their blood and money to elect a person who must go out at the end of a short period. The power of removing every fourth year by the vote of the people is a power which they will not exercise; and if they are disposed to exercise it, they would not be permitted. The king of Poland is removable every day by the Diet. But they never remove him. Nor would Russia, the Emperor, etc., permit them to do it. Smaller objections are, the appeals on matters of fact as well as laws; and the binding all persons, legislative, executive, and judiciary, by oath, to maintain that Constitution. I do not pretend to decide what would be the best method of procuring the establishment of the manifold good things in this Constitution, and of getting rid of the bad. Whether by adopting it, in hopes of future amendment; or after it shall have been duly weighed and canvassed by the people, after seeing the parts they generally dislike, and those they generally approve, to say to them, "We see now what you wish. You are willing to give to your federal government suchand-such powers; but you wish at the same time to have suchand-such fundamental rights secured to you, and certain sources of convulsion taken away. Be it so. Send together deputies again. Let them establish your fundamental rights by a sacrosanct declaration, and let them pass the parts of the Constitution you have approved. These will give powers to your federal government sufficient for your happiness."

This is what might be said, and would probably produce a speedy, more perfect, and more permanent form of government. At all events, I hope you will not be discouraged from making other trials, if the present one should fail. We are never permitted to despair of the commonwealth. I have thus told you freely what I like, and what I dislike, merely as a matter of curiosity; for I know it is not in my power to offer matter of information to your judgment, which has been formed after hearing and weighing everything which the wisdom of man could offer on these subjects. I own, I am not a friend to a very energetic government. It is always oppressive. It places the governors indeed more at their ease, at the expense of the people. The late rebellion in Massachusetts has given more alarm than I think it should have done. Calculate that one rebellion in thirteen States in the course of eleven years is but one for each State in a century and a half. No country should be so long without one. Nor will any degree of power in the hands of government prevent

insurrections. In England, where the hand of power is heavier than with us, there are seldom half a dozen years without an insurrection. In France, where it is still heavier, but less despotic as Montesquieu supposes than in some other countries, and where there are always two or three hundred thousand men ready to crush insurrections, there have been three in the course of the three years I have been here, in every one of which greater numbers were engaged than in Massachusetts, and a great deal more blood was spilt. In Turkey, where the sole nod of the despot is death, insurrections are the events of every day. Compare again the ferocious depredations of their insurgents with the order, the moderation, and the almost self-extinguishment of ours. And say finally whether peace is best preserved by giving energy to the government, or information to the people. This last is the most certain and the most legitimate engine of government. Educate and inform the whole mass of the people. Enable them to see that it is their interest to preserve peace and order, and they will preserve them. And it requires no very high degree of education to convince them of this. They are the only sure reliance for the preservation of our liberty. After all, it is my principle that the will of the majority should prevail. If they approve the proposed Constitution in all its parts, I shall concur in it cheerfully, in hopes they will amend it whenever they shall find it works wrong. This reliance cannot deceive us as long as we remain virtuous; and I think we shall be so as long as agriculture is our principal object, which will be the case while there remain vacant lands in any part of America. When we get piled upon one another in large cities, as in Europe, we shall become corrupt as in Europe, and go to eating one another as they do there. I have tired you by this time with disquisitions which you have already heard repeated by others a thousand and a thousand times; and therefore shall only add assurances of the esteem and attachment with which I have the honor to be, dear sir, your affectionate friend and servant.

P. S. The instability of our laws is really an immense evil. I think it would be well to provide in our constitutions, that there shall always be a twelvemonth between the engrossing a bill and passing it; that it should then be offered to its passage without changing a word; and that if circumstances should be thought to require a speedier passage, it should take two-thirds of both Houses, instead of a bare majority.

DOUGLAS JERROLD

(1803-1857)

HERE is a winning quality in Douglas Jerrold, whether as man or writer. Popularly known as a brilliant wit, and often regarded as a cynical one, he was a manly and big-hearted moralist, a hater of sham, a lover of lovely things,-one who did good while he gave pleasure.

He was born in London January 3d, 1803; his father, Samuel Jerrold, being actor and theatre lessee of the not too successful kind. Douglas William (the son's full name) had no regular education: he learned to read and write from a member of a theatrical company, and being of a studious turn, got by his

DOUGLAS JERROLD

own exertions such knowledge of Latin, French, and Italian as should enable him to make the acquaintance of their dramatic literature. He acted occasionally as a boy and young man, but never cared for a player's life. For the two years between 1813 and 1815 he served as midshipman in the navy: the episode was not ill suited to his careless, generous nature. He returned to London in 1816 and apprenticed himself to a printer. The family was poor, and Douglas eked out his actor-father's income by doing journalistic work and articles for periodicals. Soon he began dramatic composition with the play More Frightened than Hurt,' which was produced in London in 1820; and although looked at askance by managers at first, was eventually translated into French, and twice retranslated into English and played under other names. His earliest genuine hit, however, was the lively comedy-farce 'Black-Eyed Susan: or, All in the Downs' (1829), which was brought out at the Surrey Theatre, and was acted four hundred times that year. From this encouragement Jerrold made forty plays during twenty-odd years, many of the dramas scoring successes. Other well-known pieces are 'The Rent Day,' Nell Gwynne,' 'Time Works Wonders,' and 'The Bubbles of the Day.' In 1836 he managed the Strand Theatre, which proved a bad venture.

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All this dramatic activity, even, does not represent Jerrold's best work; nor did it call out his most typical and welcome powers. He continued to do other literary work, and his journalistic career was strenuous. He contributed to leading papers like the Athenæum and Blackwood's, and edited various periodicals, such as the Illuminated Magazine, the Shilling Magazine, and the Heads of the People,-in most cases with a disastrous financial result. He made a success, however, of Lloyd's Weekly Newspaper, for which he wrote in each number three columns of leaders and did literary reviews, receiving £1,000 salary.

When Punch was founded in 1841, Jerrold's happiest vein sought an outlet. He at once became a contributor, and continued to be one for the rest of his life, some sixteen years. His articles, signed Q., were one of the features of that famous purveyor of representative British fun, pictorial and literary. The series of Punch papers perhaps most familiar to the general public appeared as a book in 1846, under the title Mrs. Caudle's Curtain Lectures.' 'Punch's Letters to his Son' and 'Cakes and Ale' are also widely known. Jerrold himself cared most for his writings in which his serious views and deeper purpose came out: the 'Chronicles of Clovernook,' his pet book, is an example. Indeed, the fact that he was an advanced thinker, a broad-minded humanitarian preacher, is illustrated in such a moral allegory as that here selected. Jerrold's reputation as a wit has naturally enough deflected attention from this aspect of his work, which well deserves appreciation. A collective edition of his works in eight volumes appeared in 1851-4; and in 1888 his son, William Blanchard Jerrold, edited in book form the 'Wit and Wisdom of Douglas Jerrold.'

Jerrold was short and stocky in person, with clear-cut features, blue eyes, and in his later years picturesque gray hair. He was of a social nature; fond of music, a good singer himself; impulsive, fiery, hasty often in letting loose the arrows of his wit,- but simple, almost boyish in manner, and a warm-hearted man whose interest in the right was intense. Always impractical, he left his affairs in a complicated condition. In short, his was a character whose faults are palpable but which is withal very lovable.

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"Iity.

THE TRAGEDY OF THE TILL

THE HERMIT'S STORY

T IS a strange tale, but it hath the recommendation of brevity. Some folks may see nothing in it but the tricksiness of an extravagant spirit; and some perchance may pluck a heart of meaning out of it. However, be it as it may, you shall hear it, sir.

a mis

"There was a man called Isaac Pugwash, a dweller in erable slough of London, a squalid denizen of one of the foul nooks of that city of Plutus. He kept a shop; which, though small as a cabin, was visited as granary and storehouse by half the neighborhood. All the creature comforts of the poor-from bread to that questionable superfluity, small beer- were sold by Isaac. Strange it was that with such a trade Pugwash grew not rich. He had many bad debts, and of all shopkeepers was most unfortunate in false coin. Certain it is, he had neither eye nor ear for bad money. Counterfeit semblances of majesty beguiled him out of bread and butter, and cheese, and red herring, just as readily as legitimate royalty struck at the mint. Malice might impute something of this to the political principles of Pugwash; who, as he had avowed himself again and again, was no lover of a monarchy. Nevertheless, I cannot think Pugwash had so little regard for the countenance of majesty as to welcome it as readily when silvered copper as when sterling silver. No: a wild, foolish enthusiast was Pugwash; but in the household matter of good and bad money he had very wholesome prejudices. He had a reasonable wish to grow rich, yet was entirely ignorant of the byways and short cuts to wealth. He would have sauntered through life with his hands in his pockets and a daisy in his mouth; and dying with just enough in his house to pay the undertaker, would have thought himself a fortunate fellow,he was, in the words of Mrs. Pugwash, such a careless, foolish, dreaming creature. He was cheated every hour by a customer of some kind; and yet to deny credit to anybody-he would as soon have denied the wife of his bosom. His customers knew the weakness, and failed not to exercise it. To be sure, now and then, fresh from conjugal counsel, he would refuse to add a single herring to a debtor's score: no, he would not be sent to the workhouse by anybody. A quarter of an hour after, the denied herring, with an added small loaf, was given to the little