has had formerly and usually, and what in its own nature it tends to, and is apt to produce, it is infinitely sottish and irrational to imagine or suppose that it will not produce or cause in the world for the future." And he "believes hardly any nation or Government but ours would suffer the same cheat to be trumped upon it twice immediately together."

From the many proofs with which history abounds of the accuracy of South's observations, we may select one or two. They will be found in Milton's prose works. The first was written after all the most objectionable acts of the Government of King Charles I. It is from the Treatise "of Reformation in England,” A. D. 1641.

"There is no civil Government that hath been known, no, not the Spartan, not the Roman, though both for this respect so much praised by the wise Polybius, more divinely and harmoniously tuned, more equally balanced, as were, by the hand and scale of justice, than is the commonwealth of England, where, under a free and untutored monarch, the noblest, worthiest, and most prudent men, with full approbation and suffrage of the people, have in their power the supreme and final determination of highest affairs.

"Now, if conformity of Church discipline to the civil be so denied, there can be nothing more parallel, more uniform than when, under the Sovereign Prince, Christ's vicegerent, using the sceptre of David according to God's law, the godliest, the wisest, the learnedest ministers in their several charges, have the instructing and disciplining of God's people, by whose full and free election they are consecrated to that holy and equal aristocracy."

Nothing can be more loyal to the Crown than this, though the abolition of Episcopacy was the object. From this time the reign of Charles I. was one series of concessions. What was the effect upon those to whom the concessions were made? Many years after, in a short piece called "The Present Means and Brief Delineation of a Free Commonwealth, easy to be put in Practice, and without Delay; in a Letter to General Monk," Milton writes,

"First, all endeavours speedily to be used, that the ensuing election be of such as are already firm or indurable to constitute a free Commonwealth, out single person or House of Lords." And again, in his work called "The

with

Ready and Easy Way to Establish a
Free Commonwealth," (1660,)

by a great number of the people who ap-
"The Parliament of England, assisted
peared, and stuck to them faithfullest in
defence of religion and their civil liber-
ties, judging kingship, by long experience
a government unnecessary, burdensome,
and dangerous, justly and unanimously
abolished it, turning regal bondage into a
free Commonwealth, to the admiration
and terror of our emulous neighbours.

"The happiness of a nation must

needs be firmest and certainest in full and free and full council of their own electors, where no single person but reason only (!)

sways."

Compare the next paragraph with the first quoted.

"I cannot but yet further admire on the other side how any man who hath the true principles of justice and religion in him, can presume or take upon him to be a king, and lord over his brethren, whom he cannot but know, whether as men or as Christians, to be for the most part every way equal or superior to himself, how he can display with such vanity and ostentation his regal splendour so su pereminently above other mortal men; or, being a Christian, can assume such extraordinary honour and worship to himself, while the kingdom of Christ, our Common King and Lord, is hid to this world, and such Gentilish imitation forbid in express words by himself to all his disciples. All Protestants hold that Christ in his church hath left us vicegerent of his power; but himself, without deputy, is the only head thereof, governing it from heaven; how, then, can any Christian man derive his kingship from Christ, but with a worse usurpation than the Pope his headship over the Church, since Christ not only hath not left the least shadow of a commund for any such vicegerents from him in the State, as the Pope pretends for his in the Church, but hath expressly declared, that such legal dominion is from the Gentiles, not from him, and hath strictly charged us not to imitate them therein ?"

knowing men will easily agree with me, "I doubt not but all ingenuous and that a free Commonwealth, without single

person or House of Lords, is by far the best government, if it can be had."

"On the contrary, if there be a king, which the inconsiderate multitude are now so mad upon, mark how far short we are likely to come of all those happinesses which, in a free State, we shall immediately be possessed of?"

The next passage is illustrative of

the compulsory liberty of a Republic. We recommend to especial notice its doctrines as to the rights of a judicious minority to bind the majority.

"They who, past reason and recovery, are devoted to kingship, perhaps will answer, that a greater part by far of the nation will have it so, the rest therefore must yield. Not so much to convince these, which I little hope, as to confirm them who yield not, I reply, that this greatest part have, both in reason and trial of just battle, lost their right of election what the Government shall be; of them who have lost that right, whether they for kingship be the greater number, who can certainly determine? Suppose they be, yet of freedom they all partake alike, one main end of Government, which, if the greater part value not, but will degenerately forego, is it just or reasonable that most voices against the main end of government should enslave the less number that would be free? More just, it is, doubtless, if it come to force, that a less number compel a greater to retain, which can be no wrong to them, their liberty, than that a greater number, for the pleasure of their baseness, compel a less most injuriously to be their fellow slaves."

In other words, a majority is only binding when it is in favour of one's own opinions. "There is," as South remarks, "a Papacy in every sect or faction." So much for concession.

The countenance which has of late been afforded to those who resist the law by the spirit in which the law has been administered in Ireland, and by the proceedings of Ministers with regard to church-rates ;-their readiness to sacrifice any impost which any man will be bold enough and factious enough to resist ;-to say nothing of the conduct of Lord Fitzwilliam and others during the Reform agitationmakes it desirable to keep in view the principles asserted in the following passage:

"With what face or confidence can they expect the protection of the Government they live under, when they profess themselves to live by a law wholly differing from those laws, to the observers of which alone that Government promises protection? Is it reason that my neighbour should live at peace by me, and enjoy his estate only by my conscience of, and obedience to that law, which forbids me to rob and steal from him, and he, in the mean time, proceed by an inward law which exempts him from the same obli

gation, and allows him, when he pleases, to seize upon my estate and rifle me?" [Or, which is the same thing, detain from me what is due, and murder me if I attempt to collect it.] "I say, is there, can there be any reason that such a fellow should be safe from me by my subjection to the laws of my country, and I not be mutually safe from him by his subjection to the same? No, certainly; where the benefit of the law is his, the obligation of it ought to reach him too, or there will be no equality, and, consequently, no society. He, therefore, who shall presume to own himself thus led by an inward voice, or instinct of the Spirit, in opposition to the laws enacted by the civil power, has forfeited all right to any protection from that power, and has, ipso facto, outlawed himself, and accordingly as an outlaw ought to be dealt with."-(South, IV. 26.)

But it will be said, that in education at least, we have arrived at a new The dominant party, principle. smarting under their frequent experience of the hostility of learned and thinking men, and baffled in all the unfair and ungenerous attacks which they have made upon Oxford and Cambridge, feel that they never can have the educated classes with them, while education is independent of the Crown; and therefore they exult in the new and brilliant idea of a Minister of Public Instruction. In pursuance of this notion, they have given to the Home Office an absolute control over the Senate of the University of London. To the Senate, again, they have attempted to give power over all places of education, by enabling it to examine for degrees the students of any academical institution Yet sixty which it may think fit. years have elapsed since their own oracle, Adam Smith, argued most conclusively against such a power, which was a well-known appendage of despotic governments before the French Revolution.

"If the authority to which a teacher is subject resides, not so much in the bodycorporate of which he is a member, as in some other extraneous persons, in the bishop of the diocese, for example, in the governor of the province, or perhaps in some Minister of State, it is not indeed in this case very likely that he will be suffered to neglect his duty altogether. All that such superiors, however, can force him to do is to attend upon his pupils a certain number of hours; that is, to give a

certain number of lectures in the week, or in the year. What those lectures shall be, must still depend upon the diligence of the teacher; and that diligence is likely to be proportioned to the motives which he has for exerting it. An extraneous jurisdiction of this kind, besides, is liable to be exercised both ignorantly and capriciously. In its nature it is arbitrary and discretionary; and the persons who exercise it, neither attending upon the lectures of the teacher themselves, nor perhaps understanding the sciences which it is his business to teach, are seldom capable of exercising it with judgment. From the insolence of office, too, they are frequently indifferent how they exercise it, and are very apt to censure or deprive him of his office wantonly and without any just cause. The person subject to such jurisdiction is necessarily degraded by it, and, instead of being one of the most respectable, is rendered one of the meanest and most contemptible persons in the society. It is by powerful protection only that he can effectually guard himself against the bad usage to which he is at all times exposed; and this protection he is most likely to gain, not by ability or diligence in his profession, but by obsequiousness to the will of his superiors, and by being ready at all times to sacrifice to that will the rights, the interest, and the honour of the body-corporate of which he is a member. Whoever has attended for any considerable time to the administration of a French university, must have had occasion to remark the effects which naturally result from an arbitrary and extraneous jurisdiction of this kind."-Wealth of Nations, Vol. V. c. 1.

Accordingly, though Lord John Russell expressed his unwillingness to hamper the "talent and merit of this enlightened age," he quashed the first resolution of any moment, at very which the said collective "talent and merit" bad arrived; and the same "talent and merit," in obedience to his Lordship's imperial rescript, did not hesitate to reverse their own solemn decision, and to exclude all sacred subjects from their list of the branches of a liberal education! Not two years has the institution existed, and already have we "had occasion to remark the effects which naturally result from an arbitrary and extraneous jurisdiction of this kind.' Public attention has been called to the proceedings of the King of Hanover, who dismissed certain Professors of the University of Gottingen, for remonstrating against

But if the ideas and the policy of these times appear to us for the most part old, so neither do we deem the men new or extraordinary. Lord Melbourne, indeed, described Mr O'Connell as a being of a lofty but indefinite nature, one of a kind that rarely visits this planet. In him we see only an able man, a specimen of the demagogue common to all unsettled societies, and thus described by Cicero.

"From this untamed, nay, savage people, some one is generally chosen as a champion against the nobles, already driven from their places and sent to the wall; some daring foul-mouthed fellow, who insolently runs down men who have performed great public services, and who courts the multitude by presenting to them other people's property and his own too [here the resemblance fails]. At last he is found to be the tyrant of the very men to whom he owes his power.

"Ex hoc enim populo indomito vel potius immani deligitur aliquis plerumque dux contra illos principes adflictos jam et depulsos loco, audax, impurus, consectans proterve bene sæpe de republica meritos, populo gratificans et aliena et sua:

postremo a quibus producti sunt, existunt eorum ipsorum tyranni."-Rep. I. 44.

We have seen this man arise from among the untamed Irish Roman Catholics. We have seen him drive Lord Duncannon, Sir Henry Parnell, Mr Spring Rice, and the Irish Proloco), out of all the towns and countestant Whigs (adflictos et depulsos ties which they had so long represented; and, strange to say, we have seen these very men courting his alliance, notwithstanding this mortifying intrusion.

We hate calling names, cape the very strongest of Cicero's but really Mr O'Connell cannot esepithets, if he thinks proper to call the