its height corruption, and bury it beneath the ruins of the abuse it was meant to shelter." Surely then it can be no disadvantage to a country to direct the virtue and talents of its citizens principally to that science whose principles, when well understood and practiced on, will secure the liberty and happiness of the people, but when mistaken by ignorance, or perverted by corruption, will subvert the one, and dissipate the other. Look to the past history of the world, from the days of the Patriarchs to the days of our Presidents, and we are at a loss, after the review, to determine whether the world has been injured more by the unwise and unskilful efforts of statesmen and philanthropists to benefit, or by the nefarious attempts of wicked men and tyrants to injure it. We shall find from this review, that where a Hampden, a Sidney, and a Russell have been crushed by the tyrannous exercise of power, and been wept over by posterity after they had fallen, thousands have been reduced to misery, or sent untimely out of the world, unpitied and unmourned, by the stupid legislation of ignorant statesmen. Of such bodies of functionaries, we may well exclaim, in the language of England's bard, "How much more happy were good Æsop's frogs Than we?--for ours are animated logs, With ponderous malice swaying to and fro, And crushing nations with a stupid blow." The statistics of the densely populated countries of Europe and Asia inform us, that there are large masses of population in those countries constantly vacillating, if I may use the expression, between life and death; a feather may decide the preponderance of the scales, in favor of one or the other. In view of such a pregnant fact as this, how awfully responsible becomes the duty {272} of the legislator! Suppose, whilst he is endeavoring to organize the labor and capital of the country, he should unfortunately tamper with the sources of production, and, if I may use the beautiful simile of Fenelon, like him who endeavors to enlarge the native springs of the rock, should suddenly find that his labors had but served to dry them up,--what calamities would not such legislative blunders at once inflict upon that lowest and most destitute class, which is already holding on upon life, with so frail a tenure! How many would be hastened prematurely out of existence! And these are the melancholy every-day consequences, too often misunderstood or unnoticed, of ignorant legislation. How vastly different is the benign influence of that wise legislator, whose laws, in the language of Bacon, "are deep, not vulgar; not made on the spur of a particular occasion for the present, but out of Providence for the future, to make the estate of the people still more and more happy!"