Those British have even now magnified our force to ten times its real size, and I much doubt whether they will act out their threats. They have good cause to know and remember how Americans can fight; how that we need only a tree and a musket and we can each take our man. They know too that we can fight in ranks; they recollect Lundy's Lane, and our gallant Miller; and if we keep a bold front we may drive them off yet. At any rate, no fear, no flinching, we shall still be enough for them!'

"All those who had blamed our leader immediately crowded around him, and shaking him warmly by the hand, expressed their regret at having once doubted his wisdom, or true courage. Animated and invigorated we portioned out our ammunition, and prepared ourselves to meet the enemy boldly. Meanwhile the British had disembarked, and were already drawn up in force, I don't rightly know how many in number, but certainly we were to struggle against fearful odds. They advanced slowly and with great circumspection; rumor had magnified our little band, and fearing an equal foe, and an ambush behind every tree and hillock and clump of bushes, and dreading our imaginary reserve forces, they kept a wary and watchful lookout.

"We on our part, somewhat sheltered by natural screens, stood with beating hearts, breathless and eager. Already had our foremost men begun to take aim at the advancing column, when suddenly it stopped, it wavered, it retreated a few steps, its officer spoke a few hurried words, and we then saw it turn slowly about, and seek the shore. The other columns followed. Surprised, thunderstruck, as we were, we had discernment enough to guess that they had pretty good reasons for doing as they did. We looked backward into the woods, and to our unutterable astonishment and joy saw a regularly equipped American officer and company coming swiftly towards us. We observed, however, that it was a very small company; as they came nearer, the enemy began to suspect it too, and immediately commenced turning again. There was no time to be lost. I rushed from the ranks to meet them; by a hurried question ascertained that they had come from Fort Niagara, and had passed our way by the merest chance; gave the officer his cue, and hastened back to Brown. Soldiers,' cried he in a loud voice, the Fourteenth Regiment has arrived; fall back six paces, form ranks and charge bayonets !'

I have seen men run, sir, when pretty well scared, but those British beat them all. In less time than it takes to tell it, they were aboard, and in a twinkling the sails set to a fresh breeze. We did n't care how fast they got away, but as a parting salute, we dragged forth a six-pounder and commenced as vigorous a fire as possible, concealing our piece, the roar of which was greatly magnified by the steep headlands of the Bay. They fired back a few times and broke the boughs over our heads, but they were too anxious to clear the Bay, to stop for very careful aim. I don't know how much or how often we cheered. The last we saw of them, as we joyfully hastened back to Rochester to celebrate our victory over the 'best' in the village, they had swept out of the channel into the lake, and did not seem at all disposed to come to anchor."

"And did they never come back, sir?" "Never, that I know of. Peace was declared soon after; but I remember that a few years later a British subaltern officer who was engaged in the affair, making a tour through the lake country, stopped at my house one night, and that we laughed very heartily over our Yankee trick."

C. B.

A few Thoughts on Law Making.

NOTHING is more undeniable than that in any community of intelligent men the vast majority will have a just apprehension of the nature and necessity, and consequently a right disposition, as to the observance of law. It requires no great degree of virtue to give an undeviating support to rules plainly imposed for individual as well as the general security and welfare. Thus, in an army, perilously situated, the usually most insubordinate and degraded, from easily perceiving its necessity become the earnest maintainers of a rigid and painful discipline; and in an enlightened civil community the true character of law is always kept in view; the stamp of the recognized authority secures its reception, indeed, but all understand that to be but the primâ-facie evidence of its own intrinsic value, in exact proportion to which alone, it is generally respected. Accustomed therefore to this, the obvious and only rational view of the subject, no man of ordinary capacity or candor connects in his contemplation of regularly enacted law, his estimation of the source from which it emanates. He may approve or disapprove of the particular form of government under which he lives, the existing legislative authority may be popular or despotic in its character, liberal or arbitrary in its exercise, but while it is the only legitimate authority he regards the regulations it imposes in the rightful exercise of its real powers, as commanding his respect to their full extent, in their original binding force as law. Hence there are no more submissive subjects, no more earnest sustainers over themselves of necessary arbitrary power, than those most worthy and most accustomed to be free. It is one of the most glorious facts in our history, that our fathers, while nerving themselves for a mortal struggle against the unauthorized assumption of authority over them, were voluntarily bearing another yoke, unlicensed by law, and in itself a hundred times more vexatious and galling,-that while preparing to sacrifice life, fortune, every thing but sacred honor, rather than pay a wrongfully imposed two-penny tax, they readily submitted every corner of their houses to the examination of an illegal committee in a scrutinizing search after tea. Thus they evinced that right understanding of the necessity, the object, and the nature of due restraint, which not only best fits mankind to obey others, but is the first requisite to enable them to govern themselves. That understanding

is arrived at by the natural action of the judgment, unbiassed by prejudice or passion, rather than by the influence on the mind of superior inherent virtue and to this may be ascribed the deleterious effects on a people of bad government, which consists rather in closing the popular mind against the just apprehension of this truth, than in the exertion upon it of any direct degrading influence. So that the pendulum of Revolution rarely stops half way between tyranny and anarchy, for the continued imposition of tyrannical laws, that is, of enactments unnecessary in themselves or carried to an unnecessary extent, (for such are always, in however slight a degree, tyrannical,) in time excites in all but the most enlightened, a distrust and hatred of all government, it having by its operation come to be regarded as an oppressive restriction, instead of a safeguard. And so, on the other hand, the general peace, order, and happiness of a free people is mainly attributable to the fact that their natural sense has not been blinded by excessive or unreasonable legislation to the real, lofty and benignant character of law.

The first great object, then, should be so to legislate that the law may be to the view of the subject plainly directed to its true object only, preservation of order for the general welfare. To this it must be adapted, and to this every portion of it must be evidently necessary. For law being in itself a restriction, must be imposed for a desirable end, in order to its acceptability. Hence any unnecessary part of it is a restriction without an end or with an undesirable one, which will be viewed with odium, and must inevitably meet with disrespect, if not with disregard. Nor can it make the slightest difference in the application of this principle, whether the community to be regulated is political or social, for what purpose or on what plan it has been organized and established, whether each member has an equal voice in the government, or whether the controlling power is exclusively in the hands of a few: in all cases where laws are to be made for the regulation of reasoning men, they must, since human nature is always the same, be made by the law-making power, whatever that may be, upon the same general principles. And for the same reason of the uniform character of mankind, they will, in all cases, when they are just and reasonable, receive from those for whom they were made, that deference to which from their character they are rightfully entitled. Hence whenever there is found prevailing a wide-spread dissatisfaction and an extensive disregard of a law among those for whose direction it was imposed, there is the strongest reason to believe that a serious mistake in some respect has been committed in the particular form given to the object of the general odium. Especially if among its violators are found not a few who have always been in every other respect strictly obedient to lawful authority, and whose conduct, thereto without reproach, places them above the suspicion of wanton criminality, it is high time to consider whether the obnoxious statute is not at least too indiscriminate in its prohibitions, too inconsiderately inclusive in the denunciation of its penalties, of transactions which are innocent, as well as of those which are guilty. When this is so, however un

intentionally the mistake may have been committed, the general reverence for the law, founded upon its reason and necessity, which is its real strength in the community, is weakened, if not destroyed, and the law itself rendered ineffectual to its end.

Here then is no inconsiderable part of the difficulty experienced in legislation, particularly in the formation of restrictive enactments for the suppression of existing evils. There is but little doubt generally as to what ought to be corrected; the only question is, how? Especially when the wrong-doing is found attendant as it usually is, upon transactions harmless in themselves, and which therefore the subject may reasonably claim the right to perform. For as the law is professedly and properly only directed against evils, the evil alone is its rightful object, when it can, by any possibility, be distinguished and separated from the harmless connected with it, and any attempt to make shorter work by striking at it through its innocent attendant, must always fail. Plainly the only true and effectual course is to avoid inflaming the combustible jealousy of the really well-disposed, that is, of the great majority, upon the subject of their imagined, and, at all events, harmless rights, by aiming the law at the abuses only, thus securing their sympathy and support in its behalf for the prevention of the disorders of which there can be no doubt the great body disapprove, and which they would be glad to assist in suppressing. That the disorders find no countenance with the majority will be scarcely denied ; for to maintain that in any indiscriminately selected large assembly of intelligent men, the gratuitously vicious and the wantonly wicked bear any considerable proportion to the well disposed, or even so great a proportion that the latter are unwilling or unable in the absence of preventing causes to exercise an effectual restraining influence upon the former, is to contradict the plainest truths of everyday experience, and to hazard an assumption with respect to the morality of society in general, for which few will make themselves responsible. Why then such abuses do repeatedly occur when there is present, as it would appear, the disposition and the ability to prevent them, that is, what are the causes which prevent the due exercise of the latter, now becomes the subject of our consideration.

It is chiefly because, in enactments of this nature, Law-makers, in their well-meant zeal to secure order, unfortunately often overlook the undeniable truth, that there" is no greater evil in legislation than legislating too much," a maxim as truly, and far more commonly applicable to the provisions of particular laws, than to a general system of governmental policy-omitting therefore to distinguish between the use of a harmless privilege and the abuse of it-forgetting that laws of this kind, in restriction of supposed rights, should be made, if they would be respected, with the greatest caution and the strictest discrimination between necessary and unnecessary prohibitions-discrim inations which, if they exist in Reason, cannot be abrogated by Rigor-acting, in short, upon the specious principle that "the axe should be laid at the root of the tree," too often proceed to infatuated attacks upon healthy and unhealthy parts alike, for the sake of removing a

dead limb. The result is invariable. To cut away the tree by such wholesale violence is an impossibility, but a gentle shake would have brought its corrupt members tumbling down, and the trunk, if lifeless, without them, would have perished by their loss. Unnecessary prohibitions can be never successful, for nothing excites men to opposition more quickly, than restraints which have the appearance of a needless diminution of their supposed rights. Hence though professedly for an acknowledgedly desirable end, if not sanctioned by a dispassionate judgment upon their necessity to promote it, they can be only partially observed, never generally respected. Such a law is like Samson without his hair, not inefficient merely, but provoking the contempt and hostility of its enemies, absolutely neglected by those who would have been otherwise its strongest friends and supporters.

Let us suppose a case in illustration. A sweeping law is passed by the legislative authority of the State, denouncing severe punishment upon any individual attending a popular assembly, the ostensible reason being that these meetings are always attended by instances of disorder and breaches of the public peace. Now whether the reason assigned is true or not, the effect of such a law is too well proved by experience not to be obvious and undeniable. To judicious and effectual measures for the suppression of the existing evils only, none would have objected. On the contrary, the mass would have readily thrown its influence upon the side of the law, for, as we have before observed, it is the few, and not the many, who made it necessary. Had the law therefore simply stipulated that meetings of this kind should be accompanied by due provision for their peace and quietness, such as the guarantee of known, responsible, and reliable individuals for this character, the absence of personal disguises or even the presence of proper public officers, it would have been accepted at once as reasonable and its end effectually secured. But in the form supposed its real object is forgotten, and it is universally scouted as an unauthorized invasion of an innocent right. Meetings are therefore held and fully attended in defiance of it; and the circumstance of their illegality will not be likely to occasion an improvement in their character for order. But the executive power is not backward in attempting to enforce its authority, and its agents are active to make detections. Now then, it has become a question of personal safety to each and every subject, the well-intentioned and the evil-intentioned alike; for punishment is to be visited on every individual ascertained to have been present, not merely whether he participated or not in disorder, but whether or not any disorder took place. Discovery therefore must be prevented by any means, and disguises are consequently assumed, in the safety of which the officers of the law are excluded, if necessary by force, while riot and outrage are likely to reign supreme, since they are now unchecked even by those whom a judicious enactment would have made their efficient preventers, because to make themselves needlessly conspicuous, would be to increase the hazard of detection and legal punishment. Thus from this uncalled for association of harmless and harmful in the law, they come to be unity in reality, a union