its members, has yielded for a time to the influence of wickedness. "To me," says Cicero, much revolving the causes of the continued progress and unexampled prosperity of the Roman people, " nothing appears adequate to account for it but the reverence and respect which they have ever manifested for religion. In numbers the Spaniards excel us, in constancy the Germans, in military ardour the Gauls, in the resources of war the Eastern monarchies; but in devotion to the almighty gods, the Roman people exceed any nation that ever existed." As this subjugation of selfish passion to the public good was the cause of the long-continued progress and glorious triumphs of the Roman people, so the abandonment of this feeling, the excitation of popular or selfish passion, the substitution of individual ambition for patriotic feeling, was the remote cause of its decay. The passions first appeared in the strife of Gracchus: they continued through the proscriptions of Sylla and Marius: they armed the democracy of Rome under Cæsar, against the aristocracy under Pompey: they delivered over the empire of the world to military despotism at Pharsalia; and assuming then a more ignoble and sensual direction, produced the corruption of Nero, the severity of Tiberius, the infamy of Eliogabalus. Then came the age when-" corrumpere et corrumpi seculum vocatur:"* when the youth of Rome plunged unbridled into the stream of pleasure, and the matrons, disdaining the constancy even of guilty passion, applauded only the roving variety of promiscuous intercourse. It was not with impunity that this universal liberation from the laws of religion and virtue took place; the fall of the empire signalized its punishment; and ages of darkness overspread the world, until, under the influence of a holier religion, men were trained to severer employments, and called to the exercise of more animating duties. In this disastrous progress the first step is always to be found in the vehement excitation of democratic ambition. It is not liberty, but the removal of restraint, which is its * Tacitus. object. Under the cloak of liberality, and the specious names of equality and reformation, it aims at a general emancipation from the yoke of duty, the necessities of industry, the restraints of religion. In all ages, accordingly, the most vehement democratic passions have been excited, not in the virtuous, but the vicious periods; not in the youth of patriotism, but the maturity of guilt; not in the age of Fabricius, but in that of Marius; and they have led, not to the establishment of liberty, but the riveting of the chains of despotism. The transition is but too easy from the vehemence of democratic ambition to the infamy of selfish indulgence; because the object of both is the same, the gratification of the passions of the individual, not the performance of his duties or his virtues. The real love of freedom is as distinct from the passion for democratic power, as the virtuous attachment of marriage, which "peoples heaven," is from the intemperate excesses of lust, which finds inmates for hell. The one may always be distinguished by eternal and neverfailing symptoms from the other. The first is slow of growth, and cautious of running into excess; it prevails among the brave, the steady, and the independent. It aims at nothing but practical improvement; suggests nothing but the removal of experienced grievance; and shuns the very approach of violent and uncalled for changes. It was by such slow growth, and continued amendments, that the British constitution gradually arose; and its durability and beneficence has been just in proportion to the caution by which innovation was introduced, and the tenacity with which ancient custom was retained. It was by similar means, and the prevalence of the same spirit, that Rome emerged from the surrounding states, and carried the eagles of the republic to the remotest corners of the habitable globe. "Hanc olim veteres vitam coluere Sabini, Hanc Remus et frater: Sic fortis Etruria crevit ; Scilicet et rerum facta est pulcherrima Roma." + Suetonius. The passion for democracy is distinguished by totally different features; as opposite to the former as those of heaven from hell. It seeks to remedy no practical grievance, suggests no projects of real beneficence, disdains all adherence to ancient institutions, plunges headlong into the most violent innovations, stirs up at once the most extravagant passions. It is shunned by the cautious, the prudent, and the virtuous, and vehemently adopted by the reckless, the ambitious, and the profligate. Freedom, order, and religion, are the watchword of the former: licentiousness, change, and infidelity, the war-cry of the latter. The one prepares itself for the discharge of public, by the rigid performance of private duty; the other anticipates the overthrow of national authority, by the abandonment of individual restraint. The first strives to moderate the feelings, and is roused to resistance only by the presence of danger; the last incessantly stimulates the passions, and ultimately dissolves the bonds of society. The one seizes the first opportunity, when the object for which it contended is gained, to relapse into the privacy of domestic life; the other is stimulated by every acquisition to fresh demands, and derives additional strength from every concession. The first produce the soldiers of Leonidas, the peasants of Morgarten, the barons of Runnymede; the last, the satellites of Cleon, the demons of Marius, the executioners of Robespierre. Centuries of content ed rule and blessed existence succeed the former: years of anarchy, followed by ages of servitude, are the punishment of the latter. Providence has provided for the extinction of this guilty principle in a community, as of unruly passions in the individual, by the excesses to which it inevitably leads its votaries. In contemplating the extraordinary fatuity with which, in all periods of revolutionary excitement, the popular party are roused to additional demands by every acquisition which they make, and invariably require greater additions to the power of the people from the prevalence of the very suffering which has resulted from their first successes, we might be led to conclude with Locke, that there are occasions where a nation may become insane, or with Lowth, that, in certain extremities of guilt, God blinds the world, in order that it may incur the punishment of its sins, if we did not perceive that such is the invariable symptom of the career of passion, whether in the individual or society, and that no special interposition of Providence is requisite, because the punishment of the guilty people is inevitably provided for in the consequences of their own intemperance. It is no doubt an extraordinary thing to see a people whose industry is failing, whose wealth is declining, whose poor are starving from the shock which democratic violence has given to their institutions and springs of industry, clamouring for an extension of their powers, and blindly striving to augment the causes of their present suffering; but it is not more extraordinary than to see the gamester, whose property is disappearing, doubling his stakes at every throw; the drunkard, whose constitution is wasting from former intemperance, augmenting his daily draught; or the sensualist, whose strength is exhausted by former excesses, striving to reanimate his frame by unnatural excitation. All these effects in the individual, and in society, are produced by the same cause. It is the law of nature, that passion stimulates its votaries with every gratification to additional excesses, and that its punishment, even in this world, is certainly and rapidly brought about, by the consequences of what it has most ardently desi red. So rapid is the progress of democratic ambition, when it is once fairly awakened in a nation, that it bears no proportion to the length of its existence, or the slow growth of its political frame. Liberty was in a few years extinguished in Rome by the passions awakened by Gracchus; the subsequent age of suffering, through the civil wars of Sylla and Marius, of Cæsar and Pompey, of Octavius and Antony, was a vacillation of masters, not an era of freedom; the frenzy of the covenant in a few years brought the English people to the rule of Cromwell; five years did not elapse from the meeting of the StatesGeneral till the guillotine of Robespierre. As the spirit of democratic ambition is the most deadly and fatal poison which can be infused into the veins of a nation, so it is the one which soonest works itself out of the national frame; society cannot exist under its baneful influence; to its fury may be applied the words intended for the epitaph of Robespierre: "Passant, ne pleure pas son sort; The principle of democracy, therefore, is not to be regarded so much as an original and independent evil, as a symptom of a frame disorganized, corrupted, and diseased, from other causes. It is but the application to political affairs of the unbridled license of passion, the abandonment of duty, the disregard of religion in private life. The arrival of such an era in a free state, is signalized by the vehemence of popular strife, the turbulence of demagogues, the dissolution of the bonds of government. It is marked in a despotic community by the dissolution of public manners, the selfishness of individual character, the infamy of sensual pleasure. These two extremes, like all other extremes, are nearly allied to each other, and occasionally meet. They both spring from the disregard of duty, the abandonment of God, the indulgence of passion; both are equally guarded against by the precepts of the gospel; its sway can never be rejected without falling under the dominion of either the one or the other. It is hard to say which is farthest removed from the sobriety of freedom, the dignity of duty, the sublimity of devotion. "Charles II.," says Chateaubriand, “ plunged republican England into the arms of women;" and a similar transition from one passion to another may be observed in all ages of vehement democratic excitation. To those who coolly consider the condition of this country during the last thirty years, it cannot fail to occur that these principles of corrup. tion and disorder have been making rapid progress amongst us, and that whether or not reform and anarchy, or freedom and happiness, are to prevail in future, just depends on the question, Whether the princi ples of virtue and religion, or of vice and infidelity, are predominant in the nation? If the former still retain their wonted sway over the hearts of a majority of our people; if the ancient firmness of the British character, the piety and virtue of the British peasantry, still survives in the better part of the nation, the present convulsion will sink into a calm, and the banner of England reappear free and resplendent amid the sunshine of heaven. But if the contrary is the case-if infidelity has insinuated its poison into the influential part of the community-if the indulgence of passion has superseded the discharge of duty, and the desire of power supplanted the control of reason, let us not hope, or pray, or wish for salvation. We have been weighed in the balance and found wanting; our empire is delivered to another people; and as the merited punishment for such flagrant ingratitude and violation of duty, we are delivered over to the laceration of our own passions. "Quos Deus vult perdere," said the Romans," prior dementat." The principle of this maxim, which every age has found to be true, is to be found in the fatal sway of passion and intemperate feeling which prevails among those who are approaching destruction. It is not that the Almighty blinds those whom he has doomed to destruction, but that he has doomed to destruction those who are blinded by their passions. When once a people have thrown aside the restraint of virtue and religion, they find themselves precipitated into a career, either of private indulgence or public contention, which leads inevitably to individual and general ruin. It is on the same principle that the truth is to be explained, which every man's experience must have shewn to be of universal application, that those who are the most vehement supporters of democratic power in youth when in inferior, generally become the greatest tyrants when in maturer years they are exalted to superior stations. The reason is, that resistance to restraint is the ruling principle in both periods of life. When among the people, that principle operates by urging resistance to their superiors; when among the rulers, by disregarding the control, and forgetting the interests of their inferiors. It is another consequence of the same principle, that the men who are most loud in their support of democratical principles, who are most strenuous in contending for the overthrow of their superiors, are those who are least able to subdue their own passions, and least indulgent and beneficent in private life. Every body has heard the observation, that the democratic leaders are generally the severest landlords, the most tyrannical rulers, the least charitable and humane of the community; and surprise is often expressed that they should so soon forget the poor, for whom they have made such loud professions. There is, however, in reality, nothing surprising about it: on the contrary, both effects are the result of the same cause, and flow from the indulgence of the same selfish passions. The principle which actuates them, is not love of the poor, or the desire of liberty, but individual ambition, and a desire to escape from control. They desire to rule others, because they are not able to rule themselves; they strive for emancipation from the rules of virtue, or the precepts of religion, because they feel that they impose a disagreeable restraint upon their passions and their vices. It is from the same cause that every age of civil dissension is destined to witness the unholy alliance between the passion for democracy and the principles of infidelity. The horrors of the first French Revolution were ushered in by the scepticism of Voltaire and the dreams of Rousseau, which, flowing through the souls of the people, sapped the foundations alike of private virtue and public institutions. The second Revolution sprung from the irreligion,which, like a leprosy, still overspreads the fair realms of France, and has rendered unavailing all the virtue which has been excited, and all the tears which have been shed. Astonishment is often expressed, that the French have not been able, after all they have suffered, to procure a stable constitution, or the blessings of rational freedom for themselves; but the surprise must cease, when it is considered that two-thirds of the educated youth of France are irreligious, and one-half of all the children in Paris bastards. From such polluted fountains the streams of genuine freedom can never flow; from them can issue only the fierce contests of democra cy, or the unbridled license of corruption. It is in very different principles, in the dominion of far nobler feelings, that the foundation of liberty must be laid; in the subjugation of passion by the influence of religion, and the ascendant of reason by the performance of duty. In the outset of her struggle for freedom, France declared war against religion; and she will never obtain it till she has been brought by suffering, to admit the spirit, and obey the injunctions, of the rejected faith. Let us not wonder, therefore, that the vehemence of faction has fixed with such envenomed fury upon the British prelates, or, that the performance of the noblest act which adorns the annals of the Church of England, has given rise to the most atrocious calumny which has disgraced the history of the nation. Why did the democratic party fix with such rancour upon the twenty-five least offensive of the two hundred peers who rejected the Reform Bill? Why was the storm of popular indignation turned entirely upon the spiritual, to the exclusion of the temporal barons? Because the bishops were the guardians of the faith, which was the real enemy of the unbridled passions of the democratic party, and they flew wi.h unerring instinct to its destruction. The demon perceived the angel which had chained, in the ranks which opposed him, and Satan knew the spear of Michael. Nominally vented on the individuals who opposed their ambition, the fury of democracy was really directed against the faith which condemned their vices-against that unseen spirit which sways the human heart, and prepares the happiness of society by subjugating the passions of its members. While the passion of democracy has, in every age, been found leagued with infidelity, the spirit of freedom has as uniformly been found in close union with genuine devotion. It was in the profound religious feelings of the Roman people, that Cicero tra ced the cause of the majestic career of Roman victories-in the disregard of the gods under the emperors, that Tacitus foresaw the certain presage of their decline. The Spartan youth who died with Leonidas-the Theban who bled with Epaminondas, were animated by the same dignified spirit. The crucifixes of Switzerland, and the mountain chapels of Tyrol, still attest the devotion which burns undecayed among the descendants of Tell and the soldiers of Hofer. It was during the fervour of devotion, that the liberty of the United Provinces arose-the burghers of Haerlem cheerfully sacrificed their lives for their salvation; and from its support, that an inconsiderable province of Brabant rose victorious over the power of Spain and the Indies. The soldiers of Bruce knelt before they engaged in the fight of Bannockburn; and it was in the stern valour of the Puritans that a counterpoise was found for the despotism of Charles, and the decaying safeguards of feudal liberty. The fabric cemented by such hands, is of long endurance; it speedily acquires consistency, and shelters for centuries an united, virtuous, and happy people. That which is reared by the spirit of infidelity and the vehemence of passion, tears society in pieces during its terror, and leaves behind the wreck of nature, and a long catalogue of woes. It is for the same reason, that constitutions struck out at a heat, are never durable, and that those only survive the decay of time, which, like the oak, have slowly grown with the progress of ages. The spirit of innovation, the passion for demoeracy, has created the former; the spirit of freedom, the resistance to experienced suffering, has moulded the latter. The former have followed the lurid flame of popular ambition, and perished in the strife of democratic passion; the latter have been guided by the steady light of experience and reason, and survived through ages, by adapting themselves to their wants. The former have been allied to violence, intemperance, and infidelity, and have run the destined course of guilty passion. The latter have been founded on moderation, wisdom, and religion, and shared in the undecaying youth of the human race. The same principle explains the uniform tendency of great manufacturing towns, in all ages of the world, to democratical and turbulent principles. In these great hotbeds of corruption, where human beings are congregated together in vast numbers-where vice spreads from the contagion of multitudes, and passion feeds upon profligacy of habit-where virtue is abashed by the effrontery of guilt, and vice is encou raged by the facility of concealment where ardent spirits inflame the mind, while they weaken the body, and licentious pleasure brutalizes the intellect, while it unchains the passions-democratical ambition has ever been predominant. These great receptacles of guilt have, in all ages, been turbulent and unruly, because they were formed of persons whose passions were ungovernable; but they have never led to permanent freedom, because they were never based on virtue and religion. The history of the democracies of Athens and Florence, of Ghent and Genoa, exhibits splendid passages and heroic actions; but no uniform progress or permanent freedom. The mob in these communities often succeeded in overthrowing their superiors, but never in subduing themselves; their annals exhibit the vehemence of party strife, and the bloody catastrophes of popular insurrections, but never the uniform protection of all classes of the citizens, or the steady progress of universal freedom. Their rise was hailed by no grateful nations, their progress marked by no experienced blessings. Unlike the beneficent sun of Roman greatness, which shone only to improve, their blaze, like the dazzling glare of the meteor, " Rolled, blazed, destroyed, and was no more." It is the confounding of these opposite principles which makes the advances of democracy so perilous, and accounts for the large number of wise and good men who, in all ages, have joined themselves to its ranks, and swelled the array of those who were destined to ruin their country. Democracy borrows the language of virtue-it speaks of justice, and equality, and freedom-it |