as I have mentioned, have no substantial existence, are in truth every thing, and all in all.

Magnanimity in politics is not seldom the truest wisdom, and a great empire and little minds gò ill together. If we are conscious of our situation, and glow with zeal to fill our place as becomes our station and ourselves, we ought to auspicate. all our public proceedings on America, with the old warning of the church, Sursum corda! We ought to elevate our minds to the greatness of that trust to which Providence has called By adverting to the dignity of this high calling, our ancestors have turned a savage wilderness into a glorious empire, and have made the most extensive and the only honorable conquests; not by destroying, but by promoting the wealth, the number, the happiness of the human race. Let us get an American revenue as we have got an American empire. English privileges have made it all that it is; English privileges alone will make it all it can be."

us.

Mr. Burke moved his resolution, but the previous question was carried against him, two hundred and seventy to seventyeight. Well, indeed, might Mr. Burke observe, that a great empire and little minds go but ill together, and that the march of the human mind is slow.

I turn with difficulty from the pages of Mr. Burke; I proceed not to his letter, addressed to the sheriffs of Bristol ; I make no more quotations; I have made, it may be thought, already too many and too long; but if I can but thus secure your reading these compositions, I could not possibly have occupied your time better, and I have not then made quotations either too many or too long. You are men of education, and should be distinguished hereafter by the elevation of your sentiments, and the comprehensiveness of your views; that is, not a little by the magnanimity, I had almost said, by the considerate good temper of your feelings and reasonings on political subjects; and be assured that your own country, like every other country, will fare well, or fare ill, as such refinement of mind, and elevated kindness of temperament, does or does not prevail among its rulers. Never was such an absence of it, as appeared in this nation during the American war; never was such a display of it, as in the speeches of Mr. Burke, to which I have referred. Here then is your

school. It is natural for me to quote at great length from works, which, if successful in producing upon your minds their proper effects, will accomplish for me at once, many of the best purposes which I ought to labor most anxiously to attain ; for among such purposes the noblest and the first must be, to enlarge your understandings, and to harmonize your feelings to the rights of others, and to the claims of mercy and justice, whatever be the occasion on which they are urged, or the clime or the people from whence they arise.

Mine, however, is on this occasion but a ministerial office; it is to point out to you those immortal productions, and no more; it is to show you the temple, and to stand at the portal and to persuade you not to pass lightly by and disregard it, but to enter in and survey its columns, and approach its shrine; to pause and to reflect, and to ponder all these things in your heart, that you may hereafter walk forth to the exercise of your duties, some of you, the highest duties which human beings can have to perform, -the duties of legislation, that you may come abroad into the world, animated with benevolence, and soothed into a spirit of forbearance and of patience, when exposed to the resistance, which, if you are to labor for the good of others, you must encounter both in friends and foes; better men and wiser men, and purged from the mean and vindictive passions of our nature; for the temple to which I would now direct your steps, is far unlike the sacred groves or venerated edifices of ignorance and superstition,

66 'Unbribed, unbloody, stands the blameless priest."

It is a temple of peace, it is a temple of wisdom. There is no awe, and no terror, and no idol, before whose appalling fires the human victim is to be sacrificed. Scenes and images of this terrific nature should rather be associated with those men who spoke of unconditional submission, of insulted supremacy, and of necessary punishment; who, like the great minister of the vengeance of Spain, the ferocious Duke of Alva, talked of gangrenes that were to be cured by fire and by sword. Such were not the sounds, such was not the wisdom, which this patriot of the British senate breathed during the whole of this memorable period. Posterity will do him that justice, which but too few of those whom he addressed were capable

of rendering him; and however those who come after us may, or may not, differ in their opinion of the effusions of his mind. on later occasions, at the opening, and during the progress of the French revolution, when his genius may be supposed by some to have been sublimed almost into frenzy, by the scenes that in visible presence passed before him, and still more by those that came thronging and terrible upon him in the visions of his listening expectation; however men may, or may not, contest his claim to the character of a political prophet (though all must surely consider him as the great moral prophet of Europe, at the first appearance of this tremendous event); however these things may be, no intelligent statesman, no meditating philosopher on the affairs of men, will deny to him the praise of clearly discerning, and luminously stating, at the opening of the American revolution at least, all the human passions that were at work on the other side the Atlantic, and of making every effort which eloquence and wisdom were competent to make to medicine into peace the unhappy passions which were no less in full operation on this side the Atlantic ; and though these efforts were unavailing, though a greater power had decreed, that a new empire was now to issue from the far retired recesses of undisturbed forests, and the wide spreading tracts of uncultivated nature, the merit of the statesman must be ever the same; the statesman who, amid the delusions of the hour, could take the same view of the justice and policy of the case before him, which will be taken by posterity; who, amid the menaces of violence and military coercion, which animated the speeches of those around him, could, in the spirit of the angelic choir, speak the words of peace on earth, and good will towards men; and, amid the clamors of those who called aloud for unconditional submission and unconditional taxation, could maintain, with all that splendor of wisdom and of eloquence, to which I have directed your admiration, the doctrines of mild government, and the free principles of the constitution of England.

LECTURE XXXIII.

AMERICAN WAR.

You will have observed, from the extracts I have produced, that in the course of the debates in parliament, many members appear to have denounced to the ministers beforehand, the folly of their expectations, and the evil consequences by which their measures would be attended.

Such instances of peculiar wisdom in statesmen and in parties, have at other times occurred, and they ought always to be considered as the proper subjects of meditation to those who are ambitious to be hereafter wise and virtuous legislators, or intelligent patriots themselves. It should be asked, how this superior wisdom was obtained, and why it was not successful.

It is sometimes said on these occasions, by those who have nothing else to say, that predictions of this kind are made, not from a spirit of wisdom, but from a spirit of opposition; that the ministers, having taken their course in one direction, their opponents necessarily proceed in the other; that it is the very study and occupation of those who are on one side of the house, to contradict the assertions and vilify the measures of those who are on the other; and that all denunciations of ruin and defeat are words of course, the mere terms of

declamation and abuse, played off by those who are without, against the garrison within, of a fort which they are endeavouring to storm.

It must be observed, therefore, in a few words, that the ministers have the first choice of their measures, and if they adopt those which lead to disappointment and defeat, they at least are wrong, and the proper objects of public censure, whatever we may say of their opponents. But with respect to these last, that it by no means follows, if the ministers have

gone to the left, that their opponents shall necessarily turn to the right; because whatever they do, they do, like the ministers themselves, at the hazard of their own characters, at the risk of their credit with wise and good men. They who are out of office, can only come into office by rising in the estimation of their sovereign and the public, very often of the public only; and one of the most obvious ways of rising in this estimation is by showing superior sagacity in the concerns of the empire. It must also be observed, that what public men, whether in or out of office, must avoid, is the making of predictions. This is what is called, in their own language, "committing themselves," and is never done without the greatest caution and necessity; and therefore, whenever public men choose to put themselves at issue with the ministers, and hazard predictions, they become from that moment entitled to the praise of superior wisdom or not, just as their expectations are or are not verified by the event. Indeed upon any other suppo

sition the situation of our statesmen would be somewhat ludicrous, and any display of political wisdom would be impossible, if those who advise measures are to have credit when they succeed, and those who predict the folly of such measures, to have credit when they fail.

The only point on the subject that can now remain seems to be this, whether the prediction has been occasioned, not by superior philosophy or wisdom, but by some particular whim, or passion, or prejudice in the speaker's mind. This is a mere question of fact, and before such an explanation can be received, the case must be made out. This supposition, however, is out of the question, when they who have made predictions are not a few, but many, and not rash or young men, but men of information, character, and experience.

It will always be found that those who not only have predicted, but have predicted truly, have drawn their principles from deeper sources in human nature than their opponents have, have taken their views from more commanding heights, and have been better able to discern the philosophy of the case, and have probably not acquiesced in the popular or first notions of it; that is, in a word, have shown themselves men of greater capacity for the management of the affairs of mankind.