suffer himself to be stirred from his calm mood, by either the coarse falsehoods of the Times,' or the supercilious insolence of the Tories. The character and public estimate which must ultimately rest upon any individual, is not decided by what others may say of him, but by the acts he himself may perform. At the outset of his political career, John Roebuck offended the petty importance of the Times' by becoming M. P. for Bath in spite of the editor's denunciations; and, as he could not hope for forgiveness any more than Daniel O'Connell or Joseph Hume,for petty men never forgive, he should have disregarded the mock thunder altogether. Even in its palmy days, there was nothing in the Times' writing to stir fear in the breast of a patriot man; and now, nothing that others can do can render it more degraded, can heap more obloquy on it, than the conduct of its conductors has done. The editor of the Times' affects to treat John Roebuck with contempt, as a man of neither power nor influence, but it is only the writhing impotence of malice. John Roebuck has power, great power; he is a sound logician and a jurist of no mean repute, and these are two matters for which the Times' editor is by no means remarkable. The debates of the House of Commons mark John Roebuck as a sound politician and a firm friend to the freedom and advancement of the people; more than that, an efficient advocate of their progress. The 'Times' editor carps at him by means of his one-sided journal, but he is no match for him in intellect, and not comparable to him for honesty or morality. But the editor of the Times' has tact, he knows the weak side of John Roebuck, and, with crafty calculating malice, he bestirs himself to excite his irritability. He writes paragraphs which convey charges in inuendo, and rivals the worst vehicles of low scandal in personal abuse. When John Roebuck suffers these things to stir his temper, he loses much of his power, and this his crafty opponent knows. At the Bath election the squabble with Blake Foster was unworthy of a legislator, and the Times' editor exulted in it, and, so long as John Roebuck shall continue to evince an irritable temperament, there will be no want of mongrels, both of the press and also of the legislative mob, to urge him on to unworthy controversy. John Roebuck paints Geoffry Stanley to the life, as the creature of aristocratic morgue and petulant irritability; let him beware that he imitate not the man he condemns. Petulant irritability is not a vice of rank alone; and wherever it may chance to exist, it destroys the feeling of veneration alike in the possessor and beholder.

John Roebuck has established a system of pamphlets for the instruction of the people. He being an M. P. does well in this, to show how legally to defeat the immoral objects of unjust laws. He is doing more. He is exposing to the knowledge of the working classes the unprincipled conduct of their legislators, who

speak one way and vote another. This is as it should be. The working classes estimate morality in public conduct; and when political swindlers are exposed to discovery and contempt, they will cease to swindle-but not till then. It is pleasant to see working men walking the streets with these tracts in their hands; and it is also pleasant to read the ravings of the Times' on them, for it shows that the political swindlers feel their importance. Much abuse has been showered on Joseph Hume and John Roebuck for the part they have taken on the Canada question. The cant of their opponents should be exposed. The talk of the dismemberment of the empire is a farce. If it can be shown that the Canadians can be more happy under their own government, and thus save England the expense, then on all true principles of philosophy the dismemberment ought to take place. We should profit far more by Canadian allies than by Canadian subjects, and this the working classes will in time comprehend and bring to pass. Meanwhile, it is desirable that the pamphlets of John Roebuck should occupy the place of Cobbett's Register.' They will convey far sounder instruction to the people, they will disseminate principles and not party squabbles; they will speak to the conviction of reason, and not seek to excite blind passion. JUNIUS REDivivus.

POWER AND THE PEOPLE.

How amazing, how amusing a study does the progress of humanity present from the time when man first looked forth a fierce, yet fearful, savage from his forest refuge, to the time when, with cunning craftiness, he based his political strength upon his brother's weakness!

Perhaps, amid all the progression perceptible in the world, the human species itself may be said, in many respects, to be degenerated. As social refinement has advanced, moral magnanimity has receded. Human nature, when rescued from mere animalism, and preserved from mere conventionalism, has a magnificence to which not merely imagination, but reason, clings.

The strong feelings, the calm endurance, the impulsive expression, the flexile frame, the fine action of the savage, are all natural beauties, which, instead of being regulated by refinement, have been surrendered to it; in obedience to its cold, dull, senseless rules, the human being, like a copy taken from a copy, has departed farther and farther from his original characteristics, and passed into the tame automaton of civilization.

I am no advocate for utterly untutored nature, any more than for merely tutored nature. Nay, if compelled to choose between being scalped and staked by an Indian foe, and being libelled and backbit by an European friend, I should decidedly prefer the

latter process; possibly upon the principle on which the girl defended skinning eels alive-being used to it.

When speaking of refinement and magnanimity, I had, perhaps, better endeavour to make myself clearly understood.

The legitimate purposes of refinement are to rub off asperities, to subdue exuberances, to harmonize the thing it touches into a general whole of concordant beauty. But to do this successfully requires a high sense of truth and taste. When we rub down rough edges, we must not obliterate characteristic outlines; when we abate excess, we must not reduce the measure meet for expression; when we harmonize, it must be after the manner of nature, in which concords do not preclude contrasts, nor unity, variety.

Refinement, as it exists in social life, is little other than a moral cosmetic, substituting a fleeting appearance for an enduring reality. Have modulated voices any necessary connexion with regulated tempers? Are smiling faces the inseparable concomitants of sunny hearts? Are the honeyed words of praise the produce of sincere admiration, or the caustic censure the conclusion of reflective judgment? Is propriety of language and demeanour always the index of purity of mind and conduct? Is sentiment an evidence of sensibility, or etiquette of hospitality? There are, happily, cases in which these questions can be answered in the affirmative, but they form the exceptions to general society, not the rule of it.

We are now, it is true, rarely shocked by rudeness; but when are we charmed by earnestness, by flashes of irrepressible feeling, those bright outbursts of unquenched humanity, which constitute, when carried into action, magnanimity; the daring courage which defies danger in behalf of faith, of friend, or forgiven foe; the passive courage which endures serenely unto death, outlasting the torture that racks the feeble body to make it false to the firm spirit? All this, whether exhibited in the sectarian or the soldier, whether for a creed, a country, or a creature, however erroneous the aim, or insignificant the object-all these are instances of magnanimity, proving the high and mighty things of which humanity is capable; the principles for which it, in many such cases, contended, may have been false, but the principles which sustained it through these conflicts were true; though its power was misapplied, power was still present, and of the highest order-the burning energy of innate power, which cultivation may increase,

but cannot create.

The records of the past, which exhibit the exercise of human feelings and faculties, and are the real treasure of history, cheer us onward; because, if human power has thus bulwarked the false and ephemeral, what may we not yet hope from it, when acting under clearer lights in the cause of truth?

Truth! that misused word! men sneer as it is spoken, because they find it blazoned on the flag of every faction; because it is

the puff-word of every pretender. But truth is, nevertheless, as holy and as untouched as ever, and as discoverable to the touch of the truth-seeker. Facts are the impressions of the footsteps of truth, while the inferences to be deduced from facts form the light of her track, along which the eager intelligence of human nature is tracing its way. Every science smiles with serene confidence on many facts, and looks forward with well-grounded expectation for more.

Does moral science lack these guiding aids? If any being want sufficient or suitable nourishment, physically or morally, does not annihilation of his powers ensue, and does not a similar effect follow if he be surfeited? It is one fact, then, that all excess is evil. With that knowledge, why do we doom any to privation, or any to profusion? Are any beings on this earth, or any class of beings, independent existences? On the contrary, are not all so inextricably linked and involved, that injury or distortion to one, effects, immediately or remotely, all others? It is another fact, then, that individuality is an evil. With the knowledge of this, why are separate, exclusive, and consequently opposing interests so sedulously cultivated? Because our moral optics need to be couched; because, shut within the narrow pale of family, sect, class, or party, we deny, or are indifferent to, the existence of the same elements beyond our own immediate sphere. But the tide of circumstances is ever circulating, and contact and concussion are incident, often inevitable, to all who float upon its surface. Woe, then, to the porcelain pots when urged against those of iron; in vain shall they bemoan their constitutional fragility!

It may possibly be urged, that if magnanimity, like the mammoth, be departed from the earth, it is because the affairs of the world no longer afford opportunities for its exercise; and that, in the moral as in the material market, when a demand ceases the supply falls.

Upon a superficial view of the subject, some ground for this observation may appear. The alpine difficulties of the ruder ages do not strike the eye on the level surface of more civilized times, and, with the Alps, the Hannibals seem to have vanished also. But if mountains have been levelled, pits have been dug; and there is as much, if not more, heroism necessary to endure being sunk to the depths of the one, as is essential to surmount the acclivities of the other. Upon a nearer examination it will be seen that the notion that magnanimity is of necessity at a discount, could only arise from the want of a due recognition of the principles of magnanimity.

A short time since, a fearful accident occurred by the breaking of machinery which was raising some people to the mouth of a mine: they were all precipitated to the bottom, with the exception of youth and an old man; these caught by a rope which hung down into the mine. The first person to whom succour came was

the youth; he refused it, saying, 'Go to so and so (naming th man beneath him), I can hold on a little longer, he is quite ex hausted.'

Was not this magnanimity-pure, naked, magnanimity, owing nothing to the trick or the trapping of station, catching nothing from the hope of reward or renown? Verily, amid all the gems that mines have yielded, this, to my imagination, is the brightest of any. That youth, whoever he be, has a moral power which education ought to cultivate, and the voices of his fellow-countrymen call into activity. He holds the freehold of a fine nature, the only rational qualification for a delegate from national power, or a representative of it.

There is a young member of one of our Mechanics' Institutions, who, after the punctually-fulfilled duties by which he wins his daily bread, acts as a gratuitous teacher at the Institution, to which he has presented a piece of work equally honourable to his ingenuity and industry. How much does this man give to society out of his little; gives it, too, without hope of reward, save that reward which is inherent in the work itself! Let us contrast this young mechanic with the supine possessor of thousands, with the woman who carries a pair of diamond pendants in her ears (a barbarism just one degree removed from a ring in the nose), or with the man who carries a star upon his breast, and who trusts to these gewgaws for distinction--AND GETS IT!

I was a few days since in the shop of Rundell and Bridge, looking at the silver model of Eton College, which the King has presented to that college; and I felt that I could not have stood acquitted to my conscience to own the idle wealth I there beheld, or any portion of it, amid the existing want which racks so many millions of my fellow creatures. Oh! to have converted those brilliants into bread, and to have called the pale and perishing to the banquet; to have converted those shining mockeries of grace and grandeur into sources of real goodness and greatness, into schools for the young and asylums for the old! Then many an eye, now destined to the ever-during dark' of ignorance and its conséquent, vice, might be kindled with the diamond light of intelligence and virtue; and many a toil-worn spirit, destined to depart in pain, might make its transit in peace.

Surely the time is fast approaching when the present degrading masquerade of pomp, amid surrounding masses of misery, will one and all pass away. The spirit in which we must regard all that has existed, is that it has existed of necessity; but now, with better knowledge and accumulated experience, that it need exist no longer. Error is the concomitant of human production, but improvement of human progression. Improvement will press steadily on; antiquated pretension, bloated and pursy as it is, will fall out of the line of march, which practical knowledge and universal love will lead. Thus shall conquest be achieved without