“The love of Margaret, duchess dowager of Burgundy, for a young Jew, occasions Brittany to be re-united to France, and England to be rent by civil wars.” “A blow with a cane, being given by a German to a Genoese, who was looking at the carriage of a mortar-piece, which was broken in one of the streets of Genoa, occasions the Austrians to be driven from that city, and the republic of Genoa to recover its liberty.” In view of such things, may we not say with a poet whose name I have forgotten— “Think naught a _trifle_ though it small appear, Small sands the mountain, minutes make the year, And trifles life; your care to trifles give, Else you may die ere you have learned to live.” _Editorial._[1] [Footnote 1: Some misapprehensions having arrisen, it may be as well to state that _all after_ this word “Editorial,” is strictly what it professes to be.] To the Editor of the Southern Literary Messenger. _Sir_,—In your August number (page 573) is a quotation from Mr. Burke's speech to the Electors of Bristol, upon the subject of instructions from constituents to their representatives. Will you oblige me by giving another passage or two from that speech, which will show how inapplicable Mr. Burke's remarks are to our country. Immediately after the word “arguments,” at the end of your last quotation, Mr. Burke proceeds thus: “To deliver an opinion is the right of all men; that of constituents is a weighty and respectable opinion, which a representative ought always to rejoice to hear, and which he ought always most seriously to consider. But _authoritative_ instructions, _mandates_ issued, which the member is bound blindly and implicitly to obey, to vote and to argue for, though contrary to the clearest conviction of his judgment and conscience, these are things utterly unknown to the laws of THIS LAND, and which arise from a fundamental mistake of the whole order and tenor of our CONSTITUTION. “Parliament is not a _congress_ of ambassadors from different and hostile interests, which interests each must maintain as an agent, and advocate against the other agents and advocates; but Parliament is a deliberative assembly of _one_ nation, with _one_ interest, that of the whole; where, not local purposes, not local prejudices ought to guide, but the general good, resulting from the general reason of the whole. You choose a member indeed, but when you have chosen him, he is not a member of Bristol, but he is a member of _Parliament_.”