caring for no political prizes, and risking all odium, proclaim to them the solemn truth, THAT THE BEST FORM OF GOVERNMENT BADLY ADMINISTERED, IS THE GREATEST CURSE; THAT WITHOUT VIRTUE AND INTELLIGENCE, GOVERNING THE PEOPLE IN THEIR POLITICAL AS IN THEIR PRIVATE CONDUCT, NO POPULAR GOVERNMENT CAN STAND; AND THAT TO SECURE THIS VIRTUE AND INTELLIGENCE, THE WHOLE PEOPLE MUST BE BROUGHT UNDER THE INFLUENCE OF SOUND, INTELLECTUAL, MORAL AND RELIGIOUS EDUCATION OF CHRISTIAN EDUCATION.

28.

Letter from the HON. HUGH S. LEGARE, on the probable effects of the Sub-treasury Policy, to his Excellency, Pierce Butler, Governor of South Carolina. Washington: 1838, 8vo. pp. 37.

We do not notice this pamphlet because we have any thing to say on the subject of the "sub-treasury policy," nor any thing to say, at present, on the general constitutional principles involved in the measures that have agitated the country for several years past. The whole subject will come up before us at a proper time, for a calm historical and critical review; Mr. Legare's contributions, as well as those of many other able thinkers and statesmen, will then be valuable materials. We mention this letter now, because we like to note in our pages, every utterance from an influential quarter of sound constitutional opinions, as against the ignorant, heretical, and jacobinical doctrines of the day, which, if they prevail, will inevitably destroy our constitution, our union, and our national glory. We are glad to record every protest, from so accomplished, so independent, and so justly distinguished a man as Mr. Legare, against the absurd and destructive doctrine of the "right of instruction." Of this pretended right, Mr. Legare says:

"It is neither more nor less than to claim as a right of every elective body, that odious privilege of the peerage of England, the absurdity of which has lately attracted so much attention- the vote by proxy-the privilege of participating in a decision without hearing the argument. Suppose all argument cut off, as it might as well be under such a system, by the previous question, and every representative voting perpetually under instructions, and you have the ideal perfection of a deliberative assembly constructed according to these notions, a body which it would be flattery to call a Rump Parliament, or to compare with the Senate of Tiberius and Caligula."

The only difference is, that "the people" will be the despots, or rather the tools of demagogues :

"Their will, their humors, however petulant and capricious, will be crossed by very few; they will always have courtiers enough to persuade them they can do

no wrong, for power never wants them, and of all sovereigns, the 'people king' is surrounded with the most dangerous, because the best disguised parasites and sycophants."

After some remarks, showing the intention of the constitution, by its various checks on popular impulse, to secure the deliberate opinion and influence of the real majority, he says:

"The world has been governed by constructive, not real majorities. The great mass of mankind have done nothing but sanction, by a tacit acquiescence, what has been done by a few bold and active spirits, without consulting their opinions. The Jacobins who ruled France so despotically, were always in a miserable minority. Even in the Convention, as the 9th Thermidor revealed, they might at any time have been put down, had the majority understood each other, or had there been any means of ascertaining the real state of public opinion in France, sickened as she was, at the atrocities under which she was bleeding without hope. But there was no concert among the people or their representatives, and a single despotic Assembly, swayed by a handful of daring conspirators against the laws, and arming itself with the most terrible powers, executive as well as legislative, to be exerted under every gust of passion and every wild delusion as it rose, illustrates, by contrast, the wisdom of a form of government like ours, wherein every thing has been so studiously contrived to control sudden impulse, and to compel to serious and conscientious reflection. . . . Demagogues, indeed, hold a different language, as they are interested in doing-they treat all restraints whatever upon the will of the majority as a violation of its inalienable rights. They preach the infallibility, the absolute infallibility of the people,' every individual of whom knows, by the daily experience of his own errors and blindness, that the dogma is a blasphemous falsehood. They live by the very passions which it is the great object of the constitution to restrain,-by the delusions which the 'law's delay' would infallibly dissipate- what wonder that they should find these self-imposed restraints of a wise and moral people, an inconvenient abridgment of their sovereignty, and that, like all true courtiers, they should go for divine right and a dispensing power? Jacobins in democracies are precisely the jacobites of royalty, just as an atheist in the last century would, according to Rousseau, have been a bigot in the time of the League."

NOTE. BISHOP H. U. ONDERDONK'S "Third Charge."-We regret extremely that the unexpected length of some of our articles compels us to defer a somewhat extended discussion of the subject of this charge, which was intended for the present number.

MINES'S SERMON.-" The Church the Pillar and Ground of the Truth," is too remarkable, and embraces topics too important, for us to forego the opportunity of making it hereafter, in connexion with some other publications of a like character, the subject of a more thorough discussion than we have now space or time for.

TAYLOR'S "Home Education," BEERS's "American Education," LIEBER'S "Political Ethics," MELVILLE'S " Sermons," and some other works, just published, have come to our hands too late for adequate notice at present. Some of them will require extended consideration in the next number.