which arose out of this fearful subject:-On the prospects of the United States ;14 on the probabilities of their future power among the nations of the world; of the permanence of the political state; but it has not. On the contrary, the small effect of these tumults seems to have given more confidence in the firmness of our governments. The interposition of the people themselves on the side of government has had a great effect on the opinion here [Paris, 1787.] I am persuaded myself, that the good sense of the people will always be found to be the best army. They may be led astray for a moment, but will soon correct themselves. The people are the only censors of their governors; and even their errors will tend to keep these to the true principles of their institution. To punish these errors too severely would be to suppress the only safeguard of the public liberty. The way to prevent these irregular interpositions of the people, is to give them full information of their affairs through the channel of the public papers, and to contrive that those papers should penetrate the whole mass of the people. The basis of our government being the opinion of the people, the very first object should be to keep that right; and were it left to me to decide whether we should have a government without newspapers, or newspapers without a government, I should not hesitate a moment to prefer the latter. But I should mean that every man should receive those papers, and be capable of reading them. I am convinced that those societies (as the Indians) which live without government, enjoy in their general mass an infinitely greater degree of happiness than those who live under the European governments. Among the former, public opinion is in the place of law, and restrains morals as powerfully as laws ever did anywhere. Among the latter, under pretence of governing, they have divided their nations into classes-wolves and sheep. I do not exaggerate. This is a true picture of Europe. Cherish, therefore, the spirit of our people, and keep alive their attention. Do not be too severe upon their errors, but reclaim them by enlightening them. If once they become inattentive to public affairs, you, and I, and congress, and assemblies, judges, and governors, shall all become wolves. It seems to be the law of our general nature, in spite of individual exceptions; and experience declares that man is the only animal which devours his own kind; for I can apply no milder term to the governments of Europe, and to the general prey of the rich on the poor.-1787, Vol. ii. p. 84. 11" RELIGION.-The result of your fifty or sixty years of religious reading in the four words, be just and good,' is that in which all our inquiries must end; as the riddles of all the priesthoods end in four more' ubi panis, ibi deus.' What all agree in, is probably right. What no two agree in, most probably wrong. One of our fan-colouring biographers, who paints small men as very great, inquired of me lately, with real affection too, whether he might consider as authentic the change in my religion, much spoken of in some circles. Now this supposed that they knew what had been my religion before, taking for it the word of their priests, whom I certainly never made the confidents of my creed. My answer was, 'say nothing of my religion. It is known to God and myself alone. Its evidence before the world is to be sought in my life; if that has been honest and dutiful to society, the religion which has regulated it cannot be a bad one.""-1817. Vol. iv. p. 308. 12. IMPROVEMENTS REALISED AND DESIRED." At the first session of our legislature after the declaration of independence, we passed a law, Union;15 of the continued ascendancy of republican principles; of the comparative progress among them of fanaticism on the one hand, and of free opinions in religion on the other :16-On abolishing entails. And this was followed by one abolishing the privilege of primogeniture, and dividing the lands of intestates equally among all their children or other representatives. These laws, drawn by myself, laid the axe to the root of pseudo-aristocracy. And had another which I prepared been adopted by the legislature, our work would have been complete. It was a bill for the more general diffusion of learning. This proposed to divide every county into wards of five or six miles square, like your townships; to establish in each ward a free school for reading, writing, and common arithmetic; to provide for the annual selection of the best subjects from these schools, who might receive, at the public expense, a higher degree of education at a district school, and from these district schools to select a certain number of the most promising subjects, to be completed at a University, where all the useful sciences should be taught. Worth and genius would thus have been sought out from every condition of life, and completely prepared, by education, for defeating the competition of wealth and birth for public trusts. My proposition had, for a further object, to impart to these wards those portions of self-government for which they are best qualified, by confiding to them the care of their poor, their roads, public elections, police elections, the nomination of jurors, administration of justice in small cases, elementary exercises of militia; in short, to have made them little republics, with a warden at the head of each, for all those concerns which, being under their eye, they would better manage than the larger republics of the county or state. Á general call of ward-meetings by their wardens on the same day through the State, would at any time produce the genuine sense of the people on any required point, and would enable the State to act in mass, as your people have so often done, and with so much effect, by their own meetings. The law for religious freedom, which made a part of this system, having put down the aristocracy of the clergy, and restored to the citizens the freedom of the mind, and those of entails and descents maintaining an equality of condition among them, their own education would have raised the mass of the people to the high ground of moral respectability necessary to their own safety, and to orderly government; and would have completed the great object of qualifying them to select the veritable aristoi for the trusts of government, to the exclusion of the federalists: and the same Theognis who has furnished the epigraphs of your two letters assures us, that Οὐδεμιαν πω Κύρν', ἀγαθοὶ πόλιν ὤλεσαν ἄνδρες.”—1813. Vol. iv. p. 234. 13. SLAVES.- "There is, I think, a way in which the deportation of Slaves may be effected: that is, by emancipating the after-born, leaving them, on due compensation, with their mothers until their services are worth their maintenance, and then putting them to industrious occupations, until a proper age for deportation. This was the result of my reflections on the subject five and forty years ago, and I have never yet been able to conceive any other practicable plan. A million and a half are within our control; but six millions (which a majority of those now living will see them attain), and one million of these fighting men, will say, we will not go.'"-1824. Vol. iv. 398-9. 14. PROSPECTS OF THE UNITED STATES. "" For my part, I wish that all the influence and interests of priests :-On the administration of justice :-On agriculture and the introduction of new plants: -On literature and science :-On the wisdom of ancestry:17 his notices of the great events in which he was either a mover nations may recover and retain their independence; that those which are overgrown may not advance beyond safe measures of power, that a salutary balance may be ever maintained among nations, and that our peace, commerce, and friendship, may be sought and cultivated by all. It is our business to manufacture for ourselves whatever we can, and to keep all markets open for what we can spare or want; and the less we have to do with the amities or enmities of Europe, the better. Not in our day, but at no distant one, we may shake a rod over the heads of all, which may make the stoutest of them tremble. But I hope our wisdom will grow with our power, and teach us that the less we use our power the greater it will be."-1815. Vol. iv. p. 274-2. 15. PERMANENCE OF THE UNION.-"The cement of this Union is in the heart-blood of every American. I do not believe there is on earth a government established on so immovable a basis."-1815. Vol. iv. p. 257. 16. RELIGION." The atmosphere of our country is unquestionably charged with a threatening cloud of fanaticism, lighter in some parts, denser in others, but too heavy in all. "The diffusion of instruction, to which there is now so growing an attention, will be the remote remedy to this fever of fanaticism, while the more proximate one will be the progress of Unitarianism. That this will, ere long, be the religion of the majority, from North to South, I have no doubt."-1822. VoÏ. iv. 366-7. 17. WISDOM Of Ancestry.—“ Laws and institutions must go hand in hand with the progress of the human mind. As that becomes more developed, more enlightened, as new discoveries are made, new truths disclosed, and manners and opinions change with the change of circumstances, institutions must advance also, and keep pace with the times. We might as well require a man to wear still the coat which fitted him when a boy, as civilized society to remain ever under the regimen of their barbarous ancestors. It is this preposterous idea which has lately deluged Europe in blood. Their monarchs, instead of wisely yielding to the gradual changes of circumstances of favouring progressive accommodation to progressive improvement, have clung to old abuses, entrenched themselves behind steady habits, and obliged their subjects to seek, through blood and violence, rash and ruinous innovations, which, had they been referred to the peaceful deliberations and collected wisdom of the nation, would have been put into acceptable and salutary forms. Let us follow no such examples, nor weakly believe that one generation is not as capable as another of taking care of itself, and of ordering its own affairs."Vol. iv. p. 298. GOVERNMENTS OF EUROPE AND AMERICA. "" Buonaparte and the Allies have now changed sides. They are parcelling out among themselves. Poland, Belgium, Saxony, Italy, dictating a ruler and government to France, and looking askance too at our republic, the splendid libel on their governments, and he is fighting for the principles of national independence, of which his whole life hitherto has been a continued violation.'-1815. Vol. iv. p. 276. BANKS. "I sincerely believe, with you, that banking establishments 6 or a close observer; those of the American Revolution; those of the early part of the French Revolution; those of his own presidency; of Burr's conspiracy :-his views of the more recent events of importance, on which he looked from a distance in his later years; the quarrels of Europe; and the last British war with America, not forgetting the burning of Washington: -his sketches or judgments of the characters of eminent persons; of Louis XVI. and his queen; of George the Third; of George the Fourth, when Prince of Wales; and of the Duke of York; of Washington, of Franklin, of Hamilton, of Adams, of Madison, of Monroe; of Napoleon, in his glory and in his exile; of Lord Castlereagh and his colleagues; of many others who have been in the last half century conspicuous for good or for ill-present such a body of good sense, of careful and comprehensive investigation, of sound and dispassionate decision, of kindly feeling, of enlarged philanthropy, of spotless integrity; such a rare combination of an enthusiasm almost chivalrous for the liberty and happiness of mankind, with a calm philosophical judgment, restraining its pursuits within the limits of the attainable; such a picture of political sincerity, presenting always the same character in appearance as in reality, in public as in private life, as will not easily find a parallel (at least on this side the Atlantic) in the records of any individual who has had so large a share in the government of nations. Our limits do not admit of our doing justice, in the form of extracts, to the invaluable contents of these volumes, of which we have given an imperfect enumeration. We have under some of the heads of that enumeration subjoined some brief specimens but we most earnestly commend the volumes themselves to all our readers who have not yet perused them, as containing numerous and rich materials of authentic history; as presenting, on almost all truly important questions, views sometimes new, most frequently just, and always worthy of patient consideration; as abounding with incitements to moral courage and political honesty; as confirming rational hopes of the progress of knowledge and liberty; as elevating our opinion of human nature; and in all these points counteracting the soul-withering influence of our own frivolous and sycophantic literature. America is deeply indebted to Jefferson. He had the sagacity to see her true interests in the beginning of his career, the honesty to sacrifice all other considerations to them, and the moral courage to pursue them inflexibly to the end. And the are more dangerous than standing armies; and that the principle of spending money to be paid by posterity, under the name of funding, is but swindling futurity on a large scale."-1816. Vol. iv. p. 288, interests of America being peace and liberty, were and still are the interests of mankind. He was a great instrument in the foundation of her liberties in 1776; the main instrument in their restoration in 1800. He lived to see the community of which he was a member, proceed from infancy to maturity: he lived to see it rise from a struggle in which it with difficulty maintained its existence, to grow strongly and rapidly into one of the most noble and important communities of the world; and he left it in a fair train for becoming the very greatest of the nations. For how much of this progress it was indebted to him, will be most clearly manifest to those who dwell most on the history of his times, especially on the portion of them which intervened between that scarecrow of well-meaning simplicity, the French Reign of Terror, and his first election to the Presidency. The first steps of his administration dissipated for ever the phantoms of fear and delusion, with which artifice and cowardice had surrounded the image of liberty; and established principles of government, which remain to this day, not only unshaken, but apparently taking deeper and deeper hold of the affections of the American people. He was undoubtedly the greatest public benefactor that has yet appeared in the nine-. teenth century; whatever may be his station in the eighteenth, in which it is difficult to say that he was second, even to Washington, ART. IV. A Dissertation on the Geography of Herodotus, with a map. Researches into the history of the Scythians, Getæ, and Sarmatians. Translated from the German of B. G. Niebuhr. Oxford. Talboys. 1830. THE two Dissertations of Niebuhr, which are here presented in an English translation, form part of a volume of his miscellaneous, or smaller essays, published in 1828. It is our intention to examine only the first of these essays. The design of the "Dissertation on the Geography of Herodotus" is, to present in a clearer light the general Geographical notions of this ancient writer: a comparison with the real Geography forms no part of Niebuhr's plan. There are two things to be considered in investigating the Geography of Herodotus; the one, "is the point from which, and the medium through which, the author looked;" the second is, to ascertain the facts of true Geography, which form the basis of that which he imagined. It is a matter of considerable im |