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.

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 portray 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.

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. Born 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