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revised by himself. Feeling painfully conscious how little justice so meagre a sketch can do to a man of such wonderful powers and varied learning the greatest intellect of the nineteenth century-I will close this "Memoir," prefixed to a work entitled notice with an extract from a Opinions of Lord Brougham," &c., published in London, 1837:"A quality of Lord Brougham's mind, that is almost as extraordinary as his extent of information, is its singular activity. His energies never seem to flag-even for an instant; he does not seem to know what it is to be fatigued or jaded. Some such faculty as this, indeed, the vastness and universality of his acquirements called for, in order to make the weight endurable to himself, and to bear him up during his long career of political activity and excitement. Accordingly, labors that would go far to upset the reason, or destroy the powers of ordinary men, seem to produce no more effect on him than do the hot sands and swift pace of the desert on the dromedary. Activity, strife, intellectual contest-these are the elements of his existence, and of his success.

Take the routine of a day, for instance. In his early life he has been known to attend, in his place in court, on circuit, at an early hour in the morning. After having successfully pleaded the cause of his client, he drives off to the hustings, and delivers, at different places, eloquent and spirited speeches to the electors. He then sits down in the retirement of his closet to pen an address to the Glasgow students, perhaps, or an elaborate article in the Edinburgh Review.' The active labors of the day are closed with preparation for the court business of the following morning; and then, in place of retiring to rest, as ordinary men would, after such exertions, he spends the night in abstruse study, or in social intercourse with some friend from whom he has been long separated. Yet he would be seen as early as eight on the following morning, actively engaged in the court, in defence of some unfortunate object of government persecution; astonishing the auditory, and his fellow-lawyers no less, with the freshness and power of his eloquence.

Bacon, Newton, and Boyle. To this honored list, the friends of truth will no doubt rejoice in the accession of another name, and hail the appearance of a work written by one of the most remarkable men of his age-an orator unrivalled for the force of his eloquence-a reasoner whose dialectical powers it would be difficult to match-a philosopher of great and varied acquirements a statesman pre-eminent in acuteness and perspicacity. Is it not an event to be welcomed by the church, and to be hailed by Christians of every creed, that, in the meridian of his power-amid the strife of contending factions, and under the burden and distraction of the highest functions-such a man is come forward as the advocate of Natural and Revealed Religion?" "His speeches unquestionably stand in the very first rank of oratorical masterpieces. They contain individual passages of eloquence, rhetoric, debate, logic, equal to anything; besides condensed qualities of information brought powerfully to bear upon particular subjects, and a mass of masculine sense, variegated by sharp flings of sarcasm, and illustrated by a display of wit, and seasoned by tart peculiarities of temper and language, which render them, in their collected form, one of the richest legacies which the genius of oratory ever bequeathed to the unborn time.'

"Gilfillan's Literary Portraits."

"A fair contrast with this history of a day, in early life, would be that of one at a more advanced period; say in the year 1832. A watchful observer might see the new Lord Chancellor seated in the court over which he presided, from an early hour in the morning until the afternoon, listening to the arguments of counsel, and mastering the points of cases with a grasp of mind that enabled him to give those speedy and unembarrassed judgments that have so injured him with the profession. If he followed his course, he would see him, soon after the opening of the House of Lords, addressing their lordships on some intricate question of law, with an acuteness that drew down approbation even from his opponents, or, on some all-engrossing political topic, casting firebrands into the camp of the enemy, and awakening them from the complacent repose of conviction to the hot contest with more active and inquiring intellects. Then, in an hour or so, he might follow him to the Mechanics' Institution, and hear an able and stimulating discourse on education, admirably adapted to the peculiar capacity of his auditors; and, towards ten, perhaps, at a Literary and Scientific Institution in Marylebone, the same Proteus-like intellect might be found expounding the intricacies of physical science with a never-tiring and elastic power. Yet, during all those multitudinous exertions, time would be found for the composition of a discourse on Natural Theology, that bears no marks of haste or excitement of mind, but presents as calm a face as though it had been the laborious production of a contemplative philosopher."

THE DUKE OF WELLINGTON-THE SCHOOLMASTER.

Let it not be supposed that I am inclined to exaggerate. I entertain no fear of slavery being introduced by the power of the sword. It would require a stronger-it would demand a more powerful man even than the Duke of Wellington, to effect such an object. The noble duke may take the army, he may take the navy, he may take the mitre, he may take the great seal. I will make the noble duke a present of them all. Let him come on with his whole force, sword in hand, against the Constitution, and the energies of the people of this country will defeat his utmost efforts. Therefore, I am perfectly convinced that there will be no unconstitutional attack on the liberties of the people. These are not the times for such an attempt. There have been periods when the country heard with dismay that "The soldier was abroad." That is not the case now. Let the soldier be abroad; in the present age he can do nothing. There is another person abroad--a less important person in the eyes of some, an insignificant person, whose labors have tended to produce this state of things. The schoolmaster is abroad! And I trust more to him, armed with his primer, than I do to the soldier in full military array, for up

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holding and extending the liberties of his country. I think the appointment of the Duke of Wellington is bad in a constitutional point of view; but as to any violence being in consequence directed against the liberties of the country, the fear of such an event I look upon to be futile and groundless.

"MAN OVER MEN HE MADE NOT LORD.'

-Milton.

I trust that at length the time is come when Parliament will no longer bear to be told that slave-owners are the best lawgivers on slavery; no longer allow an appeal from the British public to such communities as those in which the Smiths and the Grimsdalls are persecuted to death for teaching the Gospel to the negroes; and the Mosses holden in affectionate respect for torture and murder: no longer suffer our voice to roll across the Atlantic in empty warnings and fruitless orders. Tell me not of rightstalk not of the property of the planter in his slaves. I deny the right -I acknowledge not the property. The principles, the feelings of our common nature rise in rebellion against it. Be the appeal made to the understanding, or to the heart, the sentence is the same that rejects it. In vain you tell me of laws that sanction such a crime! There is a law above all the enactments of human codes--the same throughout the world-the same in all times-such as it was before the daring genius of Columbus pierced the night of ages, and opened to one world the sources of power, wealth, and knowledge; to another, all unutterable woes: such as it is at this day. It is the law written by the finger of God on the heart of man; and by that law unchangeable and eternal, while men despise fraud, and loathe rapine, and abhor blood, they will reject with indignation the wild and guilty fantasy, that man can hold property in man! In vain you appeal to treaties, to covenants between nations: the Covenants of the Almighty, whether the Old Covenant or the New, denounce such unholy pretensions. To those laws did they of old refer, who maintained the African trade. Such treaties did they cite, and not untruly; for by one shameful compact you bartered the glories of Blenheim for the traffic in blood. Yet, despite of law and of treaty, that infernal traffic is now destroyed, and its votaries put to death like other pirates. How came this change to pass? Not, assuredly, by Parliament leading the way; but the country at length awoke; the indignation of the people was kindled; it descended in thunder, and smote the traffic, and scattered its guilty profits to the winds.

Now, then, let the planters beware-let their assemblies bewarelet the government at home beware-let the Parliament beware! The same country is once more awake-awake to the condition of negro slavery; the same indignation kindles in the bosom of the same people; the same cloud is gathering that annihilated the slave trade; and, if it shall descend again, they on whom its crash may fall will not be destroyed before I have warned them. But I pray that their destruction may turn away from us the more terrible judgments of God!

From his Speech, in July, 1830.

HAPPY EFFECTS OF EDUCATION.

The tendency of knowledge is, and the tendency of its diffusion undoubtedly is, to improve the habits of the people, to better their principles, and to amend all that which we call their characters; for there are a host of principles and feelings which go together to make up what we call, in the common acceptation of the words, the human character. How does this diffusion operate? To increase habits of reflection, to enlarge the sphere of the mind, to render it more capable of receiving pleasurable emotions, and of taking an interest in other, and in higher and better matters than mere sensual gratification. It tends to improve the feelings, as well as to increase the reflective habits; and it tends, therefore, to the attainment of that which in itself tends immediately and directly to improve the character and conduct of a nation.

It tends to increase prudence and prudential habits, and to amend and improve the human feelings. The ancients have described the effects of education in far better language, and much more happily than I can do" emollit mores nec sinit esse feros."

RAILROADS versus WAR.

When I saw the difficulties of space and time, as it were, overcome when I beheld a kind of miracle exhibited before my astonished eyes--when I surveyed mosses pierced through on which it was before hardly possible for man or beast to plant the sole of the foot, and now covered with a road and bearing heavy wagons, laden not only with innumerable passengers, but with merchandise of the largest bulk and weight-when I saw valleys made

practicable by bridges of ample height and length, which spanned them-saw the steam railway traversing the surface of the water at a distance of sixty or seventy feet in perpendicular heightsaw the rocks excavated, and the gigantic power of man penetrating through miles of the solid mass, and gaining a great, a lasting, an almost perennial conquest over the powers of nature by his skill and industry-when I contemplated all this, was it possible for me to avoid the reflections which crowded into my mind-not in praise of man's great deeds-not in admiration of the genius and perseverance which he had displayed, or even of the courage which he had shown in setting himself against the obstacles which matter had opposed to his course-no, but the melancholy reflection that whilst all these prodigious efforts of the human race, so fruitful of praise, but so much more fruitful in lasting blessings to mankind, and which never could have forced a tear from any eye, but for that unhappy casualty which deprived me of a friend and you of a representative, a cause of mourning which there began and there ended; when I reflected that this peaceful, and guiltless, and useful triumph over the elements and over nature herself had cost a million of money, whilst fifteen hundred millions had been squandered in bloodshed, in naturalizing barbarism over the world-shrouding the nations in darkness-making bloodshed tinge the earth of every country under the sun-in one horrid and comprehensive word, WAR-the greatest curse of the human race, and the greatest crime, because it involves every other crime within its execrable name, and all with the wretched, and, thank God, I may now say, the utterly frustrated, as it always was the utterly vain, attempt to crush the liberties of the people? I look backwards with shame, with regret unspeakable— with indignation to which I should in vain attempt to give utterance, upon that course of policy which we are now happily too well informed and too well intentioned ever to allow again whilst we live when I think that, if one hundred, and but one hundred of those fifteen hundred millions, had been employed in promoting the arts of peace, and the progress of civilization, and of wealth, and prosperity amongst us, instead of that other employment which is too hateful to think of, and almost, now-a-days, too disgusting to speak of (and I hope to live to see the day when such things will be incredible-when looking back we shall find it impossible to believe that they ever happened)-instead of being burthened with eight hundred millions of debt, borrowed, after spending seven

Hon. Wm. Huskisson, who was accidentally killed at the opening of the Liverpool and Manchester Railway, Sept. 15, 1830.

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