to set up these first of human blessings, against those charms of change and novelty, which the varying condition of the world is hourly displaying, and which may deeply affect the population and prosperity of our country. In times when the subordination to authority is said to be everywhere too little felt, it will be found to be the wisest policy of Great Britain, to instil into the governed an almost superstitious reverence for the strict security of the laws; which, from their equality of principle, beget no jealousies or discontents; which, from their equal administration, can seldom work injustice; and which, from the reverence growing out of their mildness and antiquity, acquire a stability in the habits and affections of men, far beyond the force of civil obligations: whereas, severe penalties, and arbitrary constructions of laws intended for security, lay the foundations of alienation from every human government; and have been the cause of all the calamities that have come, and are coming, upon the earth.

To conclude, my fervent wish is, that we may not conjure up a spirit to destroy ourselves. Let us cherish the old and venerable laws of our forefathers; let our judicial administration be strict and pure; and let the jury of the land preserve the life of a fellow-subject, who only asks it from them upon the same terms under which they hold their own lives, and all that is dear to them and their posterity for ever. Let me repeat the wish, with which I began my address to you, and which proceeds from the very bottom of my heart; may it please Him, who is the author of all mercies to mankindwhose providence, I am persuaded, guides and superintends the transactions of the world, and whose guardian spirit has ever hovered over this prosperous island-to direct and fortify your judgments!

VI. SIR JAMES MACKINTOSH, ON THE LIBERTY OF THE BRITISH PRESS.

UNFORTUNATELY for the repose of mankind, great states are compelled to consider the military spirit and martial habits. of their people, as one of the main objects of their policy. Frequent hostilities seem almost the necessary condition of greatness; and, without being great, they cannot remain safe. Smaller states, exempted from this necessity, devoted themselves to the arts of peace, to the cultivation of literature, and the improvement of reason. They became places of refuge for free and fearless discussion; they were the impartial

spectators and judges of the various contests of ambition, which, from time to time, disturbed the quiet of the world. If wars of aggrandizement were undertaken, their authors were arraigned in the sight of Europe. If acts of internal tyranny were perpetrated, they resounded, from a thousand presses, throughout all civilized countries.

Princes, on whose will there were no legal checks, thus found a moral restraint which the most powerful of them could not brave with absolute impunity. No elevation of power, no depravity however consummate, no innocence however spotless, can render man wholly independent of the praise or blame of his fellows. These feeble states, these monuments of the justice of Europe, the asylum of peace, of industry, and of literature, the organs of public reason, the refuge of oppressed innocence and persecuted truth,-have perished, with those ancient principles which were their sole guardians and protectors. They have been swallowed up by that fearful convulsion, which has shaken the uttermost corners of the earth. They are destroyed, and gone for ever!

One asylum of free discussion is still inviolate.-There is still one spot in Europe where man can freely exercise his reason on the most important concerns of society; where he can boldly publish his judgment on the acts of the proudest and most powerful tyrants. The press of England is still free. It is guarded by the free constitution of our forefathers; it is guarded by the hearts and arms of Englishmen; and I trust I may venture to say, that, if it be to fall, it will fall only under the ruins of the British empire. It is an awful consideration, gentlemen!-every other monument of European liberty has perished. That ancient fabric, which has been. gradually reared by the wisdom and virtue of our fathers, still stands;-it stands, thanks be to heaven! solid and entirebut it stands alone, and it stands amid ruins!

VII.-MR. BURKE, ON CONCILIATING THE COLONIES.

THE proposition is peace. Not peace, through the medium of war; not peace, to be hunted through the labyrinth of intricate and endless negotiations; not peace, to arise out of universal discord, fomented from principle, in all parts of the empire; not peace, to depend on the juridical determination of perplexing questions, or the precise marking of the shadowy boundaries of a complex government: it is simple peace; sought in its natural course, and in its ordinary haunts. It is

peace, sought in the spirit of peace, and laid in principles purely pacific. I propose, by removing the ground of the difference, and by restoring the former unsuspecting confidence of the colonies in the mother country,-to give permanent satisfaction to your people; and (far from a scheme of ruling by discord,) to reconcile them to each other, in the same act, and by the bond of the very same interest, which reconciles them to British government.

I mean to give peace. Peace implies reconciliation; and, where there has been a material dispute, reconciliation does, in a manner, imply concession on the one part or the other. In this state of things, I make no difficulty in affirming that the proposal ought to originate from us. Great and acknowledged force is not impaired, either in effect or in opinion, by an unwillingness to exert itself. The superior power may offer peace with honour and safety. Such an offer from such a power will be attributed to magnanimity. But the concessions of the weak are the concessions of fear. When such a one is disarmed, he is wholly at the mercy of his superior; and he loses for ever that time, and those chances, which, as they happen to all men, are the strength and resources of all inferior power.

My hold of the colonies is in the close affection which grows from common names, from kindred blood, from similar privileges, and equal protection. These are ties which, though light as air, yet are as strong as the links of iron. Let the colonies always keep the idea of their civil rights associated with your government,-they will cling and grapple to you; and no force under heaven will be of power to tear them from their allegiance. But let it be once understood, that your government may be one thing, and their privileges another; that these two things may exist without any mutual relation; the cement is gone, the cohesion is loosened; and every thing hastens to decay and dissolution. As long as you have the wisdom to keep the sovereign authority of this country as the sanctuary of liberty, as the sacred temple consecrated to our common faith; wherever that chosen race-the sons of England-worship freedom, they will turn their faces towards

you.

The more they multiply, the more friends will you have; the more ardently they love liberty, the more perfect will be their obedience. Slavery they can have any where. It is a weed that grows in every soil. But, until you become Lost to all feeling of your true interest and your natural dignity, freedom they can have from none but you.

This is

the commodity of price, of which you have the monopoly. This is the true act of navigation, which binds to you the commerce of the colonies; and, through them, secures to you the wealth of the world. Deny them this participation of freedom, and you break that sole bond which made originally, and must still preserve, the unity of the empire. Do not entertain so weak an imagination, as that your registers, and your bonds, your affidavits, and your sufferances, your cockets, and your clearances, form the great securities of your commerce. Do not dream that your letters of office, and your instructions, and your suspending clauses, are the things that hold together the great contexture of this mysterious whole. These things do not make your government. Dead instru

ments, passive tools as they are, it is the spirit of the English communion that gives to them their life and efficacy. It is the spirit of the English constitution, which, infused through the mighty mass, pervades, feeds, unites, invigorates, vivifies every part of the empire, even down to the minutest member.

Is it not the same virtue which does every thing for us here in England? Do you imagine, then, that it is the landtax act which raises your revenue? that it is the annual vote in the committee of supply which gives you your army? or that it is the mutiny bill which inspires it with bravery and discipline? No! surely no! It is the love of the people; it is their attachment to their government, from the sense of the deep stake they have in such a glorious institution, which gives you your army and your navy; and infuses into both that liberal obedience, without which your army would be a base rabble, and your navy nothing but rotten timber.

All this, I know well enough, will sound wild and chimerical, to the profane herd of those vulgar and mechanical politicians, who have no place among us; a sort of people, who think that nothing exists, but what is gross and material; and who, therefore, far from being qualified to be directors of the great movement of empire, are not fit to turn a wheel in the machine. But, to men truly initiated and rightly taught, these ruling principles-which, in the opinion of such men 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, go ill together. If we are conscious of our situation, and glow with a zeal of filling our places 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 the order of Providence has called us. 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 honourable conquests, not by destroying, but by promoting the wealth, the number, the happiness of the human race.

VIII.-MR. CANNING, ON THE SLAVE TRADE.

I HAVE, already, had occasion to say something of the antiquity of the Slave Trade, in apology for the want of novelty and of variety, in the arguments which I might have to bring against it. Those arguments, I have admitted, could not but be old; I have admitted, they must necessarily be always the same; because they were founded in what was eternal truth; because they were allied to what was immutable justice; and they partook of the immortality of the one, and of the unchangeableness of the other. But little, indeed, did I expect to hear the remote origin and long duration of the Slave Trade brought forward with triumph; to hear the advocates of the Slave Trade put in their claim for the venerableness of age, and the sacredness of prescription. What are the principles upon which we allow a certain claim to our respect, to belong to any institution which has subsisted from remote times? What is the reason why, when any such institutions had, by the change of circumstances, or of manners, become useless, we still tolerated them, nay, cherished them, with something of affectionate regard, and, even when they became burdensome, did not remove them without regret? What, but because, in such institutions, for the most part, we saw the shadow of departed worth or usefulness; the monument and memorial of what had, in its origin, or during its vigour, been of service or credit to mankind. Was this the case with the Slave Trade? Was the Slave Trade originally begun upon some principle of public justice or national honour, which the lapse of time, which the mutations of the world, have alone impaired and done away? Has it to plead former merits, services, and glories, in behalf of its present foulness and disgrace? Was its infancy lovely, or its manhood useful, though, in its age, it is become thus loathsome and perverse? No; its infant lips were stained with blood. Its whole existence has been a series of rapacity, cruelty, and murder. It rests with the House to decide,