experience, enlightened by extensive general reading, and armed and accomplished by a thorough acquaintance with all that constitutes the proper knowledge of a moralist as well as of a statesman. There is no part of his immortal work which was more justified by the event, and in itself more valuable than the moral part of it. Whatever may be said of other parts, by men of different political views and feelings, here, at least, he was indeed a philosopher and a prophet.

But a reference to this part of the subject, the moral part of it, has brought to my remembrance such passages in the history of the Revolution, has summoned before my view such scenes of guilt and horror, such massacres and executions, such scenes of undistinguishing and unparalleled murder, that I am appalled, paralyzed, and struck down by the very thought of them. I turn from the presence of them, as they rise to my recollection, cold and shuddering; so will you hereafter. It might have been supposed, that our common nature could not have been capable of such atrocities. Who, that would not have said, prior to the French Revolution, "Amid civilized man, at least, such things are impossible." You will read them in such histories as remain. How little but the mere general facts can now be known, and how faint are all such images of what was perpetrated and endured! But how awful is the lesson! how awful is it to think what the human heart may be brought to; what men may become when they cast aside the common attributes of their nature! Could it be believed, that men who had, from the crimes they were committing, ceased to be men, were at the time, as you will see them, reasoning, speaking, writing, as if they still belonged to our kind? From the provinces, in the midst of their massacres, they were sending dispatches to their government, announcing their claim to the applauses of their country. In the midst of their bloody decrees and speeches in the Assembly, they were declaring themselves the very models of patriotism and benevolence; their hall resounded with harangues about the sublimity of virtue, while they were proclaiming that death was an eternal sleep and ordering fêtes and processions to the Goddess of Reason; and in society, parents and children were vaunting their exemplary love for

their country, because they were sending each other to the guillotine.

I must hasten to the lesson of this moral part of the general subject, which cannot be delayed for a moment. You must learn, then, to be deeply sensible of the crimes which your nature may be made capable of committing. You must never tamper with your moral feelings. The understanding can pander to the passions; can at any time, as it appears, when called upon, invent a logic that shall lull the sense of guilt, and obliterate in your hearts the distinctions of right and wrong; even banish that first and common feeling of humanity that recoils from the shedding of blood. You must be warned by these phenomena of your nature, the facts of the Revolution. You must keep the great original instincts and intuitions, which the Almighty has given you, fresh and vigorous, and unstained and unadulterated, and whole and perfect, in your bosoms; they are the guardians of your virtues, and the ministers of your happiness. You must not suffer any leading passion in its fury, nor the understanding in its servility, to rob you of these instincts and intuitions,—your own best defence and the best security of the commonwealth.

Whether in morals or in politics, you must not suffer the sophister to approach you. You must be careful of your means, whatever be your end: and you must never presume to quit the great beaten paths of human duty, such as they have been always and from the first, shaped out and prepared by the common sense and feelings of our species. These are a wisdom above the wisdom of man, imparted to him from above and you will see in the annals of the French Revolution what man becomes, when he attempts to be wiser than the God that made him.

LECTURE IV.

AMERICA.

The two following Lectures were given in 1836, after the course on the second part of the French Revolution.

IN

N the concluding lecture, which I yesterday delivered, I bore my testimony to the value of the constitution of government under which I have lived; no testimony could be given with greater sincerity. The lecture was drawn up in the year 1828; and the experience of subsequent years has but given a fresh interest and warmth to the sentiment then expressed. This sentiment has naturally arisen from the studies connected with my particular situation; from observation of the uncertainty of every thing human; from long meditation on the irritable passions of mankind, as exhibited in their history; from the fury, the total unreasonableness with which they will contend for their opinions, right or wrong; from a thorough sense of the difficulty with which the edifices of human happiness can be erected among beings, such as human beings essentially are; and a deep conviction of the sober estimates which it becomes all philosophers to make, when they are considering the political situation either of their own countrymen or of the communities around them. Nature sets her goods on the right hand and on the left; a truth this, obvious to every man in the common concerns of life, and equally certain on the larger scale of his political existence. Is a man, as a private individual, desirous to be rich? He must turn from the pleasures of peaceful study. Does he wish, as a patriot and a statesman, for the order, the security, and the refinement of a limited monarchy? He must forego the animated bustle, the pride, the independence and the sense of personal consequence, to be found in a republic. On all occasions, no folly can be greater than inconsistency in our expectations. It is a great source of discontent and unhappiness to men in a private station; and in public situa

tions it often renders them the very torments of their own age and country. It would be improper to conceal from you, that reflections of this kind have been more than ever impressed upon my mind by the occurrences of later years. I am quite amazed at the careless indifference with which some men seem to regard the political blessings by which they are surrounded; the total unconsciousness that they seem to bear about them, of the value of the constitution of government under which they have been born and educated: they seem struck with mental blindness, when it is the benefit of their own system of polity that they are to contemplate; they seem to think nothing of the security of person and property, the protection of every man, while endeavouring to better his condition; the freedom of thought; the advantages of safe and cheerful study; the fair license that is allowed to every man, to display his talents and his genius, of whatever nature they may be, in art, in science, in literature, in society, in the senate, at the bar, in whatever manner he may wish to be useful, or hope to be distinguished; all these things seem to be considered as things of course, as things which can be accomplished without difficulty, when men are once associated together; as things that may be sported with and put to the hazard of any experiment that may be proposed; as things that may be left behind, without ceremony or regret, by those who are hastening on to the introduction of some other system, as they suppose, of greater political happiness. I confess, I cannot understand the reasonableness of views of this nature, and I know not how I can discharge my duty better, than by protesting against them; than by endeavouring to save your minds, at the same time, from exclusive systems in politics; from supposing, that men cannot be in a state of happiness or respect, except under one particular form of government; above all, to impress upon your minds this great truth, that opposite advantages and disadvantages belong to different systems; and that there is no folly greater than inconsistency in our expectations. Time was, when our constitution was never mentioned but in terms of panegyric"Our glorious constitution in church and state." Such was always the phrase adopted on every occasion, on the hustings, in the senate, in the books of lawyers, and the trea

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tises of philosophers. In what manner has the constitution forfeited these honourable distinctions? We have witnessed the greatest convulsion that has ever happened in Europe, since the fall of the Roman empire, yet our island still survives. Every state and potentate was insulted, trampled upon, or destroyed; the only exception was England. Nay, to England was it owing that any one state or empire now exists, under any form or appearance of its former independence. Whatever else may be contested, these are facts that cannot be disputed; and whatever else may be said of the absurdity of our institutions and our unenlightened notions, we have the appearance, at least, of a great people. The products of our skill and capital are in every portion of the habitable globe; the business of the world is transacted on the exchange of London; commerce in our ports; science in our factories; activity in our streets, and affluence in our squares; intelligence in our societies, learning in our universities, and eloquence in our senates; affections at our hearths, and piety at our altars; no slight specimens these of the value of our constitution. Would it be too much to say, turning away from these more modest expostulations of a calm and reasoning philosophy, would it be too much to say, that no such magnificent spectacle of the civilization of mankind was ever offered to observation, as is at this day presented to any reflecting mind by this our favoured island? What solution can be found, then, for the restless agitation, and inextinguishable discontent, of too many amongst us? I shall not, I think, employ your time ill, if at the conclusion of this course of lectures, I now endeavour to consider this subject throughly; if I now try to enable you, to the best of my power, to judge of the reasonings of those whom you will have hereafter to meet in public and in private; men not without their importance from their talents or influence from their situation in society. The truth is, that the convulsion to which I have alluded, the Revolution in France, a revolution that ought to be deeply studied by the inhabitants of these kingdoms, produced ferment in the minds of men which has not yet subsided, and possibly never may. Every such ferment will always give a currency to republican principles: the daring, the low, the ambitious, men of commanding talents, men of