Monarchy in America [pp. 273-278]

MONARCHY IN AMERICA.
We are interested in Miss Evans's progress in the world of letters, and hope our remarks will be ascribed solely to that interest,
and naught set down in malice. Her readers are convinced of the
vast area of learning over which she has toiled, and being duly
edified and entertained, we now wish to behold her through different spectacles.
If in Edna Earl's literary experience she typifies her own, we
beseech her to weigh well the friendly advice of Mr. Manning:
"Write sketches of home life-descriptions of places and things
that you understand, better than recondite analogies of ethereal
creeds and mythologic systems, or the subtle lore of Coptic
priests. Persons who desire to learn something of astronomy,
geology, chemistry, philology, etc., never think of finding what
they require in the pages of a novel, but apply at once to the text
books of the respective sciences, and would as soon hunt for a
lover's sentimental dialogue in Newton's Principia, or spicy small
talk in Kant's Critique, as expect an epitome of modern science in
a work of fiction." P. S. R.
ART. V.-I3[ONAIRCIIY IN AM3ERICA.
NOTHING has so distinguished English laws and institutions as
their recuperative elasticity, and, on the whole, continuous, though
firequently interrupted, course of amelioration and improvement.
Revolutions have been going backwards there for the last thousand years. Yet useful lessons of practical statesmanship have
been learned from those revolutions; and in restoring the old
order of things, her statesmen have been careful to remove the
causes that had occasioned a temporary derangement of the political machinery of government. Thus progress, though frequently
deflected and interrupted, has eventually and permanently pursued
the same line. New guarantees and monuments of rational political liberty have, from time to time, been erected, not by pulling
down or destroying any old and well-tried institution, but by
clearly defining and properly restricting and circumscribing the
powers of each, and occasionally by the gradual growth and development of new institutions; such as the elective franchise and
House of Commons.
On this subject Sir William Blackstone well remarks:' The
absolute rights of every Englishman (which taken in a political
and extensive sense, are usually called their liberties) as they are
founded on nature and reason, so they are coeval with our form
,of government, though subject at times to fluctuate and change;
their establishment (excellent as it is) being still human. At
some times we have seen them depressed by overbearing and
tyrannical princes, at others so luxuriant as even to tend to anarchy; a worse state than tyranny itself, as any government is bet VOL. II.-NO. III. 18
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