upon all human conduct. In fact that blame applies not to individuals, but to the system; and that system is proved to be bad;-hurtful to the interests of the country, corrupting to the people, injurious to honest principle, and at the very best a clumsy contrivance for carrying on the affairs of the State. It is partly the result of our monarchial constitution, in which the prince must rule by influence rather than prerogative; but it is much more to be derived from the aristocratical portion of the constitution. The great families in their struggles with each other and against the Crown, have recourse to Party leagues, and the people are from time to time drawn into the conflict. The evils which flow from this manner of conducting public affairs are manifest. The two greatest unquestionably are, first, the loss of so many able men to the service of the country as well as the devotion of almost the whole powers of all leading men to party contests and the devotion of a portion of those men to obstructing the public service instead of helping it; and next, the sport which, in playing the party game, is made of the most sacred principles, the duping of the people, and the assumption of their aristocratic leaders to dictate their opinions to them. It is a sorry account of any political machine that it is so constructed, as only to be kept in order by the loss of power and the conflict of forces which the first of these faults implies. It is a clumsy and unwieldy movement which can only be effected by the combined operation of jarring principles, which the panegyrists or rather apologists of these anomalies have commended. But it is a radical vice in any system to exclude the people from forming their own opinions, which must, if proceeding from their own impulses, be kept in strict accordance with their interests, that is with the general good; and it is a flaw if possible still more disastrous, to render the people only tools and instruments of an oligarchy, instead of making their power the main spring of the whole engine, and their interest the grand object of all its operations. 66 Of this we may be well assured, that as Party has hitherto been known amongst us, it can only be borne during the earlier stages of a nation's political growth. While the people are ignorant of their interests, and as little acquainted with their rights as with their duties, they may be treated by the leading factions as they have hitherto been treated by our own. God be praised, they are not now what they were in the palmy days of factious aristocracy, of the Walpoles, and the, Foxes, and the Pelhams―never consulted, and never thought of unless when it was desirable that one mob should bawl out Church and King," and another should echo back “No Pope, and no Pretender." They have even made great advances since the close of the American war, and the earlier periods of the French Revolution, when, through fear of the Catholics, the library of Lord Mansfield, and through hatred of the Dissenters, the apparatus of Dr. Priestley, were committed to the flames. Their progress is now rapid, and their success assured in the attainment of all that can qualify them for self-government, emancipate them from pupilage, and entitle them to undertake the management of their own affairs. Nor will they any more suffer leading men to make up their opi nions for them, as doctors do the prescriptions which they are to take, or consent to be the tools and the dupes of party any more. Let us now by way of contrast rather than comparison, turn our eye towards some eminent leaders of mankind in countries where no Party spirit can ever be shown, or in circumstances where a great danger threatening all alike, excludes the influence of faction altogether, though only for a season, and while the pressure continues. Contemporary with George III., and with the statesmen whose faint likenesses we have been surveying, were some of the most celebrated persons whom either the old or the new world have produced. Their talents and their fortunes came also in conflict with those of our own rulers, upon some of the most memorable occasions which have exercised the one or affected the other. It will form no inappropriate appendix to the preceding sketches, if we now endeavour to pourtray several of those distinguished individuals. FRANKLIN. ONE of the most remarkable men certainly of our times as a politician, or of any age as a philosopher, was Franklin; who also stands alone in combining together these two characters, the greatest that man can sustain, and in this, that having borne the first part in enlarging science by one of the greatest discoveries ever made, he bore the second part in founding one of the greatest empires in the world. Born In this truly great man everything seems to concur that goes towards the constitution of exalted merit. First, he was the architect of his own fortune. in the humblest station, he raised himself by his talents and his industry, first to the place in society which may be attained with the help only of ordinary abilities, great application, and good luck; but next to the loftier heights which a daring and happy genius alone can scale; and the poor Printer's boy who at one period of his life had no covering to shelter his head from the dews of night, rent in twain the proud dominion of England, and lived to be the Ambassador of a Commonwealth which he had formed, at the Court of the haughty Monarchs of France who had been his allies. Then, he had been tried by prosperity as well as adverse fortune, and had passed unhurt through the perils of both. No ordinary apprentice, no commonplace journeyman, ever laid the foundations of his independence in |