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can be surpassed only by their ignorance,-when we find public meetings held with some semblance at least of respectability, at which the speakers dare to prate about the subversion of the government of their country as an event not by any means undesirable, and of which the signs of the times indicate the coming fulfilment,—when we this hear the lessons of treason stammered forth, and the most terrible of public catastrophes, instead of being repelled from the imagination, admitted and cherished among the inmost thoughts of the heart,we cannot but remind such infatuated triflers that they are speaking of a change of which they have not fancy enough to anticipate the horrors, and which they will never perhaps understand till they are steeped to the lips in the sanguinary realities. For, the course of a revolution, such as that which radicalism fiercely contemplates, with revenge for its incentive and plunder for its reward,-owning no rational principle of constitutional liberty or religious toleration for its motive, but scorning the whole constitution, and holding all religion in ostentatious derision,-may easily be traced by those who can read the human heart or the history of nations. First comes the season of hypocrisy and pretences, when rebellion is yet stealing its way into favour with the crowd-the mock-assumption of super-human virtue and the outrageous denouncement of imaginary corruption. The field being thus prepared, and a path opened through the credulity of the multitude to their debasement, the felon-blow is struck, and the people, by their wicked participation in the crimes of their leaders, become for ever bound to their fate, and chained to the servitude which may be allotted them, under pretence of providing for the common safety of guilt. The period for the division and enjoyment of the spoil,-which has formed the main inducement to so much atrocity,-is short-lived, and hardly exists at all for the multitude, because the amplest fund of spoliation, when no longer fed by the resources of a neglected and forbidden industry, is soon exhausted, and the governing tyrants, prescient of its decay, find other work for their slaves. Resentment, deep and desperate on the part of the latter, is the consequence, and the newly raised tyrants, feeling that their power totters, rush furiously upon every measure which may sustain it, and trample upon the mass of the population, till they have to appearance subdued its every feeling of resistance,-when at last the pent-up spirit of man, bursting from its unwilling confinement, makes of the destruction of usurped power a scene of havoc, scarcely less hideous than that by which it was created. Repentance, restoration, return to all ancient usages and man

ners, take the place of that wild spirit which lately bounded from every thing established with such frantic disdain,-and the national mind, appalled by the recollection of its recent wanderings, of the precipices encountered, and the gulphs hardly escaped,-thinks it can find safety no where but in pitifully retiring back into the deepest recesses of long-exploded error; so that the result of an irrational experiment upon the frame of society, even when it succeeds, is generally the deeper degradation of the people for whose sake it was professedly under

taken.

The absolute controul which the meanest and most incompetent of the people exercise over their superiors in knowledge, and extend to the whole affairs of the state, is one very bad feature of the present times. As if a stream of political intelligence had preternaturally descended upon that large mass of industrious persons, whom every civilized society must contain, but whom no society, however liberal, has yet assumed into the direct government of its affairs; and, as if a mastery of eloquence had, at the same time, been conferred upon those who were never before imagined to be among the most zealous students, or the most distinguished proficients in that art,-there is no subject of policy or government, however grave, upon which the rudest mechanic has not formed an opinion equally prompt and despotic, or upon which he is not ambitious of pouring forth his eloquence in all the lustre of its novelty. The rage for public meetings has accordingly become intense, and instead of the stated collisions of opinion in the higher and more instructed regions of society, which have ever been so important in striking out truth, the bosom of the land is now covered with the continuous flames of political dissension,

But the silly ambition of talking and deciding which has thus been engendered, although no inconsiderable nuisance in its kind, might be endured without serious complaint, were it not for the extreme presumption which has followed it, and which is fast organizing into a very bad species of tyranny. Hence the insolent tone in which the proceedings of government, and even of the legislature, are reviewed-the contumely thrown on all who venture to dissent from the infallibility of the rabble decision; the absolute intimidation which is attempted to be exercised over the courts of justice, and all the high functionaries of the state. It is plain that this cannot last, and that the people, to secure the enjoyment of their rights, and especially this enviable privilege of free discussion, must exercise it with reason and moderation. The right to think freely, and to speak boldly,-the unquestioned

right of all the people of this land,—is one which, unless guided by temperance, cannot be long preserved. It is a right which is immediately connected with the power and the will to act; and if it is to be exercised only in the eternal fostering of disaffection, the inevitable alternative is too obvious to be overlooked-either the legislature must abridge the right, or the right will annihilate the legislature. We would anxiously warn our countrymen therefore, as they tender the most valuable of their privileges, that they would not risk its loss by abusing it, nor pervert that right, which was intended for diffusing intelligence and wisdom, into an engine for reproaching, insulting, and concussing either the legislature or the magistracy of the land.

It is also part of the unhappy spirit which now disgraces the country, and which is fast preparing either additional rigours of enactment for securing the public peace, or the firm ascendency of popular domination, that all the ordinary notions as to the infraction of the laws, and the perpetrators of crime, seem to be undergoing a thorough change-and that for the old deferential obedience to our civil institutions is substituted an unnatural respect and compassion for their violators. Formerly the suitableness of the laws for the correction and punishment of vice was instinctively assumed by the great body of the people;-their sanctions had a weight of moral awe and authority about them which was the best safeguard against their too frequent exhibition-and while the tear of compassion was shed for the devoted culprit, the inexorable public justice by which he was doomed was intimately felt to be the sacred guarantee of the public peace. Now all is changed in certain quarters-the cruel despotism of the law is announced-the martyrdom of its violators proclaimed-an ever active conspiracy exists to deprecate or to avert its sanctions, even where they are the most deserved; and as the law, not the criminal, is the object of scorn, the latter is accompanied to the cell, and to the scaffold, with vivid exclamations of sympathy and deep mutterings of revenge.-The same system of unabating hostility is directed against every institution, high or low, by which crime is repressed and society held together-as if the first experiment of that universal political anarchy with which the land is threatened were to be exhibited in the minor chaos which would result from the impunity of private crimes. Not but that the criminal law of this country, especially of the southern division of the island, requires revision and amendment,-not but that the spirit of true philosophy, animated by a generous and feeling nature, has yet many triumphs to win over the sanguinary barbarism which lingers in the statute-book,—not but

that the true reverers of the law of their country may find honourable employment in rendering it worthy of a perfect and unmingled veneration: But the spirit of which we speak, and which we unhesitatingly denounce as one of the worst symptoms of the times, has no alliance with a benignant and corrective philosophy. It is the spirit of rebellion trying its infant strength, and marshalling its yet imperfect resources in the mockery of the laws which it means afterwards to overthrow-waging its appropriate warfare, not with one or more exceptionable laws, because that might lead to correction, but with all law, because that conducts inevitably to destruction.

It is only on the supposition indeed that the case has already been decided, and decided triumphantly in popular feeling, against all authority, and in favour of the universal right of resistance, that some recent symptoms in the state of the public mind can be explained. How are we otherwise to account for the indignant horror manifested, when the conservators of the public peace, be they civil or military, dare to interpose in the most illegal riot-nay, dare even to act on the defensive, after having endured every contumely and outrage? With what savage shouts a successful assault upon a constable or a soldier is welcomed! With what bitter cries of injustice and loud threatenings of revenge is the slightest attempt at retaliation resented! Can this proceed from any other cause except that the violation of law is accounted, upon the maxims of the rabble,-or the people as they are styled,-to be right and magnanimous,-its support base and criminal?

But the same depraved feeling reaches yet higher, from the humble level of the mob it has in some instances ascended up, and tainted, we are afraid, the most sacred department of the administration of justice. Trial by jury is in ordinary times the most equitable, liberal, and merciful instrument by which the law can be made to speak in judgment to the people. But in times of general ferment, when distrust and derision are abroad, juries who are chosen from among the people must partake more or less in the common delusion, and instead of continuing to be a pure and safe channel of distributive justice, become a very formidable obstacle to its progress. What but the fear of encountering the prejudices of juries, and the manifest risk of miscarriage, even in the justest cause, can explain the supineness of the officers of government, who, of late years, have left so much bold sedition to go unpunished, and permitted the land to be overwhelmed with a flood of licentious libels, such as never before disgraced it,--and which, multiplying and extending in im

punity, have put to scorn the old timid maxim, that the sole remedy for such disorders is neglect? Of this neglect there has already been more than enough,-and since we have lived to see the popular sympathies so entirely withdrawn from the objects of their ancient reverence,-since we have witnessed the unpunished ebullitions of anarchy triumphant over the faltering hands to which the law has committed their chastisement, but which have been scared from the undertaking by the frown of contaminated juries, since we have been doomed to witness the last insults offered to the constitution in the unbounded favours showered upon the wickedest libellers, and the soothing regards that have followed murderers and traitors to the scaffold,-it is time, surely, that something decisive should be done to arrest the course of so much frenzy,-or at least to render it innocuous, by demonstrating the impossibility of its ever reaching its desired consummation.

What then is the cure for this disordered spirit, which threatens society with more terrible evils than it has ever yet endured? Reason and remonstrance are in vain, we suspect, with the tainted masses who have been imbued with the spirit of disaffection-who thirst for plunder, and hate the monarchy, the law, and the constitution, only because they stand as bulwarks to protect their victims from their grasp-and who, confident of ultimate success in the midst of casual disaster, survey with delight the steady progress of their cause, and exultingly reckon the numbers which every furious contest of faction, every miscarriage in public affairs, adds to their ranks. They are not to be con vinced, not to be conciliated,-but only to be overawed. The only conviction which ever can daunt their wicked enterprise is, that they will be promptly met by an opposing power, prepared to crush the very first movements of 'insurrection,-a power not hastily arrayed to meet the exigency of actual tumult, and then to be dissolved till rebellion has had time to mature its fresh preparations, but perpetual, watchful, irresistible. It is not enough to assemble a military force on a particular point,and to quell disturbances of which the very existence is a disgrace to the country, leaving the evil spirit to retire with larger experienee from this tentative encounter, and to form higher hopes for futurity, but an attitude of resolution and of preparation ought to be at once assumed by the universal loyalty of the country, such as may extinguish disaffection in despair. It is thus only that the cure can be wrought effectually that the vanished hopes of traitors may leave their minds unoccupied to receive other and sounder impressionsthat a lesson may be read to their guilty leaders, which shall

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