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tendency to impress parents with the importance of pushing forward the perfections of their own nature, that the moral and religious rules of their lives may be such as their hearts tell them are profitable and desirable for the present and future happiness of the beings upon whom they have bestowed a gift, which in a great measure may be a blessing or a curse, according to the influence of parental care in education. It has been justly remarked, that education is more than second nature; and, as Addison truly says, when it works upon a noble mind, it draws out virtues and perfections that never could appear without such help, any more than the ornamental spot and vein of a fine statue, without the skill of the artist to discover and produce the latent beauties. Mason, in his Treatise on Self-knowledge, places the proper government of thought in an important point of view, and compares the disorder and torments of the mind, under an insurrection of the passions, to a city in flames, or to the mutiny of a drunken ship's crew, who have murdered their captain and are butchering one another. What care, therefore, should be taken to prepare the understanding for the arduous task of restraining the

tumultuous subjects of the internal kingdom. I might refer to the admirable works of Bacon, Locke, and Watts, to show the vast importance of early impression and example in qualifying the young for the duties of life; and, indeed, it is in my own parlour that I endeavour to enforce those axioms and maxims on the opening minds of my children, which I trust will conduct them safely and innocently through the turbulent voyage of life, and remain as records in the all-seeing Eye, when I have to appear, trembling with apprehension, before the mercy seat.

No. XIII.

ON THE BRITISH CONSTITUTION.

It is the land which slavery's yoke

Degrades not by its tyrant thrall ;

Where Spenser, Shakspeare, Milton-woke

Music that cannot pall:

It is the insulated ground

Where mightiest minds have aye been reared;

For every liberal art renowned;

By every bond endeared.

CLARKE.

THE invaluable liberty which we possess is caused:-1st, By the impossibility under which the leaders or men in power are placed, of invading and transferring to themselves any branch of the governing executive authority. 2d, By the anxious care, consequently, with which these men continue to watch the exercise of that authority. 3d, By the easy preservation of the solidity, and indivisibility of the power of the crown, from the division of the great men of the state into two assemblies, whose

interests clash, and lead them to oppose each other's incroachments. 4th, By the facility and safety to itself with which the Crown can execute the laws, or deprive any subject of office, howsoever overgrown. 5th, By the independence conferred on the Judges, and the open manner of all judicial proceedings. 7th, By trial by Jury. 8th, By Habeas Corpus. 9th, By liberty of the Press. 10th, By the judicial and censorial powers being vested in the people. 11th, By the liberty of the subject being unbounded, except by the laws; all his actions being presumed lawful till that law is pointed out which stops him. Hence the ease and certainty with which some brush so near the law in their tangents from the circle of natural and civil equity. Hence the operations of those law quibbles, and trifling circumstances by which an offender is enabled to slip aside and escape, though ever so narrowly, the breach of the law, let the intrinsic guilt of his conduct be ever so openly admitted. 12th, From the narrow circumscription of the exertions of Government, which can do nothing without law to show the ground on which it stands, it is shut out of that unbounded space unoccupied by any law, in

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