a dissenter is always hailed when his politics are of the right sort, and the zest with which the political speeches of the evangelical clergy are recorded and read. The unpardonable sin of the dissenters, in the eyes of such parties, is not that they are political at all, but that their politics are on the wrong side; for these gentlemen have obviously no antipathy to politics, as such, but only to every body's politics except their own. 'Orthodoxy,' said Franklin, means your own doxy; heterodoxy is any other 'man's doxy.' True, O Franklin, thy definition hits the case. It is not that all politics are sinful, nor the degree to which they are pushed, abstractedly considered, but the heterodoxy of them is the sin. Political dissenters would be as much commended and petted as political churchmen, did they but symbolize with the right party. But because they do not and cannot sacrifice their consciences, write them down, talk them down, vote them down, beat them down, and trample them down-all shall be fair, moral, and evangelical, so that they may but be down, and kept down, and ourselves kept up. This is the kind of morality, not only of the newspaper editors, but, alas, of our clergy, evangelical and anti-evangelical, to an extent that scarcely admits of exception.

What is to be the issue of all this? Will it subserve the cause of truth, religion, and national virtue? Will it convince opponents and make them friends? Is it not rather calculated to dishonor christianity and dissolve the bonds of all moral and social order? It is with deep grief we daily witness the excesses of party spirit-the direct immorality which is practised in controversy, and the palpable trifling with the interests of truth, honor, and candor, which disgraces not merely the newspapers, but our literature, and to a great extent our theology. It is scarcely to be believed but that many of our party scribes must be perfectly conscious of all this violence and villany, however fair they may deem it, to render an opponent or an opposite party odious and hateful, to present them belabored or bespattered by mere Billingsgate, for the amusement or triumph of their own friends. Yet all this is unquestionably base in principle, disgusting in practice, and injurious to the morals of society.

It is indeed high time that some honorable and right-feeling men, of all parties, should step forward to remind the belligerents that they are human and rational; and that at all events, if they must and will contend, there are laws of honorable war, to which all civilized nations have acceded, and which none would disregard but savages and cannibals. It might befit the infidel bloodhounds of the first French revolution to rave round the Thuilleries like tigers and wolves with the palpitating limbs of their victims in their mouths; but does it behove christian men and

Englishmen to emulate the rage of beasts and the violence of maniacs? When rational beings feel that they must inevitably differ in opinion upon subjects of high importance and interest, surely they are mutually bound to lessen the inconvenience and unhappiness of such difference by all the means in their power. It is evil enough to be conscientiously compelled to disagree, without adding to this the rancor of enmity, and breaking up society into hostile bands intent upon nothing but mutual destruction. It is indeed a pestilent evil which has grown upon us in the heat of party strifes, to count every man that differs from us an enemy; and it is still worse to push this feeling out into all the relations of life, and all the business and intercourse of society-to scruple no means of effecting the disgrace and ruin of an adversary.

In the name of humanity, of truth, and candor, and our common religion, we reclaim against this diabolical spirit which is openly stalking forth and transforming men into furies, gladiators, assassins-habituating them to every thing that is base, false, and violent; openly shouting war to the knife! and proclaiming the lawfulness of all means for the good of our church, and the suppression of dissenters and liberals. Surely there is patriotism, morality, and moderation enough among us, to rebuke this foul spirit and chain this Leviathan. Let the men of candor, justice, and conscience, protest against all this violence, and frown at these fiery zealots as the men of Canterbury have done. Let the intolerable insolence of the state-clergy be condemned by their parishioners; and let the sacredness of the pulpit be defended by the people, when it is desecrated by the clergy, or let them leave the mock thunderers to launch their bolts in empty space. If peace is dearer to us than the cause of factions, and the interests of truth, virtue, and religion above those of party and of politics, then let all honest, and christian, and candid men join to decry and condemn the virulence, and violence, and disloyalty which are fast hastening on a crisis of the most alarming kind. Happy indeed would it be for the country if a respite could be obtained-a breathing time allowed when each might consider to what all this immorality will ultimately tend, if unchecked and unreproved. Violence on the one side will undoubtedly provoke violence on the other. The tories and the churchmen may foster and encourage the outrages of the physical force men against the liberals and the middle classes; but can they imagine that they would themselves be safe in the event of a chartist rebellion? Or that the men who say that the whigs are beating them with rods, would in the event of throwing off the yoke, hug those who have always chastised them with scorpions? How insane then is the policy which is at the present moment exacerbating all the feelings of hostile parties; and instead of aiming to

uphold morality and social order, is setting an example of outrageous insolence, immorality, disloyalty, and sedition to that rude and ignorant class which is known to be extensively organized and ripe for rebellion. Has not all this violence in the lower orders been stimulated, fostered, and called forth, by the example of their betters; and is it not at the present moment in danger of being imitated by those betters? Would it not be at once imitated by them on behalf of their Hanoverian Orangeman, if the favorable moment should occur, and if they could but persuade themselves that they had as strong a physical force to work with, as the unhappy and deluded chartists supposed they had? It is evident that there are clergymen who would not hesitate to rival Stephens, yea, ten to one, who would be zealous to sanctify the rebellion with prayers, in the name of the apostolical succession; and laymen, like Bradshaw, or even peers that must be nameless, who would rush from their castles or their club houses, to rival Frost or Lovett on the mountains of Wales.

The little unpretending volume before us has suggested to us the propriety of repeating the protest against party violence and rancor, which we have on former occasions not hesitated to put forth. Glad indeed should we be to find that our example had been imitated by other and more influential caterers for the reading and thinking public. We cannot but believe that the republication of this work in England, may be eminently serviceable at the present time, if men of all parties will but read it, and if perchance they retain any respect for the name of Christian by which they are designated.

The volume, indeed, discloses to us one fact of which, we confess, we were not fully aware; that the state of feeling in America, though of course depending on very different questions, singularly and lamentably harmonizes with that of the mother country. So much so, that if the references to particular facts and circumstances had been omitted, and America had not been mentioned, we should have received the work as eminently adapted to our own case. Take, for instance, the following as applicable to the state of political morality in America. Nothing could be written more appropriate to our own country at the pre

sent moment.

There is also a theory of opposition to the government, the beau ideal of an opposition man, which, it were to be wished, were more considered than it is. To pull down and destroy, is not, in ordinary circumstances, the legitimate end of an opposition; but it is to limit, to control, to correct, and thus ultimately to assist. It is not to look upon the government as a hostile power, that has made a lodgment in the country, and is to be expelled by a party war, but as a lawfully constituted power, that is to be watched, restrained, and kept from

going wrong. Still, it is the government of our country, and is to be respected. Still, it is the government of our country, and is to be regarded with a candid, and I had almost said, a filial spirit. Its officers are not to be assailed with scurrilous abuse, nor its departments to be degraded by vile epithets. There is a certain consideration and dignity to be preserved by an opposition; if not-if its spirit is altogether factious and fault-finding; if it rejoices over the errors of an administration, it so far loses all respectability; it shows that it is not so anxious for good government, as to be itself the government.

Oppositions, then, parties, party arguments and measures, all have their legitimate sphere. But now, I say, in the second place, that when they transcend their sphere, when they overleap the bounds of morality, they become engines of evil and peril to the country.

"The only sound and safe principle, I must continually insist, is that which binds morals and politics, in indissoluble union; which admits of no compromise, exception, or question; which will hear of nothing as expedient that is at variance with truth and justice. Politics are to have no scale of morality, graduated to their exigencies. That which is wrong everywhere else, is wrong here; that which is wrong for every other body of men, is wrong for a party. A bad man in every other relation, is a bad man for the country; he may, indeed, chance to espouse some right measure, but he who is devoid of all principles in private life, can give no satisfactory pledge that he will be governed by any principle in public life.

The evils of forsaking the moral guidance in political affairs, are various and vast, and they demand the most serious consideration; they more deeply concern the country than any peril to its visible prosperity; they are such, that they demand our most solemn meditation in our holiest hours and places.

"The tendency of political action, when set free from moral restraint, is to break down all personal independence in the country. Parties, then, demand, not honesty, but service of their votaries. Governments strengthen themselves by bribery and corruption. Oppositions take the same arms, and in their hour of success retort the same measures. Abuses become precedents, and precedents multiply abuses. Every new administration, every generation of politicians, becomes not wiser but worse than their predecessors, their fathers. The tendency of things, without moral restraint, is ever downwards. Already have we arrived at that stage of deterioration, when you will find many respectable and honest men in the country, blinded by reasonings like these; 'why should not an ad'ministration,' they say, 'reward its friends and supporters? What is it, but righting the wrongs done by a previous administration? 'What is it, in fact, but choosing its friends rather than its enemies, to help it carry on the government?' I will grant that this must be done in regard to its immediate council, its cabinet. But when it extends beyond this to subordinate officers, what is it but a system of favoritism and proscription, fatal to all public virtue? Honesty then becomes a discarded and persecuted virtue; and mere blind, unscrupulous, party zeal, becomes the only passport to honors and emoluments. Honorable citizenship is sunk in base partizanship. The entire

natural dignity, so far as it is connected with its political action, freedom, franchise, patriotism, self-respect-all is merged in a vile scramble for office. The national conscience is sold in the market; the national honor is all bowed down to the worship of interest; the corrupted nation sets up a golden calf in place of the divinity of pristine and holy truth; and not the Israelites at the footstool of God's manifested presence were more debased and sacrilegious idolaters. The destruction of mutual confidence and respect, is another evil connected with our party strifes, and to me it is one of the most painful.

'Pass through the different party circles of the country, and what shall you hear? In the course of a single day you shall hear every public man in the country charged with a total want of principle; you shall hear this constantly from men of the greatest sobriety and weight of character. Not one man in public life, high enough to be a mark for observation, shall escape this tremendous proscription. If you open the newspapers, in the hope by some patient reading and investigation, to ascertain what the truth is, you find yourself immediately launched upon a sea of doubts. Every fact, every measure, every man, is represented in such different lights, that you are totally at a loss, so far as that testimony goes, what to believe. You are in a worse condition than a juror, vexed by contrary pleadings; you have no judge to help you, and the whole country is filled with party pleadings, without law or precedent, without rule or restraint. You soon come to feel as if nothing less than the devotion of a whole life can enable you thoroughly to understand the questions that are brought before you; but you have no life to give; you have something else to do.

There is, indeed, one way to find relief; and it is the common way. It is to believe every thing that one party says, and nothing that another says; but he must altogether abjure his reason, who believes that this is the way to come at the truth. And yet this is the course usually adopted, and men are reading their favourite journals the year round, not to get their minds enlightened and their judgments corrected, but only to have their passions inflamed and their prejudices confirmed.

Thus the grand instrument of public opinion is broken. Sound and virtuous public opinion is the only safeguard of the country; and yet men lay their hands upon it as recklessly as if it were given them to practice upon, and to pervert and poison at their pleasure; as if this great surrounding atmosphere of thought, which invests and sustains the people, were but a laboratory for the experiments of ingenuity and tricks of legerdemain.

Then, I, say confidence is fallen, and with it is fallen mutual respect. What respect can there be between parties who are constantly accusing one another of fraud and perjury, of the worst practices, and the basest ends? What respect between editors of journals, who are daily charging each other with intrigue, malignity, and wilful falsehood? Can any honorable mind desire this state of things? Can nothing be done to introduce a new morality, a new courtesy into our discussions? Must our conflicts always be of this bad and brutal character? Is it not the inevitable tendency of this fierce and blasting recrimina