POLITICAL GREATNESS.

NOR happiness, nor majesty, nor fame,

Nor peace, nor strength, nor skill in arms or arts,
Shepherd those herds whom tyranny makes tame;
Verse echoes not one beating of their hearts,
History is but the shadow of their shame,
Art veils her glass, or from the pageant starts,
As to oblivion their blind millions fleet,
Staining that Heaven with obscene imagery
Of their own likeness. What are numbers knit
By force or custom? Man, who man would be,
Must rule the empire of himself; in it
Must be supreme, establishing his throne
On vanquish'd will, quelling the anarchy
Of hopes and fears, being himself alone.

Shelley.

MORALITY OF THE PRESS.

THE first temptation which besets a man in his literary avocation, is that of lowering the standard with which, if left to himself, he would endeavour to arrive at conformity, and of bringing down the purposes at which he aims; for the obvious reason, that works on all the higher topics of thought, and which in their production imply, and in their perusal also, a strenuous and continuous exercise of mental power, are the least acceptable to the world, and the last which are likely to afford anything like remuneration to those by whom they are produced. The world generally does not care about them, and the man who lives by his pen must employ himself on something of a lower and lighter description.

The man who would live by literature is ever under temptation to abandon the noblest purposes which his own mind can conceive, and which it would excitingly task his best powers to execute; he must not appeal to those higher faculties in others with which he most desires to be in collision or in sympathy; he must attempt something less. No work of the severest logic that he can produce will be so good to him in a pecuniary point of view as some light, trifling, sparkling essay. No history, though it should relate to events of the greatest importance in the annals of the world, and depict the strongest powers of individuals in their strenuous conflicts with each other, or with society, would be profitable to him, however ably told, like an historical novel where every fact or character may be falsified with impunity for effect. In every case he is impelled, if he looks to his own personal interest, to prefer the lower to the higher, the lighter to the more severe.

66

In the next place he is tempted to accommodate himself to large classes of society. Always move with the masses,' was the motto of Napoleon in his political career, which led him not to do that which he thought best for mankind, but to consult its actual state, and see where opinion and prejudice had a strong hold upon numbers, and make that his guide. So the writer is tempted to move with the masses; and there are certain great classes of society, notoriously intolerant, whose favour it must be an important object to propitiate, and whose hostility he must by all means take care to shun.

The consequence is, that the writer becomes a dependent; that he has to adapt himself to views which are so confined that very often the mere circumstance of connexion, or want of connexion, with a titled family or a wealthy one, may be the occasion of acceptance or rejection. The writer, I say, has to become a dependent on a class, and to sink into the tool of that

class; to put all the stronger and nobler powers of his intellect in abeyance; to be a mere getter up of that which it is judged, as a matter of pecuniary interest, will so far suit the public taste, as to render it a profitable speculation. He deals in plagiarisms, and abridgments, and accommodations, and selections. He becomes less and less the principled, vigorous mind which should fulfil its native destiny, and which might, in so doing, realize for himself and others, the highest amount of good.

Yet worse temptations succeed to these. He is led to realize more and more profit by greater rapidity of writing, by that sort of periodical composition in which all time for thought and reflectiveness is annihilated; in which the whole operation degenerates into the mere production of words, words, words, so long as these words can be made an article of exchangeable value to his patron. Perhaps he sinks yet lower, and earns his subsistence by that anonymous writing in connexion with newspapers, which, though it may, and assuredly does consist in some cases with the purest and the highest principle, has temptations which lead towards the grossest dereliction. For these are monopolies, too; monopolies for personal purposes; monopolies for political and party purposes; monopolies with every immoral inducement; exposed, at least, to every immoral inducement, to deviate from the true, the impartial, and the useful. He is tempted to prostitute his powers yet more and more. He now becomes an adept at the plausible sophism, the dextrous insinuation, the malignant innuendo, and the daring falsehood. He ever has a reason ready for any measure which his employers' interest may require, or that may promote the objects of the party to which his publication is devoted, or obstruct the purposes of the opposite party. He trades in falsehood-direct and glaring falsehood--in the imputation of opinions, or even the description of conduct; sometimes, perhaps, in that of transactions which pass before the eyes of hundreds and of thousands, when he knows that he can make the reverse be believed by other hundreds and thousands who were not present; yea, by millions even, on whom the influence of his publication may be exercised. Even more loathsome than political profligacy are the depths to which he may descend. Screened by his namelessness from all responsibility; ministering fuel to every fierce and foul passion; catering for every grossness; blazoning turpitude for the filthy appetite that feasts on such garbage; with an interest to serve, or a spite to gratify, in every direction; perhaps pandering at once to both political parties, and to any other parties that will pay ; the masked wretch goes forth in the dark with his poisoned dagger-now striking at his friend's reputation-now at his country's freedom; and if his thunder please the infernal gods to whom he has sold his soul, he may at last, when faction improves a momentary success, to plunder the nation, be rewarded by place or pension at the expense of that public which has had him for its intellectual guide, political director, and moral teacher!

W. J. Fox:-Lectures on Class Morality.

Children. Never suffer your children to advance in years before you attend to their education. The younger they are, the more tender and soft are their minds, and the more susceptible of impressions. Commence, then, their education AS SOON AS THEY ARE BORN, if you wish they should benefit more certainly and easily by those instructions which they will receive afterwards.-Pestalozzi.

Consistency.With what consistency can that man reprobate the bad government of his country, who practises not good government at home?

Rowland Detrosier.

HYMNS FOR THE UNENFRANCHISED.
No. XI.

WHO is the Slave?-Though life-long chains,
And a dungeon atmosphere of pains

And toil and shame and ceaseless stir-
The yoke of another's monstrous gains-
Though these proclaim him prisoner;
He is no slave: his unconquer'd thought
Trampleth his "master" underfoot.

He is a slave-whose mind is made
The panderer of the man of trade;

Writing that which he durst not speak,

Under a gilded Falsehood's shade,

With hard, cold eye, and sallow cheek:
Stabbing Truth in the back with a nameless sneer;
Burying Hope with words of fear.

He is a slave-whose spirit wears
The fettering of another's fears;

Who of another's conscience asks

His ransom from remorseful tears,

Leave for God to appoint man's tasks-
Leave, lest the Fashion of Worldly Lies
Should be outraged by God's "improprieties."

He is a slave-whose uncurb'd Wrath
Draggeth him out of the even path;

Who of his own Contempt doth make

A god, to stand in the place of Faith;

Who boweth to Wrong for his folly's sake:
Self-torturer! though the world's esteem
Worship his thoughts:-doth he not blaspheme
The Master of Thought, even Love? Oh! he
Is slave to the wretchedest poverty.

IF you should see a flock of pigeons in a field of corn; and if (instead of each picking where, and what it liked, taking just as much as it wanted, and no more) you should see ninety-nine of them gathering all they got into a heap; reserving nothing for themselves, but the chaff and refuse; keeping this heap for one, and that the weakest perhaps and worst pigeon of the flock; sitting round, and looking on, all the winter, whilst this one was devouring, throwing about and wasting it; and if a pigeon more hardy or hungry than the rest, touched a grain of the hoard, all the others instantly flying upon it, and tearing it to pieces: if you should see this, you would see nothing more than what is every day practised and established among men. Among men you see the ninety and nine toiling and scraping together a heap of superfluities for one; getting nothing for themselves all the while, but a little of the coarsest of the provision, which their own labour produces; and this one too, oftentimes the feeblest and worst of the whole set, a child, a madman, or a fool; looking quietly on, while they see the fruits of all their labour spent or spoiled; and if one of them take or touch a particle of it, the others join against him, and hang him for the theft.-Paley.

Liberty."-Who speaks of liberty while the human mind is in chains? Who of equality while the thousands are in squalid wretchedness, the millions harassed with health-destroying labour, the few afflicted with health-destroying idleness, and all tormented by health-destroying solicitude! Look abroad on the misery which is gaining on the land! Mark the strife, and the discord, and the jealousies, the shock of interests and opinions, the hatreds of sects, the estrangement of class, the pride of wealth, the debasement of poverty, the helplessness of youth unprotected, of age uncomforted, of industry unrewarded, of ignorance unenlightened, of vice unreclaimed, of misery unpitied, of sickness, hunger, and nakedness unsatisfied, unalleviated, and unheeded. Go! mark all the wrongs and the wretchedness with which the eye and the ear and the heart are familiar, and then echo in triumph and celebrate in jubilee the insulting declaration-all men are free and equal. Frances Wright.

He who wisely would restrain the reasonable Soul of Man within due bounds, must first himself know perfectly, how far the territory and dominion extends of just and honest Liberty. As little must he offer to bind that which God hath loosened, as to loosen that which God hath bound. The ignorance and mistake of this high point, hath heaped up one huge half of all the misery that hath been since Adam.-Milton.

POLITICAL SUGGESTIONS.

"MAY it not be found, that the attempt to alter the morals of mankind singly and in detail, is an erroneous and futile undertaking; and that it will then only be effectually and decisively performed, when by regenerating their political institutions, we shall change their motives and produce a revolution in the influences that act upon them."-Godwin's Political Justice.

"That people must needs be mad, or strangely infatuated, who build the chief hope of their common happiness, or safety, on a single person; who, if he happen to be good, can do no more than another man; if he be bad, hath in his hands the power to do more evil without check, than millions of other men."-Milton.

"They, who seek nothing but their own just liberty, have always a right to win it, and to keep it, whenever they have the power, be the voices never so numerous that oppose them."-Id. "The government's ungirt when Justice dies, And constitutions are non-entities."-Defoe.

"It is the greatest happiness of the greatest number, that is the measure of right and wrong."Bentham.

HITHERTO it has been our aim to enunciate principles, rather than to recommend particular methods of working them out. What we have especially desired has been to assist the advance of knowledge, by unveiling the simplicity of Truth, by unmasking the sophistries of World-Custom and World-Opinion; believing that a revolution in the minds of men, engendered by increase of knowledge, must always precede any greatly beneficial revolution in men's circumstances. The fierce fires of the Reformation had long been searching the hearts of men, growing more and more intense in the smouldering of forbidden thought, before that famous eruption, when Luther burst upon Christendom, and the Roman Idol trembled to its very base. The secret stream of discontent long crept beneath the icy fear, the fettering of remorseless Power, gathering by little and little its mighty waters, till the flaw was made which let loose the French Revolution, like a raging torrent, to flood the whole of Europe; devastating it is true, but preparing the soil for future fertility. Little observant must he be, who cannot even now hear around him volcanic murmurings, whisperings as of the gathering of many waters. He, who searcheth into the heart of the matter, will be aware of convulsive throes, ever and anon repeated and gaining force, strugglings to bring forth a destiny of equal worth with that noble Protest against the enslaving of human thought, a following out indeed of the promise of that high achievement. Who seeth not the signs of Revolution? And who hopeth to suppress that, which, in the nature of things, must gain power from the attempt at suppression? A destiny must be worked out. Now, of revolutions there is a choice. They, who have the ordering of affairs, under destiny, may choose between the gradual and the sudden. Of the sudden there are two kinds, the peaceable and the violent. But first to look at the state of this our country, that we may be sure we have not mistaken the symptoms of change, that it may not be said we are but imagining the case on which we argue.

Britain, in the year 1839, is in a condition unexampled in the world's records. No where in the scroll of history can we point out an instance of the union of such extreme and universal misery with so general intelligence, so extensive an acquaintance with social rights, and with the causes of social evil. Men suffering continually, if aware of the causes of their suffering, will soon discover a remedy. A million and a quarter of the slaves of the British empire have shewn that they are aware of a remedy for their slavery. How many more are there, who would readily join in any plausible endeavour for redress. Discontent is the British Labourer's household god. Even the most ignorant, even the most loyal, the blindest and most servile of the worshippers of Squire Million or my Lord Acres, are not quite deaf to the hints of anxious poverty, that all is not as it should be. Among mechanics there is equally the experience of distress, and, superadded, more and clearer