It is observed above, that the diamond Country extends from Punnah, on three sides, to the distance of twenty-four miles. Now, as no part of this space is permitted to be cultivated, it may be questioned, whether the possessor really derives so much advantage from the diamonds, as he would reap from the soccessive culture of the same compass of ground, either in pasture or tillage. To the Editor of the Monthly Magazine. SIR, HOULD you have any thing better on the subject, I freely consent that the following be committed to the flames: not, perhaps you will allow a place in your useful miscellany to these remarks, upon the criticism of your learned corre pondent, R. B. upon the use of the word "flebilis." (Vide last volume, p. 47) My confined reading does not enable me to decide, whether this word ever occurs in any classical writer, in the precise meaning in which it is used by Lord Hailes; but, from the number of examples cited by Stephanus in his Thesaurus, none of which will apply, I am willing to allow that it does not. Nevertheless I think it may be maintained, that, in the sense he has used it, he has not deviated farther from the ordinary application of the word by other classical writers, than Horace himself has done. To me it appears, that R. B. has very properly stated, that "it is the quality of exciting grief, or the quality which renders the thing or person the subject of grief, which is expressed by this verbal adjective;" but surely this definition in cludes two distinct meanings, which your correspondent seems to consider as one and the same. When Roman writers speak of a carmen flebile, or modi flebiles, &c. the word expresses the quality of exciting grief. But when Horace says "multis ille bonis flebilis occidit," the word flebilis, in the language of R. B. expresses the quality of rendering the perin the subject of grief in others, and may be accurately translated into English by the word lamented. Now, upon examining the examples of the word flebitis, cited by Stephanus, of which there are fifteen, the one just quoted from Horace is the only one, in which the word is affixed to the subject of grief, or in which it could be rendered lamented in English. In all the rest it expresses the quality of exciting grief; and I believe answers exactly to the English word doleful; as cantus flebilis, (doleful singing); carmen flebile, (a doleful song); clumor flebilis, (a doleful noise ;) elegia flebilis, (a doleful elegy); gemitus flebiles, (dolefu groans); modi flebiles, (doleful tunes); murmur flebile, (a doleful murmuring); questus flebiles, (doleful complainings); voces flebiles, (doleful voices); &c. R. B. appears to me to have made the same mistake in quoting Stephanus's explanation of flebilis. Plenum lachrymis, vel dignum quod fleatur, by speaking of it as containing one meaning only, when he says, that this author has given many. examples of its use in that sense, but in no other;" for surely this deinition by Stephanus, contains two distinct wean. ings, the 1st. plenum lachrymis, (tearful or doleful); the 2nd. dignum quod fleatur, (that which may be lamented). Now it is to the first sense only, that all the examples cited by Stephanus, except the one quoted above from Horace, will apply. I submit it therefore to your learned readers, whether Horace himself has not, by using Rebilis to signify lamented, deviated as far from its constant accepta tion in every other classical writer, as Lord Hailes has done, by using it to signify lumenting or weeping, which would come under Stephanus's definition of plenum lachrymis. Your's, &c. Flebili sponsæ juvenemve raptum. HORAT These instances I suppose, will be amply suf ficient to satisfy R. B. that the word is used correctly by Lord Hailes; and at the same time they render the above letter, as far as respects his criticism, perfectly nugatory. It may nevertheless serve to show that the Lexicographers fications, and may therefore be not altogether have not well explained flebilis in its three signi uninteresting to some of your readers. I suspect that the quotation from Horace, "multis illc bonis flebilis," &c. affords the only example to be found in any classical writer, in which flebilis has the signification there given it of lamented. It may be curious too, to remark, how exactly, in every other instance, the old English word doleful corresponds with descended in peace to a later tomb. Our How oft my doleful sire cried to me, Tarry,son, ger, and so many years of labour; who For the Monthly Magazine. Friends and Fellow Citizens :- never cease to excite in us the most exhilarating reflections and mutual gra- The thirty-three years of national exis- It appears to have been the practice Our departed heroes and statesmen led us in all our darings, when resistance to tyrants, as well in the forum as in the field, was deemed rebellion, and threatened with death. Their whitened locks that still wave among us are titles to our veneration; they command and they will obtain it, while the virtues they have taught us to practice shall continue to warm our hearts. But our respect for the memory and the persons of all our leaders will be best evinced by the pious culture we bestow on the rich heritage they have secured, and are handing over to our possession. The present race is likewise passing away; but the nation remains and rises with its years. We While we, the present race, are able to call ourselves the nation, we should be sensible of the greatness of the charge that has devolved upon us. have duties to posterity as well as to ourselves. We must gather up our strength and encounter those duties. Yes, my friends, we are now the nation. As such we have arrived at that epoch, when, instead of looking back with wonder upon our infancy, we may look forward with solicitude to a state of adolescence, with confidence to a state of manhood. Though as a nation we are yet in the morning of life, we have already attained an eleva tion which enables us to discern our course to its meridian splendor; to contemplate the height we have to climb, and the commanding station we must gain, in order to fulfil the destinies to which we are called, and perform the duties that the cause of human happiness requires at our hands. To prepare the United States to act the distinguished part that Providence has assigned them, it is necessary to convince them that the means are within their power. A familiar knowledge of the means will teach us how to employ them in the attainment of the end. Knowledge will lead to wisdom; and wisdom, in no small degree, is requisite in the conduct of affairs so momentous and For our situation is, in many So new. respects, not only new to us, but new also to the world. The form of government we have chosen, the geographical position we occupy, as relative to the most turbulent powers of Europe, whose political maxims are widely different from ours; the vast ex tent tent of continent that is, or must be, comprised within our limits, containing not less than sixteen hundred millions of acres, and susceptible of a population of two hundred millions of human beings; our habits of industry and peace instead of violence and war-all these are circumstances which render our situation as novel as it is important. It requires new theories; it has forced upon us new and bold, and in some cases doubtful, expe riments; it calls for deep reflection on the propensities of human nature; an accurate acquaintance with the history of human actions: and what is perhaps the most difficult to attain, a wise discrimination among the maxims of wisdom, or what are such in other times and nations, to determine which of them are applicable, and which would be detrimental, to the end we have in view. I would by no means insinuate that we should reject the councils of antiquity in mass; or turn a deaf ear to the voice of modern experience, because it is not our own. So far as the policy of other nations is founded on the real relations of social man, on his moral nature undisguised, it may doubtless be worthy of imitation; but so far as it is drawn from his moral nature, disguised by habits materially different. from ours, such policy is to be suspected, it is to be scrutinized, and brought to the test, not perhaps of our experience, for that may in certain cases be wanting, but the test of the general principles of our institutions, and the habits and maxims that arise out of them. There has been no nation,either ancient or modern, that could have presented human nature in the same character as ours does and will present it; because there has existed no nation whose government has resembled ours. A representative democracy on a large scale, with a fixed constitution, had never before been attempted, and has no where else succeeded. ́ A federal government on democratical principles is equally unprecedented, and exhibits a still greater innovation on all received ideas of statesmen and lawgivers. Nor has any theorist in political science, any among those powerless potentates of reason, the philosophers, who have taught us so many valuable things, ever framed a system or conceived a combination of principles producing such a result. Circumstances beyond our controul had thrown in our way the materials for this wonderful institution. Our first merit lay in not rejecting them. But when our sages began to discern the use that might be made of materials then so unpromising, they discovered great talents and patriotism in combining them into the system we now find in operation. It is indeed a stupendous fabric; the greatest political phenomenon, and probably will be considered as the greatest advancement in the science of government, that all modern ages have produced. This is not the moment to go into a dissertation on the peculiar character of our political constitutions. The subject being well understood by so respectable a portion of this assembly, and the time allotted to this part of the exercises of the day being necessarily short, I should hardly expect to obtain your indulgence if I were even capable of doing justice to so great a theme. Otherwise the whole compass of human affairs does not admit of a more profitable inquiry. Every ci tizen should make it his favorite study, and consider it as an indispensable part of the education of his children. But nations are educated like individual infants. They are what they are taught to be. They become whatever their tutors desire,and invite, and prepare, and force them to become. They may be taught to reason correctly; they may be taught to reason perversely; they may be taught not to reason at all. The last is the case of despotism; the second, where they reason perversely, is the case of a nation with an unsettled and unprincipled government, by whatever technical name it may be distinguished; for a democracy without a constitution, though generally and justly called the school of disorder and perversity, is no more liable to these calamities than a monarchy ill defined, and without a known principle of action, and where the arm of power has not that steady tension which would render it completely despotic. The first, the case in which they reason correctly, if it ever existed, or ever is to exist, must be ours. Our nation must, it can, its legislators ought to say, it shall, be taught to reason correctly, to act justly, to pur-, sue its own interest upon so large a scale as not to interfere with the interest, or at least with the rights, of other nations. For the moment it should interfere with theirs, it could no longer be said to be pursuing its own. What then are the interests of this nation, which it becomes us as private citizens (without any mission but the autocratical right of individuals) to recommend to the great body of the American people people on this auspicious occasion? The most obvious, and I believe the most important, are comprised in two words; and to them I shall confine my observations: public improvements, and "public instruetion. These two objects, though distinct in the organization which they will require, are so similar in their effects, that most of the arguments that will apply to one, will apply equally to both. They are both necessary to the preservation of our principles of government; they are both necessary to the support of the system into which those principles are wrought, the system we now enjoy; they are each of them essential, perhaps in an equal degree, to the perfecting of that system, to our perceiving and preparing the ameliorations of which it is susceptible. I shall dwell exclusively on these two objects, not because they are the only ones that might be pointed out, but because their importance, their immediate and pressing importance, seems to have been less attended to, and probably less understood, than it ought to have been among the general concerns of the Union. Public improvements, such as roads, bridges, and canals, are usually considered only in a commercial and economical point of light; they ought likewise to be regarded in a moral and political light. Cast your eyes over the surface of our dominion, with a view to its vast extent; with a view to its present and approaching state of population; with a view to the different habits, manners, languages, origin, morals, maxims of the people; with a view to the nature of those ties, those political, artificial ties, which hold them together as one people, and which are to be relied upon to continue to hold them together as one people, when their number shall rise to hundreds of millions of freemen, possessing the spirit of independence that becomes their station. What anxiety, what solicitude, what painful appréhensions, must naturally crowd upon the mind for the continuance of such a government, stretching its thin texture over such a country, and in the hands of such a people! The prospect is awful, the object, if attainable, is magnificent beyond comparison; but the difficulty of attaining it, and the danger of losing it, are sullicient to cloud the prospect in the cyes of many respectable ciuzens, and force them to despair. Despair in this care, to an ardent spirit devoted to the best good of his country, is a distressing state indeed. To despair of preserving the federal union of these republics, for an indefinite length of time, without a dismemberment, is to lose the highest hopes of human society, the greatest promise of bettering its condition that the efforts of all generations have produced. The man of sensibility who can contemplate without horror the dismemberment of this empire, has not well considered its effects. And yet I scarcely mingle m society for a day wi' hout hearing it predicted, and the prediction yttered with a levity bordering on indif-" ference; and that too by well-disposed men of every poistical party. Hence I conclude, that the subject has not been examined with the attention it deserves. I am not yet so unhappy as to believe in this prediction; but I should be forced to believe in it if I did not anticipate the use of other means than those we have yet employed to perpetuate the union of the States. They must not be coercive means. Sueli ones, in most cases, would produce effects directly the reverse of what would be intended. Our policy does not admit of standing armies; and if it did, we could not maintain them suziciently numerous to restrain great bodies of freemen with arms in their hands, blinded by ignorance, heated by zeal, and led by factious chiefs; and if we could maintain them strong enough for that purpose, we all know they would very soon overturn the government they were intended to support, With as little prospect of success could we rely upon legislative means; that is, upon laws against treason and misdemeanor, or any other chapter of the criminal code. Such laws may sometimes intimidate a chief of rebels, or a few unsupported traitors. But a whole geographical district of rebels, half a mation of traitors, would legislate against you. They would throw your laws into one scale and their own into the other, and toss in their bayonets to turn the balance. No, the means to be relied upon to hold this beneficent union together, must apply directly to the interest and convenience of the people; they must, at the same time, enable them to discern that interest and be sensible of that conveni ence. The people must become habituated to enjoy a visible, palpable, incontestable good; a greater good than they could promise themselves from any change. They must have information enough to perceive it, to reason upon it, to know why they enjoy it, whence it flows, how it was attained, how it is to be prcscrved, and how it may be lost, The people of these States must be edu Cated cated for their station, as members of the great community. They must receive a republican education; be taught the duties and the rights of freemen; that is, of American freemen, not the freemen that are so by starts, by frenzy, and in mobs, who would fill the forum at the nod of Clodius, or the prytaneum at that of Cleon; nor the frecmen of one day in seven years, who would rush together for sale at the hustings of Brentford, and clamor and bludgeon for a man whose principles and person were to them alike unknown and unregarded. Each American freeman is an integral member of the sovereignty; he is a coestate of the empire, carrying on its government by his delegates. The first right he possesses, after that of breathing the vital air, is the right of being taught the management of the power to which he is born. It is a serious duty of the society towards him, an unquestionable right of the individual from the society. In a monarchy the education of the prince is justly deemed a concern of the nation. It is done at their expense; and why is it so it is because they are deeply interested in his being well educated, that he may be able to administer the government well, to conduct the concerns of the nation wisely, on their own constitutional principles. My friends, is even more important that our princes, our millions of princes, should be educated for their station, than the single prince of a monarchy? If a single prince goes wrong, obstinately and incurably wrong, he may be set aside for another, without overturning the state. But if our sovereigns in their multitudinous exercise of power, should become obstinate and incurable in wrong, you cannot set them aside. But they will set you aside; they will set themselves aside; they will crush the state, and 'convulse the nation. The result is military despotism, dismemberment of the great republic, and, after a sufficient course of devastation by civil wars, the settlement of a few ferocious monarchies, prepared to act over again the same degrading scenes of mutual cacroachment and vindictive war, which disgrace modern Europe; and from which many writers have told us, that mankind are never to be free. Our habits of thinking, and even of reasoning, it must be confessed, are still borrowed from feurial principles and monarchical establishments. As a nation we are not up to our circumstances. Our principles in the abstract, as wrought into our state and federal constitutions, are in general worthy of the highest praise; they do honor to the human intellect. But the practical tone and tension of our minds do not well correspond with those principles. We are like a person conversing in a foreign language, whose idiom is not yet familiar to imm. He thinks in his own native language, and is obliged to translate as he talks; which gives a stiffness to bis discourse, and betrays a certain embarrassment which nothing can remove but frequent exercise and long practice. We are accustomed to sprak and reason relative to the people's education, precisely like the aristocratical subjects of a European monarchy. Some say the people have no need of instruction; they already know too much; they cannot all be legislators and judges and generals; the great mass must work for a living, and they need no other knowledge than what is suthe.ent for that purpose. Others will tell you it is very well for the people to get as manch education as they can; but it is their own concern, the state has nothing to do with it; every parent, out of regard to his of Spring, will give them what he can, and that will be enough. I will not say how far this manner of treating the subject is proper even in But I Europe, whence we borrowed it. will say that nothing more preposterous in America. It is directly contrary to the vital principles of our constitutions; and its inevitable tendency is to destroy them. A universal systein of education is so far from being a matter of indifference to the public, under our social compact, that it is incontestably one of the first duties of the government, one of the highest interests of the nation, one of the most sacred rights of the individual, the vital fluid of organized liberty, the precious aliment without which your republic cannot be supported. I do not mean that our legislators should turn pedagogues; or send their commissioners forth to discipline every Neither do I mean child in this nation. to betray so much temerity as to speak of the best mode of combining a system of public instruction. But I feel it my duty, on this occasion, to use the freedom to which I am accustomed, and suggest the propriety of bringing forward some system that shall be adequate to the object. I am clearly of opinion, that it is already within the power of our legisla tive bodies, both federal and provincial; but if it is not, the people ought to place it |