jects have inherited this Freedom,' claiming their Franchises, not on abstract principles, as the Rights of Men,' but as the Rights of Englishmen, and as a Patrimony derived from their Forefathers." -Pp. 45 and 46.

"You will observe, that from Magna Charta to the declaration of Right, it has been the uniform Policy of our Constitution to claim and assert our Liberties, as an entailed inheritance, derived to us from our Forefathers, and to be transmitted to our Posterity; as an Estate especially belonging to the People of this Kingdom, without any reference whatever to any other more general or prior right. By this means our Constitution preserves an Unity in so great a diversity of its parts. We have an Inheritable Crown; an Inheritable Peerage; and a House of Commons; and a People inheriting privileges, franchises, and liberties, from a long line of Ancestors."

"A spirit of Innovation is generally the result of a selfish temper and confined views. People will not look forward to Posterity, who never look backward to their Ancestors. Besides, the People of England well know, that the idea of Inheritance is a sure principle of Conservation, and a sure principle of Transmission, without at all excluding a principle of Improvement. It leaves acquisition free; but it secures what it acquires. Whatever advantages are obtained by a State proceeding on these

Maxims are locked fast as in a sort of Family Settlement, grasped as in a kind of Mortmain for ever." "By a Constitutional Policy, working after the pattern of Nature, we receive, we hold, we transmit our Government and our privileges, in the same manner in which we enjoy and transmit our property and our lives."-BURKE, pp. 47 and 48.

The following Extracts are from Fisher Ames*. Fisher Ames says, "By removing or changing the relation of any one of the Pillars that support the British Constitution, its identity and excellence would be lost,-a Revolution would ensue. When the House of Commons (in Cromwell's time) voted the House of Peers useless, then a Tyranny of the Committees of the Commons' House sprang up." He says, "The English Nation have had the good sense, or more correctly the good fortune, to alter nothing, till time and circumstances enforced the alteration, and then to abstain from speculative innovations." Look, my Countrymen, at the innovations which are constantly attempted to be enforced by every Tom Fool that can get a seat in the House. Fisher Ames again, on Faction:-" As Property is the object of the great mass of every Faction, the rules that keep all property sacred will be annulled, or so far shaken, as to bring enough of it

* Fisher Ames on Democracy, edited by Ewbank, published by Parker. This book is worthy of a place in every Public or Private Library and Reading-room.

within the grasp of the dominant Party, to reward their partisans with booty. But the chieftains thirsting only for dominion, will search for the means of extending or establishing it. They will, of course, innovate, till the vestiges of private right, and of restraints on public authority, are effaced; until the real people are stripped of all privilege and influence, and become even more abject and spiritless than weak." "The People, it will be thought, will see their error, and return. But there is no return to Liberty. What the fire of the Faction does not destroy, it will debase.” "Every Faction that may happen to rule will pursue but two objects :-its Vengeance on the fallen party, and the security of its own power against any one that may rise to contest it."

Let our Democratic Faction read what Fisher Ames says upon Democracy, viz.

"A Democracy cannot last. Its nature ordains that the next change shall be into a Military Despotism-of all known Governments, the most prone to shift its Head, and the slowest to mend its Vices. The reason is, that the tyranny of what is called the People, and that of the Sword, both operate alike to debase and corrupt, till there are neither Men left with the Spirit to desire Liberty, nor morals with power to sustain Justice. Like the burning pestilence that destroys the human body, nothing can subsist by its dissolution but vermin."

"The

truth is, and let it humble our pride, the most ferocious of all animals, when his passions are raised to a fury, and uncontrolled, is Man; and of all the Governments, the worst is that which never fails to excite, but was never found to restrain those passions; that is Democracy. It is an illuminated Hell, that in the midst of remorse, horror, and torture, rings with festivity; for experience shows, that one joy remains to this most malignant description of the damned, the power to make others wretched."-A Voice of Warning. Chap. xi. page 181, by FISHER AMES.

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'Accident may give rise and extent to States, but the fixed Laws that govern human actions and passions will decide their progress and fate. By looking into History, and seeing what has been, we know what will be. It is thus that dumb experience speaks audibly; it is thus that witnesses come from the dead and testify.-Are you warned? No. Are you roused? No. We lie in a more death-like sleep than those witnesses. The chief hazard that attends the liberty of any great People, lies in their blindness to the danger. A weak people may descry ruin before it overwhelms them, without any power to retard or repel its advance; but a powerful Nation, like our own, can be ruined only by its blindness, that will not see destruction as it comes; or by its apathy and selfishness, that will not stir

though it sees it. Our fate is not foretold by signs and wonders; the meteors do not indeed glare in the form of types, and print it legibly in the sky; but our warning is as distinct, and almost as awful, as if it were announced in thunder by the concussions of all the elements."-FISHER AMES.

Well, Brother Electors, what do you say to all this? Will not the truths here stated in these four papers awaken you? Are not the warnings here marked down, clearly shown to be of Divine origin? And is not the finger of Providence plainly to be seen in the destruction of Jerusalem, as much for a warning to posterity as a punishment for the iniquities of the Jewish people, and for the destruction of nearly the whole of the Jews then living within its walls,-when 1,100,000 fell by the sword and famine, and 97,000 were taken prisoners? We are equally warned now, as they were then it only requires for us to be as blind for the same fate to befall us. Our greatest warnings now are in the League at Lichfield House, and the Dinner at Freemasons' Tavern on the 28th March, 1835, led by a scion of the House of Russell, to overturn the Protestant Church and State; which, as Lord Morpeth said, as Chairman of the Dinner, in his address to Lord John Russell, his ancestor, Lord William, had spilt his precious blood upon the scaffold for the establishment of the Protestant Religion. These two events ought to