and constitution;" and the sable-vested instigators of the Birmingham riots well knew, that a syllogism could not disarm a drunken incendiary of his firebrand, or a demonstration helmet a philosopher's head against a brickbat. But in the principles, which this apostate has, by his emissaries, sown among a few blind zealots for freedom, he has digged a pit into which he himself may perhaps be doomed to fall. We contemplate those principles with horror. Yet they possess a kind of wild justice well calculated to spread them among the grossly ignorant. To unenlightened minds, there are terrible charms in the idea of retribution, however savagely it be inculcated. The groans of the oppressors make fearful yet pleasant music to the ear of him, whose mind is darkness, and into whose soul the iron has entered.

This class, at present, is comparatively small yet soon to form an overwhelming majority, unless great and immediate efforts are used to lessen the intolerable grievances of our poorer brethren, and infuse into their sorely wounded hearts the healing qualities of knowledge. For can we wonder that men should want humanity, who want all the circumstances of life that humanize? Can we wonder that with the ignorance of brutes they should unite their ferocity? Peace and comfort be with these! But let us shudder to hear from men of dissimilar opportunities sentiments of similar revengefulness. The purifying alchemy of education may transmute

the fierceness of an ignorant man into virtuous energy but what remedy shall we apply to him, whom plenty has not softened, whom knowledge has not taught benevolence? This is one among the many fatal effects which result from the want of fixed principles. Convinced that vice is error, we shall entertain sentiments of pity for the vicious, not of indignation—and even with respect to that bad man, to whom we have before alluded, although we are now groaning beneath the burthen of his misconduct, we shall harbour no sentiments of revenge; but rather condole with him that his chaotic iniquities have exhibited such a complication of extravagance, inconsistency, and rashness as may alarm him with apprehensions of approaching lunacy!

There are a third class among the friends of freedom, who possess not the wavering character of the first description, nor the ferocity last delineated. They pursue the interests of freedom steadily, but with narrow and self-centering views: they anticipate with exultation the abolition of privileged orders, and of acts that persecute by exclusion from the right of citizenship. They are prepared to join in digging up the rubbish of mouldering establishments, and stripping off the tawdry pageantry of governments. Whatever is above them they are most willing to drag down; but every proposed alteration, that would elevate the ranks of our poorer brethren, they regard with

suspicious jealousy, as the dreams of the visionary; as if there were any thing in the superiority of lord to gentleman, so mortifying in the barrier, so fatal to happiness in the consequences, as the more real distinction of master and servant, of rich man and of poor. Wherein am I made worse by my ennobled neighbour? Do the childish titles of aristocracy detract from my domestic comforts, or prevent my intellectual acquisitions? But those institutions of society which should condemn me to the necessity of twelve hours' daily toil, would make my soul a slave, and sink the rational being in the mere animal. It is a mockery of our fellow creatures' wrongs to call them equal in rights, when by the bitter compulsion of their wants we make them inferior to us in all that can soften the heart, or dignify the understanding. Let us not say that this is the work of time-that it is impracticable at present, unless we each in our individual capacities do strenuously and perseveringly endeavour to diffuse among our domestics those comforts and that illumination which far beyond all political ordinances are the true equalizers of

men.

We turn with pleasure to the contemplation of that small but glorious band, whom we may truly distinguish by the name of thinking and disinterested patriots. These are the men who have encouraged the sympathetic passions till they have become irresistible habits, and made their duty a

necessary part of their self-interest, by the longcontinued cultivation of that moral taste which derives our most exquisite pleasures from the contemplation of possible perfection, and proportionate pain from the perception of existing depravation. Accustomed to regard all the affairs of man as a process, they never hurry and they never pause. Theirs is not that twilight of political knowledge which gives us just light enough to place one foot before the other; as they advance the scene still opens upon them, and they press right onward with a vast and various landscape of existence around them. Calmness and energy mark all their actions. Convinced that vice originates not in the man, but in the surrounding circumstances; not in the heart, but in the understanding; he is hopeless concerning no one - to correct a vice or generate a virtuous conduct he pollutes not his hands with the scourge of coercion; but by endeavouring to alter the circumstances would remove, or by strengthening the intellect, disarms, the temptation. The unhappy children of vice and folly, whose tempers are adverse to their own happiness as well as to the happiness of others, will at times awaken a natural pang; but he looks forward with gladdened heart to that glorious period when justice shall have established the universal fraternity of love. These soul-ennobling views bestow the virtues which they anticipate. He whose mind is habitually.imprest with them soars above the present state of huma

C

nity, and may be justly said to dwell in the presence of the Most High.

would the forms

Of servile custom cramp the Patriot's power?
Would sordid policies, the barbarous growth
Of ignorance and rapine, bow him down
To tame pursuits, to indolence and fear?
Lo! he appeals to nature, to the winds
And rolling waves, the sun's unwearied course,
The elements and seasons-all declare

For what the eternal maker has ordain'd

The powers of man: we feel within ourselves
His energy divine: he tells the heart

He meant, he made us to behold and love
What he beholds and loves, the general orb
Of life and being-to be great like him,
Beneficent and active.-A KENSIDE.

Such is Joseph Gerald! Withering in the sickly and tainted gales of a prison, his healthful soul looks down from the citadel of his integrity on his impotent persecutors. I saw him in the foul and naked room of a jail — his cheek was sallow with confinement-his body was emaciated; yet his eye spoke the invincible purposes of his soul, and he still sounded with rapture the successes of freemen, forgetful of his own lingering martyrdom! Such too were the illustrious triumvirate* whom as a Greek poet expresses it, it is not lawful for bad men even to praise. I will not say that I have abused

* MUIR, PALMER, and MARGAROT.