4. Love over it presideth, With meek and watchful awe, BERNARD BARTON. LESSON XIX. The Liberty of the Press. 1. WHERE the press is free and discussion unrestrained, the mind, by the collision of intercourse, gets rid of its own asperities, a sort of insensible perspiration takes place in the body politick, by which those acrimonies, which would otherwise fester and inflame, are quietly dissolved and dissipated. But now, if any aggregate assembly shall meet, they are censured; if a printer publishes their resolutions he is punished. Rightly to be sure in both cases, for it has been lately done. 2. If the people say, let us not create tumult, but meet in delegation, they cannot do it; if they are anxious to promote parliamentary reform in that way, they cannot do it; the law of the last session has, for the first time, declared such meetings to be a crime. What then remains? The liberty of the press ONLY; that sacred palladium, which no influence, no power, no minister, no government, which nothing but the depravity, or folly, or corruption of a jury, can ever destroy. 3. And what calamities are the people saved from by having publick communication left open to them? I will tell you, gentlemen, what they are saved from, and what the government is saved from; I will tell you also to what both are exposed by shutting up that communication. 4. In one case sedition speaks aloud, and walks abroad; the demagogue goes forth; the publick eye is upon him; he frets his busy hour upon the stage; but soon, either weariness, or bribe, or punishment, or disappointment, bears him down, or drives him off, and he appears no more. In the other case, how does the work of sedition go forward? 5. Night after night the muffled rebel steals forth in the dark, and casts another and another brand upon the pile, to which, when the hour of fatal maturity shall arrive, he will apply the flame. If you doubt of the horrid consequences of suppressing the effusion of individual discontent, look to those enslaved countries where the protection of despotism is supposed to be secured by such restraints. 6. Even the person of the despot there is never in safety. Neither the fears of the despot, nor the machinations of the slave, have any slumber, the one anticipating the moment of peril, the other watching the opportunity of aggression. The fatal crisis is equally a surprise upon both; the decisive instant is precipitated without warning, by folly on the one side, or by phrensy on the other, and there is no notice of the treason till the traitor acts. 7. But, gentlemen, if you wish for a nearer and more interesting example, you have it in the history of your own revolution; you have it in that memorable period, when the monarch found a servile acquiescence in the ministers of his folly; when the liberty of the press was trodden under foot! when venal sheriffs returned packed juries to carry into effect those fatal conspiracies of the few against the many; when the devoted benches of publick justice were filled by some of those foundlings of fortune, who, overwhelmed in the torrent of cor ruption at an early period, lay at the bottom like drowned bodies, while soundness of sanity remained in them; but at length becoming buoyant by putrefaction, they rose as they rotted, and floated to the surface of the polluted stream, where they were drifted along, the objects of terrour, and contagion, and abomination. 8. In that awful moment of a nation's travail; of the last gasp of tyranny, and the first breath of freedom, how pregnant Is the example! The press extinguished, the people enslaved, and the prince undone. As the advocate of society, therefore, of peace, of domestick liberty, and the lasting union of the two countries, I conjure you to guard the liberty of the press, that great sentinel of state, that grand detecter of publick imposture! guard it, because, when it sinks, there sinks with it, in one common grave, the liberty of the subject, and the security of the crown.-CURRANS LESSON XX. Wisdom. 1. WISDOM is humble, said the voice of God. And hastes, by death, to wipe its honour clean. 3. Wisdom retires, said God, And weeps with all who have just cause to weep: Alone to wield the sword, and rush on death; 4. Wisdom, said God, is highest, when it stoops And breathes adoring praise. There Wisdom stoops And meditates the while of inward worth.-POLLOK LESSON XXI. Practical Religion. 1. PRACTICAL religion confers upon its possessor à glorious triumph amid the sorrows of life. Suppose poverty comes with its train of calamities; or suppose detraction points its barbed arrows at a blameless character; or suppose bereavement casts a withering shade over the best earthly hopes and joys; or suppose disease, which mocks the highest efforts both of friendship and of skill, impress itself upon the countenance and make its lodgement in the very seat of life; or suppose, if you please, that this whole tribe of evils come marching in fearful array to assail an individual at once, I am sure that I do not say too much for practical religion, when I declare to you, that it will enable its possessor to meet them all with serenity and triumph. 2. To do this must require a high effort of faith, I acknowledge; but only such an effort has been exemplified in the experience of thousands. Oh! when I have stood amid such scenes, and seen the bright beams of joy irradiate the countenance over which sorrow had thrown her deepest shades, just as the bow cast brilliant hues upon the dark cloud in the going down of the sun, I have looked upon religion as a bright angel come down from heaven to exercise a sovereign influence over human calamity; and if I have formed a wish, or offered a prayer in respect to you at such a moment, it has been that this good angel may be your constant attendant through this vale of tears.-SPRAGUE. LESSON XXII. Rolla's Address to the Peruvians. 1. My brave associates, partners of my toil, my feelings, and my fame! Can Rolla's words add vigour to the virtuous energies which inspire your hearts? No; you have judged as I have, the foulness of the crafty plea by which these bold invaders would delude you. Your generous spirit has compared, as mine has, the motives, which in a war like this, can animate their minds, and ours. 2. They, by a strange phrensy driven, fight for power, for plunder, and extended rule; we, for our country, our altars, and our homes. They follow an adventurer whom they fear, and obey a power which they hate: we serve a monarch whom we love, a God whom we adore. 3. Whenever they move in anger, desolation tracks their progress! Whenever they pause in amity, affliction mourns their friendship! They boast they come but to improve our state, enlarge our thoughts, and free us from the yoke of errour! Yes; they will give enlightened freedom to our minds, who are themselves the slaves of passion, avarice, and pride. 4. They offer us their protection: yes, such protection as vultures give to lambs, covering and devouring them! They call on us to barter all of good we have inherited and proved, for the desperate chance of something better, which they promise. Be our plain answer this: 5. The throne we honour is the people's choice; the laws we reverence are our brave father's legacy; the faith we follow teaches us to live in bonds of charity with all mankind, and die in hopes of bliss beyond the grave. Tell your invaders this; and tell them too, we seek no change; and least of all, such change as they would bring us.--SHERIDAN. LESSON XXIII. Genius. 1. THERE is a certain charm about superiority of intellect, that winds into deep affections, which a much more constant and even amiability of mankind, in lesser men, often fails to reach. Genius makes many enemies, but it makes sure friends; friends who forgive much, who endure long, who exact little; they partake of the character of disciples as well as friends. There lingers about the human heart a strong inclination to look upward, to revere in this inclination lies the source of religion, of loyalty, and also of the worship and immortality which are rendered so cheerfully to the great of old. And, in truth, it is a divine pleasure to admire! admiration seems in some measure to appropriate to ourselves the qualities it honours in others. We wed; we root ourselves to the natures we so love to contemplate, and their life grows a part of our own. LESSON XXIV. Ancient Babylon. 1. BABYLON is often mentioned in the Bible, and is remark able for having been the place where the Jews were so long |