Billeder på siden
PDF
ePub

model; their arrangement of the three powers, in their political body, was regulated somewhat after the English form; their trial by jury and their system of representation were English: our best constitutional political writers, Milton, Harrington, Sidney, and Locke, were their great favourites; Penn, and Lord Baltimore, the founder of Maryland, were both Englishmen; and the former, in some respects the best of political writers, spoke the high language and breathed the purest spirit of English liberty. In one word, with the exception of our limited toleration, against which Penn pleaded so ardently in England,of the expences of our government,

of our hereditary claims and privileged orders,—with these exceptions, the Americans spoke highly of the English Constitution.

When we proceeded to tax the Americans without their consent, and to make a monopoly of their trade, they made a stand, and altered their tone. This they execrated as an encroachment on their liberty, and inconsistent with the principles of the English Constitution; and some writers in our own country, particu larly Dr. Price, examined the American war by the same rule. Now it was, that the boldest of the American writers, the author of Common Sense, advanced a step higher, he spoke the lan. guage of abuse and contempt of our Constitution as a house di. vided against itself: still he expresses himself of its distinction, in a constitutional sense, and of the Americans as having a prejudice in favour of the English Constitution.

A second period, when the question concerning the English Constitution became much agitated, commenced with the Revolu tion of France. That event gave an unusual interest to the question. A new epoch seemed to be forming. Long habituated to contemplate the constitutions of the American states, and now of Poland, and France, as visible and tangible masses, generated as it were on the spot, and shaped within a limited period, the wri. ter alluded to was not satisfied with abuse: he went farther; he roundly asserted we had no Constitution at all.

A third period we venture to pronounce this in which we live. The Whigs and Tories, as they are called, and the third class, who will allow themselves to be called neither Whigs nor Tories, are in the constant habit of using the same or similar language. In the act of exercising, certainly, a great power, the House of Commons talk as being under constitutional protection, (I allude to the case of Sir Francis Burdett), and Sir Francis pleads, in vindication of his resistance, the violation of the principles of the Constitution. A House of Commons, they all allow, is a true form of English policy,—and that it must have privileges; but we see them differing in their opinion on the extent of those privileges. Those, however, the most determined against Reform, in both houses, are for rallying round the Constitution; and Sir

Francis

Francis Burdett, so ardent for Reform, speaks nothing so loudly, as that he and his friends require nothing but the Constitution.

As we have had these three periods when this question became pe culiarly interesting, we may be said to have three classes of writers who have taken somewhat different measures in discussing it.

The first is of those who, in pleading against the advocates of arbitrary power, have adopted a mode at once direct and insinuating. Direct, because they appeal to first principles and rea sonings from analogies in nature,the best and most philosophical way of examining the subject, though it requires too profound a turn of thinking for an ordinary genius. Of this description was Montesquieu, who, in his Spirit of Laws, professedly examines the English Constitution; and Mr. David Williams, who, by way of comment on Montesquieu, wrote a treatise of political principles. Hooker, on Analogy, whether truly or not we do not en. quire, lays the foundation of the laws of ecclesiastical polity, in reference to England, on reasonings from analogy; and Locke's general properties of law, in his Treatises on Government, have a view to the English Constitution. The mode of reasoning more insinuating, is that which appeals to facts in our own history, as it appeals to the pride of a great nation. Of this character were. Sir Robert Cotton, and Sir Henry Spelman, Milton, and Sidney, who, as antiquarians and historians, illustrate the principles of the English Constitution.

Some writers, and this we call the second class, have thought this way of reasoning too general. Advocates of the same cause, they admit the principles to be metaphysically accurate, the facts historically true. But, in their judgment, these principles cannot be so systematically arranged, nor those facts be rendered so producible, consolidated, as it were, into any plan of premeditated contrivance and permanent strength, as to form what might be called the regular features and connected parts of a well-organized body. They allow that we have a Constitution, and that it is excellent; but they speak of it as not to be traced to any particu lar era, nor to any systematic philosophical plan of principle. They trace it to an heterogeneous mixture of causes and effects, of principles and facts, of opposite powers-each struggling in its turn for victory, and reposing at length in peace; in short, as rising out of jarring interests, of lucky contingencies, and auspicious alliances. Montesquieu himself talks of the English Constitution as formed in this manner, and Bishop Hurd, in his Dialogues on the English Constitution. What Montesquieu says of our Constitution in reference to a Saxon origin, the writers al luded to affirm, metaphorically, in reference to the uncertain ori. gin and perturbed progress of our Constitution, "That it was formed in the woods."

[blocks in formation]

Those writers have been followed by others. They perceived that writers of opposite interests maintained the same opinions and appealed to the same facts, and that men who had the same leading views were sometimes divided about them. They asked, in triumph, where did your Constitution begin? and where are the principles laid down? They thought the country not prepared to give a clear and direct answer, and hence they inferred, as we have seen, that England had no Constitution to produce.

Our limits will not allow us to enter on minute distinctions or long discussions now. But we propose in a future paper, to state briefly what we conceive to be the fundamental principles of the English Constitution, and to propose a plan for the readiest diffusion of its principles, an expedient at all times necessary, and perhaps never more so than now. We cannot, however, be supposed to have made any new discoveries. The subject has been discussed a thousand and a thousand times; and the plan being constitutional, will have in it nothing that has not been tried at different periods before. Circumstances, however, may awaken contrivance, and returning evils lead us to look after our natural remedies. In adopting the language, What are the fundamental principles of the British Constitution? we adopt a language which we think liable to no ambiguity, and that keeps free of the frowardness of party. The terms are admitted into the vocabulary of all the parties in England.

AN OBSERVER.

ART. XI.-Account of a Familiar Spirit, who visited and conversed with the Author in a manner equally new and forcible, shewing the Carnivorous Duties of all Rational Beings and the true end of Philosophy.

CERTAINLY there is no possible speculation, from which the un derstanding may not reap some advantage. When people deny the utility of certain obscure branches of knowledge, they deny it, not from the use, but from the abuse of those branches; for knowledge is infinitely various; some of it is for practice, some for communication, some for avoidance; and it is as well to be truly acquainted with trifles, in order that you may really know them for such. The two rocks upon which enquiry is apt to split, are superficiality and superstition-extremes equally hurtful to know. ledge from the seductive confidence into which they draw unwary minds. But real knowledge on any subject is real utility it is

only

only for want of knowing, that we do not make the proper application of knowledge. Chesterfield, for instance, is said to have understood the graces properly :-nothing can be more unfounded he could talk about them a great deal, and could prac tise a great many, but in not properly understanding their nature and uses, he did not perceive they were trifles;-and thus he split upon the superficial rock. Cardan, on the other hand, had a great turn for abstruse speculation, and was thought to be the profoundest man of his time; but his fancy and bad nerves uniting, drove him into all sorts of fantastic inquiries: he applied his knowledge to the nonentities of secret magic, forgetting that the proper secret for his discovery was that of social utility and an even mind ;—and thus he split upon the superstitious rock.

But even those magnanimous sciences, so well denominated the occult, would never have been abused as they have, had not their greatest professors been the last men who undertood them properly. The emptiness of their knowledge might have been discovered from the noise they made about it and the uselessness it exhibited. They studied these sciences just as pedants study books-with much learning and no wisdom; and whatever the Cabalists may say to the contrary, I will venture to affirm that the Great Secret was understood neither by Peregrinus, nor Cor. nelius Agrippa, nor Celsus, nor Jamblicus, nor Porphyry, nor Don Calmet, nor Raymond Lully, nor even the divine Aureolus Theophrastus-Bombastus-Paracelsus, though he lived six months, upon the strength of his knowledge, without eating and drink. inga mighty secret truly, when every body may enjoy it as long as he pleases by writing for the booksellers! When the Rosicrucians tell us that we have only to annoint our eyes with a certain collyrium in order to see all the people of the air-that we have only to pronounce certain words in order to put to flight powers of darkness-and that we have only to take a small dose of the Quintessence of Sunshine in order to dispense with the butcher and baker-they tell us, no doubt, things as easy as they are delightful; but in hunting after these supernatural powers, they lost sight of that natural and useful wisdom which ought to have been the result of their studies: the world has not been a jot the better for all the Rosicrucians that have astonished it, and nothing can shew their unphilosophical feelings in a stronger light than the well-known anecdote of their founder, who having rediscovered, according to his disciples, the perpetual lamps of the ancients, and wishing to enjoy the fame but not to impart the ad. vantages of his discovery, ordered one to be placed in his tomb in such a manner, that the moment any curious person approached it, the light should be dashed out by an automaton. The great predecessors of these gentlemen in the Cabala seem in like manner G 4

the

to

to have mistaken the end of their researches. Apollonius, we are told, was more than mortal; and Porphyry and others, by way of renouncing superstition, endeavoured to oppose his miracles to those of Jesus: but Apollonius turned his divinity to little account, if he did no better than raise a girl to life by his skill in onomancy and ride upon a dart from Athens to Thessaly. Pythagoras also was more than mortal; and certainly his Golden Verses are worthy of a wise man, if not of a great poet; but what did he mean by having a golden thigh? It must have been very ugly, not to mention uncomfortable. Nay, say the Cabalists, he had it as a proof of his divine wisdom. It is from this strange precedent perhaps, that every wealthy fool produces his gold as a proof of wisdom.-But Solon settled that matter with Crœsus.

These are the abuses of the Cabala-of the Great Secret-of all that knowledge, in short, which goes under the name of Occult Philosophy, and guides us to the depth of wisdom. Those who have talked so much about it have gone but a little way down ; their heads were too giddy for the descent. But doubtless there have been many great men, who have felt their way properly, and turned it to excellent account. The Neapolitans to this day insist that Virgil was a great magician, and I believe there are few of us who will be disposed to deny his skill in one great branch of occult science, that of magical numbers. Of Zoroaster and the Thrice.Great Hermes, we know as little as we do of Mines and Cadmus; but all four, according to the Rosicrucians, were masters of the hidden philosophy, and I believe we shall not much dispute the matter when we recollect what they did for their respective countries. Confucius was undoubtedly a great adept: it is true he always deprecated any suspicion of præter natural knowledge, but that he was master of the Great Secret, one single specimen of his apophthegms will prove, in which he exclaims "Heaven has given me virtue, man cannot hurt me." It is quite as clear, that Æsop and Pilpay, whom our learned men distinguish or confound just as it suits the display of their learning, had the true knowledge of the language of birds and beasts: they not only knew it, but they knew it to some purpose. Monsieur the Count de Gabalis may have had the power of invisibility, a very common virtue with such sages; and the egregious Mr. Blake, who wages such war with Titian and Cor. regio both in his writings and paintings, may tell us that he is inspired by certain spirits to alter the human figure;-but to be out of sight can as little benefit mankind as to be out of nature. If you want an instance of a true Cabalist-one who turned his knowledge of the spiritual world to proper account-look at the divine Socrates, whose familiar spirit taught him to utter sayings

SO

« ForrigeFortsæt »