nations of both ancient and modern times, a foundation for professional study, and from the habits of investigation and acquisition which had been formed, a foundation for the successful prosecution of any pursuit, to which convenience or necessity might lead. Of the general success attending this system of collegiate education, there is abundant evidence. In Great Britain, for centuries, the leading men in the church and in civil life have generally had their early training at the universities. But it is true, that not every man from a university has shown superior knowledge or ability, nor have those without a university education failed with no exception to occupy with success places of eminence. The latter, however, must have received an education somehow and somewhere; and as a general fact in this country as well as in Europe, those who, before entering on active life, have depended on private instruction or their own unaided efforts, in proportion as they have varied from the collegiate system, have manifested less method in their subsequent studies, a less correct taste, less general information, and a less comprehensive view even of professional knowledge. On the subject of education, there are current in our times numerous fallacies, by which men of much intelligence in other departments, are not unfrequently misled. The two words practical and useful in this relation are subject to great abuse. An example of this perversion of language is found in the Report of the Board of Visitors of the Military Academy at West Point, 1849. It is there said, "the board see no rea son to recommend any other change in the course of study, than that of substituting physiology for logic, as recommended in the report of the committee on instruction, and for the reasons there given at length. That the cadets should have been able to pass the examination which they did in pure logic, was most creditable to them and to their instructors. But useless, or comparatively useless knowledge, may be ably taught and thoroughly acquired; and the board can not help thinking, that logic falls into this category, as regards young men whose powers of close reasoning would seem to have been improved to their utmost by other studies, taught as mathematics and natural philosophy are taught in the Military Academy." That the study of the mathematics improves the intellectual powers is undeniable; but that a man who reasons well in mathematics, will of course reason well on moral questions, appears neither from the nature of the case nor from experience. Logic teaches the nature of reasoning, the modes of constructing an argument, where to look for fallacies, and the proper method of detecting and exposing them; a kind of knowledge useful, in the common acceptation of this word, to all men, in all places and at all times, and highly practical. Even a cadet from West Point well instructed in physiology, might find a little "pure logic" of use in applying his knowledge. If it be objected that a student may learn the rules of logic without being in consequence a good reasoner, it is true likewise, that he may be extensively acquainted with the facts of physiology, without becoming a good physiologist. The general result should be looked at in both cases. Most of the objections to the course of study pursued in our colleges, rest on a foundation similar to that on which rests this undervaluing of logic in the report of the Board of Visitors at West Point.

The changes in Brown University proposed by the committee appointed by the corporation, are numerous and radical. To adapt the instruction of the institution "to the wants of the whole community," they would abandon the present system of adjusting collegiate study to a fixed term of four years, and arrange the various courses so that every student might study "what he chose, all that he chose, and nothing but what he chose." They would admit no student to a degree, unless he had "honorably sustained his examination in such studies as may be ordained by the corporation." These changes are among the most prominent. One of the consequences expected from this new organization of the University, is the increase of the number of its pupils. Among the reasons assigned of this anticipated increase, is the following. Many young men who intend to enter the professions, are un

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willing or unable to spend four years in the preparatory studies of college. They would, however, cheerfully spend one or two years in such study, if they were allowed to select such branches of science as they chose. This class would probably form an important addition to our numbers, and we should thus, in some degree, improve the education of a large number of all the professions." That the numbers of the University may in this way be increased, is not impossible, but that "the education of a large number of all the professions" would be improved, is a point not so clear.

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We are told in this report, that academical degrees are often conferred upon the unworthy, and that the sign, in numerous instances, does not correspond to the thing signified. But does President Wayland, or does any one else, suppose, that at Brown University, on the new plan of study, those who go through a course of instruction in Chemistry, Physiology and Geology one and a half years," or a "course of instruction in the English language and Rhetoric, one year," or a "course of instruction in Moral and Intellectual Philosophy, one year," or a course of instruction in Political Economy, one term," and so through all the courses, that each individual student will be a proficient in his own branch, and that no one will obtain a "certificate," in which the extent of his acquirements is not correctly defined? The eminent qualifications of President Wayland for the station he occupies, are universally acknowledged; and Brown University will enter on its new career under the most favorable auspices. There are, however, two aberrations from the prescribed scheme to be guarded against. One is that the partial courses will become so popular, that the full course will be in a great measure, if not wholly, deserted-the other is, that the partial courses will fail to answer the expectations of their friends, and that the university will be in danger of reverting to its former state. In the latter case, however, the $125,000 dollars, which it is proposed to raise, and which, it is hoped, will be secured, will remain with the institution; and even on the old organization, this sum will find its sphere of usefulness.

Conscience and the Constitution, with Remarks on the recent Speech of the Hon. Daniel Webster, in the Senate of the U. S., on the subject of Slavery. By M. STUART, lately Professor in the Theological Seminary at Andover. Δοῦλος ἐκλήθης, μή σοι Mir-Paul. Boston: Crocker & Brewster, 1850. 8vo. pp. 119.

Ir is with much disappointment that we find ourselves unable to pay our respects to Prof. Stuart's pamphlet in a deliberate and leisurely way. We were the more desirous to do this, because we think that the learned and venerable author has been treated in some quarters with an undue severity of criticism, if not with the injustice of positive misrepresentation. But the unexpected length of some of the articles in this number, compels us to adopt a summary method of proceeding, or else to wait till the end of another quarter, when the pamphlet with all its demerits will already have passed out of the public mind.

We begin then, by saying that Prof. Stuart does not in this pamphlet defend the institution of slavery. On the contrary he denounces the intrinsic injustice and meanness, and the incurable mischievousness of that institution, in terms which show plainly enough that he has the sensibility of a Christian man; and he argues against it with a commendable force and pungency. If Prof. S. will give us the use of his copyright, we will undertake to compile from this pamphlet a more effective tract against slavery than can be found upon the catalogue of the Anti-Slavery Society. And if his friends, or rather those who have undertaken to use him for their own political purposes, will provide the means of publishing three thousand copies and distributing them through the State of South Carolina, we will warrant that on his next visit to that hospitable and sovereign State, he shall be mobbed, and unless he saves himself by flight, shall be murdered by the chivalry. All those criticisms which represent the author as justifying the institution of slavery by the authority of the Scriptures or in any other way, are grossly unfair.

What fault then do we find with this pamphlet? Much every way; but we will not stop to be critical upon the lesser matters of incorrect quotations, loose state

ments of incidental matters, heedless story telling, and slips in chronology and history. The great fault is that it was written with an unfortunate aim and bias. Instead of taking for a motto the text from Paul which he translates, "Art thou called being a slave, do not make a fuss about it," the author might rather have taken a motto from Jude which is in the common English translation, "Having men's persons in admiration." His admiration of Senator Webster, is as profound and overwhelming as Captain Cuttle's admiration of his friend Bunsby. And having been invited by the Senator to write a pamphlet "in relation to great and permanent questions of government, and to the obligations which men are under to support the constitution and the fundamental principles of the government under which they live," he writes from first to last very much as if he had been retained to defend all that Mr. Webster has said and done of late in reference to the demands of the great slavetrading interest. Thus he is obliged not only to reassert and reargue all the false issues on which the illustrious Senator has expended so much of his strength, but also to follow him in the bold rhetorical feat of putting his conclusions as to what should be done, on the great questions of the day, in point blank opposition to his arguments.

Prof. Stuart's first grand paralogism is one which underlies not only Mr. Webster's speech, but every thing which has been written and spoken by respectable Northern men in favor of yielding to the demands and threats of the slave-trading interest. It is that the question which now agitates Congress and agitates the country, is a question in which the Anti-Slavery Societies are particularly involved. Accordingly the venerable author argues from the Old Testament and from the New, at great length, and with great gravity, to show that the modern doctrine of immediate abolition at all hazards, is not warranted by the principles of the divinely guided Mosaic legislation, nor by the principles on which Christ and his Apostles acted. Who that will take the trouble to think for a single moment, needs to be told that all such arguments are utterly impertinent to the great questions now before the country? That great commercial interest which is created by the capital and industry employed in raising slaves and transporting them to market-the interest which by the abolition of the foreign slave trade has become paramount to all other interests in the Southern States, and has thus become far more powerful as an element in party politics than any interest can be which is liable to foreign competition-that interest the existence of which in our country is the opprobrium alike of our republicanism and of our Christianity, is now demanding from Congress, with violent clamor, and with audacious threats of treason and of civil war, new guarantees and new measures of protection. At such a time, when these demands are to be met and disposed of, how perfectly impertinent is it to argue a false issue about modern abolitionism and the wisdom or folly of the doctrines and measures peculiar to the Anti-Slavery Societies.

Another paralogism into which Prof. Stuart has been led by Mr. Webster and other politicians, is the assumption that some great concession must be made for the sake of saving the Union, and that those who insist on applying the ordinance of 1787 to the new territories, do not properly love and value the Union. That he does nake this assumption, is sufficiently manifest from an impassioned appeal near the close of the pamphlet, pp. 116-118, where he evidently includes among those "who are urging the nation on to disruption and a war of desolation," all the myriads of all parties who are insisting on legal and constitutional measures against the further extension of slavery and the further protection of the slave trade. There may be a few Bedlamites, chiefly in the eastern part of Massachusetts, who are willing that the Union should be dissolved, and who are not indisposed to get rid of slavery by separating the North from the South. Some there may be who affirm that the Union will be dissolved, and ought to be, if the power of the Union is to be employed for the extension of slavery. But if the Union may only stand till such men have influence enough to carry the people of the North with them, it will stand quite long enough. Nay, if it may stand till Messrs. Garrison, Wendell Phillips, Theodore Parker, and the like of them, shall take up arms for its overthrow, the prayer of patriotism, Esto perpetua, will not have been offered in vain. It is little

than a libel upon the people of the free-labor states to represent them, or any portion of them, save a few whose insane extravagance makes them quite harmless, as wanting in loyalty to the Union. Is there then no truth in the outcry that the Union is in danger? We will not say that there is no danger. But how much danVOL. VIII.

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ger is there, and from what quarter does it arise? The only threat of danger to the Union, the only whisper of disloyalty, comes from those who affect to represent the great interest of slavery, or more properly the great slave-trading interest. They tell us, peremptorily, that if any measure is adopted in Congress but such as they demand, they will immediately resort to overt acts of treason as treason is defined in the Federal Constitution. And therefore grave and eloquent statesmen, and a thousand tricky or cowardly politicians-nay, men in whom wisdom and uprightness are combined as unquestionably as they are in Prof. Stuart-cry out that the Union can be preserved only by some new compromise, some magnanimous and patriotic concession to slavery. What is this Union which must needs be preserved from year to year by new concessions and new compromises? Is not the Federal Constitution a definitive and fixed arrangement for the government of the Union? Is it not an arrangement under which a majority of the people as represented in one house, and of the States as represented in the other, is to make all laws and regulations and put forth all acts of power within the limits of the Constitution? Does not every State, in the act of entering into the Union under the Constitution, surrender irrevocably just so much of its sovereignty as is committed to the general government? And if any thing is done by that government contrary to the Constitution, is there not a legal and peaceful remedy--a tribunal provided by the Constitution itself, with power to pronounce upon every unconstitutional act, legislative or executive, and to set it aside as null and void? We are not living under a loose confederation of independent states, but under the constitutional government of a vast federal republic. Is this Union then so weak and frail a thing that it can not stand alone? Must it be continually propped up by new compacts and compromises supplementary to the Constitution? Must an overwhelming numerical majority of the people, represented by a corresponding majority in both houses of Congress, be governed forever by a passionate minority threatening fire and slaughter if their will is thwarted? If this is the reality of things, if the Union exists only so long as a pusillanimous majority shall cower and tremble at the word of an imperious minority, and must be dissolved at whatever moment the slave-traders choose to pronounce the fiat; it is time for the people of the United States to awake out of sleep and to understand what kind of free government it is under which they are living.

No; the attempt to preserve the Union by making concessions in the face of justice and humanity to those who threaten us with war and a violent dissolution of the Union, is preposterous. It is a kind of constructive treason. Nothing does so much to weaken the Union and to make it valueless for all the great ends for which the Constitution was ordained by our fathers, as this practice of buying the continuance of the Union, and buying it again, whenever gasconading demagogues who deserve to be hung for their treason, attempt to carry their measures through Congress by threatening to make war upon our common country. The greatest real danger to the Union arises not so much from those who threaten it with dissolution as from those who are terrified into concession by the threat of treason. If Prof. Stuart should receive a letter from some scoundrel, “Sir, send me fifty dollars by return mail, or I will burn your house over your head,"-would he send him the money? Would he cry out, "My house is in danger; and I must make a concession for the sake of peace"? Or would he take measures to have the felon arrested and punished Mr. Webster showed the true way of preserving the Union, when he demonstrated to Mr. Hayne in the Senate, that nullification if persisted in would put

a halter round the neck of the nullifier.

But after all, the truth is that as yet there is no imminent danger to the Union. Just step into State street or Wall street, and ask whether United States' stocks have suffered any depression since the commencement of these agitations. Has there been any panic among the brokers? Did the price of U. S. six per cents, rise after Mr. Clay had introduced his plan of a compromise? Was there a still more remarkable "tendency upwards" when Mr. Webster's speech had 'saved the Union? Alas for the Union if its continuance depends upon the breath of Mr. Clay and Mr. Webster. Treason having been so long baited and coaxed with compromises, may perhaps at last venture into overt acts, and show itself in array of arms; there may even be bloodshed, and the trial and conviction and punishment of misguided men who have levied parricidal war against their country; but the Union will stand, unless betrayed by the pusillanimity of the men who ought to be its unshrinking and uncompromising defenders. NO COMPROMISE WITH TREASON! NO CONCESSION

AFTER THE UTTERANCE OF ONE THREAT OF DISUNION !---should be the universal shout of patriotism.

We will not attempt to exhibit in detail the incongruities between Prof. Stuart's arguments and principles on the one hand, and his practical conclusions and counsels on the other. It will be enough to indicate one or two of the most striking instances.

Prof. S. undertakes to discuss what he calls "the so-long agitated Wilmot Proviso"-that is, the free-labor proviso of the ordinance of 1787 for the government of the North West Territory-the proviso which has been enacted under almost every administration and subscribed by almost every President from Washington to Polk -the proviso which has excluded slavery from all the great North-western states this side of the Mississippi, and which was applied by the Missouri compromise to all the territories north and west of Missouri-the proviso which in its latest re-enactment was applied to Oregon without one word of protest or objection from Mr. Webster. "The principle itself asserted in the proviso," says our author, "is one to which I give my most unlimited and hearty assent." Very well; what next? But the expediency of applying this proviso to new territories, and even the legal power to do so, may be called in question." Some of us have studied exegesis under Prof. Stuart, but we know not how to interpret this so as to explain away the contradiction which forces itself alike upon the sense of congruity in logic, and the sense of congruity in morals. He gives his most unlimited and hearty assent to the principle-but doubts the expediency of applying it! As we understand the theory of right and wrong, the whole value of good principles is in the use of them; and a principle which must not be applied to the identical case which it defines and covers, instead of being a good principle, is good for nothing. If this principle may not be applied “to new territories," pray to what territories may it be applied? But this is not the only incongruity which the passage reveals. The application of the principle to the only class of cases to which it ever has been applied, or ever can be, is not only objectionable to our author on the ground of expediency, but he doubts whether Congress has the constitutional power to apply it. What! Is it not one grand aim of this pamphlet to show that Mr. Webster is "the greatest, wisest," noblest "of mankind"--the noble ox, "ruminating his pleasant dinner," in whose sight we are all as grasshoppers? And has not Mr. Webster demonstrated that the prohibition of slavery in new territories-a measure for which he himself has voted again and again-is perfectly within the legitimate power of Congress? What incongruity then-what temerity-even for the venerable author of this pamphlet, who though he was once a law student professes himself no lawyer," to offer his opinion on a point of Constitutional law, in opposition to the opinion and acts of Mr. Webster!

Another striking incongruity is this. Our author shows that slavery in our country originated from Great Britain, that "all the colonies fought pitched battles against it, but the king and parliament of Great Britain defeated them." This is perfectly true. The legislation of Britain, in regard to the colonies, did not inquire what was right, or what was demanded by the welfare of the millions that were to inhabit America in future ages, but only what would be for the prosperity of the Guinea slave-trade, which was then one great branch of British commerce as our own internal slave-trade is now one of the chief branches of American commerce. Our slave-breeders and slave-traders have now the same interest in forcing slavery upon our reluctant and protesting colonies, which the blood-merchants of Bristol and Liverpool once had in forcing slavery upon Virginia. Mr. Webster and Mr. Stuart say, in effect, 'Let them do it." They trust in the laws of nature, in geography, in the certainty that colonies upon which the institution of slavery has been forced by the power of the mother country, will throw off that institution as soon as they become self-governed states. But is Virginia a free state? Is Maryland another? Are Kentucky and Missouri, into which slavery was carried while they were in the condition of colonial dependence, free states? And may not the same laws of nature which have made Virginia, with a soil which yields neither sugar nor cotton, and with a surface broken by vast mountain ranges, the fiercest of all states for the support and propagation of slavery, act hereafter with equal force upon the territories which Mr. Webster and Mr. Stuart would now surrender to the potencies of geography and to the tender mercies of Virginia slave-sellers?

But our limits forbid us to proceed. We can not enter upon the task of pointing out the incongruity between that part of the pamphlet which argues against the