Are all those associations that give heart and courage, and a sense of dignity and independence, and honour, and long transmitted glory to a country, what no legislature on earth can at pleasure create, and no riches on earth can purchase, are these all to be swept away that an assembly may arise, "in which property would cease to be the necessary title, and virtue and knowledge might advance claims equally allowed -an assembly of the best men, the selected of the country, selected from the poorest as the rich, the intelligent as the ignorant?" Selected! and selected by whom? It is indeed astonishing, but it is a specimen of the times, and as such, I produce it to be a lesson and a warning to you; it is indeed astonishing, that any man can be found, yet such there are, who can for a moment entertain so unworthy a conception of what his country stood in need of, of what a statesman of England should propose, of what an Englishman should condescend to honour, with a moment of his thoughts, tearing from his memory and respect whatever he ought to find indissolubly connected with every emotion of his heart, and every feeling of his patriotism, and even his own personal pride: but such is the miserable consequence of letting a spirit of speculation loose, unchecked by any affection, unawed by any reverence for the past, sacrificing every thing to some political irritation or inconvenience of the hour, and destroying their country, because their country, they think, is impeded in what they suppose the march of liberalism, or as they would presume to say, of happiness and honour.

We speak of republics. I do not believe any intelligent republican from America would thus deal, as it is called, with our House of Lords. I remember showing this University to a gentleman from that country. Of course I did not omit the hall of Trinity College, nor forget the beautiful observation of Sir James Mackintosh, "that this was indeed a renowned University, where such men as Lord Coke, and Barrow, and Dryden were only second-rate men, and where one college could boast the still more illustrious names of Bacon and Newton, and another the name of Milton. "True indeed, sir," said my visitor, and while he spoke, I saw a shade of melancholy visibly pass athwart his countenance; "true in

deed, sir; and this is what in our country, do what we will, we never, never can attain."

I know not how to comprehend the feelings of those who are unmoved by the common associations of our nature, and who speak and legislate, as if men were beings of reason alone; as if they were influenced only by the dictates of the understanding; and as if the Almighty Master had not called in, to the aid of the understanding, many other and even more powerful instincts and principles, when he provided for the interests of the individual, and secured the working of the machinery of human society.

On what possible grounds do men make light of prescription, and custom, and usage? In the practical affairs of the world they are all in all. Men, it is said, institute society from a sense of common interest and the necessity of mutual protection. This has seldom or never been the fact. But be it so. What wise man would afterwards deprive them of those long established habits of thought and feeling which render them contented to remain in it? who would deprive them of the influence of their imagination, to be added to that of their reason? Who would deprive a nation of a sort of visible immortality in its institutions, be they what they may, if found to be sufficient to the great purposes of life? Who would take from men a sort of confidence in the peace and order of their community; who would rob them of a constant sense and belief, that they may depend on the future in the disposal of their children, in the exercise of their own industry, in the prospects of themselves and of those who are to come after them? How is patriotism to be generated or to exist, if there is nothing fixed and visible to love and to respect; if every thing is to be transitory, fluctuating, and uncertain, abandoned to the mercy of the shifting conclusions and speculations of those who reason? "But a new world, it seems, has arisen. Perfectly right," it is said, "were the statesmen of old in their scoffs and declamation against the people: the people were then uneducated; maxims of polity, which were applicable to the world before the invention of printing, are for that very reason inapplicable now." The matter, however, is, whether the press has banished poverty out of the world, or essentially reconciled the opposing interests of those who have something or

much to lose, and of those who have little or nothing, and this to the satisfaction of the latter; whether the press has done this or ever can. And again, whether with the wisdom, which it enables good men to diffuse among mankind, it enables not the bad and the ambitious to spread folly and discontent, unreasonableness and sedition; whether there is any thing in this world that is not to be considered as of a mixed nature, and however good in itself, to be used with constant circumspection; whether the pestilence that walketh in darkness, as found in modern times, may not be more fatal than the arrow (the insurrection of the feudal times) that flieth by day. I am alluding in this lecture to no such feudal times; I am speaking of what has happened in our own times, within twenty miles of our shore, and I am waging no war with the rights of free discussion, the education of the people, or the laudable efforts of constitutional reformers, in whatever province they appear; I speak of political rashness, presumption, enthusiasm; of a thirst for popular changes never to be appeased; of the abuse and caricature of the principles of improvement; of the revolutionary theories now circulating among us; of a giddy disposition to beat down the strong holds of our form of government; of a heartless, inhuman indifference to the obvious certainties of collision and confusion; and all this, while we are pressed by a heavy funded debt, incumbered with an overgrown population; while we are in the midst of our commerce and our manufactures, our systems of anticipation and credit, our banks, our bonds, and our speculations; and while every thing that concerns our safety, our prosperity, our dignity and honour, and even our character for common sense, depends on the maintenance of the peace and order of the community.

But I have done. I have now referred to such of the revolutionary phenomena as I have more particularly observed among us: they may be all more or less comprised under the two general heads of the dreams that are inconsistent with all government whatever, and those theories and reasonings that are directed more especially against our aristocracy, and therefore inconsistent with the constitution of this country. It is to these last, as the most plausible, that I have endeavoured more distinctly to call your attention, and to expose

their sophistry and their danger. If the constitution of this country is to be overthrown, and the times of Charles I. to be renewed, it must be by the introduction, in the first place, of a "démocratie royale," as it was in France.. In that unhappy country, at that particular season, there was some excuse for her patriots, when they made this most calamitous mistake; but for us there would be none. The lessons of history will, I trust, not be lost upon us. It is my business to enforce them; on this account I have now stepped out of my way, to give this preliminary lecture. I am not aware that I have advanced a single position that I could not justify by the facts of the French Revolution.

IN

LECTURE III.

PRELIMINARY LECTURE, 1835.

N the course of lectures which I last year delivered from this place, I made a sort of summary of all the lectures that I had drawn up on the subjects of modern history, prior to the French Revolution. I thus converted two courses into one, not a little, to say the truth, from my impatience to return to the consideration of that momentous event. I had originally no intention of bringing down my lectures lower than the close of the American Revolution, and in this determination I for some years remained; but I at last perceived that this French Revolution would affect this country for many years, it was impossible to say how many, and that it was my duty to give some account of it, however imperfect, that the youth of the country, such as came to my lectures, should not go into the world without receiving from me every assistance that I was competent to offer them, on a subject that I as I thought, would affect them and their posterity, probably for many generations.

saw,

Every succeeding year has but more and more confirmed the reasonableness of this apprehension. Indeed, from the first opening of these lectures, more than twenty years ago, I always closed my introductory lecture with endeavouring to impress upon my hearers the necessity of attending to the lessons which history affords. I endeavoured to warn them, that such was the situation of the world and of this country, that political mistakes, at no time without their danger, might to us be fatal; and that it was impossible to say, how much might not depend on the virtue and intelligence of the rising generation.

These were the words I used. Are they of less import now? This will surely not be thought. I do not mean to mix my