If government be founded in a Social Compact, we must suppose that, before the formation of that compact, man being in what is technically styled "the state of nature," each individual member of the human family constituted in himself a free sovereign and independent state, and that society was composed as it were of unconnected particles, until the social compact, infusing into the mass cohesive power, hardened the loose aggregation into that firm foundation, have been reared all the institutions of civil society. To this view we have several objections, which will be briefly stated.

This theory seems, if not to involve, at least to be intimately allied with, that other one which we consider equally erroneous: we mean the doctrine which maintains that the race, originally savage, has been progressively developed to its present high state of civilization. This mistaken idea we have, without due consideration, received from antiquity. Had man been created a barbarian, he must always have remained so. In every nation, civilization has advanced under external, not internal, influences. Of an entirely isolated people, emerging from the savage into the civilized state, History furnishes no instance. The leaven must have been applied from without, or the untutored mind had never expanded into intellectual life. The doctrine of a State of Nature, in all its bearings on civil and political relations, de

serves to be buried along with the exploded dogmas of the Scholastic Philosophy.

Government, as we hold, derives its origin from a higher source than the Social Compact, or any merely human authority-from the Creator Himself. In the institution of the family, God planted the seed of all human government. This germ, as the race increased, has itself expanded in all directions, co-extensively with the wants which it was to supply. It seems clear that the complicated mechanism of the celestial motions can, with no more certainty, be derived from the great law of gravity, than government can be deduced from the institution of the family relation. As in that exquisite organ, the human eye, the Creator has exhibited a perfect model of adaptation to the laws of optics, by imitating which in artificial instruments, man has been enabled to attain such wonderful results; so in the institution of the family, He has presented us with a perfect model of a political community. After this pattern every human government has been constructed, though, with all their cumbrous machinery, they fall infinitely short of their faultless original.

In the patriarchal age men reasoned but little about inalienable rights; they were compelled by the presence of dangers from without, to coalesce and form societies. And here we see the gradual development of the family relation. As the original stock increased and sent off its colonies in divergent radii from the common centre Ararat, the father of a family soon becoming the head of a tribe or clan, the patriarchal age commenced; so that from the family to the community was but a single step. As the race continued to increase, the tribe soon rose into the nation, and the patriarch, in some cases, became the king, while in others the patriarchal authority, gradually becoming extinguished, gave place to the Democratic form of government. Thus it appears that from the family may be derived, by gentle and natural gradations, every existing system of polity. And this may be done without resorting to the cumbrous hypothesis of a Social Compact, invented by certain philosophers to prove a favorite theory. Thus on the Newtonian principle of philosophizing, "to assign no more reasons than are necessary to account for the phenomena," this brilliant conception of Locke proves to be far more beautiful than useful.

But again, this theory unfortunately will not bear to be carried out to the ultimate conclusions that can be logically deduced from it. These conclusions shock the susceptibilities of its most strenuous advocates. If government is based upon a Social Compact, we must at once remove all restraints upon the right of suffrage; for the authority of law being founded in the consent of the governed, this becomes a sacred and inalienable right. The felon and the foreigner may boldly demand access to the ballot-box, as an inalienable privilege, of which none of the petty considerations of personal character, public expediency, or want of any arbitrary qualifications for citizenship, can justly deprive them. Our naturalization laws, too, and the statute that a freeman must vote in the town or state in which he resides, are palpably unjust. Indeed, all laws relating to the subject are utterly useless;

all legal restraints null and void; nay, even to women and minors cannot be denied a right which they never consented to relinquish. In a word, government has not the least authority to impose any civil disabilities whatever upon its subjects.

Again, this theory leads directly to the modern doctrine of the democracy, that the will of the people, wherever or however expressed, must have the force of law—a doctrine which not only renders a written constitution a paper nullity, but subjects all our dearest rights to the lawless will of an everchanging partisan majority. Indeed, the same principle need be carried but a step farther, to fully establish the nonresistant, no-government theory. But this, as is evident, is nothing more nor less than the State of Nature, from which we started; so that this beautiful hypothesis, after all its meanderings through philosophic brains, faithfully conducts us to our original position. It will be seen, therefore, that the doctrine under consideration reduces itself to a mere absurdity. It destroys itself with the razor-like sharpness of its own subtleties.

Providence seems to have ordained that governments should be subject to a law somewhat similar to that which regulates the celestial motions. Perpetually moving around the great common centre, and unable to remain stationary at the mean distance of a constitutional republic, they are ever vibrating between the burning perihelion of a lawless democracy, and the chilling aphelion of despotism. We had hoped that our own country was free from this law of governmental gravitation; but recent events, and especially the prevalence of the opinion which we have opposed, supply reason for apprehension that we are still subject to its destructive power.

THE MISSION OF ROME.

THE universal law of gradation in the powers of man, would seem to have been, in the earlier ages, more apparent in its effects on his physical than on his mental nature. We say apparent, for there is no reason to suppose that in native vigor of the intellectual, more than of the corporeal, powers, nature was less partial to her favorites then, than at the present. But we mean that the immeasurable distance between the different degrees of mental power, which now exists in the world, is owing, mainly, to cultivation on the one hand, and to neglect on the other. When, however, our race was as yet in its infancy, as it were, this natural line of distinction not being widened by artificial means, (since the powers of the body are more inevitably and vigorously developed than those of the mind,) we perceive that the physical and baser mental faculties, which we possess in common with the brute creation, constituted the chief distinction between man and man. The world's Aristocracy, if we may be allowed the expression, were as ignorant of all those acquisitions which befit man's better nature, as

the meanest of the rabble; while a mere animal courage, and a sort of short-sighted sagacity, were the admiration and the aim of minds which might have soared even to communion with the Deity, through the grandest of His works. Men were in the state of children whose minds are as yet undeveloped.

Hence, we believe, arose the radical imperfection of the earlier governments, (and one too of which all mankind have by no means, even yet, perceived the fallacy,) their dependence upon physical power for the obedience of the subject.

From this mistake, Rome in her earlier and more glorious days was free; for, if the kings, who are reported to have preceded the Republic, were not mere mythological personages, their rule was but little more arbitrary than that of an Athenian Archon; for the heterogeneous mass of their subjects was to be held together only by the most conciliatory measures. The folly, kindred to that before mentioned, of cajoling and deceiving the people, was, we think, together with the debasement engendered by luxury, (from which indeed it naturally arose,) a powerful agent in the nation's ruin. But that subject will occur again. We will endeavor to present a brief sketch of the changes in the government of Rome, during her progression to the acme of her glory; explaining, before the conclusion, what we believe to have been the design of Providence which she fulfilled.

If we concur with the majority of modern critics, in considering the earlier kings of Rome as mere personifications of the genius of her people, Romulus, of the warlike, and Numa, of the religious spirit, we leave the origin of the state veiled in obscurity. The descendants of the founders of a nation, however, are generally to be found among its nobility, and thus, perhaps from the character of the Roman Patricians, as it is developed to our view, we may infer that their ancestry were quite as lawless and aggressive as the fabled Romulus and his associates.

But, however commenced, undoubtedly the most important of the early measures adopted by the new Government, was the granting to the plebeians such immunities and privileges as raised them to an influential station in the state; for a government without a vigorous and respectable commonalty, is like a house without a foundation.

There is, however, in the very nature of a monarchy, even when limited, a tendency to the increase and concentration of power in one individual; and Rome was, in time, brought to feel most bitterly the tyranny which such power invariably originates.

It is a merciful provision of Heaven, that the temper of a great people is not, like the inflammable gases, ready to explode at the first touch, and without previous provocation; but rather (if we may be allowed the comparison) like condensed vapor, patiently enduring a succession, and even increase of aggravations, up to a certain point; but the tyrant who dares to pass the limit of their patience, is crushed with his minions, by the fearful vengeance that ensues.

Such we believe to have been the temper of the Roman people, and such they showed it, at the expulsion of the Tarquins. It does not,

སྐ

indeed, always chance that the tyrant, who is swept away by the fury of the storm, is more oppressive than his predecessors. We do not believe that the people suffered more under the Second, than under the First Tarquin; nor, to refer to a modern instance, the English, under the First Charles, than under the preceding princes of his dynasty. But the fool-hardy tyranny of both these rulers lay in their daring to insult, by fresh aggravations, even though they had been the slightest, those tempers, which they knew, or should have known, to be goaded already even to desperation. It was for this that they lost, the one, his crown, and the other, his head.

Although by the general revolt of an oppressed people, tyrannical rulers are forced to acknowledge the great truth, that with the people is the residue of power, and great advances are always, at such seasons, made in the experimental science of government; nevertheless, it is generally, and very naturally, the case, that the best measures are not adopted to maintain the conquered ground. Thus, to recur again to modern history, although, by the horrors of the French Revolution, a memorable lesson was impressed upon Tyranny, yet few will contend that the reign of the First Consul was more favorable to liberty than that of the innocent and unhappy Louis. We believe this to have been the case with the Roman people, and that, in all their successive rebellions and revolutions, they were too easily contented with the removal of present abuse, and too heedless of such a radical change in the government, as would prevent a recurrence of the evil. Their Senate seems to have closely resembled in its constitution the present Upper House in the British Parliament; and had the people, while the power was in their hands, established a body of their own representatives, corresponding to the House of Commons in England, we believe they would have adopted a wise precaution against future oppression. But it is idle to censure a past age for ignorance, in any of the experimental sciences, and especially in that of government.

We come next, passing over the long and checkered history of the Republic, to the rise of the Empire upon its ruins-an event which, we believe, is often contemplated in an entirely erroneous light.

It is undoubtedly a general truth, that, as nations sink in luxury and vice, their governments become monarchical and arbitrary in their character, unless they fall under a foreign despotism, before a domestic tyranny can arise. The history of the world is one continued illustration of this truth. It results from the very nature and tendency of the artificial distinctions which invariably exist in society; for the influx of luxury is always preceded by that of refinement, of which it is the abuse. Now, among the lower classes, refinement is confounded with luxury and voluptuousness, and luxury sinks into sensuality and debasement. But, among the families of noble blood, owing to the prevalence of individual and family pride, (which motives do not affect the populace,) the main feature of the change produced is, that for the hardy valor and energy of their uncorrupted ancestry, they substitute a subtle craftiness, by which the common people, now sunk in degradation, are readily controlled. Such was the case in Rome;