely a sentence in this part of his address, that is not applicable to our own union of king, lords, and commons,-the established constitution of the reali of England. I will quote it at some length, and you can make the application as I read.

"in

"I profess, sir," said Mr. Webster, my career hitherto, to have kept steadily in view the prosperity and honour of the whole country, and the preservation of our federal union. It is to that union we owe our safety at home, and our consideration and dignity abroad; it is to that union that we are chiefly indebted for whatever makes us most proud of our country.

That union we reached only by the discipline of our virtues in the severe school of adversity. It had its origin in the necessities of disordered finance, prostrate commerce, and ruined credit. Under its benign influences, these great interests immediately awoke, as from the dead, and sprang forth with newness of life. Every year of its duration has teemed with fresh proofs of its utility and its blessings; and, although our territory has stretched out wider and wider, and our population spread farther and farther, they have not outrun its protection or its benefits. It has been to us all, a copious fountain of national, social, and personal happiness. I have not allowed myself, sir, to look beyond the union, to see what might lie hidden in the dark recess behind; I have not coolly weighed the chances of preserving liberty, when the bonds that unite us together shall be broken asunder; I have not accustomed myself to hang over the precipice of disunion, to see whether, with my short sight, I can fathom the depth of the abyss below; nor could I regard him as a safe counsellor in the affairs of this government, whose thoughts should be mainly bent on considering, not how the union should be best preserved, but how tolerable should be the condition of the people, when it should be broken up and destroyed. While the union lasts, we have high, exciting, gratifying prospects spread out before us, for us and our children. Beyond that, I seek not to penetrate the veil. God grant, that in my day, at least, that curtain may not rise! God grant, that on my vision never may be opened what lies behind! When my eyes shall be turned to behold, for the last time, the sun in heaven, may I not see him shining on the broken and dishonoured fragments of a once glorious union; on states dissevered, discordant, belligerent; on a land rent with civil feuds, or drenched, it may be, in fraternal blood!"

Such was the language, and such the sentiments of Mr. Webster. With reason did he pour out his soul in the patriotic effusion which I have just read to you; and with equal reason might a patriot, in our own country, dedicate every energy of his mind, and every feeling of his heart, to the preservation and defence of that union, which, as Mr. Webster said of his own, has been to us all, a copious fountain of national, social, and personal happiness. "And never," to use his animated language, never may the sun be seen to shine on the broken and dishonoured fragments of a once glorious union".of king, lords, and commons; 66 'on powers dissevered, discordant, belligerent;

on a land rent," as it once was, "with civil feuds, or drenched," as it once was, "in fraternal blood!"

may

"Other misfortunes," says Mr. Webster, in his eulogy on Washington (the parent and protector of the American union), "other misfortunes may be borne, or their effects overcome.' And we too, in England, may echo back the patriotic strain of Mr. Webster, for we too have had our misfortunes, and we too have a constitution that I trust we admire and love, as the Americans their republic. "Other misfortunes," says Mr. Webster, "may be borne, or their effects overcome." Let us make his sentiments our own. "If disastrous war should sweep our commerce from the ocean,' says he, "another generation may renew it; if it exhaust our treasury, future industry may replenish it; if it desolate and lay waste our fields, still, under a new cultivation, they will grow again, and ripen to future harvests. It were but a trifle, even if the walls of our Capitol were to crumble (and the walls of our Capitol, of our House of Parliament have so crumbled), if its lofty pillars should fall, and its gorgeous decorations be all covered by the dust of the valley. All these might be rebuilt; but who shall reconstruct the fabric of demolished government?" And well may we too say, "but who shall reconstruct the fabric of demolished government?" and with even more propriety than Mr. Webster, for his democratic government, "a breath may make it, as a breath has made." "Arbitrio popularis auræ." “Who shall rear again,” continued Mr. Webster, "the well-proportioned columns of constitutional liberty?" "Who shall frame together," said Mr. Webster, and what English patriot may not say the same? "the skilful architecture, which unites national sovereignty with state rights, individual security, and public prosperity? No, gentlemen, if these columns fall, they will be raised not again. Like the Coliseum and the Pantheon, they will be destined to a mournful, a melancholy immortality. Bitterer tears, however, will flow over them than were ever shed over the monuments of Roman or Grecian art, for they will be the remnants of a more glorious edifice than Greece or Roman ever saw,—the edifice of constitutional American liberty."

"Constitutional American liberty," said Mr. Webster; and constitutional English liberty shall, in like manner, be said by me. Let each country be enamoured of its own: to each country may its own be best adapted. To me there may appear a far more refined and higher specimen of civilization in this favoured island than is or can be seen in America; but I con

tend only for candid estimates, for reasonable allowances in each country for the appropriate and inevitable evils of the other. I wage war only with exclusive systems, with this democratic doctrine, which first appeared in the arrogant pages of Paine, that no government can be lawful which rests not on the will of the majority, told by the head; that aristocracies of every kind, of birth, of rank, and of property, are mere usurpation and tyranny, and with the gradual civilization of the world must nccessarily disappear. I look to no such revolutions in the world, or rather, in human nature; I consider such aristocracies as the great elements, materials, and results of the civilization of mankind; as the best hope, foundation, and support of that civilization; as the best protection against selfishness, vulgarity, the coarser vices, and the fierce and ruder passions of mankind; as the best promoters of every higher sentiment of benevolence, honour, and virtue, of taste, of literature, of learning, and of knowledge; of the aspirations of genius in every direction. Such aristocracies have ever existed in our island, and never may they decline or fall! They form the constitution of England, a constitution, to which, by birth as an Englishman, by study, by gratitude, by reason, by every principle of duty and of feeling, I am, for one, deliberately but ardently attached, and I shall never cease to be attached, be the changes, and whims, and whirlwinds of opinion in this restless world, be they what they may; "non ego perfidum dixi sacramentum.' Our country has had its misfortunes, the misfortunes of Europe. They were nigh fatal; they lie still heavy upon us. We may have committed our mistakes; we may have our faults. An old country cannot be without its difficulties; difficulties hard to wrestle with. In the midst of great exhibitions of affluence and prosperity, great extremes of poverty and misery cannot but arise. Different classes of men may have their appropriate temptations, and be found too ready to submit to them; but the constitution itself, the ancient constitution of our honoured land, the constitution of king, lords, and commons, each and all with their appropriate privileges and prerogatives, "Esto perpetua" be the cry, now and for ever; esto perpetua;" for, whatever be our political differences, this at least should be the cry of every Englishman that deserves the name.

66

And I now, as my concluding effort, deliver this aspiration to you, to be the treasure of your hearts, and the maxim of your public conduct; and as far as your own country is concerned, to be considered by you, as the sum and substance of all political wisdom and all genuine patriotism.

LECTURE VI.

GENERAL SUMMARY.

DEC. 1837. My last lecture concluded with the termination of the American war,—the war with the colonies; and this is a period in the modern history of Europe. New scenes were afterwards preparing. It was a great event, the establishment of an immense republic; and, combined with other circumstances, produced a series of the most memorable scenes that have occurred since the overthrow of the Roman empire. History seems to begin anew, so extraordinary are the events and so strange the opinions, which, no longer confined to the closet of the speculating philosopher, are seen on a sudden to influence the practical conduct of mankind.

To this great subject I have dedicated two courses of lectures, which I call Lectures on the French Revolution; little worthy indeed of the name, but which may serve to direct the curiosity of my hearers, and give them some general notion, at least, of this most important crisis in human affairs. These lectures I cannot now deliver-and I say this with some concern-for if I can hope to be useful to those who hear me, it is chiefly, I think, by calling their attention to the characters and events of the French Revolution. The whole history from first to last is full of instruction, and I often observe, in society, with equal surprise and disquietude, how little it is known or how little remembered; on the whole, how little effect it seems to me to produce on the reasonings and conduct of those around me.

England, it is said, is not France, the English people not the French; totally unlike in their character and prior history. These are thought answers quite sufficient, if any allusion be made to those memorable scenes; and no doubt it is a consolation and support to a reflecting mind, that these are truths that may be acknowledged. But it is quite forgotten, at the same time, in how many important points human nature must ever be the same; how many valuable lessons may be drawn from remarking the tendencies of things to produce effects, whether the same exact effects and to the same extent may or may not be expected; how important in the philosophy of human affairs it is to provide against these tendencies in time, for when they have further ripened, any attempt of the kind may be too late; how much of human wisdom consists in pro