Kings can only appear great through the medium of their subjects' happiness; without their love, royalty is but an ombre Chinoise; a single puff blows out the candles, and all cats are grey in the dusk. To look down from an elevated station is too apt to turn weak heads giddy:

And dizzy 'tis to cast one's eyes so low!

The crows and chonghs, that wing the midway air,
Shew scarce so gross as beetles. Half way down
Hangs one that gathers samphire; dreadful trade!
Methinks he seems no bigger than his head.
The fishermen, that walk upon the beach,
Appear like mice; and yon tall anchoring bark
Diminish'd to her cock; her cock a buoy

Almost too small for sight. The murm'ring surge,
That on th' unnumber'd idle pebbles chafes,

Cannot be heard so high."

SHAKESPEAR'S LEAR.

Hence it is that a people, viewed at an im mense distance below the throne, through the

misty medium of lying courtiers, are too often mistaken for the scum of a pot-a swinish multitude; and the "murmuring surge," their remonstrances or petitions for redress of grievances "cannot be heard so high." But there is a time for all things. James II. found not that pity to which he himself had ever turned a deaf ear; he despised his people without cause, and he was more than despised by them with the justest cause.

It is far easier to lose rights than to recover them, and therefore a free people ever are, and should be, extremely jealous of them. Such jealousy, far from giving pain to government, should afford it the utmost satisfaction and confidence, as men so tenacious of their own, will scarcely ever seize upon another's. They have no incitement to encroachment;-born to consider their own ease and happiness as the summum bonum of life, although they may be at times misled or abused, their judgments are always the sounder as they are devoid of a lust for power.

6

arduous task of the whole is to choose a proper minister; above all, he should take care not to keep one who may, by his arrogance, alienate the affections of his subjects from him. Abuses in government occasion indigence in the governed; and the indigence of the people, says Mr. De St. Pierre, in his Etudes de la Nature,' is a mighty river, which is every year collecting an increase of strength, which is sweeping away before it every opposing mound, and which will issue in a total subversion of order and government. Royalty should set an example of magnanimity and disinterestedness, which should never suffer itself to be polluted by a dealing in patronage, which degrades it to the rank of a Moorfields broker. From royalty, as the source of honors, that is titles, every dis tinction should flow as freely as light from the sun. It may be doubted whether a king can receive the slightest present from a subject, or suffer any of his family to receive it, without lowering his dignity. Under a master resolved to maintain it, few ministers

would dare to carry on a traffic in those offices which are to be filled solely for the benefit of the public, and the fees of which are solely paid by the public. They have a right to have them filled by men of ability and integrity, not speculators and brokers; they have a right to desire their removal, or even punishment, if they should prove incapable or knavish; but purchase renders them in a manner independent both of government and people. The former are necessitated to screen them, to keep their own nefarious traffic a secret from the latter. "Minùs est quàm servis dominus, qui servos timet"says Publius Syrus.-That master is less than a servant who fears his servants. What can we think, then, of royalty committing itself before its servants? Besides the loss of respect, such degradation will give them encouragement to practise unbounded venality, and let loose every basest passion, to the corruption of the morals of the people, the evasion of all wholesome laws, the utter empoverishment of the middling and lower