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digested he cannot be too decisive in their execution.

It was not, indeed, under the actual rule of monarchs, however arbitrary, that royal authority was raised to its highest pitch in France. It was Richelieu, who, under a regency, rapidly established such a system of tyranny, as the boldest sovereign had seldom dared to attempt. He improved on all the anterior corruptions; and, as a lively French author says, tried to conceal their being corruptions, by erecting them into political maxims. Mazarin, with inferior ability, which would not have enabled him to give the impulse, attempted still more to accelerate the movement of that machine which his predecessor had set a going with such velocity; and a civil war was the consequence.

Happily, the examples of neither the kings, the laws, nor the constitution of France, can be strictly applicable to us. Happily also, we live at a time, when genuine freedom is so completely established among us: when the constitution, powers, and privileges of parliament are so firmly settled; the limits of the royal prerogative so exactly defined, and so fully understood; and the mild, moderate, and equitable spirit of the illustrious family in which it is invested, is withall so conspicuous, that as Blackstone observes, topics of government, which, like the mysteries of the Bona Dea, were formerly thought too sacred to be divulged to any but the initiated, may now, without the smallest offence, be fully and temperately discussed.'

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At this tumultuous period, when we have seen almost all the thrones of Christendom trembling to their foundation; we have witnessed the British constitution, like the British oak, confirmed and rooted by the shaking of that tremendous blast, which has stripped kingdoms of their crowns, levelled the fences and inclosures of law, laid waste the best earthly blessings of mankind, and involved in desolation a large part of the civilized world. When we have beheld absolute monarchies, and republican states, alike ravaged by the tempest, shall we not learn still more highly to prize our own unparalleled political edifice, built with such fair proportions, on principles so harmonious and so just, that one part affords to another that support which, in its turn, it receives; while each lends strength, as well as stability to all?

they are the surest guides of action, so are they the surest guards from danger.

Well might the view of this well-founded power produce the remark which it drew forth from a sagacious Frenchman, who was comparing the solid constitutional authority of the British monarch, with the more specious, but less secure fabric of the despotism of the kings of France- That a king of England, who acted according to the laws, was the greatest of all monarchs!'

But while the convulsions of other governments, built on less permanent principles, have riveted our affection to our own; and while an experimental acquaintance with the miseries of anarchy most naturally lead us, as subjects, to a strong sense of the duty of obedience :-with equal zeal would we wish it to be inculcated on princes, that they should be cautious never to multiply occasions for exacting that obedience; that they should use no unnecessary compulsion by seizing as a debt what good subjects are always willing to pay as a duty: and what is then only to be relied upon, when it is spontaneous and cordial.

It is observable, that those monarchs who have most sedulously contended for prerogative, have been among the feeblest and the least capable of exercising it; and that those who have struggled most earnestly for unjust power, have seldom enjoyed it themselves, but have made it over to mistresses and favourites. This is par ticularly exemplified in two of our weakest and most unhappy princes, Edward II. and Richard II.-Whether it was that this very imbecility made them more contentious about their prerogative, and more obstinate in resisting the demands of parliament; or that their favourites stimulated them to exactions, the benefit of which was to be transferred to themselves. The character of Edward III. (notwithstanding his faults) was consistently magnanimous. He was not more brave than just. He was attentive to the dignity of his crown in proportion to that magnanimity, and to the creation and execution of laws in proportion to that justice; and he took no important steps without the advice of parliament. The wretched reign and miserable catastrophe of each of the two first-named princes, furnish a striking contrast to the energy and popularity of the last; of whom Hume observes, that his domestic government was even more admirable than his foreign conquests;' and of whom Selden says, that one would think by his actions that he never was at home, and by his laws that he never was abroad.'

How slender is the security of unlimited power, let the ephemeral reigns of eastern despots declare! A prince who governs a free people, enjoys a safety which no despotic sovereign ever possessed. The latter rules singly; and where a revolution is meditated, the change of A wise and virtuous prince will ever bear in a single person is soon effected. But where a mind the grand distinction between his own sisovereign's power is incorporated with the pow-tuation and that of his minister. The latter is ers of parliament, and the will of the people who elect parliaments, the kingly state is fenced in with, and intrenched by the other states. He relies not solely upon an army. He relies on his parliament, and on his people, a sure resource, while he involves his interests with theirs! This is the happiness, the beauty, and the strength of that three-fold bond which ties our constitution together. Counsellors may mislead, favourites may betray, even armies may desert, and navies may mutiny, but Laws, as

but the precarious possessor of a transient authority; a mere tenant at will, or, at most, for life. He himself is the hereditary and permanent possessor of the property. The former may be more tempted to adopt measures which, though gainful or gratifying at the present, will be probably productive of future mischief to the estate. But surely the latter may be justly expected to take a longer and wider view; and considering

* Gourville.

tion ought to take. If a sovereign of England' be, in such a variety of respects, supreme, it follows, not only that his education should be liberal, large, and general, but that it should, moreover, be directed to a knowledge of those departments in which he will be called to preside.

the interests of his posterity no less than his be an essay on political, but moral instruction, own, to reject all measures which are likely to these remarks are only hazarded, in order to indisparage their inheritance, or injure their te-timate the peculiar turn which the royal educanure. He will trace the misfortunes of our first Charles to the usurpation of the Tudors; and mark but too natural a connexion between the unprincipled domination and profuse magnificence of Louis XIV., and the melancholy fate of his far better and more amiable successor. He will remember the solid answer of the Spartan king, who being reproached by a superficial observer with having left the regal power impaired to his posterity, replied, 'No; for he had left it more secure, therefore more permanent.' A large and just conception of interest, therefore, no less than of duty, will prompt a wise prince to reject all measures which, while they appear to flatter the love of dominion, naturally inhe. rent in the mind of man, by holding forth the present extension of his power, yet tend obsti. nately to weaken its essential strength, to make his authority the object of his people's jealousy, rather than of their affection; to cause it to rest on the uncertain basis of military power, rather than on the deep and durable foundations of the constitution.

In order to enable him the better, therefore, to know the true nature and limits of his authority, he will endeavour to develope the constitutional foundations on which it rests. Sovereigns, even female sovereigns, though they cannot have leisure to become fully acquainted with the vast mass of our laws, ought at least to imbibe the spirit of them. If they be not early taught the general principles of our laws and constitution, they may be liable, from the flatterers to whom they may be exposed, to hear of nothing but the power which they may exert, or the influence which they may exercise, without having their attention directed to those counteracting principles, which, in a limited monarchy like ours, serve, in numberless ways, to balance and restrain that power.

As supreme magistrate and the source of all judicial power, he should be adequately acquainted, not only with the law of nature and of nations, but particularly with the law of England. As possessing the power of declaring war, and contracting alliances, he should be thoroughly conversant with those authors who, with the soundest judgment, the deepest moral views, and the most correct precision, treat of the great principles of political justice; who best unfold the rights of human nature, and the mischiefs of unjust ambition. He should be competently acquainted with the present state of the different governments of Europe, with which that of Great Britain may have any political relation; and he should be led to exercise that intuitive discernment of character and talents, which will enable him to decide on the choice of ambassadors, and other foreign ministers, whom it is his prerogative to appoint.

As he is the fountain of honour, from which proceed titles, distinctions, and offices, he should be early accustomed to combine a due attention to character, with the examination of claims, and the appreciation of services; in order that the honours of the subject may reflect no dishonour on the prince. Those whose distinguished lot it is to bestow subordinate offices and inferior dignities, should evince, by the judgment with which they confer them, how fit they themselves are to discharge the highest.

Is he supreme head of the church? Hence arises a strong obligation to be acquainted with ecclesiastical history in general, as well as with It should be worked into a principle in the the history of the church of England in particu mind, that it is in consideration of the duties lar. He should learn, not merely from habit which the laws impose on a prince, that those and prescription, but from an attentive compalaws have secured to him either dignity or pre-rison of our national church with other ecclesirogative; it being a maxim of the law, that pro-astical institutions, to discern both the distintection and allegiance are reciprocal. With the guishing characters and appropriate advantages impression of the power, the splendour, and the of our church establishment. He ought to indignity of royalty, the ideas of trust, duty, and quire in what manner its interests are interresponsibility, should be inseparably interwoven. woven with those of the state, so far as to be It should be assiduously inculcated, that the inseparable from them. He should learn, that LAWS form the very basis of the throne; the root from the supreme power, with which the laws and ground-work of the monarch's political ex-invest him over the church, arises a most awful istence. One peculiar reason why a prince ought to know so much of the laws and constitution, as to be able to determine what is, and what is not, an infringement of them, is, that he may be quick sighted to the slightest approximation of ministers towards any such encroachments. A farther reason is, that by studying the laws and constitution of the country, he may become more firmly attached to them, not merely by national instinct, and fond prejudice, because they are his own, but from judgment, reason, knowledge, discrimination, preference, habit, obligation,-in a word, because they are the

best.

But as this superficial sketch proposes not to

responsibility, especially in the grand prerogative of bestowing the higher ecclesiastical appointments; a trust which involves consequences far too extensive for human minds to calculate; and which a sovereign, even amid all the dazzling splendour of royalty, while he preserves tenderness of conscience, and quickness of sensibility, will not reflect on without trepidation. While history offers numberless instances of the abuse of this power, it records numberless striking examples of its proper application. It even presents some, in which good sense has operated usefully in the absence of all principle. When a profligate ecclesiastic applied for preferment to the profligate duke of Orleans, while regen

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of France, urging as a motive, that he should be | der stock has been laid in for it to work upon; dishonoured if the duke did not make him a bi- and where these materials for forming the characshop- And I,' replied the regent, shall be dis-ter have not been previously prepared. Things honoured if I do.' must be known before they are done. The part should be studied before it is acted, if we expect to have it acted well.

CHAP. V

On the importance of studying Ancient History.

THOSE PIOUS persons do not seem to understand the true interests of Christianity, who forbid the study of pagan literature. That it is of little value, comparatively with Christian learning, does not prove it to be altogether without its usefulness. In the present period of critical investigation, heathen learning seems to be justly appreciated, in the scale of letters; the wisdom and piety of some of our most eminent contemporaries having successfully applied it to its noblest office, by rendering it subservient to the purposes of Revelation, in multiplying the evidences, and illustrating the proofs. Thus the Christian emperor, when he destroyed the heathen temples, consecrated the golden vessels, to adorn the Christian churches.

Where much is to be learned, time must be economised; and in the judicious selection of pagan literature, the discernment of the preceptor will be particularly exercised. All those writers, however justly celebrated, who have employed much learning, in elaborating points which add little to the practical wisdom or virtue of mankind; all such as are rather curious than useful, or ingenious than instructive, should be passed over; nor need she bestow much attention on points, which, though they may have been accurately discussed, are not seriously important. Dry critical knowledge, though it may be correctly just; and mere chronicles of events, though they may be strictly true, teach not the things she wants. Such authors as Sallust, who, in speaking of turbulent innovators, remarks, that they thought the very disturbance of things established a sufficient bribe to set them at work: those who, like this exquisite historian, unfold the internal principles of action, and dissect the hearts and minds of their personages, who de

to trace the labyrinth of causes and effects, and assign to every incident its proper motive, will be eminently useful. But, if she be taught to discern the merits of writers, it is that she may become not a critic in books, but in human nature.

In this enlightened period, Religion, our religion at least, does not, as in her days of dark-velope complicated circumstances, furnish a clue ness, feel it necessary to degrade human learning, in order to withdraw herself from scrutiny. The time is past, when it was produced as a serious charge against saint Jerome, that he had read Homer; when a doctor of the Sorbonne penitently confessed, among his other sins, that the exquisite muse of Virgil had made him weep for the woes of Dido; and when the works of Tacitus were condemned to the flames, from the papal chair, because the author was not a Roman Catholic. It is also curious to observe a papist persecuting the memory of a pagan on the ground of his superstition! Pope Gregory the great, expelled Livy from every Christian library on this account!

The most acute enemy of Christianity, the emperor Julian, who had himself been bred a Christian and a scholar, well understood what was most likely to hurt its cause. He knew the use which the Christians were making of ancient authors, and of rhetoric, in order to refute error, and establish truth. They fight us,' said he, by the knowledge of our own authors; shall we suffer ourselves to be stabbed with our own swords?' He actually made a law to interdict their reading Homer and Demosthenes; prohibited to their schools the study of antiquity, and ordered that they should confine themselves, to the explanation of Matthew and Luke, in the churches of the Galileans.

History is the glass by which the royal mind should be dressed. If it be delightful for a private individual to enter with the historian into every scene which he describes, and into every event which he relates; to be introduced into the interior of the Roman senate, or the Athenian areopagus; to follow Pompey to Pharsalia, Miltiades to Marathon, or Marlborough to Blenheim; how much more interesting will this be to a sovereign? To him for whom senates dehate, for whom armies engage, and who is himself to be a prime actor in the drama! Of how much more importance is it to him, to possess an accurate knowledge of all the successive go. vernments of that world, in a principal government of which he is one day to take the lead. To possess himself of the experience of ancient states, of the wisdom of every antecedent age! To learn moderation from the ambition of one, caution from the rashness of another, and pru. dence perhaps from the indiscretion of both! To apply foregone examples to his own use; adopting what is excellent, shunning what is erroneous, and omitting what is irrelevant!

It can never be too soon, for the royal pupil, Reading and observation are the two grand to begin to collect materials for reflection, and sources of improvement; but they lie not equalfor action. Her future character will much de-ly open to all. From the latter, the sex and hapend on the course of reading, the turn of temper, the habit of thought now acquired, and the standard of morals now fixed. The acquisition of present taste will form the elements of her subsequent character. Her present acquirements, it is true, will need to be matured by her after experience; but experience will operate to comparatively little purpose, where only a slen

bits of a royal female, in a good measure, exclude her. She must then, in a greater degree, depend on the formation which books afford, opened and illustrated by her preceptor. Though her personal observation must be limited, her advantages from historical sources may be large and various.

If history for a time, especially during the

reign of the prince whose actions are recorded, sometimes misrepresent characters, the dead, even the royal dead, are seldom flattered; unless, which indeed too frequently happens, the writer is deficient in that just conception of moral excellence, which teaches to distinguish what is splendid from what is solid. But, sooner or later, history does justice. She snatches from oblivion, or reproach, the fame of those virtuous men, whom corrupt princes, not contented with having sacrificed them to their unjust jealousy, would rob also of their fair renown. When Arulenus Rusticus was condemned by Domitian, for having written with its deserved eulogium, the life of that excellent citizen, Thrasea Pœtus; when Senecio was put to death by the same emperor, for having rendered the like noble justice to Helvidius Priscus-when the historians themselves, like the patriots whom they celebrated were sentenced to death, their books also being condemned to the flames; when Fannia, the incomparable wife of Helvidius, was banished, having the courage to carry into exile that book which had been the cause of it; a book of which her conjugal piety had furnished the materials. In the fire which consumed these books,' says the author of the life of Agricola, the tyrants imagined that they had stifled the very utterance of the Roman people, abolished the lawful power of the senate, and forced mankind to doubt of the very evidence of their senses. Having expelled philosophy, and exiled science, they flattered themselves that nothing, which bore the stamp of virtue, would exist. -But history has vindicated the noble sufferers. Poetus and Helvidius will ever be ranked among the most honourable patriots; while the emperor, who, in destroying their lives could not injure their reputation, is consigned to eternal infamy.

The examples which history records, furnish faithful admonitions to succeeding princes, respecting the means by which empires are erected and overturned. They show by what arts of wisdom, or by neglect of those arts, little states become great, or great states fall into ruin; with what equity or injustice wars have been undertaken; with what ability or incapacity they have been conducted; with what sagacity or short-sightedness treaties have been formed. How national faith hath been main tained, or forfeited. How confederacies have been made, or violated. History, which is the amusement of other men, is the school of princes. They are not to read it merely as the rational occupation of a vacant hour, but to consult it, as a storehouse of materials for the art of govern

ment.

There is a splendour in heroic actions, which fires the imagination, and forcibly lays hold on the passions. Hence, the poets were the first, and, in the rude ages of antiquity, the only his torians. They seized on whatever was dazzling, in character, or shining in action; exaggerated heroic qualities, immortalized patriotism, and deified courage. But instead of making their heroes patterns to men, they lessened the utility of their example by elevating them into gods. Beginning of Tacitus's life of Agricola. VOL. II. 2*

Hence however arose the first idea of history; of snatching the deeds of illustrious men from the delusions of fable; of bringing down extravagant powers, and preter-natural faculties within the limits of human nature and possibility; and reducing overcharged characters to the size and shape of real life; giving proportion, order and arrangement to the widest scheme of action, and to the most extended duration of time.

CHAP. VI.

Laws-Egypt-Persia.

BUT however the fictions of poetry might have given being to history, it was sage political institutions, good governments, and wise laws which formed both its solid basis, and its valuable superstructure. And it is from the labours of an cient legislators, the establishment of states, the foundation of government, and the progress of civil society, that we are to look for more real greatness, and more useful instruction, than from all the extravagant exploits recorded in fabulous ages of antiquity.

So deep is the reverential awe which mankind have uniformly blended with the idea of laws, that almost all civilized nations have af fected to wrap up the origin of them in the obscurity of a devout mystery, and to intimate that they sprang from a divine source. This has arisen partly from a love to the marvellous inherent in the human mind; partly from the vanity of a national fondness in each country for losing their original in the trackless paths of impenetrable antiquity. Of the former of those tastes, a legislator, like Numa, who had deep views and who knew how much the people reverence whatever is mysterious, would naturally avail himself. And his supposed divine communication was founded in his consummate knowledge of the human mind; a knowledge which a wise prince will always turn to good account.

But, however the mysteriousness of the origin of laws may excite the reverence of the vulgar, it is the wise only who will duly venerate their sanctity, as they alone can appreciate their value. Laws are providentially designed, not only to be the best subsidiary aid of Religion, where she is operative, but to be in some sort her substitute, in those instances where her own direct operations might be ineffectual. For, even where the immediate law of God is little regarded, the civil code may be externally efficient, from its sanctions being more visible, palpable, tangible. And human laws are directly fitted to restrain the outward acts of those, whose hearts are not influenced by the divine injunctions. Laws, therefore, are the surest fences of the best blessings of civilized life. They bind society together, while they strengthen the separate interests of those whom they reciprocally unite. They tie the hands of depredation in the poor, and of oppression in the rich protect the weak against the encroachments of the powerful, and draw their sacred

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shelter round all that is dear in domestic, or, valuable in social life. They are the truest guardians of the dignity of the throne, and the only rampart of the liberty of the people.

and for that reputation which follows it, was so high, that a kind of moral inquisition was appointed, on the death of every citizen, to inquire what sort of life he had lived, that his memory might be accordingly held in houour or detestation. From the verdict of this solemn tribunal, even their kings themselves were not exempted. The whole aim and end of education among them was to inspire a veneration for GOVERNMENT and RELIGION. They had a law which assigned some employment to every individual of the state. And though the genius of our free constitution would justly reprobate what indeed its temperate and judicious restraints render unnecessary among us, that clause which directed that the employment should be perpetuated in the same family, yet, perhaps, the severe moralist, with the example of the well

On the law of nature, and the law of revelation (where revelation is known) all human laws ought to depend. That a rule of civil conduct should be prescribed to man, by the state in which he lives, is made necessary by nature, as well as sanctioned by revelation. Were man an insulated being, the law of nature, and of revelation, would suffice for him; but, for aggregate man, something more than even municipal laws becomes requisite. Divided as human beings are, into separate states, and societies, connected among themselves, but disconnected with other states, each requires with relation to the other, certain general rules, called the law of nations, as much as each state needs respect-ordered government of Egypt before his eyes, ing itself, those distinct codes, which are suited to their own particular exigencies. On the whole, then, as the natural sense of weakness and fear impels man to seek the protection, and the blessing of laws, so from the experience of that protection, and the sense of that blessing, his reason derives the most powerful argument to desire their perpetuation; and his providential destiny becomes his choice.

If, therefore, we would truly estimate the value of laws, let us figure to ourselves the misery of that state of nature in which there should be no law, but that of the strongest; no judge to determine right, or to punish wrong; to redress suffering, or to repel injury; to protect the weak, or to control the powerful.

If, under the prevalence of a false, and even absurd religion, several ancient states, that of Egypt in particular subsisted in so much splendour* for so long a period, and afterwards sunk into such abject depression, the causes of both are obvious. The LAWS of ancient Egypt were proverbial for their wisdom. It has not escaped several christian historians that it was the human praise of him who was ordained to be the legislator of God's own people, that he was skilled in all the learning of the Egyptians. And it was meant to confer an high eulogium on the wisest of the kings of Israel, that his wisdom eclipsed that of Egypt.

The laws of this state so strongly enforced mercy, that they punished with death those who refused to save the life of a fellow-creature if attacked, when it was in their power. The justice of the Egyptian laws was so inflexible, that the kings obliged the judges to swear that they would never depart from the principles of rectitude, though even in obedience to the royal command. Their respect for individual virtue,

*It is to be observed that this splendour alludes to the prosperity arising from wise political institutions merely; for the private morals of Egypt must have borne some proportion to her corrupt idolatry, which after. wards became of the most degrading and preposterous kind. Her wisdom, we must therefore infer, was chiefly political wisdom. Her morality seems to have been, in a good measure, cultivated with a view to aggrandize the state, and in violation of many natural feelings, as was the case in Sparta. Egypt was a well compacted political society, and her virtue appears to have been the effect of political discipline. In enumerating her merits, our object is to prove the great importance of laws.

might reasonably doubt whether a law, the effect of which was to keep men in their places, though it might now and then check the career of a lofty genius, was not a much less injury to society than the free scope which was afforded to the turbulent ambition of every aspiring spirit in the Greek democracies. Bossuet, who has, perhaps, penetrated more deeply into these subjects than almost any modern, has pronounc ed Egypt to be the fountain of all political wisdom.

What afterwards plunged the Egyptians into calamity, and brought final dissolution on their government? It was a departure from its constitutional principles; it was the neglect and contempt of those venerable laws which for sixteen centuries had constituted their glory and their happiness. They exchanged the love of their wise domestic institutions for the ambition of subduing distant countries. One of their most heroic sovereigns (as is not unusual) was the instrument of their misfortunes. Sesostris was permitted by Divine Providence to diminish the true glory of Egypt, by a restless ambition to extend her territory. This splendid prince abandoned the real grandeur of governing wisely at home for the false glory of foreign conquests, which detained him nine years in distant climates. At a remote period, the people, weary of the blessings they had so long enjoyed under a single monarch, weakened the royal power, by dividing it among multiplied sovereigns.

What exalted the ancient Persians to such lasting fame? The equity and strict execution of their LAWS. It was their sovereign disdain of falsehood in their public transactions. Their considering fraud as the most degrading of vices, and thus transfusing the spirit of their laws into their conduct. It was that love of justice (modern statesmen would do well to imitate the example) which made them oblige themselves to commend the virtues of their enemies. It was such an extraordinary respect for education, that no sorrow was ever expressed for young persons who died uninstructed. It was by paying such an attention to the children of the sovereign, that, at the age of fourteen, they were placed under the care of four statesmen who excelled in different talents. By one they were instructed in the principles of justice; by an

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