have always avowed during my whole life, that charge, at least, I say, is destitute of foundation.

Sir, if I look to the prerogative of the Crown-if I look to the position of the Church-if I look to the influence of the aristocracy I cannot charge myself with having taken any course inconsistent with conservative principles, calculated to endanger the privileges of any branch of the legislature, or of any institutions of the country. My earnest wish has been, during my tenure of power, to impress the people of this country with a belief that the legislature was animated by a sincere desire to frame its legislation upon the principles of equity and justice. I have a strong belief that the greatest object which we or any other government can contemplate should be to elevate the social condition of that class of the people with whom we are brought into no direct relationship by the exercise of the elective franchise. I wish to convince them that our object has been to apportion taxation, that we shall relieve industry and labor from any undue burden, and transfer it, so far as is consistent with the public good, to those who are better enabled to bear it. I look to the present peace of this country; I look to the absence of all disturbance to the nonexistence of any commitment for a seditious offense; I look to the calm that prevails in the public mind; I look to the absence of all disaffection; I look to the increased. and growing public confidence on account of the course you have taken in relieving trade from restrictions, and industry from unjust burdens; and where there was dissatisfaction I see contentment, where there was turbulence I see there is peace; where there was disloyalty I see there is loyalty; I see a disposition to confide in you, and not to agitate questions that are at the foundations of your institutions. Deprive me of power to-morrow, you can never deprive me of the consciousness that I have exercised the powers committed to me from no corrupt or interested motives - from no desire to gratify ambition, or attain any personal object; that I have labored to maintain peace abroad consistently with the national honor and defending every public right-to increase the confidence of the great body of the people in the justice of your decisions, and by the means of equal law to dispense with all coercive powers-to maintain loyalty to the Throne, and attachment to the Constitution, from a conviction of the benefit that will accrue to the great body of the people.

A PLEA FOR HIGHER EDUCATION

(From the Address Delivered on His Installation as Lord Rector of the University of Glasgow, January 11th, 1837)

T is very natural," says Sir Joshua Reynolds, "for those who are unacquainted with the cause of anything extraordinary, to be astonished at the effect and to consider it as a kind of magic.

"The travelers into the East tell us that when the ignorant inhabitants of those countries are asked concerning the ruins of stately edifices yet remaining among them, the melancholy monuments of their former grandeur and long-lost science, they always answer that they were built by magicians. The untaught mind finds a vast gulf between its own powers and those works of complicated art which it is utterly unable to fathom, and it supposes that such a void can be passed only by supernatural powers."

We have, in the instance of Cicero, the stately edifice, the monument of intellectual grandeur; but we have also the evidence of the illustrious architect to prove to us by what careful process the foundations were securely laid and the scaffolding gradually erected. Our wonder at the perfection of the work may be abated, but what can abate our admiration and respect for the elevated views-the burning thirst for knowledge and for fame -the noble ambition which "scorned delights, and lived laborious days"-which had engraven on the memory the paternal exhortation to the hero in Homer, the noblest, says Doctor Johnson, that can be found in any heathen writer:

«Αιεν αριστεύειν και υπείροχον έμμεναι αλλων.»

The name, the authority, the example of Cicero, conduct me naturally to a topic which I should be unwilling to pass in silence. I allude to the immense importance to all who aspire to conspicuous stations in any department of public or learned professional life, -the immense importance of classical acquirements, of imbuing your minds with a knowledge of the pure models of antiquity and a taste for their constant study and cultivation. Do not disregard this admonition from the impression that it proceeds from the natural prejudice in favor of classical learning, which an English university may have unconsciously

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instilled, or that it is offered presumptuously by one who is ignorant of that description of knowledge which is best adapted to the habits and occupations of society in Scotland.

Oh, let us take higher and more extensive views! Feel assured that a wider horizon than that of Scotland is opening upon you -that you are candidates starting with equal advantage for every prize of profit or distinction which the wide circle of an empire extended through every quarter of the globe can include.

Bear in mind, too, that every improvement in the means of communication between distant parts of that empire is pointing out a new avenue to fame, particularly to those who are remote from the seat of government. This is not the place where injustice should be done to that mighty discovery which is effecting a daily change in the pre-existing relations of society. It is not within the college of Glasgow that a false and injurious estimate should be made of the results of the speculations of Black and of the inventive genius of Watt. The steam engine and the railroad are not merely facilitating the transport of merchandise, they are not merely shortening the duration of journeys, or administering to the supply of physical wants. They are speeding the intercourse between mind and mind; they are creating new demands for knowledge; they are fertilizing the intellectual as well as the material waste; they are removing the impediments which obscurity, or remoteness, or poverty, may have heretofore opposed to the emerging of real merit.

They are supplying you, in the mere facility of locomotion, with a new motive for classical study. They are enabling you with comparative ease to enjoy that pure and refined pleasure which makes the past predominate over the present, when we stand upon the spots where the illustrious deeds of ancient times have been performed, and meditate on monuments that are associated with names and actions that can never perish. They are offering to your lips the intoxicating draught that is described with such noble enthusiasm by Gibbon: "At the distance of twenty-five years I can neither forget nor express the strong emotions which agitated my mind as I first approached and entered the eternal city. After a sleepless night I trod with a lofty step the ruins of the Forum; each memorable spot where Romulus stood, or Tully spoke, or Cæsar fell, was at once present to my eye, and several days of intoxication were lost or enjoyed before I could descend to a cool or minute investigation."

By every motive which can influence a reflecting and responsible being, “a being of large discourse, looking before and after," -by the memory of the distinguished men who have shed a lustre on these walls,- by regard for your own success and happiness in this life,- by the fear of future discredit,— by the hope of lasting fame,- by all these considerations do I conjure you, while you have yet time, while your minds are yet flexible, to form them on the models which approach the nearest to perfection. Sursum corda! By motives yet more urgent,- by higher and purer aspirations,-by the duty of obedience to the will of God, by this awful account you will have to render, not merely of moral actions, but of faculties intrusted to you for improvement, -by these high arguments do I conjure you so "to number your days that you may apply your hearts unto wisdom "-unto that wisdom which, directing your ambition to the noble end of benefiting mankind, and teaching you humble reliance on the merits and on the mercy of your Redeemer, may support you "in the time of your tribulation," may admonish you "in the time of your wealth," and "in the hour of death, and in the day of judgment," may comfort you with the hope of deliverance.

EDMUND PENDLETON

(1721-1803)

HE argument on the First and Second Sections of the Federal Constitution, delivered by Edmund Pendleton in the Virginia Convention of 1788, has been admired as one of the best of the many searching analyses of the principles of government made during that period. Pendleton was born in Caroline County, Virginia, September 9th, 1721. At different times he was a Member of the Virginia House of Burgesses, and of the Continental Congress. He was President of the Virginia Convention, and the resolutions instructing the State representatives in Congress to propose the Declaration of Independence were written by him. He died at Richmond, October 23d, 1803.

LIBERTY AND GOVERNMENT IN AMERICA

(On the First and Second Sections of the Federal Constitution - Delivered in the Virginia Convention, June 12th, 1788)

Mr. Chairman:·

WHE

THEN I spoke formerly, I endeavored to account for the uneasiness of the public mind, on the ground that it arose from objections to government drawn from mistaken sources. I stated the general governments of the world to have been either dictated by a conqueror at the point of his sword, or the offspring of confusion when a great popular leader, seizing the occasion, if he did not produce it, restored order at the expense of liberty, and became the tyrant. In either case, the interest and ambition of the despot, and not the good of society, give the tone to the government, and establish contending interests. A war is commenced and kept up, where there ought to be union; and the friends of liberty have sounded the alarm to the people, to regain that liberty which circumstances have thus deprived them of. Those alarms, misrepresented and improperly applied to this government, have produced uneasiness in the public mind.