Cicero, in one of his letters, says familiarly to his friend: "Send to me the persons to whom you wish me to give the Gauls." In another, he complains of being fatigued with letters from I know not what princes, who thank him for causing their provinces to be erected into kingdoms; and he adds that he does not even know where these kingdoms are situated. It is probable that Cicero, who often saw the Roman people, the sovereign people, applaud and obey him, and who was thanked by kings whom he knew not, had some emotions of pride and vanity. Though the sentiment is not at all consistent in so pitiful an animal as man, yet we can pardon it in a Cicero, a Cæsar, or a Scipio; but when in the extremity of one of our half barbarous provinces, a man who may have bought a small situation, and printed poor verses, takes it into his head to be proud, it is very laughable. PRIESTS. Priests in a state approach nearly to what preceptors are in private families: it is their province to teach, pray, and supply example. They ought to have no authority over the masters of the house; at least until it can be proved that he who gives the wages ought to obey him who receives them. Of all religions the one which most positively excludes the priesthood from civil authority, is that of Jesus. "Give unto Cæsar the things which are Cæsar's."--"Among you there is neither first nor last."--"My kingdom is not of this world." The quarrels between the empires and the priesthood, which have bedewed Europe with blood for more than six centuries, have therefore been, on the part of the priests, nothing but rebellion at once against God and man, and a continual sin against the Holy Ghost. From the time of Calchas, who assassinated the daughter of Agamemnon, until Gregory XII., and Sixtus V., two bishops who would have deprived Henry IV., of the kingdom of France, sacerdotal power has been injurious to the world. Prayer is not dominion, nor exhortation despotism. A good priest ought to be a physician to the soul. If Hippocrates had ordered his patients to take hellebore under pain of being hanged, he would have been more insane and barbarous than Phalaris, and would have had little practice. When a priest says: Worship God; be just, indulgent, and compassionate; he is then a good physician; when he says: Believe me, or you shall be burned; he is an assassin. The magistrate ought to support and restrain the priest in the same manner as the father of a family insures respect to the preceptor, and prevents him from abusing it. The agreement of Church and State is of all systems the most monstrous, for it necessarily implies division, and the existence of two contracting parties. We ought to say the protection given by government to the priesthood or church.