Father and the educator; the people, the progressive interpreter of his law. No true society can exist without a common belief and a common aim. Religion declares the belief and the aim. Politics regulate society in the practical realization of that belief, and prepare the means of attaining that aim. Religion represents the principle, politics the application. There is but one sun in heaven for all the earth. There is but one law for those who people the earth. It is alike the law of the human being, and the law of collective humanity. We are placed here below, not for the capricious exercise of our own individual faculties-faculties and liberty are the means, and not the end-not to work out our own happiness upon earth; happiness can only be reached elsewhere, and there God works for us; but to consecrate our existence to the discovery of a portion of the divine law; to practise it as far as our individual faculties and circumstances allow, and to diffuse the knowledge and the love of it among our brethren. We are here below to endeavour fraternally to build up the unity of the human family, so that the day may come when it may represent "a single sheepfold, with a single shepherd;" the Spirit of God, the law. To aid our search after truth, God has given to us tradition, the voice of anterior humanity, and the voice of our own conscience. Wheresoever these accord is truth, wheresoever they are opposed is error. To attain a harmony and consistency between the conscience of the individual and the conscience of humanity, no sacrifice is too great. Family, city, country, and humanity are but different spheres in which to exercise our activity and our power of sacrifice towards this great aim. God watches from above the inevitable progress of humanity, and from time to time He raises up the great in genius, in love, in thought, or in action, as priests of His truth, and guides to the multitude on their way. These principles, indicated in their letters, in their proclamations, and in their conversation, with a profound consciousness of the mission entrusted by God to the individual and to humanity, were to Attilio and Emilio Bandiera and their fellow-martyrs the guide and comfort of a weary life; and, when men and circumstances had alike betrayed them, sustained them in death, in religious serenity and calm, and in the certainty of their immortal hopes in the future of Italy. The immense energy of their souls arose from the intense love which informed their faith. And could they now rise from the grave and speak to you, they would, believe me, address you, though with a power very different from that which is given to me, in counsel not unlike this which I now offer to you. Love! Love is the flight of the soul towards God, towards the great, the sublime and the beautiful, which are the shadow of God upon earth. Love your family, the partner of your life, those around you ready to share your joys and sorrows, the dead who were dear to you, and to whom you were dear. But let your love be the love taught you by Dante and by us, the love of souls that aspire together; and do not grovel on the earth in search of a felicity which it is not the destiny of the creature here to reach; do not yield to a delusion which inevitably would degrade you into egotism. To love, is to promise, and to receive a promise for the future. God has given us love, that the weary soul may give and receive support upon the way of life. It is a flower which springs up on the path of duty, but which cannot change its course. Purify, strengthen, and improve yourselves by loving. Ever act-even at the price of increasing her earthly trials- -so that the sister soul united to your own may never need, here or elsewhere, to blush through you or for you. The time will come when from the height of a new life, embracing the whole past and comprehending its secret, you will smile together at the sorrows you have endured, the trials you have overcome. Love your country. Your country is the land where your parents sleep, where is spoken that language in which the chosen of your heart, blushing, whispered the first word of love; it is the house that God has given you, that by striving to perfect yourselves therein, you may prepare to ascend to Him. It is your name, your glory, your sign among the peoples. Give to it your thought, your counsel, your blood. Raise it up, great and beautiful, as foretold by our great men. And see that you leave it uncontaminated by any trace of falsehood, or of servitude, unprofaned by dismemberment. Let it be one, as the thought of God. You are twenty-four millions of men, endowed with active, splendid faculties, with a tradition of glory the envy of the nations of Europe; an immense future is before you, your eyes are raised to the loveliest heaven, and around you smiles the loveliest land in Europe; you are encircled by the Ålps and the sea, boundaries marked out by the finger of God for a people of giants. And you must be such, or nothing. Let not a man of that twenty-four millions remain excluded from the fraternal bond which shall join you together; let not a look be raised to that heaven, which is not that of a free man. Let Rome be the ark of your redemption, the temple of your nation. Has she not twice been the temple of the destinies of Europe? In Rome two extinct worlds, the Pagan and the Papal, meet each other like the double jewels of a diadem; and you must draw from thence a third world, greater than the other two. From Rome, the Holy City, the City of Love (Amor), the purest and wisest among you, elected by the vote, and strengthened by the inspiration of a whole people, shall give forth the pact that shall unite us in one, and represent us in the future alliance of the peoples. Until then you have no country, or you have it contaminated. Love humanity. You can only ascertain your own mission from the aim placed by God before humanity at large. God has given you your country as cradle, humanity as mother, and you can only love your brethren of the cradle in loving your common mother. Beyond the Alps, beyond the sea are other peoples, now fighting or preparing to fight, the holy fight of independence, of nationality, of liberty other peoples striving by different routes to reach the same goal-improvement, association, and the foundation of an au X thority which shall put an end to moral anarchy, and link again earth to heaven, and which mankind may love and obey without remorse or shame Unite with them, they will unite with you. Do not invoke their aid where your single arm can suffice to conquer ; but say to them, that the hour will shortly sound for a terrible struggle between right and blind force, and that in that hour you will ever be found with those who have raised the same banner as yourselves. And love, young men, love and reverence above everything the Ideal. The Ideal is the word of God, superior to every country, superior to humanity; it is the country of the spirit, the city of the soul, in which all are brethren who believe in the inviolability of thought, and in the dignity of our immortal soul; and the baptism of this fraternity is martyrdom. From that high sphere spring the principles which alone can redeem the peoples. Arise for them! and not from impatience of suffering, or dread of evil. Anger, pride, ambition, and the desire of material prosperity are arms common to the peoples and their oppressors; and, even should you conquer with them to-day, you will fall again to-morrow; but principles belong to the peoples alone, and their oppressors can find no arms to oppose them. Adore Enthusiasm. Worship the dreams of the virgin soul, and the visions of early youth, for they are the perfume of Paradise, which the soul preserves in issuing from the hands of its Creator. Respect above all things your conscience; have upon your lips the truth that God has placed in your hearts, and, while working together in harmony in all that tends to the emancipation of our soil, even with those who differ from you, yet ever bear erect your own banner, and boldly promulgate your faith. Such words, young men, would the martyrs of Cosenza have spoken had they been living amongst you. And here, where perhaps, invoked by our love, their holy spirits hover near us, I call upon you to gather them up in your hearts, and to make of them a treasure, amid the storms that yet threaten you, but which, with the name of our martyrs on your lips, and their faith in your hearts, you will overcome. God be with you, and bless Italy! 23.-RICHARD B. SHERIDAN ON TAXATION. [Taken from a speech delivered against the second reading of Mr. Pitt's bill for the New Assessed Taxes, presented to the House of Commons in 1797.] A WISE man, Sir, it is said, should doubt of everything. It was this maxim, probably, that dictated the amiable diffidence of the learned gentleman, who addressed himself to the chair in these remarkable words-"I rise, Mr. Speaker, if I have risen." Now, to remove all doubts, I can assure the learned gentleman that he actually did rise; and not only rose, but pronounced an able, long, and elaborate discourse, a considerable portion of which was em ployed in an erudite dissertation on the histories of Rome and Carthage. He further informed the House, upon the authority of Scipio, that we could never conquer the enemy until we were first conquered ourselves. It was when Hannibal was at the gates of Rome, that Scipio had thought the proper moment for the invasion of Carthage, what a pity it is that the learned gentleman does not go with this consolation and the authority of Scipio to the lord mayor and aldermen of the city of London. Let him say, "Rejoice, my friends! Buonaparte is encamped at Blackheath! What happy tidings!" It would be whimsical to observe how they would receive such joyful news. I should like to see such faces as they would make on that occasion. Though I doubt not of the erudition of the learned gentleman, he seems to me to have somehow confounded the stories of Hanno and Hannibal, of Scipio and the Romans.__ He told us that Carthage was lost by the parsimony or envy of Hanno, in preventing the necessary supplies for the war being sent to Hannibal: but he neglected to go a little further, and to relate that Hanno accused the latter of having been ambitious "Juvenem furentem cupidine regni ;" and assured the senate that Hannibal, though at the gates of Rome, was no less dangerous to Hanno. Be this, however, as it may, is there any Hanno in the British Senate? If there is, nothing can be more certain than that all the efforts and remonstrances of the British Hanno could not prevent a single man, or a single guinea, being sent for the supply of any Hannibal our ministers might choose. The learned gentleman added, after the defeat of Hannibal, Hanno laughed at the senate; but he did not tell us what he laughed at. The advice of Hannibal has all the appearance of being a good one "Carthaginis moenia Romæ munerata." If they did not follow his advice, they had themselves to blame for it. From the strain of declamation in which the learned gentleman launched out, it seems as if he came to this House as executor to a man whose genius was scarcely equalled by the eccentricities he sometimes indulged. He appears to come as executor, and in the House of Commons, to administer to Mr. Burke's fury without any of his fire. It is, however, in vain for him to attempt any imitation of those declamatory harangues and writings of the transcendant author, which, towards the latter part of his life, were, as I think, unfortunately too much applauded. When not embellished with those ornaments which Mr. Burke was so capable of adding to all he either spoke or wrote, the subject of such declamations could only claim the admiration of a school-boy. The circumstance of a great, extensive, and victorious republic, breathing nothing but war in the long exercise of its most successful operations, surrounded with triumphs, and panting for fresh laurels, to be compared, much less represented as inferior, to the military power of England, is childish and ridiculous. What similitude is there between us and the great Roman republic in the height of its fame and glory? Did you, Sir, ever hear it stated, that the Romar bulwark was a naval force? And if not, what comparison can there be drawn between their efforts and power? This kind of rodomontade declamation is finely described in the language of one of the Roman poets→ "I, demens, curre per Alpes, The proper ground upon which this bill should be opposed, I conceive to be neither the uncertainty of the criterion, nor the injustice of the retrospect, though they would be sufficient. The tax itself will be found to defeat its own purposes. The amount which an individual paid to the assessed taxes last year can be no rule for what he shall pay in future. All the articles by which the gradations rose must be laid aside, and never resumed again. Circumstanced as the country is, there can be no hope, no chance whatever, that, if the tax succeeds, it ever will be repealed. Each individual, therefore, instead of putting down this article or that, will make a final and general retrenchment; so that the minister cannot get at him in the same way again, by any outward sign which might be used as a criterion of his wealth. These retrenchments cannot fail of depriving thousands of their bread; and it is vain to hold out the delusion of modification or indemnity to the lower orders. Every burthen imposed upon the rich in the articles which give the poor employment, affects them not the less for affecting them circuitously. It is as much cant, therefore, to say, that by bearing heavily on the rich, we are saving the lower orders, as it is folly to suppose we can come at real income by arbitrary assessment, or by symptoms of opulence. There are three ways of raising large sums of money in a State: First, by voluntary contributions; secondly, by a great addition of new taxes; and thirdly, by forced contributions, which is the worst of all, and which I aver the present plan to be. I am at present so partial to the first mode that I recommend the further consideration of this measure to be postponed for a month, in order to make an experiment of what might be effected by it. For this purpose let a bill be brought in, authorizing the proper persons to receive voluntary contributions; and I should not care if it were read a third time to-night. I confess, however, that there are many powerful reasons which forbid us to be too sanguine in the success even of this measure. To awaken a spirit in the nation, the example should come from the first authority, and the higher departments of the State. It is, indeed, seriously to be lamented, that whatever may be the burthens or distresses of the people, the Government has hitherto never shown a disposition to contribute anything; and this conduct must hold out a poor encouragement to others. Heretofore all the public contributions were made for the benefit and profit of the contributors, in a manner inconceivable |