grievances, real or assumed, of Lower Canada, had been the subject of parliamentary discussion. It was stated by Committees in Reports, and by the late Ministers in speeches, to the House, that many of those grievances were idle and illusory; and no doubt, they were so to superficial observers. The American Revolution to such men had been but a quarrel about a chest of tea, which was undoubtedly but a bad pretext for the separation of thirteen colonies from the British Crown. But who is not now sensible that the root of the matter was not there? The refusal of the people of Boston to pay a duty on tea, was only one of the modes of asserting the old Saxon right of self-government; and was it so wonderful that French and English Canadians should at last catch some of the same spirit, with the Revolution of July, the English Reform Bill, before their eyes? Was the desire to have a greater share in the management of their own affairs so undeserving of the sympathy and respect of a Reform Administration that it could only be met with the bayonet? It seemed so. Remonstrance, importunity, solemn warning, were alike disregarded; and the prayer of the Canadians for an extension of their rights was even answered by a violation of that which they held most sacred. The right which in England has ever been the boast of the House of Commons,-the right of stopping the supplies, had been acted upon (injudiciously, we think) in Lower Canada by the House of Assembly, and the intention was announced of continuing to do so, till the Legislative Council was rendered elective. We defend not this extreme step, which at one time, at least, was quite unnecessary, but neither can we approve of the retaliative policy of the Home Government. Wrong does not justify wrong. On the 6th of March, 1837, Lord John Russell moved a series of resolutions depriving the House of Assembly of this power, taking away from it all control over the revenues of the Crown, denouncing the proposition of an elective Legislative Council, and again postponing, with indefinite promises, the consideration of any plan of pacification.

The following August, on the dissolution of the Assembly by Lord Gosford, the insurrection broke out the battles of St. Charles, St. Denis, St. Eustache (a few months later) followed. Many hundreds were shot in the fields, or burnt in their houses, or driven into the woods to perish. The discontented of Upper Canada joined in the movement, but only to meet a similar fate. Defeated, and flying with the story of their wrongs across the frontier, they enlisted the sympathies of the American border population in their favor. Neutrality was violated on both sides-mutual reprisals followed-the "Caroline" was destroyed in American waters-Sir F. Head issued inflammatory antiAmerican diatribes-M'Leod was seized and threatened to be hanged, and for many months a war between England and the United States appeared to be inevitable.

The struggle is over-the insurrection has been quelled; and having at length seen the necessity of conciliating the Canadian population by measures rendering their interests less dependent upon the Colonial Office, British subjects have returned to their allegiance.

And now for what have we been fighting?-why this waste of blood and treasure?—what have we been doing but endeavoring to remedy the mischief occasioned by our own want of foresight, or our too culpable indifference? Had measures conceived in the spirit of Lord Durham's Report been introduced in 1834, all the calamities to which we have alluded would have been prevented. We challenge contradiction to the fact, that even in 1837, had Lord Durham's Report then appeared in place of the ten resolutions of Lord John Russell, public confidence in the intentions of the British Government would have been at once restored, and History would not have had to record a Canadian Rebellion.

In the above wars and military conflicts, is it an exaggeration to say that ten millions sterling have been fruitlessly expended? Grant that the amount be somewhat less ;-need we go further to account for the present deficiency of revenue? How many measures of national utility have stood still for want of the funds unnecessarily devoted to the arts of destruction.

Here we pause. We must close our summary of the political history of the last ten years, though at the risk of being charged with the omission of many facts which would possibly have told in favor of the late Administration. Let the reader make a liberal allowance for such omissions, but yet ask himself the question, has not enough been said to show that there are other causes to account for the fall of the late Ministers than the self-complacent assumption that they were too good forthe times?

Undoubtedly it was true that the counties and small agricultural towns were not prepared for the change proposed in the Corn Laws; but whose fault was it that the landed interest was made predominant by the Reform Bill, and not rendered so by accident, but premeditatedly and avowedly? Whose fault was it that the enthusiasm of Reformers, which would have carried them all lengths in support of Ministers in 1832-which, even in 1835, defeated the machinations of a hostile Court-cooled gradually into apathy and indifference, giving way to feelings of bitter disappointment? The bold stroke, the generous free trade policy, came at last, but came too late-power was gone. The registration clauses had done their work-the rottenness of the electoral system had been discovered-constituencies created, to be sold to the highest bidder, had allowed themselves to be bought. Why complain that the commercial interests of the large towns were unable to save a Ministry, when even in those towns the seeds of corruption had been left to germinate?

Practically, too, a great mistake had been committed by the attempt to carry on the Government with the Parliament of Sir Robert Peela Parliament in which, from the smallness of the Liberal majority, no measures could be carried but by a compromise; and in which, therefore, the Cabinet of Lord Melbourne was constantly exhibited in such a tottering condition that the public became accustomed to the idea that the Conservatives only could form a strong Government.

At the last election, from this cause, the opinion of the necessity of a change had become almost universal, and but for the free trade agitation, a majority of Conservatives, much more overwhelming than the present, would have been returned. The result should be a lesson to statesmen. Every year that office is retained by men unable to carry their own measures, they damage their party. A bad Government is an evil, but that which is powerless has no friends.

The second advent of the Tories has scarcely excited regret in any quarter. Reformers remembering that Catholic emancipation, the repeal of the Corporation and Test Acts, and many excellent measures of administrative and legal reform, were obtained through the instrumentality of Sir Robert Peel, have augured favorably from the fact that the influence of public opinion upon Conservatism, when Conservatives are in office, has ever been greater than when in opposition. If these sentiments were entertained among Reformers, how much less likely were the electors at large, with such a constituency as the Reform Bill has created, to imagine that their own interest, or the prosperity of the country, was connected with the fortunes of the late Administration.

Our brief political sketch presents but a melancholy contrast to the narrative that might be written of the progress of science and the arts during the period we have described. It is only as legislators and politicians that the men of the nineteenth century appear as dwarfs of intellect in every other branch of knowledge they stride with the step of giants. The annihilation of space and time is beginning to be no fable. The broad Atlantic has been bridged by steam navigation. Old modes of travelling on land have given way to new; a journey of 200 miles is now, in rapidity, a meteor flight. The electric spark has been seized, and made to obey the impulse of the human will. Lightning is our news carrier-light is our portrait painter. The sunbeam has become the pencil of the artist. We are mastering the secrets of the elements, and in the command of all physical agencies take a higher rank than the demigods of antiquity.

Will the time never come when in the higher branches of knowledge -in all that relates to the moral and social-to the arrangements upon which depend employment, subsistence, content, and happiness-a corresponding progress will be made? Shall we never see the day when the few, who hold the destinies of mankind in their grasp, will use their glorious opportunities for benefiting the race to which they belong for other objects than those of personal ambition? Why do not these phantoms of a night perceive that not only power, but even their existence, is but a dream? In deeds and thoughts only is their reality. It seems but an instant, and Huskisson, Canning, Liverpool, Durham, Sydenham, were here visibly before our eyes, in the glory of high office. Where are they now?-where, in another instant, will be the men now legislating for class interests, as if they and their class interests would endure for ever?

Great Father of mankind, if among thy sons nobler spirits have yet

awakened, who with high and god-like aims would stand among statesmen as the Miltons and Shakespeares of the literary world,―if, in the wide circle of humanity, there exist men capable of perceiving the true uses of power, and of directing it aright,-overrule thou the course of events, that another generation may not pass away before self-worshippers being displaced, and the might at last with the right, one worthy effort may be made to raise the multitude from their present physical and moral degradation, and to protect, by institutions worthy of rational beings, the interests of all.--Amen! amen!

Die Zukunft der Protestantischen Kirche in Deutschland, vom Standpuncte der Würtembergischen verhaeltnisse aus. [The Prospects of the Protestant Church in Germany, from the Standpoint of the Wirtemberg relations. By Karl Wolff, Minister at Bernstein.] Stuttgart, 1840.

AMONG the evidences which the ordinary course of things around us. furnishes of the truth that mankind are placed under a righteous system of moral government, there is none more striking than the fact that every institution, which is not based upon truth and justice, sooner or later, even when unassailed by hostile powers, works its own decay. Whatever influences may be combined in its support, however much the prejudices of the people may be enlisted in its defence, and to whatever extent it may be guarded against assault from without, nothing, it would seem, can avail to counterbalance effectually the pernicious operation of its inherent evil, or to save the institution from the ruin which that evil is incessantly tending to effect. "The legs of the lame," says the wise man, are not equal," and no artifice will ever prevent such an one from halting. Institutions based upon falsehood are essentially mischievous and nothing can permanently prevent their evil from being detected, their iniquity exposed, and their overthrow desired.

Of the truth of these remarks we have an illustration in the growing suspicion and dislike with which multitudes in different parts of Christendom are beginning to regard civil establishments of religion. That in a country like this, where dissent has been so long tolerated, and where it has so extensively spread, the error and iniquity of such institutions should be perceived and exposed, is perhaps little to be wondered at. The feeling to which we have referred, however, is not confin

ed to this country, but is showing itself even in regions where the sway of the established church is uninterrupted by the toleration of dissent in any of its forms. The volume now before us is an evidence that it has penetrated into Germany, than which we know no protestant country which, a few years ago, seemed more hermetically sealed against the intrusion of any such influence. Nor is Mr. Wolff alone in Germany in the discussion of this question. The voluntary controversy has, in fact, been fairly mooted both in Prussia and in other states of the Germanic empire; and though it has not yet assumed anything of the general interest which it has attracted in this country, the thoughts of many pious and some great minds have, in that part of Europe, been turned to the questions which it involves. The very perfection of their system of church establishments has forced this upon them. Disgusted with the minute and rigid enactments by which the freedom of Christian activity within the Church is fettered, and tired of a system which is mighty in project, but impotent in action, imposing in outward form, contemptible and too often vile in inward substance, they have been constrained to inquire whether what they once deemed the bulwark of religion in their country has not in reality been its greatest obstacle, and the source of its acknowledged depression. Among those who have uttered their feelings and opinions in writing upon this subject, Mr. Wolff is by far the most decided advocate, so far as we have had any opportunity of judging, of the perfect freedom of the church. For our knowledge of his work-the title of which we have translated with a closeness to the original which some of our readers may perhaps be disposed to condemn, but which will, at all events give them some small idea of what difficulties those have to contend with who would render German sentences into easy and idiomatic English-we stand indebted to an article in a late number of the "Theologische Studien und Kritiken"—a periodical conducted with great ability by Professors Ullmann and Umbreit, of Heidelberg, in conjunction with Doctors Gieseler, Lücke, and Nitsch. This article is written by Mr. W. F. Frey, Dean at Umstadt, in the grand duchy of Hesse, and after the faithful fashion. of German reviews, contains a copious analysis, very much in the author's own words, of the contents of his book. Judging from this article we should not take Mr. Wolff to be a man of very superior mind, but his work seems to be written in a manly and candid spirit, and his opinions are avowed with much distinctness and fervor. Studying his reasonings through the medium of an analysis of them made by a third party, it does not become us to pronounce any very decided opinion upon them. This, however, need not prevent our laying before our readers a general view of the course of remark which the author pursues, accompanied by such observations as may be thereby suggested to us. For this the article by Dean Frey furnishes ample materials; and our readers will thus get a sufficiently correct general idea of how the question of establishments is moving at present in Germany.

Mr. Wolff divides his work into three books. In the first of these, he considers the relation of the church to the state; in the second, he