1824.]

Imaginative writing prevails at two very different æras in the history of a nation-in the period of rudeness, and in the age of refinement. In the first case, poetry is very little else than the natural effusion of ardent and uncultivated minds; and, of course, where the learned and enlightened are comparatively few, it will constitute the general language of society. By this, we do not mean to say, that the dialect of ordinary conversation ever excited the peculiar emotions which poetical language is known to excite; but only, that the style of discourse which seems pedestris' or familiar, to semi-civilized barbarians, would appear highly figurative to us. We are therefore willing to admit, that if America were just emerging from barbarism, there would be reason in requiring, that our poetry, and even that our prose should possess that character which Europeans would denominate imaginative. But we are neither in this condition, nor in that of refinement, when poetry is cultivated not as the ordinary vehicle of thought, but in order to administer to the pleasures of the idle and the opulent.

Much has been said (we believe, without just discrimination) of the favourable influence which free institutions exert over most of the fine arts. There are many reasons which induce us to believe, that the progress of the arts will be necessarily slower (though no doubt surer and steadier) under a government like ours, than under the control of an irresponsible sovereign.

In order to comprehend distinctly the principles, which, in all probability, will eventually determine the progress, not only of the liberal arts, but of all the useful interests and peaceful occupations of our citizens, it is necessary to study with attention the important and interesting changes, which cannot but result from the removal of the sovereignty from the hands of a powerful aristocracy to its proper and legitimate seat—an intelligent people. The subject is the more curious, inasmuch as we are not aware, that much attention has been turned to a consideration of the alterations in society and government, which this single circumstance will one day create.

When a people is either too ignorant to understand its rights, too weak or too indolent to recover them, or too little acquainted with the spirit of government to exercise discreetly the functions of sovereignty, it will necessarily happen that the interests of that people will be regulated by a few men, the craftiest and strongest among them. In that case, religion, education, the trades and the professions, the arts and the sciences, will be controlled by the caprice of the oligarchs, to whose dominion the people have agreed, or are compelled to submit.

Now, no error is more common than the belief, that rulers may be found and have been found, who are able, by the wise and prudent exercise of arbitrary power, so to regulate the interests of the state, as to advance it to a very high degree of political prosperity.* We venture to solicit particular attention of the reader to this part of our subject, because we are convinced that it involves considerations of great theoretical beauty, and still greater practical importance. So great is the general over-estimate of the capacity of rulers to increase, by a system of well directed impulses and checks, the welfare of a nation, that, even at this day, even among those who are not wholly unacquainted with the baueful operation of a system of restriction and encouragement, it is by no means uncommon to hear the highest and most unthinking admiration expressed for the wisdom of those monarchs, who are said to have secured, by wise laws, the welfare of their sub ects. Pericles, Augustus, Julius II., Leo X., and Louis XIV., have been extolled to the skies for the munificent protection and support, as it is called, which they afforded to literature, the science and the arts in their respective dominions. The historian delights to expatiate on the universities splendidly endowed, or the monuments of art expensively erected during the reigns of these illustrious benefactors of mankind; he enlarges on the wisdom of their sumptuary laws, and descants at full length on the legislative virtue by which luxury was repressed, and industry encouraged. He disclaims, in rhetorical flourishes, on the splendid effects of princely liberality, and talks in fine flowing periods, of the exquisite productions of manufactural skill, and the elaborated specimens of art, which he seems to regard as unquestionable proofs of national prosperity. If it were insinuated that much of this apparent wealth was the effect of any thing but the positive enactments of the sovereign; and that precisely where it was undoubtedly induced by the influence of government, it was there particularly, the evidence of an unwise and unjust distribution of property and power; if he were told that the mag

It is painful to contemplate the deplorable absurdities into which Plato, Sir Thomas Moore, Milton, Locke, and Hume, were betrayed, in attempting to fabricate systems of government. Every body knows what lamentable nonsense Fenelon has put into the mouth of the goddess of wisdom, when she undertakes to instruct Idomeneus in the arts of legislation. One would really imagine, that the authors and inventors of Utopias actually believed that the great bulk of mankind were, and would ever remain in a state of the most helpless fatuity; and that the great object of government was to bribe and to threaten, to lead and to drive, these stupid and ignorant creatures into a sort of undesirable happiness.

nificence he beheld was merely the effect of a forcible concentration of that light, which, but for the application of this force, all portions of society might have nearly equally enjoyed; if he were assured that the glory of a few men was purchased by a ruinous demand upon the happiness of the many; that public faith and public interest were violated; that the Parthenon and the Odeum might be built; that the most grinding exactions were resorted to, and all Christendom laid under compulsive contribution, that the expense of building St. Peter's might be defrayed; that the rights of property were disregarded and despised, in order that the nation might enjoy the frivolous reputation of fabricating sumptuous velvets and silks ;-if he were told all this, he might perhaps be made to pause and reflect, to what extent this glittering and show were safe indications of the wisdom of the laws, or the welfare of the people. In fact, it is not easy to avoid being deluded by some of the alleged symptoms of national intelligence and happiness; and accordingly, no error is more common than that which prevails on this subject. As travelers, sometimes, in order to illustrate the wealth of a state, enumerate the splendid palaces that adorn its cities, so some men point out a few great names in literature or science as a proof of the quantity of generai intelligence, and recount the prosperity and enjoyment of a few, in evidence of the flourishing condition of the whole. If the means of subsistence and the lights of science are not generally distributed, we see nothing to rejoice at, in the contemplation of the great wealth or the great wisdom of a few individuals. On the contrary, whereever riches or intelligence are unequally possessed, the amount of human happiness is obviously less, than where, from the wise distribution of political forces, or rather from the absence of all disturbing interferences, the wealth and the wisdom, which preposterous restrictions prevent from distributing their benefits, are suffered freely and by their own expansibilities to extend in all directions unimpeded through the region of society. It would no doubt be a delightful thing to be able to boast of our magnificent churches, superb galleries and splendid theatres; to enumerate our manufactories of elegant laces and expensive porcelains; but to the rational philanthropist, it is vastly more delightful to reflect that the absence of concentrated splendour and accumulated wealth, is far more than balanced by another effect of the cause of this absence-the comfort and convenience of thousands and millions of our fellow-creatures. In the same way, it would be doubtless a source of great national pride, if we could exhibit the more finished productions of the pencil and the chisel; if we could boast of our

Webers, our Rossinis, our Chauntreys and our Thorwaldsens; if our rivers and lakes were consecrated by the presence of the Muses, and the beautiful and glorious visions of the imaginative world were portrayed by the pen of a native son of song. But is it not a subject of greater exultation, that the circumstances which prevent the encouragement of all that is elaborate and exquisite in the arts, are identically the causes of the equable diffusion of intelligence? Certainly it is. Governments should be constituted, not to afford strong stimulus to the talents of a few, but to inform and enlighten the minds of the many. It is no less unwise than unjust to sacritice the comforts of millions to the glory of a limited number of men of talent or of genius; and if we were called upon to decide between two systems of polity, one of which would diffuse, and the other concentrate intelligence; one of which would tend to make every man informed, the other to make a few men illustrious, we should not hesitate a moment in the choice.

Monarchical governments tend more or less to produce an unequal distribution of intelligence and property. Thousands are starving that one man may build a magnificent palace; thousands are ignorant that a few favoured savans may be provided with the means of acquiring expensive science or brilliant reputation.

ge

In a free representative democracy, (the government which an educated common people will always endeavour to obtain,) the case will be directly the reverse. The nearer the character of the national delegation approaches to a just and precise representation of the several interests, the more exactly will the result of all their compromises indicate the respective intensities of the various wishes of the nation. A system will be thus produced, in which the interests will succeed in obtaining liberties or advantages very nearly proportionate to their respective strengths, and those, in a free country, will neially be proportioned to their rights. Not that this distribution of advantages will be determined and extended by the wisdom of our legislatures. This can never be the case in America, for the people are at least as well informed as their servants, on the subject of their interests. And indeed it ought never to be attempted, even if our agents were endued with all the wisdom which political writers seem disposed to ascribe to them. The attempt to distribute encouragement, by one statute in favour of this interest, and another in favour of that, is the very bane and curse of legislation. It is the pit into which the makers of laws are perpetually falling. There is something so imposing in the pretension, so noble and so mag

nificent in the desire, of encouraging the industry, and directing the enterprises of a nation, that nothing but the clearest and soundest good sense can prevent the members of the na tional councils from yielding to this flattering delusion. There fortunately, however, exists a check to this spirit of overlegislation. The claims of rival interests will pour in from all quarters to the centre that promises to satisfy them all; and these solicitations must tend, in some measure, to balance and neutralize each other. Unable to comply with all demands, our assemblies will be driven by necessity, to the policy which ought, at once, to be adopted by choice, that is, to leave the whole affair to be regulated by that principle of self-adjusta tion, so active and so effectual in enlightened communities. Industry, both physical and intellectual, will be gradually rej signed to the influence of unrestricted trade; and we doubt not, its progress, though not so rapid, will be vastly more uniform and healthy than when harassed by a complicated system of encouragements, checks and restrictions.

In a country, where the will of the nation is the law, and where the people are sufficiently enlightened to understand, and sufficiently active to prosecute their rights, the consequence must, obviously, be those regulations which afford the minimum of aggregate dissatisfaction to all the claimants concerned in the discussion. The laws of a free people, if rightly considered, are only so many contracts between the various parties or interests in the state, executed by the agency of authorized commissioners or deputies from each. These commissioners meet to act according to the instructions they receive, and not, as some Utopians pretend, to erect themselves into judges of all the interests of the state. The pretensions of these would-be Minoses and Rhadamanthuses could only serve to cover them with disgrace; and the day, indeed, will come when the attempt on the part of the agents of the people to teach them the nature and extent of their various interests, will be regarded as an arrogant and insolent assumption of a province which, in no way, belongs to them. The arrangements negociated by the deputies of the people being in the nature of voluntary contracts, would be made on the principle of exchanges, and supposing that the parties are intelligent, all would be gainers by every new interchange of benefits. The result of the mutual compromises of the interests thus represented, would be, we repeat, the gradual abolition, or rather the decay and disappearance of all such artificial and partial restrictions as rulers impose upon their people with the chimerical expectation of manœuvring