a

LIAMS.

and Madame Sand, and a hundred others, all | The Slalesman's Manual. The Addresses and in good plain English, or equally facile French. Messages of the Presidents of the United These moderns are much more obscene, States, Inaugural, Annual, anul Special, from though not quite as gross as the ancients. 1789 to 1819 ; with a Memoir of each of the The talk of antiquity was very like the small Presidents, and a History of their Ad. talk of Shakspeare's day, or the jests of lusty ministrations. Also, the Constitution of the bachelors in our time. Chivalry, refined by United Slates, and a selection of important Christianity, first made decency a rule, and documents and statistical information. Comforbade the sacrifice of modesty to wit. It piled from official sources, by EDWIN Wiseems to us, therefore, both a chivalrous and a

Embellished with Portraits of the Christian, or in one word, a gentlemanly pre- Presidents, engraved on steel, by Vistus caution in Mr. Bristed, to have omitted the Balch. In 4 vols. New York : Edward indecencies of Catullus in this critical and Walker, 114 Fulton-street, 1849. elegant selection.

Those of our readers who read only Tenny- We are intimately acquainted with this work, son and Shelley, can have no idea of the and must speak of it in terns of unqualified manner and spirit of Catullus. Like nature's praise. It is not only a good Political History self, it combines simplicity, the result of severe of the United States, from the Inauguration of criticism, with extreme grace and lightness. President Washington to that of General Like nature, or rather like the music of Mozart, Taylor, but contains a collection of the Preor the canzonets of Haydn, seeming to affect sidential Messages, special and general, of all the sense only, it secretly raises and harino the Administrations, each prefaced with, and nizes the spirits. It fulfills the first great end followed by complete and clearly written bisof poetry-to please without debauching. It torical chapters of the most unquestionable breathes a harmless and benign complacency; accüracy. it smiles while it sings, is gay without effort, To the young politician this work is inwitty without point or edge, humorous without dispensable. It will richly reward his most severity.

attentive study. To be master of its en“ Let us live, my Lesbia,” cries the sweet tire contents is to be as well informed as the heathen, “and let us love, and count the saws reading of one work can make us, in the policy of cross old fellows not worth a copper. · Suns and conduct of both the great parties. may set and rise again; but to us, when our To a lawyer's library the work is of the short day is ended, the long night comes with greatest importance. Every young men's cirits endless sleep: Give me a thousand kisses, culating library will need a copy of it. Every then give me a hundred, and then a thousand debating club, and every State Department will more; and then a second hundred; and after require it. these another thousand and a hundred; and The politics even of the last year can rarely when we have kissed many thousand times, be gathered from newspapers. It is only by let us 'rub out the score, and never know, nor such histories and compilations as this, that let any envious fellow know, that there hare we are to be thoroughly informed and guided been so many kisses.” But now we have only to a just estimate of the present movement in metaphysics and the rights of man done into the political world. The volumes are cheap, but verse; or, if a love sonnet is written, it gathers well printed and neatly bound, and adorned no cream by standing.

with really excellent Engravings of all the Presidents.

The Documentary History of the State of New Pathology and treatment of the Asiatic Cholera,

THE

A M E RICAN REVIEW,

No. XXI.

FOR SEPTEMBER, 18 49.

SHORT CHAPTERS ON PUBLIC ECONOMY.

I.

Il arrived only at its perfect and full deConstitutionality.

velopment within the last few ages, and It is never to be lamented when men stands immoveable, by the accumulated are driven to search into the foundation of strength of all its past existence. It came the commonwealth ; as it is necessary for into perfect being, not by revolution, not the conduct of life that the divine and ab- by a change of principles, but by the nastract principles of virtue should have a tive force of an internal life, which impellconscious existence in the intellect, and ed it to throw off a foreign incumbrance, should be frequently agitated and discuss- and stand free in the vigor of independed; so, if we intend to maintain in their ant youth. It is a government of princioriginal purity and force, those ideas of ples, not of prescription, nor of forms. authority, of right, and of obedience, upon Its traditional forms are few; it did not which all government is founded, we must come down to us loaded with the corruptoften reflect, and induce others to reflect ions of former ages, to be maintained by upon them, in their simplicity. It is ne- the timid and condemned by the wise. cessary to revive and fortify the spirit of It is a government of necessity; it arose the Constitution by frequent recurrence to from necessity, and exists by necessity; it the rights and opinions upon which it is therefore not subvertible while its moral rests ; tracing these to their principles, and conditions exist. But the necessity which casting an historic glance upon those con- gave it birth is not that with which the ditions of society—those exigencies of hu- mathematics are conversant, nor the wants manity—from which they took their rise, and desires of the grosser nature of man. and through which they became appa- The necessity with which our laws are in rent; rights, in our own case, derived accordance is of a moral nature, and can be from a recognition of the imperious neces- found only in the operation of moral causes. sity of freedom to the full development of In the course of history, philosophers our nature; principles, grounded in human observe series of events signifying the exnature, tested by the experience of all | istence and operation of certain divine and time, and suggested as rules of legislation | moral laws, by which the superior destiny from an observation of the evils that arose of man is distinguished above his physical upon their absence. Ours is not an hypo- and

destiny. Governments thetical government; it was not erected founded like ours upon a recognition of upon an imaginary basis ; the first fibres of of justice, of faith, of beneficence, of honits roots can be traced backward into the or, of liberty and of constancy, are imperdarkness of primeval liberty ; its growth ishable governments; and die only with has been gradual through many centuries. I the races which