means of thriftless folly, that to give gold to youth is giving fuel to fire, and furnishing them with the means of self-destruction. If I live and reign, these means of unchristian excess shall be abridged. Yet thou mayest be poor," she added, "or thy parents may be. It shall be gold if thou wilt, but thou shalt answer to me for the use on't." Walter waited patiently until the queen had done, and then modestly assured her that gold was still less his wish than the raiment her majesty had before offered. “How, boy,” said the queen, "neither gold nor garment? What is it thou would'st have of me, then?" "Only permission, madam, if it is not asking too high an honour -permission to wear the cloak which did you this trifling service." "Permission to wear thine own cloak, thou silly boy!" said the queen. "It is no longer mine," said Walter; "when your Majesty's foot touched it, it became a fit mantle for a prince, but far too rich a one for its former owner." The queen again blushed, and endeavoured to cover, by laughing, a slight degree of not unpleasing surprise and confusion. VII. SIR JAMES MACKINTOSH. SIR JAMES MACKINTOSH was born in 1765, on the banks of Loch Ness, and was educated at Aberdeen. He was intended for the medical profession, but after completing the necessary studies, he changed his purpose and commenced to study law. Like many others of his own age, he hailed with enthusiasm the outbreak of the French Revolution, and in his "Vindicia Gallica" ventured to defend against Mr Burke the proceedings of the French Assembly. His work was followed by an interview with Burke, in which genius at once asserted its natural superiority, and Mackintosh abandoned the French cause, and condemned the doctrines he had so lately upheld. He was chosen as the advocate of Peltier the French emigrant, who had libelled Napoleon in the "Ambigu," and his eloquence on the occasion, while it effectually assisted his client, acquired for him a wide-spread reputation as a legal orator. In 1803 he was made Recorder of Bombay, and he for some years resided in that town, and on his return to Great Britain he entered Parliament, where he became conspicuous as an able debater and a zealous law reformer. He held office under Lord Grey's Ministry as President of the India Board, and died in 1832. His works consist of two historical fragments, one embracing the early History of England, the other the History of the Revolution, a “ Dissertation on the History of Moral Philosophy," and many contributions to the Edinburgh Review." He is distinguished by extensive information, and great metaphysical ability, but though usually vigorous, and occasionally eloquent, his style is often clumsy and careless, and presents few attractions to the mere literary reader. RIGHT OF RESISTANCE TO GOVERNMENT.-("REVIEW OF THE CAUSES OF THE REVOLUTION.") The war of a people against a tyrannical government may be tried by the same tests which ascertain the morality of a war between independent nations. The employment of force in the intercourse of reasonable beings is never lawful, but for the purpose of repelling or averting wrongful force. Human life cannot lawfully be destroyed, or assailed, or endangered, for any other object than that of just defence. Such is the nature and such the boundary of legitimate selfdefence in the case of individuals. Hence the right of the lawgiver to protect unoffending citizens by the adequate punishment of crimes; hence, also, the right of an independent state to take all measures necessary to her safety, if it be attacked or threatened from without; provided always that reparation cannot otherwise be obtained, that there is a reasonable prospect of obtaining it by arms, and that the evils of the contest are not probably greater than the mischiefs of acquiescence in the wrong, including, on both sides of the deliberation, the ordinary consequences of the example, as well as the immediate effects of the act. If reparation can otherwise be obtained, a nation has no necessary, and therefore no just cause of war; if there be no probability of obtaining it by arms, a government cannot, with justice to their own nation, embark it in war; and if the evils of resistance should appear on the whole greater than those of submission, wise rulers will consider an abstinence from a pernicious exercise of right as a sacred duty to their own subjects, and a debt which every people owes to the great commonwealth of mankind, of which they and their enemies are alike members. A war is just against the wrong-doer, when reparation for wrong cannot otherwise be obtained; but it is then only conformable to all the principles of morality, when it is not likely to expose the nation by whom it is levied to greater evils than it professes to avert, and when it does not inflict on the nation which has done the wrong sufferings altogether disproportioned to the extent of the injury. When the rulers of a nation are required to determine a question of peace or war, the bare justice of their case against the wrongdoer never can be the sole, and is not always the chief, matter on which they are morally bound to exercise a conscientious deliberation. Prudence in conducting the affairs of their subjects is, in them, a part of justice. On the same principles the justice of a war made by a people against their own government must be examined. A government is entitled to obedience from the people, because without obedience it cannot perform the duty, for which alone it exists, of protecting them from each other's injustice. But when a government is engaged in systematically oppressing a people, or in destroying their securities against future oppression, it commits the same species of wrong towards them which warrants an appeal to arms against a foreign enemy. A magistrate who degenerates into a systematic oppressor shuts the gates of justice, and thereby restores them to their original right of defending themselves by force. As he withholds the protection of law from them, he forfeits his moral claim to enforce their obedience by the authority of law. Thus far civil and foreign war stand on the same moral foundation: the principles which determine the justice of both against the wrongdoer, are, indeed, throughout the same. But there are certain peculiarities, of great importance in point of fact, which in other respects permanently distinguish them from each other. The evils of failure are greater in civil than in foreign war. A state generally incufs no more than loss in war; a body of insurgents is exposed to ruin. The probabilities of success are more difficult to calculate in cases of internal contest than in a war between states, where it is easy to compare those merely material means of attack and defence which may be measured or numbered. An unsuccessful revolt strengthens the power and sharpens the cruelty of the tyrannical ruler; while an unfortunate war may produce little of the former evil and of the latter nothing. It is almost peculiar to intestine war, that success may be as mischievous as defeat. The victorious leaders may be borne along by the current of events far beyond their destination; a government may be overthrown which ought to have been only repaired; and a new, perhaps a more formidable, tyranny may spring out of victory. A regular government may stop before its fall becomes precipitate, or check a career of conquest when it threatens destruction to itself: but the feeble authority of the chiefs of insurgents is rarely able, in the one case, to maintain the courage, in the other to repress the impetuosity, of their voluntary adherents. Finally, the cruelty and misery incident to all warfare are greater in domestic dissension than in contests with foreign enemies. Foreign wars have little effect on the feelings, habits, or condition of the majority of a great nation, to most of whom the worst particulars of them may be unknown. But civil war brings the same or worse evils into the heart of a country, and into the bosom of many families: it eradicates all habits of recourse to justice and reverence for law; its hostilities are not mitigated by the usages which soften wars between nations; it is carried on with the ferocity of parties who apprehend destruction from each other; and it may leave behind it feuds still more deadly, which may render a country depraved and wretched through a long succession of ages. As it involves a wider waste of virtue and happiness than any other species of war, it can only be warranted by the sternest and most dire necessity. The chiefs of a justly disaffected party are unjust to their fellows and their followers, as well as to all the rest of their countrymen, if they take up arms in a case where the evils of submission are not more intolerable, the impossibility of reparation by pacific means more apparent, and the chance of obtaining it by arms greater than are necessary to justify the rulers of a nation in undertaking a foreign war. SAMUEL TAYLOR COLERIDGE. 447 A wanton rebellion, when considered with the aggravation of its ordinary consequences, is one of the greatest of crimes. The chiefs of an inconsiderable and ill-concerted revolt, however provoked, incur the most formidable responsibility to their followers and their country. An insurrection rendered necessary by oppression, and warranted by a reasonable probability of a happy termination, is an act of public virtue, always environed with so much peril as to merit admiration. VIII. SAMUEL TAYLOR COLERIDGE. SAMUEL TAYLOR COLERIDGE was born in Devonshire, in 1772, at Ottery St Mary. His father, who was vicar of the parish, superintended his early education, and he was afterwards placed in Christ's Hospital, where his superiority as a Greek scholar led to his obtaining a presentation to Cambridge. Debt, and peculiar opinions, led him to leave the University and repair to London, where in a fit of despondency he enlisted in a horse regiment. His friends soon procured his release from a position for which he was so ill qualified; and after various unsuccessful schemes, he married and settled at Stowey, where he wrote some of his early poetry, and also officiated as a Unitarian preacher. Through the kindness of the Messrs Wedgewood, the famous Staffordshire-ware manufacturers, he was furnished with funds to defray his education in Germany, and on his return from the Continent he abandoned his republican and Unitarian principles, and defended the government measures in the "Morning Post." He also published his "Friend," a periodical paper, which his irregularity prevented from becoming popular. At subsequent periods he published his two "Lay Sermons," "Biographia Literaria," and "Aids to Reflection." For the last nineteen years of his life he resided with Dr Gillman, at Highgate, where his great conversational powers attracted around him most of the literary men of the day. He died in 1834. Coleridge's fame is likely to suffer materially from his constitutional indolence, which has prevented him finishing any one work according to his original plan. In poetry, in philosophy, and in criticism, he has left fragments which show how admirably qualified he was to reach the highest excellence in these departments; while they continually tantalize us by abruptly terminating just as the writer seems to be rousing himself to exert all his powers. His poetry is distinguished by its richness of fancy and extraordinary sweetness of versification, but, as might be anticipated from his character, is deficient in energy and action. Of his prose works the most valuable are his critical essays; his philosophical, disquisitions are too often obscure. 1. INFLUENCE OF PATRIOTISM ON NATIONAL PROGRESS.— ("FRIEND," ESSAY IX.) The objects of the patriot are, that his countrymen should, as far as circumstances permit, enjoy what the Creator designed for the enjoyment of animals endowed with reason, and of course develop those faculties which were given them to be developed. He would do his best that every one of his countrymen should possess whatever all men may and should possess, and that a sufficient number should be enabled and encouraged to acquire those excellences which, though not necessary or possible for all men, are yet to all men useful and honourable. He knows that patriotism itself is a necessary link in the golden chain of our affections and virtues, and turns away with indignant scorn from the false philosophy or mistaken religion which would persuade him that cosmopolitism is nobler than nationality, and the human race a sublimer object of love than a people; that Plato, Luther, Newton, and their equals, formed themselves neither in the market nor the senate, but in the world and for all men of all ages. True! but where, and among whom, are these giant exceptions produced? In the wide empires of Asia, where millions of human beings acknowledge no other bond but that of a common slavery, and are distinguished on the map but by a name which themselves perhaps never heard, or hearing abhor? No! In a circle defined by human affections, the first firm sod within which becomes sacred beneath the quickened step of the returning citizen-here, where the powers and interests of men spread without confusion through a common sphere, like the vibrations propagated in the air by a single voice, distinct yet coherent, and all uniting to express one thought and the same feeling! Here, where even the common soldier dares force a passage for his comrades by gathering up the bayonets of the enemy into his own breast; because his country "expected every man to do his duty!" and this not after he has been hardened by habit, but as probably in his first battle; not reckless or hopeless, but braving death from a keener sensibility to those blessings which make life dear, to those qualities which render himself worthy to enjoy them! Here, where the royal crown is loved and worshipped as a glory around the sainted head of FREEDOM! where the rustic at his plough whistles with equal enthusiasm, "God save the King," and "Britons never shall be slaves;" or, perhaps, leaves one thistle unweeded in his garden, because it is the symbol of his dear native land! Here, from within this circle defined, as light by shade, or rather as light within light, by its intensity, here alone, and only within these magic circles, rise up the awful spirits whose words are oracles for 1 Alluding to the famous verse of Burns: "The rough burr-thrissle spreading wide I turn'd the weeder-clips aside And spared the symbol dear." |