transaction, that it fails to excite alarm or indignation in the minds of those who are made acquainted with such disgraceful transactions? Is it no abuse that the buying and selling of seats should be as common as bargains and sales that are every day made as common as the buying and selling of cattle in the stalls of Smithfield market? That these things should be no abuse-that these practices, which the highest authority of the commons house of parliament declared from the chair of that house, would have made our ancestors startle with indignation that these practices, I say, are to be called no abuse, is one of the most extraordinary and barefaced assertions that I have ever heard uttered by man.

BROUGHAM.

170. REFORM IN THE ELECTIONS.

MY LORDS, I am stating one or two of the prominent evils of the system, but, I leave out all mention of the bribery and corruption that contaminate and degrade the elections of all boroughs. From whence do they arise ?-from whence, but from what are called the sacred rights of corporations-that is to say, not the rights of the corporations, but the rights of the freemen of the towns corporate. They are the usurpers of the ancient rights of the people; they are the select bodies which were totally unknown in the earlier stages of the constitution; they are the individuals to whom that constitution, originally, never intended to insure the right of voting; and they are the persons who, ninety-nine times out of a hundred, all over England, have, by usurpation, acquired to themselves the privilege of an exclusive monopoly in the choice of the representatives of the people. In my mind, it is no small recommendation of the measure which has been introduced, that it will, in future, abolish such abuses and anomalies.

My lords, I have yet to learn that a measure recommended upon principle, consistent in its form, and, certainly, proceeding upon an anxious wish to restore, and not to destroy, to improve, and not to impair, is to be at once cried down and abandoned, because it happens to enjoy this additional quality-I will not call it a recommendation-that it is honestly and sincerely greeted with approbation by a large body of his majesty's subjects.

My lords, I do not call upon you to adopt this measure

because it happens to be consistent with popular feelings. I do not call upon you to adopt it upon that account; but I am persuaded that if this measure be rejected, you will bring the security of the country-the peace of his majesty-the stability of our ancient constitution-and the whole frame of society, from Cornwall to Sutherland, Ireland as well as England, into a state of jeopardy, which I earnestly pray to heaven may never come to pass.

My lords, I do not wish to use the language of threats, but I recollect, and history has recorded the fact, that when the great Earl of Chatham was addressing our most severe ancestors within these walls-when he was shaking them with his magnificent oratory-he suffered the lightning of his eloquence to smite the enemies of reform, by menacing them with the dangers that must attend an attempt to withhold from the people their just rights; and I well remember that that was deemed no insult by those who heard him, but was considered honorable, highly honorable to him who had the boldness to utter that denunciation. For my own part, all that I will venture to do in this latter day of eloquence and of talent, standing in the honorable situation which I do in this house and in the country, is, to call upon your lordships to reflect and believe, that the thunders of heaven are sometimes heard to roll in the voice of a united people.

BROUGHAM.

171. SYMPATHY FOR MAN AROUND THE THRONE OF GOD.

WHEN one of a numerous household droops under the power of disease, is not that the one to whom all the tenderness is turned, and who, in a manner, monopolizes the inquiries of his neighborhood, and the care of his family? When the sighing of the midnight storm sends a dismal foreboding into the mother's heart; to whom, of all her offspring, I would ask, are her thoughts and her anxieties then wandering? Is it not to her sailor-boy whom her fancy has placed amid the rude and angry surges of the ocean? We sometimes hear of shipwrecked passengers thrown upon a barbarous shore, and seized upon by its prowling inhabitants, and hurried away through the tracks of a dreary and unknown wilderness, and sold into captivity. Oh! tell me, when the fame of all this disaster reaches his family, who is the member of it to whom is directed the full

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tide of its griefs and of its sympathies? Who is it, that for weeks, and for months, usurps every feeling, and calls out their largest sacrifices, and sets them to the busiest expedients for getting him back again Who is it that makes them forgetful of themselves, and of all around them? and tell me, if you can assign a limit to the pains, and the exertions, and the surrenders which afflicted parents and weeping sisters would make to seek and to save him?

Now conceive the principle of all these earthly exhibitions to be in full operation around the throne of God. Conceive the universe to be one secure and rejoicing family, and that this alienated world is the only strayed, or only captive member belonging to it, and we shall cease to wonder that from the first period of the captivity of our species, down to the consummation of their history in time, there should be such a movement in heaven; or, that angels should so often have sped their commissioned way, on the errand of our recovery; or, that the Son of God should have bowed himself down to the burden of our mysterious atonement; or, that the Spirit of God should now, by the busy variety of his all-powerful influences, be carrying forward that dispensation of grace, which is to make us meet for readmittance into the mansions of the celestial.

DR. CHALMERS.

it

172. THE BRITISH CONSTITUTION.

MY LORDS, it is with no ordinary feeling that I find myself speaking upon this subject, in this, the most august assembly in the world-ay, I repeat it, in this, the most august assembly in the world. Such this house for centuries has been-such it still is—such, let us hope, it may long continue to be. God grant may, for if it should ever cease to be the most august assembly in the world, it will become the most degraded. And why, my lords, will this be? because if this house shall fall from its proud eminence, it will not fall by violence from without; for, notwithstanding all that has been said or done, the people of this country will never be so false to their own interests, as to be wanting in respectful attachment to you, if you are not wanting to yourselves and them. It will fall by the folly or the guilt, by the cowardice or the treachery of some, if there shall be any such, of its own degenerate members.

My lords, it has been ordained by a severe, but most merci

ful dispensation, that those to whom great interests are intrusted, cannot be false to those interests, without drawing down a full measure of righteous retribution on their own heads. My lords, to you the guardianship of the British constitution that constitution which for at least eight hundred hears, has fostered, nursed, matured, and consolidated the liberties and the happiness of this much-favored people; to you the guardianship of that constitution has been mainly consigned to your fidelity, to your prudence, to your firmness. My lords, if it fall, you will not only fall with it, but you will be ground to dust beneath its ruins. May He who has appointed you to your high place, enable you to fill it as you ought! In this great crisis, for so we all feel it to be, in this agony of our country's fate, may He give you wisdom to see, and fortitude to pursue steadily and fearlessly that only path, which can lead to honor or to safetythe path of duty. True, my lords, that path is beset with difficulties and with dangers; clouds and thickest darkness rest upon it; but one thing is clear, is bright, and one thing only,to walk uprightly is within your own power. As for consequences, they are in the power of God. Will you distrust that power? My lords, you will not. DR. PHILPOTTS.

173. AUTUMN.

Ir is the unvarying character of nature, amid all its scenes, to lead us, at last, to its Author; and it is for this final end that all its varieties have such dominion over our minds. We are led, by the appearance of spring, to see his bounty; we are led, by the splendors of summer, to see his greatness. In the season of autumn we are led to a higher sentiment; and, what is most remarkable, the very circumstances of melancholy are those which guide us most securely to put our trust in him. We are witnessing the decay of the year; we go back in imagination, and find that such, in every generation, has been the fate of man. We look forward, and we see that to such ends all must come at last; we lift our desponding eyes in search of comfort, and we see above us One who "is ever the same, and to whose years there is no end." Amid the vicissitudes of nature, we discover that central Majesty, "in whom there is no variableness nor shadow of turning." We feel that there is a God; and, from the tempestuous sea of life, we hail that polar star of nature,

to which a sacred instinct had directed our eyes, and which burns, with undecaying ray, to lighten us among all the darkness of the deep.

Let the busy and active go out, and pause, for a time, amid the scenes which surround them, and learn the high lesson which nature teaches in the hours of its fall. They are now ardent with all the desires of mortality; and fame, and interest, and pleasure are displaying to them their shadowy promises. Let them withdraw themselves, for a time, from the agitations of the world; let them mark the desolation of summer, and listen to the winds of winter, which begin to murmur above their heads. It is a scene which, with all its powers, has yet no reproach it tells them that such is also the fate to which they must come; that the pulse of passion must one day beat low; that the illusions of time must pass; and "that the spirit must return to Him who gave it."

ALISON.

174. CHARITY.

THOUGH I speak with the tongues of men, and of angels, and have not charity, I am become as sounding brass, or a tinkling cymbal. And though I have the gift of prophecy, and understand all mysteries, and all knowledge; and though I have all faith, so that I could remove mountains, and have not charity, I am nothing.

And though I bestow all my goods to feed the poor, and though I give my body to be burned, and have not charity, it profiteth me nothing. Charity suffereth long, and is kind; charity envieth not; charity vaunteth not itself; it is not puffed up; doth not behave itself unseemly; seeketh not her own; is not easily provoked; thinketh no evil; rejoiceth not in iniquity, but rejoiceth in the truth; beareth all things, believeth all things, hopeth all things, endureth all things.

Charity never faileth: but whether there be prophecies, they shall fail; whether there be tongues, they shall cease; whether there be knowledge, it shall vanish away. For we know in part, and we prophesy in part. But when that which is perfect is come, then that which is in part shall be done

away.

When I was a child, I spake as a child, I understood as a child, I thought as a child; but when I became a man, I put