language were exhausted by Junius in desolating and unpunished party libels on the chief justice of England; and when the capital of the British empire lay for six days at the mercy of Lord George Gordon's mob, its fury was concentrated against the same venerable magistrate. The jurisprudence of this country strikes its roots deep into that of England. Her courts, her magistrates, her whole judicial system, are regarded by the profession in America with respect and affection. But if, beginning at a period coeval with the settlement of America, we run down the line of the chancellors and chief justices, from Lord Bacon and Sir Edward Coke to the close of the last century, it will, in scarce any generation, be found free from the record of personal, official, and political infirmity, from which an unfriendly censor might have drawn inferences hostile to the integrity of the tribunals of England, if not to the soundness of her public sentiment. But he would have erred. The character of governments and of nations must be gathered from a large experience, from general results, from the testimony of ages. A thousand years, and a revolution in almost every century, have been necessary to build up the constitutional fabric of England to its present proportions and strength. Let her not play the unfriendly censor, if some portions of our newly constructed state machinery are sometimes heard to grate and jar. With respect to the great two-edged sword, with which Justice smites the unfaithful public servant, the present lord-chancellor (late chief justice) of England observes, of the acquittal of Lord Melville, in 1806, that "it showed that impeachment can no longer be relied upon for the conviction of state offences, and can only be considered as a test of party strength; while of the standard of professional literature, the same venerable magistrate, who unites the vigor of youth to the experience and authority of four-score years, remarks, with a candor not very flattering to the United States, that down to the end of the reign of George the Third (A.D. 1820), “Eng land was excelled by contemporary juridical authors, not only in France, Italy, and Germany, but even America." I will only add, that, of the very great number of judges of our federal and state courts-although frugal salaries, short terms of office, and the elective tenure may sometimes have called incompetent men to the bench,-it is not within my recollection, that a single individual has been suspected even of pecuniary corruption. Next in importance to the integrity of the courts, in a well-governed state, is the honesty of the Legislature. A remarkable in stance of wholesale corruption, in one of the new states of the west, consisting of the alleged bribery of a considerable number of the members of the Legislature, by a corrupt distribution of railroad bonds, is quoted by Lord Grey, as a specimen of the corruption which has infected the legislation both of Congress and of the states, and as showing "the state of things which has arisen in that country." It was a very discreditable occurrence certainly (if truly reported, and of that I know nothing), illustrative I hope, not of "a state of things," which has arisen in America, but of the degree to which large bodies of men, of whom better things might have been expected, may sometimes become so infected, when the mania of speculation is epidemic, that principle, prudence, and common sense break down in the eagerness to clutch at sudden wealth. In a bubble season the ordinary rules of morality lose their controlling power for a while, under the temptation of the day. The main current of private morality in England, probably flowed as deep and strong as ever, both before and after the South Sea frauds, when cabinet ministers and court ladies and some of the highest personages in the realm ran mad after dishonest gains, and this in England's Augustan age. Lord Granville in reply, observed that the "early legislation of England, in such matters, was not so free from reproach, as to justify us in attributing the bribery in America, solely to the democratic character of the government," and the biographer of George Stephenson furnishes facts which abundantly confirm the truth of this remark. After describing the extravagant length, to which railway speculation was carried in that country in 1844-1845, Mr. Smiles proceeds:— "Parliament, whose previous conduct in connection with railway legislation was so open to reprehension, interposed no check, attempted no remedy. On the contrary, it helped to intensity the evil arising from this unseemly state of things. Many of its members were themselves involved in the mania, and as much interested money-grubbers. The railway prospectuses now in its continuance as even the vulgar herd of issued, unlike the Liverpool and Manchester and London and Birmingham schemes, were headed by peers, baronets, landed proprietors, and strings of M.P.'s. Thus it was found in 1845 that not fewer than one hundred and fifty-seven members of parliament were on the list of new companies, as subscribers for sums ranging from two hundred and ninety-one thousand pounds sterling [not far from a million and a half of lines even came to boast of their parliamentary dollars downwards! The proprietors of new strength, and the number of votes they could command in the House.' The influence which land-owners had formerly brought to bear upon parliament, in resisting railways, when called on our side, has yielded to the unreasonable pretensions of the United States. There is danger that this may be pushed too far, and that a question may arise, on which our honor and our interests will make concession on our part impossible." No one is an impartial judge in his own case. If we should meet these rather indiscreet suggestions in the only way in which a charge without specifications can be met,by a denial as broad as the assertion,-the matter would be left precisely as it stood before; that is, each party in its national controversies thinks itself right and its opponent wrong, which is not an uncommon case in human affairs, public and private. This at least may be added, without fear of contradiction, that the United States, in their intercourse with foreign governments have abstained from all interference in European politics, and have confined themselves to the protection of their own rights and interests. As far as concerns theoretical doctrines on the subjects usually controverted between governments, a distinguished English magistrate and civilian pronounces the authority of the United States "to be always great upon all questions of international law." (R. Phillimore's International Law, Vol. iii. P. 252.) Many of the questions which have arisen between this country and England, have been such as most keenly touch the national susceptibilities. That in discussing these questions, at home and abroad, no despatch has been written, no word uttered, in a warmer tone than might be wished, is not to be expected, and is as little likely to have happened on one side of the water as the for by the public necessities, was now employed spoiled children, and, though the right was clearly to carry measures of a far different kind, originated by cupidity, knavery, and folly. But these gentlemen had discovered, by this time, that railways were as a golden mine to them. They sat at railway boards, sometimes selling to themselves their own land, at their own price, and paying themselves with the money of the unfortunate stockholders. Others used the railway mania as a convenient, and to themselves inexpensive, mode of purchasing constituencies. It was strongly suspected that honorable members adopted what Yankee legislators call log-rolling; that is, 'you help me to roll my log, and I will help you roll yours.' At all events, it is a matter of fact, that, through parliamentary influence, many utterly ruinous branches and extensions, projected during the mania, calculated only to benefit the inhabitants of a few miserable old boroughs, accidentally omitted from schedule A., were authorized in the memorable session of 1844-45."-Smiles' Life of Stephenson, p. 371. These things, be it remembered, took place, not in a newly gathered republic, just sprouting, so to say, into existence on the frontier, inhabited by the pioneers of civilization, who had rather rushed together, than grown up to the moral traditions of an ancient community; but they took place at the metropolis of the oldest monarchy in Europe, the centre of the civilized world, where public sentiment is propped by the authority of ages; heart of old English oak encased with the life circles of a thousand years. I was in London at the height of the mania: I saw the railway king, as he was called, at the zenith of his power; a member of parliament, through which he walked quietly, it was said, "with sixteen railway bills under his arm;" almost a fourth estate of the realm; his receptions crowded like those of a royal prince; and I saw the gilded bubble burst. But I did not write home to my government, that this marvellous "state of things" showed the corruption which springs from hereditary institutions, nor did I hint that an extension of the right of suffrage and a moderate infusion of the democratic principle was the only remedy. I have time for a few words only on the "unscrupulous and overbearing tone" which is said by Lord Grey to "mark our intercourse with foreign nations." other. But that the intercourse of the United States with Great Britain has, in the main, been conducted, earnestly indeed, as becomes powerful states treating important subjects, but courteously, gravely, and temperately, no one well acquainted with the facts will, I think, deny. It would not be difficult to pass in review and to show that when she has conceded any our principal controversies with England, portion of our demands, it has not been because they were urged in " an unscrupulous and overbearing tone" (an idea not very "If any one European nation," he observes, complimentary to herself), but because they were to act in the same manner, it could not were founded in justice and sustained by escape war for a single year. We ourselves argument. This is not the occasion for such have been repeatedly on the verge of a quarrel a review. In a public address, which I had with the United States. With no divergence of the honor of delivering in this hall last Sepinterest, but the strongest possible interest on tember, I vindicated the negotiations relaboth sides to maintain the closest friendship, we tive to the north-eastern boundary from the have more than once been on the eve of a quar rel; and that great calamity has only been gross and persistent misrepresentations of avoided, because the government of this country which they have been the subject; and I has had the good sense to treat the government will now only briefly allude to by far the of the United States much as we should treat most important chapter in our diplomatic history. It will show, by a very striking "extreme indecency" to admit the possibilexample, whether, in her intercourse with ity, that the orders in council could be in foreign nations, America has been in the contravention of the public law, it is now the habit of assuming an unscrupulous and over- almost universal admission of the text-writbearing tone, or whether she has been the ers, that such was the case. As lately as victim of those qualities on the part of 1847, the present lord-chancellor, then lord others. chief justice of England,―used this remarkable language: "Of these orders in council, Napoleon had no right to complain; but they were grievously unjust to neutrals; and it is now generally allowed, that they were contrary to the law of nations, and to our own municipal law!" These liberal admissions have come too late to repair the ruined fortunes, or to heal the broken hearts of the sufferers; they will not recall to life the thousands who fell on hard-fought fields, in defence of their country's rights. But they do not come too late to rebuke the levity with which it is now intimated, that the United States stand at the august bar of the public law, not as reasoning men, but as spoiled children; not too late to suggest the possibility to candid minds, that the next generation may do us the like justice, with reference to more recent controversies." After the short-lived peace of Amiens, a new war of truly Titanic proportions, broke out between France and England. In the progress of this tremendous struggle, and for the purpose of mutual destruction, a succession of imperial decrees and orders in council were issued by the two powers, by which all neutral commerce was annihilated. Each of the great belligerents maintained that his adversary's decree was a violation of international law; each justified his own edict on the ground of retaliation; and between these great conflicting forces the rights of neutrals were crushed. Under these orders and decrees, it is estimated that one hundred millions of American property were swept from the ocean;-of the losses and sufferings of our citizens, in weary detention for years at courts of admiralty and viceadmiralty all round the globe, there can be no estimate. But peace returned to the Thus, fellow-citizens, I have endeavored, world; time wore away; and after one gen- without vain-glorying with respect to oureration of the original sufferers had sunk, selves, or bitterness toward others, but in a many of them sorrow-stricken and ruined, spirit of candor and patriotism, to repel the into the grave, the government of King sinister intimation, that a fatal degeneracy Louis Philippe, in France, acknowledged the is stealing over the country; and to show wrong of the imperial regime, by a late and that the eighty-fourth anniversary finds the partial measure of indemnification.* Eng- United States in the fulfilment of the glowland, in addition to the capture of our ships ing anticipations, with which, in the selfand the confiscation of their cargoes, had same instrument, their INDEPENDENCE was subjected the United States to the indignity inaugurated, and their UNION first proof taking her seamen by impressment from claimed. No formal act had as yet bound our vessels-a practice which, in addition to they together; no plan of confederation had its illegality and cruelty, often led to the im- even been proposed. A common allegiance pressment of our own citizens, both natural-embraced them, as parts of one metropolitan ized and native. For this intolerable wrong (which England herself would not have endured a day, from any foreign power), and for the enormous losses accruing under the orders in council, the United States not only never received any indemnification, but the losses and sufferings of a war of two years and half duration were superadded. These orders were at the time regarded by the liberal school of British statesmen as unjust and oppressive towards neutrals; and though the eminent civilian, Sir William Scott (afterwards Lord Stowell), who presided in the British court of admiralty, and who had laid the foundations of a princely fortune by fees accruing in prize causes,† deemed it By the treaty negotiated with great skill by Hon. W. C. Rives. Sketch of the Lives of Lords Stowell and Eldon, by William Edward Surtees, D.C.L. [a relative], p. 88. empire; but when that tie was sundered, they became a group of insulated and feeble communities, not politically connected with each other, nor known as yet in the family of nations. Driven by a common necessity, nearning toward each other with a common sympathy of trial and of danger, piercing with wise and patriotic foresight into the depths of ages yet to come,-led by a Divine Counsel, they clung together with more than elective affinity, and declared the independence of the UNITED STATES. North and South, great and small, Massachusetts *Lord Campbell's Lives of the Chancellors, vol. vii. p. 218; Story's Miscellaneous Writings, p. 283; Phillimore's International Law, vol. iii, pp. 250, 539; Manning's Commentary on the Law of Nations, p. 330; Wildman's Institutes of International Law, vol. ii, pp. 183, 185; also, the French publicists, Hautefeuille and Ortolan, under the appropriate heads. olutionary Greece, an appeal not made in vain, was for American sympathy and aid. The golden vice-royalties of Spain on this continent asserted their independence in imitation of our example, though sadly deficient in previous training in the school of regulated liberty; and now, at length, the fair "Niobe of Nations," accepting a constitutional monarchy as an instalment of the long-deferred debt of freedom, sighs through all her liberated states for a representative confederation, and claims the title of the Italian Wash-, ington for her heroic Garibaldi. and Virginia, the oldest and then the largest; | it, is coeval with the successful issue of the New York and Pennsylvania, unconscious as American struggle. The first appeal of revyet of their destined preponderance, but already holding the central balance; Rhode Island and Delaware, raised by the Union to a political equality with their powerful neighbors, joined with their sister republics in the august declaration for themselves and for the rapidly multiplying family of states, which they beheld in prophetic vision. This great charter of independence was the life of the Revolution; the sword of attack, the panoply of defence. Under the consummate guidance of Washington, it sustained our fathers under defeat, and guided them to victory. It gave us the alliance with France, and her Here then, fellow-citizens, I close where auxiliary armies and navies. It gave us the I began; the noble prediction of Adams is Confederation and the Constitution. With fulfilled. The question decided eighty-four successive strides of progress, it has crossed years ago in Philadelphia was the greatest the Alleghanies, the Ohio, the Mississippi, question ever decided in America; and the and the Missouri; has stretched its living event has shown that greater, perhaps, never arms almost from the arctic circle to the was nor ever will be decided among men. tepid waters of the Gulf; has belted the con- The great declaration, with its life-giving tinent with rising states; has unlocked the principles has, within that interval, exerting golden treasuries of the Sierra Madre; and its influence, from the central plains of Amerflung out the banners of the Republic to the ica to the eternal snows of the Cordilleras, gentle breezes of the peaceful sea. Not con- from the western shores of the Atlantic to fined to the continent, the power of the Union the furthest east, crossed the earth and the has convoyed our commerce over the broad- ocean, and circled the globe. Nor let us fear est oceans to the furthest isles; has opened that its force is exhausted, for its principles the gates of the morning to our friendly in- are as broad as humanity,-as eternal as tercourse; and,-sight unseen before in hu- truth. And if the visions of patriotic seers man history, has, from that legendary are destined to be fulfilled: if it is the will Cipango, the original object of the expedi- of Providence that the lands which now sit tion of Columbus, brought their swarthy in darkness shall see the day; that the south princes, on friendly embassage, to the west- and east of Europe and the west of Asia shall ern shores of the world-dividing ocean. be regenerated; and the ancient and mysMeantime, the gallant Frenchmen, who fought the battles of liberty on this continent, carried back the generous contagion to their own fair land. Would that they could have carried with it the moderation and the wisdom that tempered our revolution! The great idea of constitutional reform in England, a brighter jewel in her crown than that of which our fathers bereft terious regions of the East, the cradle of mankind, shall receive back in these latter days from the west the rich repayment of the early debt of civilization, and rejoice in the cheerful light of constitutional freedom, that light will go forth from Independence Hall in Philadelphia; that lesson of constitutional freedom they will learn from this day's Declaration. M. H. BAILLIERE, Regent Street, has in the press a "Manual of Medical Zoölgoy: containing a detailed description of animals useful in medicine, and also general considerations on the organization and classification of animals, and a resume of the natural history of mankind," by A. Moquin-Tondon, edited by Dr. Hulme. THE German painter, Haimann, has offered to the "Comitato Veneto " of Turin a beautiful picture, called "A Sunset of Venice," for the Venetian emigrants, in acknowledgment of the hospitality shown him during his residence in Venice. 1857. From The North British Review. and the application of it in maritime enterBrazil and the Brazilians, Portrayed in prise, about the beginning of the fifteenth Historical and Descriptive Sketches. By century, soon began to change the political Rev. D. P. Kidder, D.D., and Rev. J. condition of these countries. The mariners C. Fletcher. Philadelphia: Childs and of the Peninsula hastened to use it for purPeterson. London: Trübner and Co.poses of national aggrandizement. In a few years, wondering Europe was told of lands, the tidings of whose beauty, fertility, mineral wealth, and varied forms of animal life and of vegetation, acted very powerfully, especially on the warm imaginations of the people of the South. At a period so early down the western coasts of Africa, and had as 1486, Portuguese voyagers had sailed doubled the Cape of Good Hope. The Ir is quite true, as our authors allege, that great ignorance of Brazil prevails both in Britain and in the United States. Few have been accustomed to think of it as a great constitutional monarchy, ruled over by a wise and accomplished prince. The popular notion has been the prevalent one even among educated men. It has been regarded as a land of "mighty rivers and virgin forests, dream of lands beyond that great ocean, out palm-trees and jaguars, anacondas and alli- on which for ages men had looked from the gators, howling monkeys and screaming In 1498, Columbus cast anchor at the mouth bold headlands of Lusitania, was realized. parrots, diamond mining, revolutions, and earthquakes." If other figures have been of the Orinoco. The sanguine southern added to the picture, they have not made it mind was deeply agitated when the treasures more attractive, for they have been figures from the "New World" were spread out of men stricken with ague and yellow fever, before them. Poets sung of them,-solof negroes and negro-drivers, of mining diers dreamed of conquest,-statesmen of desperadoes and of political despots, of im- aggrandizement, the multitudes of neverportunate beggars, and of a superstitious failing wealth, and "The Holy See" of priesthood. Whence these current views wider absolute influence. In 1500, the Porhave been derived, it would not be easy to tuguese navigator, Pedro Alvares Cabral, determine. We have to thank Gardner, discovered Brazil, took possession of it in Ewbank, Waterton, Wallace, and the authe name of his sovereign, Dom Immanuel, thors of this peculiarly interesting volume, and named it Vera Cruz. In 1503, a second for setting us right on all these topics. Some expedition was sent out. The Florentine, of the features, both moral and physical, Americus Vespucius, whose name is now now referred to, are characteristic, but these more intimately associated with the western do no more than supply a dark background, world, than that either of Cabral or Columon which to bring more attractive figures bus, joined this. As the most remarkable out in sunlight. This faithful portraiture of part of the cargo which Vespucius brought Brazil and the Brazilians, will not fail to be to Europe, was the dyewood-casalpina influential. New channels will be opened Braziliensis-called in Portuguese, pau Braup for the streams of British and North American enterprise; and the sympathies of the Anglo-Saxon race, will cluster more closely round this great people, and their present justly esteemed great prince. The work now noticed is the joint effort of the Rev. Dr. Kidder, of the American Methodist Episcopal Church, and of the Rev. J. C. Fletcher, of the Presbyterian Church, who recently visited Brazil as missionary travellers, and the latter of whom held, for some time, the post of acting secretary of the United States' legation at Rio de Janeiro. This brotherhood of energy, enterprise, and love for, and devotion to, missionary work, between representatives of the leading ecclesiastical denominations of America, is peculiarly graceful. As the sketches bear to be historical and descriptive, our brief notice of them shall assume the same form. The introduction into Spain and Portugal of the knowledge of the polarity of the needle, zil, on account of its resemblance to brazas-"coals of fire," the name of Brazil was given to the newly discovered region. Portugal continued to hold it, and governed it by viceroys sent from the mother country, up to the year 1803, when the prince regent, Dom John VI., was forced to leave Portugal on account of the part he had taken with Napoleon against England and the Allies. He carried with him the fruits of the civilization of the Old World. Commerce grew in importance, -printing presses were set up,-libraries founded,-colleges opened, and all the social habits and fashions of Portugal began "What wars they wag'd, what seas, what dangers pass'd. What glorious empire crowned their toils at Vent'rous I sing, on soaring pinions borne, |