only schemes, the one leads to anarchy, and the other to despotism; the one is a river that stagnates and fills the atmosphere with putrefaction; the other is a torrent which roars to destruction. Of all the great men who have looked down on the sphere of politics, from a throne of light, it appears to me that Edmund Burke was one who had his mind most stored with general principles. It is well known that this great man was charged with inconsistency; though, I suspect, that his was the inconsistency of the boatman, who leans to the one or the other side of his skiff, as he sees it incline by the passengers, or dip in the waves. When he considered the influence of the crown as too strong, he was on the side of liberty; and when he saw French principles breaking in like a torrent, he changed his ground only to meet the change of circumstances. This, I consider as the truest consistency. But perhaps part of that wise man's deviations in principles, is owing to the fact, that in politics, no general principles can be found which suit all occasions; and that God has decreed that we should feel our way through fragmentary knowledge; and that to complete a system, is a proof rather of the ambition, than of the wisdom of him who attempts it. If the subject were not so delicate, I might show the same thing in theology. You must either admit or deny the foreknowledge of God; yet what a train of deductions can be made from either of the postulates of this dilemma ! There is one general principle that is now setting our land on fire. All men are born free and equal, have certain inalienable rights; and therefore it is wrong for man to hold property in man. Slavery is a sin, and ought immediately to be abandoned. But surely these principles, so clear in their abstraction, so congenial to the purest sentiments of liberty and religion, cannot be maintained, as justifying certain obvious deductions, independent of all the conditions of time and place. In Algiers, I may say, that all men are born free and equal; but if I proceed to strip the Dey of his usurped power, and restore the people to their original rights, without instruction, without preparation, I shall only change a government which accomplishes the objects of government imperfectly, for anarchy; and I shall fill the streets with blood. So with respect to the other part of these propositions. Slavery is a sin, and ought immediately to be abandoned. I suppose any rational man would say that the word ought, refers only to what is possible; for, impossibilium nulla est obligatio, there is no obligation which binds to impossibilities; and in a vast political movement, I take it, an impossibility is, that the instant removal of which will be attended with greater evils than the temporary continuance. At any rate, let a man beware, because a principle is clear in the abstract, that it is therefore equally clear in its application to every possible, practical case. The maintaining of which position has been the source of half the political and moral delusions which have distracted our earth. The object of these remarks, is not to prove the entire uselessness of general principles, even when they are most general. They certainly show an object on one side, or rather on one point, and will always be followed out by all analytic minds. I only wish to remind all lovers of them, that the most general side is always the darkest; that it teaches us the least of the nature of an individual thing; and that the value or worthlessness of general principles, always depend on the application a man makes of them; and he is never to be charged with an application which he disavows. O how much charity would this single recollection spread through the world! It would be oil to the breakers of a troubled sea. We are living in a very excited age, and an excitement which comes, as usual, from some metaphysical principles. We are treading the old track, and are fighting because our maxims are too general to be fully understood. The cloud is dark, and is therefore surcharged with thunder. Would it not be well for us to remember the words of one of the wisest politicians that ever brought the dictates of philosophy to calm the passions of mankind. "I cannot," says Edmund Burke, "stand forward and give praise or blame to any thing which relates to human actions and human concerns, on a simple view of the object, as it stands stripped of every relation, in all the nakedness and solitude of metaphysical abstraction. Circumstances (which with some gentlemen pass for nothing) give in reality to every political principle its distinguishing color and discriminating effect. The circumstances are what render every civil and political scheme beneficial or noxious to mankind. Abstractly speaking, government, as well as liberty, is good; yet could I, in common sense, ten years ago, have felicitated France on her enjoyment of a government, (for she then had a government,) without inquiring what the nature of that government was, or how it was administered? Can I now congratulate the same nation upon its freedom? Is it because liberty in the abstract is to be classed among the blessings of mankind, that I am seriously to felicitate a madman, who has escaped from the protecting restraint and wholesome darkness of his cell, on his restoration to the enjoyment of light and liberty? Am I to congratulate a highwayman and murderer, who has broke prison, on the recovery of his natural rights? This would be to act over again the scene of the criminals condemned to the galleys, and then heroically deliver the metaphysic knight of the sorrowful countenance."* If we must bring down these general principles to bear on our agitated land, let us, at least, endeavor to be as calm as those philosophic minds from which they are supposed to have originated. * Reflections on French Revolution. THE PURITAN.. No. 33. I love to breathe where Gilead sheds her balm; And deck my mossy couch with Sharon's deathless rose. Pierpont's Airs of Palestine. HEBREW POETRY. In the earliest ages of the world, poetry was a very serious employment. It was the first form in which the contemplative powers of man manifested themselves; and to it may be traced, as a germ, our history, our fiction, our philosophy, and our laws. Even the solemn attributes of the Deity, and the tremendous truths of religion, are supposed to have been first delivered to mankind, by the inspiration of the poet, through the melody of song. The reason for this peculiarity in the history of |