A SECOND year has closed upon us since the establishment of this Magazine. How well during that period it has been sustained, and how ably the editors have contributed to its success, you yourselves can best decide, and it remains for you also to determine what shall be its future character; whether, like other and similar productions, it shall pass away and be forgotten, or whether it shall continue, as it has been, a vehicle for the display of that taste and literary talent which so generally pervades our College halls.

To question your liberality, after you have afforded so cheerful an exhibition of it for the last two years, or to doubt its permanence, now that the Magazine has passed into different hands, would be to evince suspicions insulting to your feelings and injurious to your character-insulting, for your previous generosity would give them the lie, and injurious, for they would argue an inconstancy of feeling which, in this matter certainly, you have never been charged with. The steady and constant support of our friends we therefore reasonably anticipate, not only because it has been most freely extended to our predecessors, but because the honor of the class and of the College is involved in its continuance. Let us not hereafter be reproached with an inability to sustain a Magazine-a Magazine of our own too--for a longer period than two short years. Let us not idly abandon so important, so useful a branch of College privileges -let us not, now, when our bark is on the open sea, with a fresh breeze astern, and a clear course ahead, fall asleep on our watch,

and suffer the good ship to swim lazily by the shore, or to lie wrecked and stranded, high and dry, on the beach-but rather let us trim ship, and each use his best endeavors to secure for the "craft" a reputation as a good sailer and a stout sea-boat. True she has lately changed commanders, and it may be that the new ones have not the same skill, as they assuredly have not the same experience, with the old; but zeal in the fulfilment of their duty, and above all an honest confidence in their crew, will speedily enable them to supply any deficiencies.

Let this Magazine go down, and for years you have seen the last of Yale College periodicals-sustain it through the early portion of its existence, and it will gather strength by age, and ripen into that maturity of which it has already given such brilliant promise. Sustain it, and the time may come when the ambitious hopes of those who established it will be realized; when it may number in the list of its contributors the great and good whom our Alma Mater shall have sent out through the land, and may become in place of an humble College Magazine, an organ of taste for the continent! But to leave fancy for reality.

The Editors of the Magazine for the ensuing year, while deeply sensible of the honor which their classmates have conferred upon them by their election, cannot but feel that they have been assigned a duty whose discharge is most arduous and most delicate. To escape the imputation of partiality or prejudice, is an immunity from censure which we can scarcely hope to enjoy; while we are assured that to enable the Magazine to preserve its reputation, and at the same time to answer your expectations, we must sacrifice to its improvement much of our time and attention. But any such sacrifice we are ready to make, relying confidently upon the good feeling of the class, to interpret our actions in the most favorable manner. Thanks to the generous efforts of our predecessors, we have to tread no untrodden path, to explore no literary desert, but enlightened by their experience, and warned by their errors, we have the opportunity, if not the power, to render the Magazine an ornament to College, and an advantage to its members. With the hope that under our guidance it may become both, we are, fellow students, respectfully,

YOUR EDITORS.

243

ANCIENT AND MODERN REPUBLICS.

It is very generally admitted that the universal triumph or prostration of republican principles will attend upon the success or failure of our political experiment. It is the duty, therefore, of every citizen, but more especially of those, who by their education are fitted to exert an extensive influence over their fellow men, to become fully acquainted, not only with our own history, but also with that of former free governments, and thus be enabled to meet the desponding republican with words of encouragement, and the taunting aristocrat with a confident reply.

When we open the pages of history, the appalling fact is presented to us, that the republics of former ages have existed for a short time among the nations of the earth, and then sunk into anarchy and despotism. The enemies of freedom thence derive encouragement to persevere in their measures of tyranny and oppression, and coufidently boast that our government will not survive for a century. It becomes an interesting and vastly important subject of inquiry, whether our situation is such that the same causes which produced their ruin, will produce ours, or, in other words, whether free governments are adapted to the wants and capacities of mankind.

It is our purpose to show, in this and a few following papers, that there is no such similarity between the republics of former ages and our own, as that we must necessarily be involved in the same final ruin, but that, on the contrary, the causes which produced their overthrow do not, and cannot exist amongst us.

Experience teaches us that with nations, as well as with individuals, their origin is a powerful cause of good or evil. No one will deny that in the case of an individual, the habits of thinking and acting first formed are those which afterwards mould the character and direct the destiny; and when we consider that a nation is but a community of individuals, and its action the aggregate of the action of the several parts, it is evident that it will be governed by the same general laws. In presenting the origin of ancient and modern republics, it would be a task equally thankless and unnecessary, to describe minutely the manner in which each of them was ushered into being, since their general history is so well known that a single proposition will suffice.

The Ancient Republics all sprung from the ruins of monarchies, more or less absolute, destroyed by some sudden outbreak of popular violence. It is true indeed, that, since monarchical governments became at an early day universal, more or less force has been employed by every people who have obtained for themselves the bless