would gallop heedlessly on, though the life of a fellow-creature, a companion, or friend, depended on their aid. We give a couple of these pic

tures:

"Two horses are seen loose in the distance-a report is flying about that one of the field is badly hurt, and something is heard of a collar bone being broken; others say it is a leg; but the pace is too good to inquire. A cracking of rails is now heard, and one gentleman's horse is to be seen resting, nearly balanced, across one of them, his rider being Who is he?' on his back in the ditch, which is on the landing side. says Lord Brudenell to Jack Stevens. Can't tell, my Lord; but I thought it was a queerish place when I came o'er it before him.' It is evidently a case of peril, but the pace is too good to afford help. Who is that under his horse in the brook?" inquires that good sportsman, and fine rider, Mr. Green of Rolleston, whose noted old mare had just skimmed over the water like a swallow on a summer's evening. Only Dick Christian,' answers Lord Tonaster, and it is nothing new to him! But he'll be drowned,' exclaims Lord Kinnaird. I shouldn't wonder,' observes Mr. William Colce. But the pace is too good to inquire."

The men whose pleasures so steel their hearts are legislators who would be loud in reprobation of the brutalities of the people. What inference might not a hasty observer draw from a barbarous selfishness, practised and recorded, not only without shame but with boast! A critic such as those on America would argue that these actions in the field might only prove the depravity of the individuals, but that the blazonry of them in the organ of the aristocracy denotes the barbarism of the whole public.

Had a foreigner heard Lord Winchilsea express his eagerness to put to death with his own hand some one who had scribbled offensive remarks upon the Queen, what would he have thought of the humanity of the assembly in which this savage, lawless sentiment was uttered without rebuke? Would he not argue that if it were as odious as it should be to the feelings of society, the Lords would, for the sake of decency, of public decorum, have rebuked and discountenanced the brutal avowal. We know sufficiently well our own state of society; and we know that the readiness to resort to murderous violence, which was boastfully declared by that pillar of the Church, Lord Winchilsea, is severely condemned, and severely punished when it is discovered in the lowest of the rabble. But the question is, what would be thought of such appearances by foreigners, judging of us as we judge of other nations. Dennis Collins, acting upon the vindictive sentiment that Lord Winchilsea avowed, threw a stone at the King, and is deprived of his liberty. His offence did not lack rebuke. Also, when the Duke of Wellington was pelted by the mob, all proper things were said in condemnation of violence. The silent toleration of Lord Winchilsea's ebullition, proves nothing against the common sentiment. The American who judged us from particular instances would be grossly in error; and equally mistaken must be the English traveller who constructs charges against the people of the United States, upon anecdotes of roguery or depravity which he has observed to obtain sympathetic or admiring auditors in particular classes. It must, however, be admitted that the Americans ore, to a man, a money-getting people; and, in the race of Mammon, scruples are too likely to be trampled under foot. On the other hand, money-spending classes have their vices; they will have indulgences, let law and morality say what they will to the con

trary. Cyril Thornton, in proof of the laxity of morals in America, tells the following story :—

"I had returned from my ramble, and was sitting near the stove in the public room, engaged in the dullest of all tasks, reading an American newspaper, when a woman and a girl, about ten years old, entered, cold and shivering, having just been discharged from a Boston stage-coach. The woman was respectable in appearance, rather good-looking, and evidently belonging to what may in this country be called the middling class of society. She immediately inquired, at what hour the steam-boat set off for New York; and, on learning that, owing to the river being frozen up, it started from Newhaven, some thirty miles lower, she was evidently much discomposed, and informed the landlord, that calculating on meeting the steam-boat that morning at Hartford, her pocket was quite unprepared for the expense of a further land journey, and the charges of different sorts necessarily occasioned by a day's delay on the road.

"The landlord shrugged up his shoulders and walked off; the Irish waiter looked at her with something of a quizzical aspect; and an elderly gentleman, engaged like myself in reading a newspaper, raised his eyes for a moment, discharged his saliva on the carpet, and then resumed his occupation. Though evidently without a willing audience, the woman continued her complaints; informed us she had left her husband in Boston to visit her brother in New York; explained and re-explained the cause of her misfortune, and a dozen times at least concluded by an assurance, of the truth of which the whole party were quite satisfied,-that she was sadly puzzled what to do.

"In such circumstances, I know not whether it was benevolenee, or a desire to put a stop to her detestable iteration, or a mingled motive compounded of both, that prompted me to offer to supply her with any money she might require. However, I did so; and the offer, though not absolutely refused, was certainly very ungraciously received. She stared at me; expressed no thanks, and again commenced the detail of her grievances, of which, repetition had something staled the infinite variety. I therefore left the apartment. Shortly after the sleigh for Newhaven drove up, and I had entirely forgotten the amiable sufferer and her pecuniary affliction, when she came up, and said, without any expression of civility, "You offered me money; I'll take it." I asked how much she wished. She answered, sixteen dollars, which I immediately ordered my servant to give her. Being a Scotchman, however, he took the prudent precaution of requesting her address in New York, and received a promise that the amount of her debt should be transmitted to Bunker's on the following day.

"A week passed after my arrival in New York, and I heard no more either of the dollars or my fellow-traveller; and, being curious to know whether I had been cheated, I at length sent to demand repayment. My servant came back with the money. He had seen the woman, who expressed neither thanks nor gratitude; and on being asked why she had violated her promise to discharge the debt, answered that she could not be at the trouble of sending the money, for she supposed it was my business to ask for it. It should be added, that the house in which she resided, was that of her brother, a respectable shopkeeper in one of the best streets in New York, whose establishment certainly betrayed no indication of poverty.

The

"The truth is, that the woman was very far from being a swindler. She was only a Yankee, and troubled with an indisposition-somewhat endemic in New England -to pay money. She thought, perhaps, that a man who had been so imprudent as to lend to a stranger, might be so negligent as to forget to demand repayment. servant might have lost her address; in short, it was better to take the chances, however, small, of ultimately keeping the money, than to restore it unasked. All this might be very sagacious; but it certainly was not very high-principled nor very honest."

This story will bear two interpretations. It is possible that the woman was as dishonestly disposed and as ungrateful as the writer deems her; or may it not have been, that, expecting assistance in such circumstances as a matter of course, the sense of obligation was slight; and as for the money not having been sent to the lender, gallantry might have required that the lady should be saved the trouble. Lively gratitude for little services of mere humanity would not denote a kindly state of society. These should be things of course. Then for the gallantry—if a gentleman lends a lady a cloak, an umbrella, a book, or any such article of small value, when she asks him the address

to which it shall be returned, is not the usual answer, "Don't give yourself the trouble to send it, for I will send to your house for it." But in an affair of money, this would not seem delicate to an Englishman; and why not? Because an Englishman always supposes the payment of money to be an act of reluctance and pain; and that to ask it, is to ask something afflicting, which politeness would wait, but not press. Americans may not so consider the matter. They may think as little of sending for the return of a loan of money, as we do for sending for the return of a cloak or an umbrella, a book, or any such matter. It is the little reliance which we have in the honesty of each other, that makes an application for the return of a loan seem indelicate; that is, seem like distrusting the punctuality or the probity of the borrower. The story of our author is equivocal; and we only offer an interpretation, of which it allows, without arguing for the probability of its truth.

Cyril Thornton falls into a very common error respecting equality. No reasonable republican desires, or believes in the possibility of an equality of respect and consideration for all men alike. In order to suppose such a state, we must suppose an equality of talent and virtue. All the equality that is rationally to be wished, is an equality in rights, which of necessity excludes any peculiar privileges or arbitrary distinctions. The field should be level and fair for all; but some must be backward and some forward in the race; and the honour of the foremost is their due. Cyril Thornton observes that he does not find an equality in the United States, which is undesirable and impossible.

It is the fashion to call the United States the land of liberty and equality. If the term equality be understood simply as implying, that there exists no privileged order in America, the assertion, though not strictly true, may pass. In any wider acceptation it is mere nonsense. There is quite as much practical equality in Liverpool as New York. The magnates of the Exchange do not strut less proudly in the latter city than in the former; nor are their wives and daughters more backward in supporting their pretensions. In such matters legislative enactments can do nothing. Man's vanity, and the desire of distinction inherent in his nature, cannot be repressed. If obstructed in one outlet, it will only gush forth with greater vehemence at another. The most contemptible of mankind has some talent of mind or body, some attraction-virtue-accomplishment-dexterity-or gift of fortune,-in short, something real or imaginary, on which he arrogates superiority to those around him. The rich man looks down upon the poor, the learned on the ignorant, the orator on him unblessed with the gift of tongues; and he that is a true-born gentleman, and stands upon the honour of his birth,' despises the roturier, whose talents have raised him to an estimation in society perhaps superior to his own.

*

"Tother night, at a ball, I had the honour to converse a good deal with a lady, who is confessedly a star of the first magnitude in the hemisphere of fashion. She inquired what I thought of the company. I answered, that I had rarely seen a party in any country in which the average of beauty appeared to me to be so high.' "Indeed!' answered my fair companion, with an expression of surprise; it would seem that you English gentlemen are not difficult to please; but does it strike you, that the average is equally high as regards air, manner, fashion?'

"In regard to such matters,' I replied, I certainly could not claim for the party in question any remarkable distinction; but that, in a scene so animated, and brilliant with youth, beauty, and gaiety of spirit, I was little disposed to play the critic.' "Nay, replied my opponent, for the conversation had already begun to assume something of the form of argument, it surely requires no spirit of rigid criticism, to discriminate between such a set of vulgarians, as you see collected here, and ladies who have been accustomed to move in a higher and better circle. Mrs. odd person, and makes it a point to bring together at her balls all the riff-raff of the place-people whom, if you were to remain ten years in New York, you would probably never meet anywhere else. I assure you there are not a dozen girls in this room that I should think of admitting to my own parties.'

is an

"Thus driven from the field, I ventured to direct her notice to several elegant and pretty girls, about whom I asked some questions. Their attractions, however, were either not admitted, or when these were too decided to allow of direct negation, the subject was ingeniously evaded. If I talked of a pretty foot, I was told its owner was the daughter of a tobacconist. If I admired a graceful dancer, I was assured (what I certainly should not have discovered) that the young lady was of vulgar manners, and without education. Some were so utterly unknown to fame, that their very names, birth, habits, and connexions were buried in the most profound and impenetrable obscurity. In short, a Count of the Empire, with his sixteen quarterings, probably would not have thought, and certainly would not have spoken, with contempt half so virulent of those fair plebeians."

We see in this picture of manners nothing but what must be reckoned on. There is folly: but the soil for it is shallow; and the tobacconist, and the vulgarian, and the unknown, have small reason to complain of the insolence of superior fortune, while the course is open for their exertions, and no advantages are possessed by any which it is not for industry and talent, unaided by favour, and unthwarted by prejudice, to attain.

It has not been our design to write a criticism upon the book before us. We raise no question as to the accuracy of the representations; but taking them as we find them, we say, "Look at home." The mote may be in our brother's eye, but the beam is in our own. It is, however, impossible to read the book without noting some evidence of prejudice, which a moment's reflection must have corrected. Thus, in observing on the American army, the author says, "The truth is, that men accustomed to democracy, can never be brought to submit patiently to the rigours of military discipline." Has the author to learn that the discipline of the American navy is the severest in the world; and can he doubt that the discipline to which republicans submit on board a ship, they would submit to on shore, if any object for it existed, or any use appeared. In peace or war, the effect of discipline is manifest in the working of a ship, which has always the elements to battle with; but a regiment without prospect of employment on active service has no practical application of the efficiency produced by painful discipline. In England, the soldiery in profound peace may, for all the troubles of training, console themselves with the thought, that if their discipline be not useful against a foreign foe, it may be available against their fellow-countrymen; but in the United States, no such thought can exist; and if they are sufficiently disciplined to overmatch the poor Indians, all the purposes of their appointment are accomplished. We were acquainted with a British General, aged nearly eighty, and in the care of a nurse, who for the last twenty years of his life had patriotically lathered his beard with cold water, and gone without his breakfast, that he might be the better prepared for the hardships of a campaign, in which he expected to be called to a command. As ridiculous as this, might seem to Americans, the rigours of discipline in the securities of peace and their trans-atlantic position.

Cyril Thornton observes a fatal error in the education of the military cadets" a certain slouch about the shoulders ;" and our English martinets cannot suppose it possible that men can fight who are not as straight as ramrods. They should remember, however, that the French, with their round shoulders and slovenly discipline, drubbed all the straight backs on the Continent of Europe, and sometimes had a fugitive view of the British. We beat them at last,-but for many a day the English army was as unpopular, and probably as neglected and inefficient, as the American is now described as being.

THE MONTHLY OBSERVER.

LAW-REFORMERS AND LAW-MAKERS.

A POLITICAL PARSON is not a more offensive character than a meddling judge. Sufficient for the judge is the business of his Court, and he cannot with any propriety travel out of it to play the censor in matters of legislation. If he will assume the critic he lays himself open to criticism. The judge should expose himself as little as possible to question. If he intrude opinions liable to controversy, and the judgment of society goes against him, his error in a matter which the public understands induces the presumption of error in matters which it does not understand. The judge's authority is thus brought into distrust where it may be entitled to confidence, by his exhibition of fallibility in a ground beyond his province. When public opinion decides against the intruded dogmas of a judge, his usefulness is impaired, his credit shaken, his respect compromised. The occasion of these words is an impertinent sally of Mr. Justice Alderson at the Somerset Assizes. In charg ing the Grand Jury, he thought it not indecent to launch into a lecture against the Chancellor's attempts to improve the administration of justice. The proposed establishment of Local Courts was obviously the immediate object of attack; but Mr. Justice Alderson did not argue so much against the Courts as against the imputed ignorance in which the innovation (renovation we should say) was attempted.

"It was a desirable thing," said the learned Judge," that the custom which had continued for so long a time in this realm, of administering justice in frequent assemblages of the people, in a regular progress through the different counties, should be retained; and that it should combine, as it had hitherto combined, the great advantage of bringing justice home to every man in his county. When he spoke of the errors of the law, they must permit him to call their attention to those errors which it had in common with all other merely human institutions; but he would have them consider how impossible they were to be corrected, unless with the assistance of those acquainted with the science. Surely he would be a foolish man who should endeavour to correct anything in a steam-engine, or to improve it, without being first himself acquainted with its general principles, and the particular application of those principles to the machine. What would they think of a man who would endeavour to improve the state of agriculture, or the mode of commerce, without knowing anything at all relative to them? They would say of such a person, he was something approaching to a fool; and should they say less of those who imagined themselves capable of improving the most difficult science then existing-involving the consideration of the common nature and habits of those whom it was to govern?-of the motives which influenced their conduct, and of those particular points to which any civil government could be applied, and adding to these the different circumstances connected with civil contracts-considering the various natures of property, real and personal, the mode in which it was to be transmitted to posterity, and that by which it was to be transferred from one man to another-when they added to these the disturbances constantly produced in all general rules which required adjustment-who would contemplate all these without deprecating the rashness of those who would rush on and tear asunder all its complicated machinery? The great evil of the present day was a morbid desire to alter the legislation; which was only to be compared to a quack medicine, which left the patient worse than it found him. He would read to them the opinion of one of the most eloquent men of the day he wished he could say one of this country, for he was an honour to any country he meant Dr. CHANNING, who said, no man was found who doubted that a steady Government was a great good; but it did this good, chiefly negatively, by repressing injustice, and securing property from invasion; it conferred little positive good. Its office was not to confer happiness itself, but to give those who lived under it an opportunity of working out happiness themselves. It was to be compared to a piece of land, where the individual had his choice, whether the enclosure should be a paradise or a waste-it would not till or reap the produce; whether it should be productive or not, would depend upon ourselves. That there were faults in the law