falsehood and cowardice. A man swears that the property intrusted to him is burnt, and then, when he is no longer afraid, produces it, and boasts of the atmosphere of "honour," through which the lie did not transpire. Frenchmen are like grains of gunpowder,-each by itself smutty and contemptible, but mass them together and they are terrible indeed. AUGUST 1, 1831. Mixed Nature of Man.*-St. Simonism.* S there is much beast and some devil in man; so is there some angel and some God in him. The beast and the devil may be conquered, but in this life never destroyed. I will defy any one to answer the arguments of a St. Simonist, except on the ground of Christianity—its precepts and its assurances. THE AUGUST 6, 1831. The Good and the True.-Romish Religion. HERE is the love of the good for the good's sake, and the love of the truth for the truth's sake. I have known many, especially women, love the good for the good's sake; but very few, indeed, and scarcely one woman, love the truth for the truth's sake. Yet without the latter, the former may become, as it has a thousand times been, the source of persecution of the truth,-the pretext and motive of inquisitorial cruelty and party zealotry. To see clearly that the love of the good and the true is ultimately identical-is given only to those who love both sincerely and without any foreign ends. Look through the whole history of countries professing the Romish religion, and you will uniformly find the leaven of this besetting and accursed principle of action—that the end will sanction any means. "Read" are," in default of a more lucid construction. K · AUGUST 8, 1831. England and Holland. THE HE conduct of this country to King William of Holland has been, in my judgment, base and unprincipled beyond anything in our history since the times of Charles the Second. Certainly, Holland is one of the most important allies that England has; and we are doing our utmost to subject it, and Portugal, to French influence, or even dominion! Upon my word, the English people, at this moment, are like a man palsied in every part of his body but one, in which one part he is so morbidly sensitive that he cannot bear to have it so much as breathed upon, whilst you may pinch him with a hot forceps elsewhere without his taking any notice of it. IRON AUGUST 8, 1831. RON is the most ductile of all hard metals, and the hardest of all ductile metals. With the exception of nickel, in which it is dimly seen, iron is the only metal in which the magnetic power is visible. Indeed, it is almost impossible to purify nickel of iron. Galvanism is the union of electricity and magnetism, and, by being continuous, it exhibits an image of life;—I say, an image only: it is life in death. Heat is the mesothesis or indifference of light and matter. THE AUGUST 14, 1831. National Colonial Character, and Naval Discipline. HE character of most nations in their colonial dependencies is in an inverse ratio of excellence to their character at home. The best people in the mother-country will generally be the worst in the colonies; the worst at home will be the best abroad. Or, perhaps, I may state it 1 This 8, though in all the editions, is probably an error. less offensively thus:-The colonists of a well-governed country will degenerate; those of an ill-governed country will improve. I am now considering the natural tendency of such colonists if left to themselves; of course, a direct act of the legislature of the mother-country will break in upon this. Where this tendency is exemplified, the cause is obvious. In countries well governed and happily conditioned, none, or very few, but those who are desperate through vice or folly, or who are mere trading adventurers, will be willing to leave their homes and settle in another hemisphere; and of those who do go, the best and worthiest are always striving to acquire the means of leaving the colony, and of returning to their native land. In illgoverned and ill-conditioned countries, on the contrary, the most respectable of the people are willing and anxious to emigrate for the chance of greater security and enlarged freedom and if they succeed in obtaining these blessings in almost any degree, they have little inducement, on the average, to wish to abandon their second and better country. Hence, in the former case, the colonists consider themselves as mere strangers, sojourners, birds of passage, and shift to live from hand to mouth, with little regard to lasting improvement of the place of their temporary commerce; whilst, in the latter case, men feel attached to a community to which they are individually indebted for otherwise unattainable benefits, and for the most part learn to regard it as their abode, and to make themselves as happy and comfortable in it as possible. I believe that the internal condition and character of the English and French West India islands of the last century amply verified this distinction; the Dutch colonists most certainly did, and have always done. : Analogous to to this, though not founded on precisely the same principle, is the fact that the severest naval discipline is always found in the ships of the freest nations, and the most lax discipline in the ships of the most oppressed. Hence, the naval discipline of the Americans is the sharpest; then that of the English;1 then that of the French (I This expression needs explanation. It looks as if Mr. Coleridge speak as it used to be): and on board a Spanish ship, there is no discipline at all. At Genoa, the word " Liberty" is, or used to be, engraved on the chains of the galley-slaves, and the doors of the dungeons. rated the degree of liberty enjoyed by the English after that of the citizens of the United States; but he meant no such thing. His meaning was, that the form of government of the latter was more democratic, and formally assigned more power to each individual. The Americans, as a nation, had no better friend in England than Coleridge; he contemplated their growth with interest, and prophesied highly of their destiny, whether under their present or other governments. But he well knew their besetting faults and their peculiar difficulties, and was most deliberately of opinion that the English had, for 130 years last past, possessed a measure of individual freedom and social dignity which had never been equalled, much less surpassed, in any other country ancient or modern. There is a passage in Mr. Coleridge's latest publication ("Church and State"), which clearly expresses his opinion upon this subject:-"It has been frequently and truly observed that in England, where the ground-plan, the skeleton, as it were, of the government is a monarchy, at once buttressed and limited by the aristocracy (the assertions of its popular character finding a better support in the harangues and theories of popular men, than in state documents, and the records of clear history), a far greater degree of liberty is, and long has been, enjoyed, than ever existed in the ostensibly freest, that is, most democratic, commonwealths of ancient or modern times; greater, indeed, and with a more decisive predominance of the spirit of freedom, than the wisest and most philanthropic statesmen of antiquity, or than the great commonwealth's-men, the stars of that narrow interspace of blue sky between the black clouds of the first and second Charles's reignsbelieved compatible, the one with the safety of the state, the other with the interests of morality. Yes! for little less than a century and a-half, Englishmen have, collectively and individually, lived and acted with fewer restraints on their free agency, than the citizens of any known republic, past or present." (p. 120.) Upon which he subjoins the following note: "It will be thought, perhaps, that the United States of North America should have been excepted. But the identity of stock, language, customs, manners, and laws scarcely allows us to consider this an exception, even though it were quite certain both that it is and that it will continue such. It was at all events a remark worth remembering, which I once heard from a traveller (a prejudiced one, I must admit), that where every man may take liberties, there is little liberty for any man; or, that where every man takes liberties, no man can enjoy any." (p. 121.) See also a passage to the like effect in the "Friend," vol. i. p. 129.-H. N. C. I AUGUST 15, 1831. England.-Holland and Belgium. CANNOT contain my indignation at the conduct of our government towards Holland. They have undoubtedly forgotten the true and well-recognised policy of this country in regard to Portugal in permitting the war faction in France to take possession of the Tagus, and to bully the Portuguese upon so flimsy-indeed, false, a pretext; 1 yet, in this instance, something may be said for them. Miguel is such a wretch, that I acknowledge a sort of morality in leaving him to be cuffed and insulted; though, of course, this is a poor answer to a statesman who alleges the interest and policy of the country. But, as to the Dutch and King William: the first, as a nation, the most ancient ally, the alter idem of England, the best deserving of the cause of freedom and religion and morality of any people in Europe; and the second, the very best sovereign now in Christendom, with, perhaps, the single exception of the excellent King of Sweden; 2. -was ever anything so mean and cowardly as the behaviour of England! The Five Powers have, throughout this conference, been actuated exclusively by a selfish desire to preserve peace-I should rather say, to smother war-at the expense of a most valuable but inferior power. They have over and over again acknowledged the justice of the Dutch claims, and the absurdity of the Belgian pretences; but as the Belgians were also as impudent as they were iniquitous,—as they would not yield their point, why then-that peace may be preserved the Dutch must yield theirs! A foreign prince comes into Belgium, pending these negociations, and takes an unqualified oath to maintain the Belgian demands: 1 Meaning, principally, the whipping, so richly deserved, inflicted on a Frenchman called Bonhomme, for committing a disgusting breach of common decency in the cathedral of Coimbra, during divine service in Passion Week.-H. N. C. 2" Everything that I have heard or read of this sovereign has contributed to the impression on my mind, that he is a good and a wise man, and worthy to be the king of a virtuous people, the purest specimen of the Gothic race."-Church and State, p. 125, n.-H. N. C. |