standing the Coxonation Oath? And has not the legislature itself conscientiously given a sanction to this doctrine ? * It is greatly to be lamented, that Judge Blackstone should at all have spoken in favour of our penal laws, when it is evident, even to candour itself, that his better feelings flowed from a purer source. A constitutional king should distinguish, as constitutional lawyers do, a Commentator on the Laws of England looking towards the Bench. For Blackstone, when he wrote his Commentaries, was only looking to be a judge; and this is the true key to his inconsistencies. To guard what has been said, let it be observed, that it is not denied, it has been granted,-that before and at the time when Magna Charta was granted, church and state formed one consti− tution in those times the civil and ecclesiastical courts were united, though separated, for state-reasons, at the Conquest. To those times Hooker's observation well applies : ، The church of England and the people of England were the same people." It is, however, still true, that Magna Charta has nothing doctrinal in it; and no less true, that Hooker's maxim does not apply to the times since the Reformation. Men, exercising their own faculties, and following the dictates of their consciences, have formed different opinions on doctrinal articles and church government; and philosophy, more unshackled from bigotry, has breathed something of the empyrean of liberty: Experiments have proved to be true, what bigots and politicians denied. Civil and religious liberty, and nothing else, is the true cement of the English Constitution: penal laws are wedges driven violently. into it, and keep the parts wide asunder : these were never ge nuine parts of it, and wherever they appear are sophisms intermingled with eternal truths. It is time that these sophisms were untwisted: we should revert to fundamentals, and distinguish what is merely legal from what is constitutional. As to the old Coronation Oaths, they were administered when the nation was united in one faith; the new, when the nation was split into reli gious sections: and if by maintaining the true profession of the Gospel any thing more is meant than professing the reformed religion, and giving its teachers a civil sanction, it goes further than any civil magistrate is authorized to go by that Gospel; it is contrary to right reason as well as to true policy, and may be come a trap to a conscientious king, no less than an insult to those of his subjects who have any conscience. No oath, that binds a king to the will of the majority, can authorize him to resist the will of the majority; and no government could, constitutionally, impose such an oath on an English king.. *On the Act of Patronage in Scotland, see an Inquiry into the Principles of Ecclesiastical Patronage and Presentation, p. 29. Conscience is that secret council-chamber erected in the breas of man by the Great Power that formed him—a mysterious vicegerency, that brings nigh to human beings that Presence which fills the universe. Kings as well as subjects are under its dominion; and for their religious feelings and apprehensions are accountable to that tribunal alone. A king is bound by his religion, in his personal character, in foro conscientiæ, as much as a subject; a subject as much a king. But does a subject foregó his civil rights by embracing religious opinions? Or can a king, in his political character, be released from his obligation to protect a citizen in his natural rights and civil privileges; that being the very end of political society,-the only just foundation of civil government? Liberty of conscience is every man's inalienable birthright, a franchise, of which no being on earth has a right to disinherit him; and for the peaceable enjoyment of which he should forfeit none of the common advantages of civil society. 5. As to the People at large, it should seem but a principle of moderation to say, that in a cause which concerns every individual, no individual should be wholly indifferent. For though individuals may ask, what good can we do? Yet, as it is reasonable that every man should know something of his birthrights, it will be natural for him sometimes to talk of them. Is it not also agreeable? Love of liberty is a natural passion; like all natural passions, the very feeling of it is delight, and to converse about it refreshes the spirits. He who is a stranger to the feeling is scarce a man. The Liberty of the Press is a scyon of the good old tree of English liberty; and although liable to some luxuriancy, it bears much wholesome fruit. True it is, it may be prurient, but it must not be lopped off. The art of printing itself has been the means of propagating some errors, some absurdities,-some malignities; but by leading to truth and philosophy, it has been favourable to human happiness. And the liberty of the press, though that press may occasionally be licentious, is by its general tendencies naturally salutary, and more abundantly beneficial to mankind. Thus the public papers, which may be considered as a kind of registers of the times, often lead mankind to much important truth; for though they frequently subserve people's particular interests or passions, and lead far enough from liberty and truth, yet, when directed by wise and well-principled men, they conduct to much good, they bring out much political information: and their very oppositions often produce elucidations; for as stone struck against flint elicits sparks, so do the contentions of gentle. men, playing at cross-purposes with one another, often throw out a light which keeps the unprejudiced in the right way. The debates of the House of Commons, as reported in these papers, have the same same tendency; for though they sometimes are at variance with the liberties of the country, and are sometimes made with more of gladiatorial prowess and violence, than of legislatorial dignity and principle, yet when men of generous, disinterested feelings, bear testimony to the best principles of the Constitution, their words, like seeds borne by the wind and carried to a distant soil, are conveyed far and wide to many an unsophisticated heart; and taking deep root, they produce the most solid, ever-growing advantages. Time would fail me to notice particular persons, who in their private capacities have felt agreeable employment in distributing useful pamphlets on the principles of English Liberty, or to point out the worth of those pamphlets illustrated by them; but their ardour is entitled to much praise. One example I cannot for bear noticing :-It is of a private gentleman, who, after travelling in foreign countries, sat down quiet and delighted in his own; and who, admiring the best principles of the English Constitution, as unfolded in the political writings of Sidney, Milton, Marvel, and Locke, published them at his own expence. Portions of these were selected for a wider circulation. The complete copies were distributed among private friends, or deposited in various public libraries throughout England and Scotland. Nor was his zeal confined to his own country: copies of these works were conveyed, under his direction and at his expence, to public libraries in North America, in Holland, and Switzerland, A testimony this, worthy of a true Englishman, honourable to his nation, and highly honourable to himself,-beneficial to his own countrymen, and no doubt singularly beneficial to mankind at large!* Societies have been formed with similar views, to convey con stitutional information, more enlarged views of our representative system, and to support the liberty of the press: some composed of simple citizens, others combining with them members of both Houses of Parliament. That effects proportioned to their wishes and plans were not produced, was owing, in part, to the inter. position of government,-in part, to other causes not so obvious to a hasty survey, That nothing good was effected, by no means follows. The full influence of useful truths, no less than of per nicious doctrines, is not to be calculated by immediate effects. It is not the mere depositing of seed in the bosom of the earth, that can cause it to grow: that seed takes a new place, it must strike root, undergo a chemical process, by means of other bodies, with which it comes into contact, and depends on other influences, independent of the power of individuals, or societies of agriculturists: what retards its growth may perhaps strengthen its U 4 * Memoirs of John Hollis, Esq. vital vital principle, and prepare it for a more peaceable issue. Such may be the issue. But shall man be confident? Blasts and mildews may scatter, or wither, his rising hopes suddenly. Political societies are sometimes composed of men not united among themselves, and have to contend with other societies united against them all. Our condition, as a civil community, also, is not the best calculated to admit constitutional information. We are a rude mass,- -a loose combination (if those words may be used together) of different interests,-of different passions,-of different religions, and different corruptions. Should government ever study the real interest of the community, as well as its own, it would unite its influence with such societies, should any such arise, for the perfection of our representative system. This once attained, we might boast of something like a perfect Constitution. Understanding, perhaps, better than our Saxon ancestors, the nature and end of representation, we might learn much from their wisdom in realizing the plan: as, indeed, than their ancient division of England into Tithings, Hundreds, and Counties, nothing was ever more admirably devised for mutual protection and confidence, mutual justice and benevolence; and nothing would be better calculated for the destruction of all party spirit, and the propagation of constitutional knowledge. AN OBSERVER. [P. S. The reader will please to set right the Greek, p. 249, which is deranged.] ART. IX. THEATRALIA. No. 1.-On Garrick, and Acting; and the Plays of Shakspeare, considered with reference to their fitness for Stage Representation. TAKING a turn the other day in the Abbey, I was struck with the affected attitude of a figure, which I do not remember to have seen before, and which upon examination proyed to be a whole-length of the celebrated Mr. Garrick, Though I would not go so far with some good catholics abroad as to shut players altogether out of consecrated ground, yet I own I was not a little scandalized at the introduction of theatrical airs and gestures into a place set apart to remind us of the saddest realities. Going nearer, I found inscribed under this harlequin figure the following lines :— To paint fair Nature, by divine command, A Shakspeare rose; then, to expand his fame Though Though, like the bard himself, in night they lay, And till Eternity with pow'r sublime Shall mark the mortal hour of hoary Time, Shakspeare and Garrick like twin-stars shall shine, And earth irradiate with a beam divine. It would be an insult to my readers' understandings to attempt any thing like a criticism on this farrago of false thoughts and nonsense. But the reflection it led me into was a kind of wonder, how, from the days of the actor here celebrated to our own, it should have been the fashion to compliment every performer in his turn, that has had the luck to please the town in any of the great characters of Shakspeare, with the notion of possessing a mind congenial with the poet's how people should come thus unaccountably to confound the power of originating poetical images and conceptions with the faculty of being able to read or recite the same when put into words ;* or what connection that absolute mastery over the heart and soul of man, which a great dramatic poet possesses, has with those low tricks upon the eye and car, which a player by observing a few general effects, which some common passion, as grief, anger, &c. usually has upon the gestures and exterior, can so easily compass. To know the internal workings and movements of a great mind, of an Othello or a Hamlet for instance, the when and the why and the how far they should be moved; to what pitch a passion is becoming; to give the reins and to pull in the curb exactly at the moment when the drawing in or the slackening is most graceful; seems to demand a reach of intellect of a vastly different extent from that which is employed upon the bare imitation of the signs of these passions in the countenance or gesture, which signs are usually observed to be most lively and emphatic in the weaker sort of minds, and which signs can after all but indicate some passion, as I said before, anger, or grief, generally; but of the motives and grounds of the passion, wherein it differs from the same passion in low and vulgar natures, of these the actor can give no more idea by his face or gesture than the eye (without a metaphor) can speak, or the muscles utter intelligible sounds. But such is the instantaneous nature of the impressions which we take in at the eye and ear at a play-house, compared with the slow apprehension oftentimes of the understanding in *It is observable that we fall into this confusion only in dramatic recitations. We never dream that the gentleman who reads Lucretius in public with great applause, is therefore a great poet and philosopher; nor do we find that Tom Davies, the bookseller, who is recorded to have recited the Paradise Lost better than any man in England in his day (though I cannot help thinking there must be some mistake in this tradition) was therefore, by his intimate friends, set upon a level with Milton, |