commerce,* and that commerce is altogether an affair of the State, and quote Montesquieu for authority. Assure them that luxuries are for the aristocracy--necessaries for the people. The one leads to vice, the other to virtue. Preach up poverty, humility, and contentment-to all which nothing is so conducive as an impost. Franklin often speaks of luxuries as ruinous to the rising colonies and young states, and yet we find him more than once brought to a stand, and to very grave doubts, whether after all, the temptation of luxuries did not stimulate to new industry, greater enterprise, higher views; in short, he was not quite sure that levelling down these aristocratic cumulations of luxuries, and diffusing them among the people, might not promote general civilization, and tend to elevate and refine man. But Jefferson was afflicted with no doubts. He thought exemption from the influence of luxuries cheaply purchased, even at the expense of a ruined national credit. But as this subject involves the whole question of sumptuary laws, we must pass it over. They fill many and many a long page upon the statute books of our honored English ancestors, whose pride it was "to stand in the ancient ways" and fill many and many a page of English history; but happily they could not forever withstand the onward progress of man, and they have long since gone to rest along with the kindred laws and prejudices pertaining to trial by ordeal-debasing money-the burning of heretics§-fixing wages-granting monopolies-judicial torture-purveyance -forestalling-regrating-alchemy-astrology-witchcraft-persecution of the Jews-prejudices against the use of coal for domestic purposesagainst machinery-against numbering the people-against enlarging London-et id omne genus; gone-all gone to a cemetery, where no resurrection will ever find them. "Hic jacet" sumptuary laws and prejudices against luxuries. The truth is, that the luxuries of Athens and Rome, which have so much excited the spleen of moralists and the ingenuity of historians, were the ill-gotten products of rapine and injustice-never the proceeds of honesty and industry. Luxuries gained by honest industry never corrupt, but always elevate and refine. The hope of their fruition constitutes the most powerful incentive, and the highest reward to popular industry. Nearly all the commonest necessaries of life have in their day been esteemed luxuries-and the luxuries that now are, will in their turn become necessaries their history ever marking the progress of man in refinement and civilization. But against all these advantages, impost erects its brazen front. The impudence of its assumptions are ever equalled by the success of its impositions. And we are accordingly next prepared to find its friends coolly and complacently putting forward the claim, that it is not only * Jefferson, an inveterate hater of luxuries, never lost an opportunity of bearing testimony against them. "The great mass of the articles on which impost is paid, are foreign luxuries purchased by those only who are rich enough to afford themselves the use of them."-Annual Message, December 2, 1806. [Am. State Papers, vol. v. p. 458.] Same in his inaugural address, 1805. We cannot stay now to expose these errors, but take the one article of iron-from 10,000 miles of railroad iron down to a cambric needle-and there is not a farmer, laborer, nor housewife in all the land, that does not feel and groan under the impost upon the article, although they may not be able to tell how they are aggrieved by its mysterious influence, any more than they can describe the mysterious cause of the cholera. The effects, however, are sufficiently apparent in both cases. Works, Vol. I. 344, 433. † Works, Vol. I. 577. ý De hæretico comburendo. negatively no tax--no burthen-but even that is positively a great blessing! Massachusetts, whose principles of political economy, and theory of national greatness, are as variable as the winds that first blew commerce to her shores, and subsequently wafted it away again, stoutly maintains in 1850, that the higher the tariff , the greater the blessing the weightier the tax, the lighter the burden. And Pennsylvania verily believes in her heart that an increased impost on railroad iron is the only salvation of the country. Of course railroad iron is a luxury for the rich, and all who ride on railroads, and all who own or purchase merchandise transported on railroads-from the merchants and their customers of Wisconsin, to the emigrants from Ireland and Germany, all-all are wealthy aristocrats! And the price of railroad iron must be raised higher yet to mark it as an imported luxury, corrupting to the popular masses ! We must now bring this article to a close, having rather exhausted our space than the subject. Should it meet with acceptance from the friends of free-trade, we may subsequently take up the history of the impost in the United States, on which occasion its deceptive character will still farther appear. It is indeed not only a stupendous imposition upon man, but it is a hideous monster- for what else but a monster can be hailed in Pennsylvania as the greatest good to the state and salvation to the country—and in South-Carolina be denounced as the greatest evil to the state, and the ruin of the country! It is humiliating to know, and painful to feel that the same truth and honesty, so becoming, so useful, and so beautiful in all the social relations of life, are still regarded with suspicion by princes, and distrusted by cabinets.* It is impossible there can be two opposite rules of morality-one, of swindling and fraud for the use of governments, politely called policy and another, of truth and virtue for the use of the people, vulgarly called honesty. Impost, as its name betokens, is not only an imposter, and a two-faced monster, but it is the fundamental resource, as we have seen, for the support of wars, and the payment of war-debts. Abolish impost, and the tap of 500,000 drums will rouse to war no more. It discourages agriculture by closing its markets. It discourages commerce by curtailing its business. It seduces government to unlimited extravagance by cheating the people into the belief that it is neither a tax, nor a burthen, but a positive blessing. It confuses industry, unsettles trade, and perplexes capital, by its constant fluctuations, and the absolute certainty that the only quiet will ever have is quiet in the grave. It requires no small amount of courage to invade an ancient way, or attack a beaten path.f Yet we have implicit belief in the general tendency *“ Nothing is so mistaken as the supposition that a person is to extricate himself from a diffi culty by intriguo, by chicanery, by dissimulation, by trimming, by an untruth, by an injustice. This increases the difficulties tenfold; and those who pursue these methods get themselves , so involved at length, that they can turn no way but their infamy becomes more exposed."Jefferson-in a letter to Peter Carr, dated Paris, August 19, 1785, vol. I, 286. Stand in the ancient ways"-stare super vias antiquas-is a time-honored maxim, but honored in the breach as well as in the observance, for it hae successively aud successfully been invaded by every railroad and canal, and demolished by every invention and improvement, in all the civilized globe. The Earl of Normanton's motto, " Via trita, via tuta"--the beaten path is the safe path,—is not adapted to human progress. to human perfection, and a firm conviction that the progress of public opinion is ever from evil to good-from wrong to right-from error to truth. We are fully aware of the great unpopularity, not to say odium, that must necessarily attend an attack upon a long established custom, and especially when that custom, like impost, is a financial custom, and the source of untold millions of revenue to civilized governments. Still the frequent assertion, and publication of truth, can never be without effect.* It is an old proverb, that truth, though often in eclipse, is never extinguished. It is a most consoling reflection to the practical philanthropist that the progress of improvement is irresistible. "Time, and change of circumstances and opinions, have the same progressive effect in rendering modes of government obsolete, as they have upon customs and manners." The present progress of man is the best evidence of his past errors. In what condition would the world now be, had man in every age still continued to stand in the old paths! NOTES ON THE NATURE OF INSANITY. LIFE, mind, soul! Physics, intelligence, immortality! Who can conneot, or who sever these? Poetry and insanity-wisdom and folly-contend for audience, while they descant upon them. The mystery of life, and the aspirations of the soul, have founded in the human heart the most absurd, the most disgusting, and the most cruel superstitions. The lights of science and reason, gleaming into the darkness of superstition and of ignorance, have revealed the true character of vitality wherever it exists, and have divested it of its wonderful and supernatural properties. It is now known that vitality, in every condition of its existence, is essentially the same; that the lichen, the shrub, and the animated body, are all formed by similar vital processes, modified only in their mutual relations by the character of surrounding material elements, and by the circumstances of singular or multitudinous vital existences being joined within a given body. The body of man has lost the peculiar and incomprehensible interest which ignorance once threw about it, because it lives. There is no more reason for attributing to the human organization, because of life, qualities of infinite and immortal character, than there is to the lower animals-to the vegetable, or even to the inorganic creation. The human body is mere matter, and its growth and decay are no more wonderful than the life and death of the simplest *There is at least one benefit to be expected from the open assertion and publication of sound maxims, which is, that even those who relish them the least are thereby laid under a necessity of keeping within some bounds, lest they should forfeit their characters altogether.-Vattel, Bk. II., ch. i., ( i. Veritatem laborare nimis sæpe, aiunt, extingui, nunquam. organized substance. This is the lesson of science, and it is already approved by the intelligent and thoughtful. In meditating upon this lesson, its truth is evinced. The intellectual vision is brightened, and the gaze of mind reaches far beyond its former boundaries. Truth always expands the mind and beatifies the soul. The pride of man is humbled ; his selfishness vanishes, and charity finds rest in his bosom. What right has man to say that he is the only recipient of the immortal spark, which ever aspires to the eternal throne? Why may not matter in other forms, as well as that of the human frame, be possessed of a conscious, though enchained soul ? Are all the great burning planets—all the cold, frigid stars,--all the rocky, barren, uninhabited and uninhabitable worlds throughout the expanse of heaven made for nought? Or, from earth, and every star in the heavens,—from the milky-way, whose myriads of worlds spread a mantle of glory through the sky, and from each lone and brilliant orb which glitters in the ether of heaven, shall not immortal souls congregate in the everlasting habitations ? None can say no! Nor is it even known in what shape, whether of earth or air, or rock or shrub, or of all the invisible spirits which surround us, and with which we sympathize, exist. There has been a doctrine, or rather a feeling, common to all the philosophers of every age, that the human mind and soul are separate elements, distinct in their duties and powers. Some holding this opinion have thought that mind is of earthly beginning, though of infinite existence hereafter; while the human soul has its origin, as well as destiny, in eternity. There are, however, sufficient reasons for believing that the human mind is not the consequence of elaborative vital actions. The intellect of the child is as powerful, there is good reason to believe, as that of the oldest or wisest man. The efforts of intelligence in the infant, evince as much innate force and scope (when its relations with new and untried instruments are considered,) as the sublimest reaches of matured reason. The silly, gabbling idiot, (if he has intellect at all,) will display as much rationality as the most splendid mind can do, operating under the disadvantage of his imperfect physical instruments of mental manifestation. The slowest, as well as the quickest intelligence, can be brought to an equality of knowledge, if trouble, corresponding with the differences in the perfection of their mental instruments, be employed to teach the more obtuse. Finally, there are no known boundaries to the intellectual scope. tellect, in every relation—in the young and old—the silly and the wise, the ancient and the modern, has no limit to its power. Mind is absolutely equal in power, it matters not where it may be found-for, it is infinite . But vital actions are not equally perfect in the organizations of men. Nor has the human body stamped upon it any of the elements of infinity. Mind, then, notwithstanding its variableness in appearance, cannot be dependent upon the body for existence, or upon vitality for elaboration. The human mind is able to exist independently of the body. The decay and death of the material organization of man affects not his mind. The instruments of the material relations of mind may perish, and possibly those relations may cease. But the power which drives the human machine, does not necessarily perish with it. Many strange phenomena, and especially those of insanity, prove that the usual relations of mind and matter, through the medium of the human body, In may be greatly modified; and they go far to show that there may be intellectual existence independent of physical. A few observations, explanatory of the essential nature of insanity, delirium, and dreams, may not be improper in the present connection. In the body, the mind is addressed and affected by external or relative, and by internal or organic sensation. The organs of external sensation are the ordinary sentient instruments of mind. Through their operation, mind is brought into relation with the external world, and thought is aroused, and knowledge is secured by intelligence. In its material relations, mind must operate upon the things of earth through a material medium. And it must reoperate upon its kind also through its material instruments of manifestation. Internal, or organic sensation, is quite of a different character. In the usual microscopic operations which result in the growth and decay of the human body, minute changes occur, minute bodies change position, and minute currents are set in motion. These all make a certain marked impression upon the nervous system, and are noticed more or less distinctly by the mind. But the ordinary circulation of the blood in the larger, and especially in the capillary vessels, and the movements of the red particles of the blood before and against nervous filaments, give rise to still more marked sensations. These, inasmuch as they occur within the compass of the body, may all be termed organic sensations. Now, intelligence cannot, in its human connection at least, take notice of many subjects at a time. And it is a well known fact, that attention can be only directed to a single object (or sensation) at the same instant. It may, therefore, be said, that there is a kind of controversy between relative and organic sensation, as to which shall absorb the attention of the mind. In the unborn infant, the active movements of vitality impress sensations upon its mind. Who can tell the dreamy visions which brighten the way of the young soul, as it fades from the eternal world and gradually puts on this "muddy vesture of decay?" Who knows the lessons first taught to the wondering mind of man, by the soft impress of slumbering sensibilities? Ah! doubtless they flit across the attention often, as we explore the stores of memory, and we know not where we obtained them. But at birth new relations are entered upon by the human body. New and intense impressions are at once made upon the mind. Light, heat, sound, and external touch, painfully impress the senses; and, by their greatly superior intensity, distract the attention entirely from its former dream-like employment. The observation of these, and the actions to which they give rise, constitute the ordinary life of man. Insanity, delirium, and dreams, are the consequences of the withdrawal of the mind from some cause or other, from the dominion of external sensation, and the consequent domination of organic sensibility in affording it food for ideas, thought, motive, and action. There is no such thing as a sick mind, an impaired mind, or a deranged mind. Observe a man in a high fever. The excitement of the nervous system is such that the nearest, and first, and most constant impressions upon it, absorb it altogether. They are of themselves sufficiently intense, under the circumstances of fever, to take possession of the attention and affect the operations of the mind. These impressions are made by the internal agents of sensation. The circulation is rapid. The blood hurries through the capillaries, and is forced into close contact with the finer nerves. The VOL. XXVII.-NO. V. 5 1 |