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he, who murmurs, murmurs not against man merely, but against God; and superstition, even religion is brought to shield the oppressor, and to rivet still firmer the chains of the slave.

I touch a point on which it is considered dangerous to tell the truth, and on which one needs some courage to tell the whole truth. Yet if men were honest in their aims, and wanted only their share of God's gifts, no one would suffer by the truth's being told; no one would shrink from having it told.

It is a truth nobody can gainsay, that labor is the sole creator of wealth; the laborer then should be its. sole possessor. If justice were done, we should go on the principle laid down by the Apostle Paul, “if any man will not work, neither shall he eat." But what confusion would the proclamation of such a truth produce! Verily, the preaching of such a doctrine would turn the world upside down.

The laboring classes formed, not very wisely in my judgment, a few years since, certain associations, called Trades Unions, and straightway the hue and cry was raised; property was declared to be in danger, the peace and order of society were threatened, and in some cases the law was twisted against the workingmen, and they were punished because they refused to, work for the wages offered them by their employers. Now, at this moment* a combination is entered into by the merchants and bankers, by which law and justice. are set at defiance; by which the laborer and the whole community, except money-lenders and moneyborrowers, are and cannot but be defrauded, and forthwith the public press lauds this combination as proceeding from almost unprecedented magnanimity and nobility of soul, and love of country and of man.

Now this does not all proceed from stupidity, from ignorance. It is craft, dishonesty. Nobody needs. pretend that it is otherwise. Men are ignorant, I know, and cannot see the truth because the guinea

*This was written in the summer of 1837.

hides it; but they know better than they act. I, however, have not introduced these topics for the purpose of declaiming against any portion of the community; I have merely done it to show why, on the one hand, men are opposed to having the truth told, and why, on the other, the people submit to be deceived. I have merely broached the matter. Much more must be said before it will be placed in a clear light.

My conclusion is, that people are afraid of the truth because they are conscious of ends which the truth opposes; and that they who have these ends are so situated, that they have the control of the public conscience and the forming of the public mind.

Now I may be wrong in all I have said. Be it so. Let truth be free to combat me, and no harm can arise. We are all liable to err, and the only way to avoid the mischievous consequences of error is to communicate freely and unreservedly our opinions, one to another; to give them modestly but frankly to the public, and let them be canvassed.

He who is conscious of none but honest ends will never refuse to hear the truth, and will never withhold what he believes to be the truth from others. Not a little have mankind suffered because men have been deterred by interest, by regard for friends, by love of peace, by fear of producing confusion or strife, from telling their whole thought, from uttering themselves freely and fully on topics on which they had thought long and deeply, and on which they were qualified to instruct their country or their race.

Jesus

I know the truth is often like a sword. I know there are times and places when if you tell certain truths you must look out for a convulsion. was the way, and the truth, the truth itself, and yet he said he had come not to bring peace but a sword. It is the truth most needed, and which it is the most criminal to withhold, that produces the most confusion, and occasions the most reproach to him. who tells it. The truth, which can be told without producing any excitement, is not the truth that needs to be told, for it is a truth which already reigns.

I know of but one restriction as to this matter of telling the truth, that is, never undertake to tell a truth when you cannot tell it. Be sure that you have the truth, and that you can so utter it, that it will be taken for what it really is, and then utter it boldly, in a mild and gentle voice, if you choose, in trumpet tones, if you please.

I close with one word to those that hear. If what you hear be a truth, and you are convinced that it is truth, find no fault with it, and never suffer yourselves to regret that it has been told. It may have disturbed your repose, swept away your old dependencies, broken. up old associations; no matter; never mind; if it be the truth, thank God for it; though it may pain you it will do you good. Bear in mind, that as no error can be useful, so no truth can be harmful."

66

ART. III.-Manual of Political Ethics, designed chiefly for the Use of Colleges and Students at Law. Part II., Political Ethics Proper. By FRANCIS Lieber. Boston: Charles C. Little and James Brown. 1839. 8vo. pp. 668.

We noticed in a preceding number at some length the former volume of this work, and we then advised the author, before publishing the remainder, to keep his materials on hand for some years, in order to give. a greater degree of maturity to his thoughts and style. We did not much expect that this piece of advice would be acted on, and are therefore not surprised at the early appearance of this large and thick volume.

We still think that the author would have improved. his work in both its parts, by keeping it longer on the anvil; but there are, nevertheless, defects in it which no amount of labor employed in polishing and matur

The two leading objec

ing would entirely remove. tions to the work are the foreign air that pervades the language, and the want of any precise and distinct subject.

The language consists substantially of English words put together on the principles of arrangement and construction belonging to the idiom of Germany. The result is a dialect not only inelegant, but at times almost comic;-an effect entirely at variance with the character of the work. Thus, in quoting from a French dictionary a remark upon the employment of informers by the government, our author does it into English in the following singular style.

"The French dictionary says ad verbum Mouchard with much naïveté. Those who have the misfortune to employ these abject persons, believe to disguise their contemptibleness by calling them observers."

To avoid indulging in a hearty fit of laughter at the perusal of this passage, would probably be with most persons in good health, what the execution of the order to slaughter the Protestants on St. Bartholomew's day was to Viscount d' Orthèz: une chose non faisable, or as our author has it, an unfeasible thing.

In the same way, in treating the interesting subject of woman, the author throws a comic air over the whole discussion, by employing frequently the German form, the woman, instead of the English, woman's, or women. If he were required to translate Schiller's beautiful little poem, Die Würde der Frauen, into English, he would probably render the title, The Dignity of the Women, instead of The Worth of Woman. The different effect of these forms is easily seen by substituting one for the other in any part of the poem alluded to. Thus, if instead of

"Woman invites him with bliss in her smile,
To cease from his toil and be happy a while,"

we substitute

The woman invites him with bliss in her smile,
To cease, &c.

the effect changes at once from the serious to the

com c.

Again:

"Woman contented in silent repose,

Enjoys in its beauty life's flower as it blows."

On reading this couplet, the ear is soothed by the harmony of the language, and the imagination gratified by the beauty of the image; the judgment acquiesces in the correctness of the thought. The effect is a quiet, serene satisfaction. Substitute the woman for woman in the first line, and every reader, not provided with a diaphragm of adamant, bursts at once into a fit of laughter. So true it is, as Napoleon remarked, that there is only one step from the sublime, and we may add the pathetic, to the ridiculous. Du sublime au ridicule il n'y a qu'un pas.

When Frederic the Unique attempted to write French poetry, he took the precaution to put it into the hands. of Voltaire for correction before he published it. Voltaire was accustomed to describe the operation, which he performed upon it, under the figure of washing the king's soiled linen. The wits of Paris remarked at the time, that Voltaire did not do his work thoroughly, and that he should have passed the royal linen through two or three more waters. - Dr. Lieber, we believe, submits his lucubrations to a similar process; and if he must publish in a language, which he really does not and probably never will write with either correctness or elegance, he is perfectly right in so doing; but we must in conscience say to him that the literary washerwomen, whom he employs, slight their work at least as much as Voltaire did his, and do not give him his money's worth.

Take for another example the following precious specimen of the Babylonish. In speaking of the employment, by the Pope and the Cardinals, of their family connexions, a practice commonly designated under the name of Nepotism, Dr. Lieber remarks:

"The crime and plunder which was [were] connected with nepotism, is [are] appalling: State property was alienated and changed into hereditary principalities for the Nepots."

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