They have a power of taxation for these purposes, subject to the controul of the states general.

The criminal justice entrusted to the sovereign prince is guarded from abuse by several wise regulations, and is to be administered by the local magistracies. But a supreme criminal court, called the high council, is appointed for the trial of the national functionaries under accusation, with the power of receiving appeals from the inferior courts in matters of impor tance. The judicial power is enjoyed for life.

A permanent militia is provided for; and the hydraulical department, peculiar to the Dutch nation, is under the superintendance of a competent power. The freedom of religious worship is protected. The antient endowments of the reformed Church are restored, and the supplies recently granted to other persuasions are continued. Provision is promised for the schools and the universities, and for the education of the indigent: and finally, any alterations or additions to the constitutional code are to be effected by the states general convened for that purpose, which is then to consist of double its ordinary number.

In this constitution there are some points upon which we cannot pronounce without qualifying our approbation. This power of dispensing with the laws even for an instant we deem inconsistent with all wholesome legislation, and more characteristic of Asiatic despotism than of the mildness of European monarchy, even in its most absolute form. We think that the states general are too far removed in the process of successive delegations from the community at large, and are too few in number to answer the purposes of a representative legislature, the excellence of which consists in its double property of expressing the public will when that will is just and wise, and of forming it by the influence of its own virtue and prudence when its tendency is perverted,

As subjects to the most excellent government which human wisdom ever framed, not merely for the bodily necessities of civilized man in the enjoyment of his personal freedom, estate, and civil immunities, but in his unrestricted use of the intellectual faculty, we cannot but observe, that in this code there is a studied silence as to that great privilege, the ample shield of every other, without which no people can be secure under any system against the aggression of power and the subversion of equitable laws, we mean the liberty of the press. We know the inestimable value of our parliaments, our trial by jury, and our incorruptible courts of justice. We deem them at once the depositaries of all our rights and all our affections, while the state rests upon their support to awe presuming innovators, and to guard its establishments from domestic peril or aspersion,

But

But these sacred institutions would be worth nothing, they would either cease to exist, or might exist only as public nuisances, the instruments of unprincipled power, without the continual aid and guardianship of a free and unrestricted press. The licentiousness of the press is restrained among us by severe but just coercion. In its freedom the most generous quality of our nature is called into action, and acts for all moral and intellectual advancements, stimulating every virtue, ennobling every thing which it touches, and preserving all the rules and all the rights of society in exact harmony and proportion. Where this privilege is curtailed men shall become gloomy and unsocial. The ungenerous vices shall all predominate, and liberty, however guarded, shall languish and expire.

Yet many of the provisions of this constitutional code are so sage and excellent, that we lament its having originated from any source other than the antient and constituted authorities of the commonwealth. We ardently hope that it will continue to be cherished and enjoyed by the country for which it is framed, and that its advantageous effects will be extended to society at large. If its duration should be limited by its proceeding from an authority, the existence of which was beyond all question occasional, and not legitimately founded in any antient or prescriptive law, then we shall lament that the example of our British ancestors in many a similar necessity has not prevailed in the councils of the Prince of Orange, whose personal dignity is greatest as the heir of an antient dynasty, and whose power might, we think, have been sufficiently enlarged without a total abrogation of the fundamental laws of the antient states.

England will undoubtedly wish well to the sovereign Prince of the Netherlands, and to the constitution which shall secure his government, politic and mild as we persuade ourselves it will always be. The alliance of the two countries is of equal importance to both of them, and its stability will probably be pro moted by preventing for ever that corrupt and foreign influence which was in many former instances exercised over the deliberations of the states general by the enemies of that alliance. The augmented powers of the House of Orange afford new facilities to every joint operation of the two nations either in treaty or in action, and strengthen the foundations of the political balance, equally necessary to the prosperity, the glory, and the greatness of either state,

Europe is now reviving from the tremendous shock of moral and political revolution, which originated in vain philosophy and was matured by successful crime. In all our political speculations we wish to enforce these important truths, that experience is better than speculation; that the inheritance of order and

social institutions, which was derived from a distant ancestry, are due to a distant posterity; and that the prosperity which nations derive from established laws and religion are a treasure to be enjoyed and improved, but not a possession to be hazarded in wan ton experiment, or to be wasted in speculative prodigality.

ART. VI. Memoirs of Algernon Sydney, by George Wilson Meadley, &c. &c.

(Concluded from Vol. I. p. 619.)

WE come now to an important period in the political life of Sydney, when he was appointed one of the commissioners who were to sit in judgment upon their sovereign. His conduct, at this crisis, seems to us, we confess, to bear no stamp of a great and commanding mind. He occasionally attended the court during its preliminary arrangements, but he did not sit at the trial. It may be asked, why he did so act? why, if he thought of this trial and the sentence then pronounced, as he afterwards declared he did, that" that it was the justest and bravest action that ever, was done in England, or any where else;" (P. 85) why did he not attend in his place? A question this, which we feel not much concerned to answer. There is a similar inconsistency in all guilt, for which it is sometimes impossible to account. whatever was his motive, Mr. Meadley seems to have no authority for imputing to him the one he has chosen. "Having so far sanctioned," says he," the great principles of making rulers responsible for misconduct, he declined any further attendance, not choosing it is thought to trample upon a fallen foe." (P. 31.)

But

What ground there is for giving this colour to Sydney's be haviour we know not; to whom the author is indebted for the ingenuous supposition we stop not to inquire. His absence from the trial cannot affect our opinion either of his principles, or character; as by his own eager claim to all the responsibility: of the action, it must be imputed to any thing, rather than a motive which would exculpate him from the charge of regicide. But though we feel it to be of little importance to inquire into the reasons of Syduey's conduct on this occasion, we cannot pass over the language, in which the author has chosen to convey his view of them to the public. May we then be permitted to ask the biographer of Sydney, what he means by "the great principle of making rulers responsible for miscon duct?" That kind of personal responsibility, to which the un

3

happy

1

happy Charles was subjected, is so absurd in itself, so utterly unjustifiable by any law human or divine, so destructive of all government, that we are really at a loss to conceive by what process of mind Mr. Meadley has been enabled to exalt it mto a great principle.' We presume he knows it to be a fundamental article of the British Constitution, that the king is not responsible.

"By law," says Blackstone," the person of the King is sacred, even though the measures pursued in his reign be completely tyrannical and arbitrary; for no jurisdiction on earth has power to try him in a criminal way, much less to condemn him to punishment." (Comment. vol. I. p. 242.)

Again,

"Whatever is exceptionable in the conduct of public affairs, is not to be imputed to the king, nor is he answerable for it personally to his people." (Vol. I. p. 245.)

We really beg pardon of our readers for quoting authorities in support of a doctrine, which we think that all parties in the kingdom profess to acknowledge, unless it be some speculative republicans, who, wholly busied in dreaming over their visionary theories, have never thought of looking around them for a little real knowledge; and are so infatuated by their own conceits, that even the tremendous lessons of political wisdom, which have been now read to us for so many years, at the expence of the happiness and liberty of half the world, have been lost upon them.

"It is neither interded (says Mr. Meadley, p. 33,) to deny, Bor yet to palliate the irregularities which took place at this unprecedented trial." This is doubtless a prudent determination; for why deny or palliate irregularities, when the whole proceeding was an infamous and unexampled usurpation of authority, which no people ever possessed, or ever before pretended to exercise?

When the axe must be laid to the root of the tree, and nothing can rescue it from being cut down; it would indeed be folly to occupy ourselves in pruning some of the branches, which may seem, even to an admirer of its rottenness and deformities, to be of unsightly growth. But though Mr. Meadley declines this task, he was engaged, we think, in an equally fruitless and unnecessary labour, by endeavouring to rescue the judges of Charles from the imputation of acting under the influence of Cromwell.

Whether they be supposed to have "received his mandates, and to have acted in obedience to his will," (p. 84.) or whether their own wishes so far coincided with his, as to reuder any exertion of influence unnecessary, it is now of little consequence

to ascertain; as in either case their crime is the same. A republican would indeed be anxious to ascertain such a fact; because, in his opinion, the character of the action would turn upon it: but those who consider regicide to be the head and front of their offending; who assert that the trial and execution of the King were deeds, which could not on any principle be defended; which stamped their perpetrators with indelible guilt, will be little interested in inquiring, whether this guilt was incurred to establish a republic on the ruins of the monarchy, or to pave the way to the throne for an usurper.

It is possible that, the judges" were actuated throughout by the most ardent enthusiasm," that they, or some of them, were so far blinded by fanatical frenzy, as to consider themselves "called upon by every moral and religious duty to execute justice on" him, whom they thought "the author, of so many calamities." (P. 35.) This may be possible; but we surely shall not allow this to be pleaded in extenuation of their guilt. Men have often worked themselves up to a belief, that they were called upon to do things contrary to the laws of men, and the known will of God; and yet this confident persuasion has never exempted them from the penalty of those laws, which it led them to break; nor must we flatter them with a hope of its obtaining their pardon at a higher tribunal. Could self delusion once be admitted as an excuse for transgression; or in bar of punishment, we should soon hear enough of irresistible impulses to the commission of every crime; of highwaymen "actuated by the most ardent enthusiasm," and murderers considering themselves called upon by every moral and religious duty, to execute justice upon the" supposed "authors of their calamities." In fact, Mr. Meadley has produced, in favour of the murderers of Charles, the very same arguments, which that notable example of self delusion, Bellingham, used to prove, that he had broken no law human or divine by the assassination of one of the best and most virtuous ministers this country ever possessed.

The concluding reflections of Mr. Meadley, upon this subject are quite in character with the tenour of such arguments.

"The propriety of this whole proceeding may, indeed, be fairly questioned by all, who, reflecting coolly on the prepossessions and feelings of mankind, are aware of the imprudence of disre garding them, and of the mischievous effects of a re-action where extreme measures are pursued. Yet it was surely more dignified to arraign and punish the deposed king in the face of the whole nation, than to resort to any of those secret means of destruction so often practised on the rulers of despotic states. For the representatives of a people thus solemnly requiring judgment on