upon me to look on some religious opinions as dangerous to society.' Do we find, then, in these cases, or in the decisions of Lord Thurlow and Lord Erskine, any attempt, any disposition, to stretch the principle, vague as it may be deemed, one iota beyond its wise and essential aim and object-that of shielding from ruin children in the hands of parents so grossly vicious, or irreligious, as necessarily to render the parental influence contaminating and perilous? It is manifest that it is a jurisdiction only meant for extreme cases, and that to extreme cases alone has it been applied. If the integrity of the judge, if the public vigilance, affords no security against abuse, surely some may be found in the absence of all sinister interest, Can any rational motive be pointed out which should induce the keeper of the great seal to add to the overwhelming amount of his duties, to accumulate fresh causes of anxiety, and labour, and embarrassment, upon himself, by unjustly drawing upon himself the personal superintendence of the education of infant suitors? His interest, if anything resembling interest can be said to exist-we are satisfied, is all the other way. All ordinary personal motives-if a judge could admit any such would prompt him to leave the duty in the father's hands. Nothing but a deep and conscientious sense of duty, a courageous determination to ascertain the right line, and unshrinkingly to act up to it, can bear up a judge under the harassing investigation of such a case as that of Mr. Long Wellesley, or can inspire him with fortitude to brave obloquy, and to draw upon himself the load of responsibility which such a decision entails upon him. An unprincipled judge would, we suspect, be sorely tempted at once to truckle to popular clamour, and consult his own ease by consigning the infants to that care which, however pernicious, however ruinous, has still some popular prejudice on its side. In this, as in so many other instances, Lord Eldon exhibited a model of that lofty independence of mind-the first of judicial qualities-which acts solely from internal motives; regardless of popular clamour, and indifferent to vulgar eulogy. • Intaminatis fulget honoribus, To desire to give up the present good to the infant, effected by such a decision, from a vague fear of a possible abuse of the jurisdiction, appears to us nothing less than to rank contingencies higher than realities-to be nervously sensitive to shadows, and splendidly unmindful of substances-to be willing to sacrifice a hundred infants to flagitious fathers, in order to avoid a bare possibility of one ever being the victim of a corrupt Chancellor. P 2 But But the jurisdiction, it is alleged, may be made the instrument of private revenge and malicious annoyance; the enemy of a father may, forsooth, bestow on his child a fortune; may then make him a ward of the Court, by instituting a suit; and may apply to the Chancellor to appoint a guardian; and may gratify his malice against the father by objecting, on the score of his character or conduct, to his filling that office-and, it is said, if he does not succeed in his object of excluding the father, he will, at least, subject him to a scrutiny of all the acts of his private life before a public Court. When a jurisdiction is thus assailed by a statement of a possibility of abuse, founded on the assumption of a complication of contingencies just within possibility, it is at least obvious that rational objections are not abundant against it. Admitting that a good father may have a bitter enemy-that his malice may urge him, contrary to all common motives, to settle a fortune of some hundreds per annum on his foe's son -that out of mere malice he may incur the additional expense and trouble of procuring a chancery suit to be instituted to make the child a ward of court-granting all these highly probable contingencies to happen, still how is the enemy's malice to induce the Lord Chancellor and the House of Lords to deprive the father of the guardianship, unless he be indeed a person unfitted, in point of morals or religion, to fill that office? If he be such a person, it is desirable and proper that the jurisdiction should control his parental authority, even although (as occasionally happens with very salutary proceedings of justice) it may have been put in motion by unprincipled malignity. If the father be not such a person, the malicious plot proves abortive, and the defeated enemy has conferred a fortune on the child, without being able to wound or annoy the parent-a result admirably calculated, it must be admitted, to encourage the frequency of such attempts! But at least, it is said, the malicious foe is enabled to harass the parent by the assault on his private character which the proceeding involves. But why should he incur the difficulty and heavy pecuniary sacrifice of attacking the father through the medium of the Chancery jurisdiction, when numberless modes, at once cheaper. and easier, are open to malignity and falsehood? Without perjury and suborned testimony, malice would find no means of annoyance in an attempt to deprive the father of his children. But with the aid of false testimony, and audacious conspiracy, there is no judicial proceeding which may not be wrested to the purpose of gratifying revenge, and overpowering innocence—and this without the pleasing preliminary of bestowing some thousands on a child. Proceedings on penal statutes are every day put in force from motives of malignity or lucre-indictments for perjury are common instruments for the oppression of individuals obnoxious to to the individual prosecuting. But are we to abolish at once such proceedings, because malice is occasionally their mover? It by no means follows, that because the motive of a legal proceeding is improper or even wicked, its result is unjust-far from it. Justice is, in many cases, necessarily attained through wicked instruments. But certainly, if any one proceeding is less likely than another to be abused to improper and malignant ends, we conceive it to be a proceeding, like the jurisdiction in question, fraught with difficulties, applying only to extreme cases, and not to be put in motion by a stranger, without first endowing the child with a considerable property. An objection more far-fetched, we conceive, could hardly be devised. But it is argued that the jurisdiction is, as it were, felo-de-se— that it is wrong on its own principles, since it only extends to infants possessed of some property which may be the subject of a suit to ground the court's jurisdiction; and it is contended that, if it be really wise, there can be no reason for restricting it to such a limited range of cases. That this might be a plausible argument for extending the jurisdiction (if possible) to every vicious parent, whether the child has property or not, we agree; and we are sure that this ought to be the object of those putting forth an argument which in itself admits the utility of the authority; but that it affords any argument against the existing jurisdiction to show that it does not go far enough-that, though it does good, it does not do all the good that is desirable-we confess ourselves at a loss to understand. The jurisdiction is limited as it is, not only because it has grown out of the duties and functions of the court respecting an infant's property, but also from the physical impossibility of any court exercising such a jurisdiction, without funds in its power to be applied for the support of the infant. To any legislative attempt to extend a principle in itself excellent, and to throw the chancellor's protection over the children of the poor as well as of the rich, in cases where their parents grossly violate their parental duties, we should have no other objection, than that we believe it would be found wholly impracticable. It is, however, to be observed, that the same degree of strong necessity does not exist in the two cases. The circumstances and situation of the parties are wholly different; and, though we are by no means disposed to draw distinctions, as to the obvious necessity for virtuous education, between the higher and the lower classes, we think there are many difficulties and some correctives to be found in the very poverty and narrow circumstances of the latter; and, at least, that the mischief of their immoral habits is confined to a less sphere than that influenced by the qualities and conduct of higher individuals. It cannot be denied that it is in the kind of cases in which the jurisdiction is commonly exercised, viz., in cases of infants of so me some consideration and station in society, that the evil is the most crying and manifold, and that the judicial remedy is most peculiarly important. When we consider the multitude of individuals whose happiness and comfort are of necessity dependent on the disposition, and character, and habits of one individual of exalted station and large possessions; how extensive both in public and in private life are his means of effecting widely-felt good or evil, it is impossible to provide too effectual means of securing to him an early education and example conducive to his virtue, benevolence, and utility. The interest of the public in the principles and character of such a youth are scarcely less considerable than that of himself and his family. And yet what virtues or good qualities of any kind are to be expected from any man, of which the seeds are not sown and the growth nourished in his tender years? Independently, therefore, of the strong private claim, which every helpless subject may make for protection at the hands of the law against every species of wrong, moral or physical, practised upon him in his defenceless youth by any other, be he whom he may-independently of these considerations, we conceive that, on public grounds, a jurisdiction is expedient and indispensable, which, in cases of extreme necessity, interposes to prevent youths of family and high expectations from being mis-educated by parents in a manner calculated to render them disgraceful to their order, disqualified for their public functions, and mischievous to society in proportion to the means at their command. Is it desirable to perpetuate in an aristocracy an entail of indecorum and depravity, and carefully to abstain from preventing a father from transmitting by education all his vices to his sons? If an individual of one generation becomes a blot on his family, and on society, is the virus to be preserved for the deliberate inoculation of his successors? Are peers of the realm to be educated in the morals of the brothel, and in the society of the gallies, because the being who begot them is, unhappily, lost to all virtue, and because the laws can acknowledge no control over the powers of a flagitious parent? In vain would the government-in vain would individuals labour to ameliorate society, by improving the education of all ranks-in vain would the ministers of religion inculcate the virtues and duties necessary for individual and social happiness-if the head of an important family, invested with a power beyond all control, could place himself between his infants and their country, and their God, and claim, on the plea of paternal right and parental authority, to corrupt and debase the beings who must ultimately exercise an influence over their families, and over society at large. ᎪᎡ Ꭲ ART. VII.-A Review of the Negociations between the United States of America and Great Britain, respecting the Commerce of the Two Countries, and more especially concerning the Trade of the former with the West Indies. By the Honourable Littleton W. Tazewell. Norfolk in Virginia. Printed with the signature Senex,' in the Norfolk Herald;' and reprinted, London. 8vo. 1829. IF ; F we take a view of the origin, progress, and present state of the several colonies founded by the European nations in the western world, we cannot but be deeply impressed with the vast differences that present themselves. We shall not fail to observe, that those which originated in England, on whatever reason or pretext they may have commenced, and although sometimes injudiciously planned, have soon become flourishing communities and, whether connected with or independent of the parent state, have exhibited a constant and regular progression in knowledge, in population, in wealth, in civilization, and in all the acquisitions which adorn and dignify the human character. If the view here sketched be compared with the colonial history of the other nations of Europe, we must be struck with the contrast, and may be allowed, without the imputation of vanity or of nationality, to feel a high sense of the benefits we have conferred on our species. We turn, for instance, to the settlements, founded by Spain and Portugal-settlements older by more than a century than any of the English. These had the benefit of a soil so productive, as, with slight efforts of industry, to yield all that the absolute wants of human beings require: the climates in which they were planted were mild and genial; at some seasons, perhaps, intensely hot, but never exposed to the sudden and severe alternations of heat and cold which affect the localities where the English established themselves. Those countries abounded, also, in all the minerals which contribute to the convenience, the luxury, or the wealth of nations. But, with these advantages, the progress they made in civilization was scarcely perceptible. The turbulent habits of the first settlers, the military adventurers, were soon reduced, not to the regular and sober habits of agricultural or any other kind of industry, but to a languid and supine indolence-greatly increased by the mildness of the climate, combined with the soporific influence of a system of ecclesiastical discipline opposed to all mental exertion. The settlements of Spain and Portugal have increased in their white population at a much slower rate than the colonies planted by England. Including in the estimate the coloured race, the population of these settlements is supposed to be double that of similar establishments originating in this country; but, though they have been nearly twice as long in existence, their inhabitants of the white race do not amount to half the number of the present |