of a distant foe, and not to establish de novo, as has to be done by those who have adopted us for their model, and suppose themselves to be following our example, has necessarily given a bloody and disastrous character to these blind and mistaken efforts, and occasioned them to terminate, in every instance, in failures and disappointments. These failures, therefore, though they may awaken sympathy, cannot excite wonder, as no nation ever became free by such means, or per saltum, but by slow progress; by contenting itself with the occasional attainment of partial advantages, by long assuetude to the forms of public business, and by finally feeling its way, if we may so phrase it, to freedom and independence, greatness and glory. It is only, in a word, by cautious reforms, by a gradual enlightenment of the minds of the people, and occasional compromises, rather than by violent collisions with existing authorities, or the actual possessors of power, that the reformer and legislator sincerely desirous of ameliorating the condition of the masses, and of introducing practical and really beneficial improvements in legislation and government, can accomplish their objects, or promise themselves success in their attempts to bring them about. The famous Magna Charta of England was a compromise between the barons and the throne; and all the subsequent enlargements of liberty in that country, by which the people obtained a recognition of their rights, and a representation in parliament, were gradual acquisitions, sometimes made by sudden and violent struggles against tyranny, but always characterized by a certain moderation in the conduct and demands by the successful party, and by an abstinence from those sweeping and radical reforms which modern revolutionists so ambitiously aim at, and so vainly attempt to accomplish. The radical error with which they always set out, that the people are, par excellence, the nation, and not merely one of the classes, and that, generally, the least influential into which the latter is divided, necessarily leads to these rash and violent attempts to revolutionize and remodel the whole system and existing order of society, and invest the ignorant masses with rights they know not how to exercise, and a mock sovereignty, which only tempts them to play such "tricks before high heaven, as make the angels weep," and which invariably end in their VOL. XVI.-No. 32.

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again taking their former subordinate position, under some. military usurper, or upstart and popular tyrant of their own making. For the people are not only always a distinct and limited class in all old countries, but often occupy the condition of a mere commonalty, possessing neither privileges nor power, nor any recognized place among the other orders of the State.*

This was long the case in ancient Greece and Rome, and hence Mr. Bulwer, in his admirable work on "The Fall of Athens," remarks, in relation to the forms of Solon, that "he maintained or revived the senate of the aristocracy, but to check its authority he created the people." Niebuhr also states that "Rome's earlier citizens solely consisted of the patricians and their clients," and throws out the conjecture that "a free plebs was only formed by degrees, and that its first organization was owing to the elder Tarquin and Servius Tullius." The struggles, however, by which the people ultimately obtained a share in the government, under their tribunes, the ascendancy which they finally acquired in the State, and the democratic excesses into which they ran, or by which they passed

*The British government owes its excellence and stability to its being modelled upon the same general principles as those of the ancient republics-that of comprising a representation of the different ranks and classes into which society there, as in all old countries, is always divided. That is, the political is adapted to the social system-the parliament or governing body being composed of separate representations, of the religious order, the aristocracy and the mass of the people. A government consisting, like ours, of a mere division of political powers into the executive, the legisla tive and the judicial, acts less immediately under the direction of the constituent body than in a constitutional monarchy like that of England: for the same division of power exists there as in our system. The chief difference between the two systems is, that with us the above branches, namely, the executive, the legislative and the judiciary, constitute the government, which derives its authority from the people, but in its ordinary administration reflects the will only of the majority; while, under the English constitution, the measures of parliament are always, at least in theory, the result of a compromise between the representatives of the different orders and classes into which the society or nation is permanently divided. A portion of the assembly being composed of hereditary legislators, the parties into which it is divided are less apt to run into extremes and excesses than if the whole body were elevated to power by the votes of the people, as in this country, the ministry being dissolved at any moment, or the instant that it loses the support of the majority in the House of Commons. The difference, however, between the principles and working of the two governments is a pregnant and extensive subject, which we have not space or leisure to enter into at present.

through the usual cycle of changes, from democracy to despotism, or were once more enslaved, are matters of history too well known to need being dwelt on here. "The Roman constitution," says Niebuhr, "was in its greatest vigor when the assembly of the plebs formed a branch of the legislature, whose acts were subject to the veto of the senate." At this period, he states, an ordinance of the plebs was of no greater force than a bill, which, having passed through the House of Commons, must receive the assent of the other two branches of the legislature before it can become a law." "After a long struggle, however," he continues, "the veto of the senate was abolished, and the plebs allowed an absolute legislative sovereignty." But the time came at last, he goes on to observe, "when the assembly of the people arbitrarily curtailed the power of the supreme magistrates, and retrenched the property of the nobles, by agrarian laws. At that time the ordinances of the plebs were laws for every Roman, and their legal validity could not be contested, even by those who condemned them as ruinous.

The stages by which the legislative power of the plebs attained to absolute sovereignty were, first, by setting aside the Curies,* and it became sufficient to give the auctoritas patrum, if the senate sent an ordinance to the tribes, or adopted one passed by them. This change may be ascribed to the Dictator Q. Publilius. Half a century later, the veto of the senate was also abolished by the Hortensian law, and the tribes assumed the constituent authority, independent of that assembly-a dangerous absoluteness, against which good sense struggled very long, and which was first decisively established in C. Flaminius, in his tribunate."

The main feature of the constitution founded by Solon was, that the administrative branch of the government consisted of a representation of the four ancient orders into which the community was both socially and politically divided, rather than of the whole body of citizens. For a

The stronghold of the patricians was in the privileges they enjoyed as keepers of the sacra, by which, without exactly possessing priestly functions, they were charged with the regulations of the sacred rites and religious festivals and ceremonials. This enabled them to unite in their hands the power of Church and State, and gave them, therefore, a preponderating influence in the government.

system founded upon the modern doctrine of equality and the sovereignty of the people, by which the will of the more numerous mass is recognized as the only true and legitimate source of authority, could not have existed for a day amongst a people so wayward and excitable as were the Athenians. The institutions of Solon, on the contrary, were based upon the two primary principles, of a representation, first, of property, and next, of classes, so that though the main assembly of the people bore the character of a purely democratic body, it was composed in reality of a delegation from the different orders or tribes into which the citizens were both socially and politically divided.* The promotion, in a word, of the good of the whole community, as connected with the protection of the interests of the different orders into which it was naturally and constitutionally divided, and not an assertion of the "inalienable rights and natural equality of man," (phrases which ever form a text for mere diatribes, "full of sound and fury and signifying nothing," and always disgusting in proportion as they are eloquent,) formed the main object of his institutions and the practical end of his legislation. Of the success which attended this first great experiment in favor of human liberty and happiness, the greatness and glory of Athens, the intellectual splendor that surrounds

It was one of the advantages attending the division into tribes and classes, which prevailed in the ancient republics, that a rivalship was produced between the different orders, which was attended with advantage to the State. As the plebeians gained in privileges and power in ancient Rome, the patricians equally advanced in character, virtue and spirit, so that, up to a certain time, the contest between the two orders was attended with advantage to the commonwealth. The writers of the excellent Compendium of Roman History, digested from the works of Schlosser, Wachsmuth and Heeren, in referring to the period when the constitution had established this happy balance of power between the principal orders of the State, observe that "nothing but moderation, valor, fortitude, justice and prudence could now secure persons in their stations, who had formerly owed every thing to birth alone. It was this which gave such dignity to the character of those times, and such activity and vigilance to the military leaders. The plebeians were excited in no less degree by the change. They were constrained to double exertions in the public service, in order to supplant the present possessors of public offices; they were constrained to practice industry and frugality, in order to become their rivals in wealth; they were constrained to exhibit promptitude in supporting the public burdens, in order not to stand behind them in patriotism." The absence of this spirit of rivalship and emulous competition with opposing orders, when the people acquired absolute power, was one cause of their speedy degeneracy in the ancient republics, or of the downfall of the democracies of Greece and Rome.

her name, the since unreached height to which she attained in civilization and true enlightenment, which have rendered her literature and legislation the guides and beacon-lights of the human mind, form sufficiently glorious evidences, and have rendered her the wonder and the envy, and her achievements in every department of art, knowledge and science, the admiration and despair of all succeeding nations. Hence the eloquent writer from whom we have just been quoting truly observes that, "looking round us at this hour, more than four-and-twenty centuries after the establishment of the constitution we have just surveyed, in the labors of the student, in the dreams of the poet, in the inspirations of the artist, in the philosophy of the legis lator, we yet behold the imperishable blessings we derive from the liberties of Athens and the institutions of Solon, The life of Athens became extinct; but her soul transfused itself, immortal and immortalizing, through the world."

We

In the introduction of universal suffrage our example prepared another snare for the feet of our French and European imitators, no less fatal and betraying than our doctrine of the sovereignty of the people, which, we have endeavored to show, can never be successfully reduced to practice among older nations of Europe, or where society has assumed those artificial, yet permanent forms, which the distinctions arising from the protection of property, from superior birth and intelligence, and which the influence of hereditary ideas naturally and necessarily give rise to, and which time consecrates and confirms. shall then endeavor to show that, as civil society owes its origin to, and is distinguished from the savage state solely by the institution of property, or the protection drawn round it by government and law, our first ideas of right, and consequently our earliest notions of true liberty, are derived from this great and prime source of human improvement and social happiness. That the introduction of universal suffrage, therefore, is a retrograde step in legislation, or one directly calculated to contravene the objects and destroy the rights which it is the purpose of free institutions to secure and preserve. That those who look to higher sources than the declaration of independence* and the

*The colonists grounded their resistance upon the violation of their charters and written rights by the mother country, and not upon the principles of natural justice, &c., asserted in the declaration of independence.