matter is fully compensated to the over-taxed class. For example, take the householders in London, who complain so bitterly of the house and window taxes. Is it not pretty clear that, whether such householder be a tradesman who indemnifies himself in the price of his goods, — or a letter of lodgings, who does so in his rent, or a stockholder, who receives it back again in his dividends, -or a country gentleman, who has saved so much fresh levy on his land or his other property, one way or other, it comes at last pretty nearly to the same thing, though the pressure for the time may be unjust and vexatious, and fit to be removed? But when New England, which may be considered a state in itself, taxes the admission of foreign manufactures in order to cherish manufactures of its own, and thereby forces the Carolinians, another state of itself, with which there is little intercommunion, which has no such desire or interest to serve, to buy worse articles at a higher price, it is altogether a different question, and is, in fact,

downright tyranny of the worst, because of the most sordid, kind. What would you think of a law which should tax every person in Devonshire for the pecuniary benefit of every person in Yorkshire? And yet that is a feeble image of the actual usurpation of the New England deputies over the property of the Southern States.

There are two possible modes of unity in a State; one by absolute co-ordination of each to all, and of all to each; the other by subordination of classes and offices. Now, I maintain that there never was an instance of the first, nor can there be, without slavery as its condition and accompaniment, as in Athens. The poor Swiss cantons are no exception.

The mistake lies in confounding a state which must be based on classes and interests and unequal property, with a church, which is founded on the person, and has no qualification but personal merit. Such a community may exist, as in the case of the

Quakers; but, in order to exist, it must be compressed and hedged in by another society, ·mundus mundulus in mundo immundo.

The free class in a slave state is always, in one sense, the most patriotic class of people in an empire; for their patriotism is not simply the patriotism of other people, but an aggregate of lust of power and distinction and supremacy.

April 11. 1833.

LAND AND MONEY.

LAND was the only species of property which, in the old time, carried any respectability with it. Money alone, apart from some tenure of land, not only did not make the possessor great and respectable, but actually made him at once the object of plunder and

hatred. Witness the history of the Jews in this country in the early reigns after the Conquest.

I have no objection to your aspiring to the political principles of our old Cavaliers; but embrace them all fully, and not merely this and that feeling, whilst in other points you speak the canting foppery of the Benthamite or Malthusian schools.

April 14. 1833.

METHODS OF INVESTIGATION.

THERE are three ways of treating a subject :

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In the first mode, you begin with a definition, and that definition is necessarily assumed as the truth. As the argument proceeds, the conclusion from the first proposition becomes the base of the second, and

so on.

Now, it is quite impossible that you can be sure that you have included all the necessary, and none but the necessary, terms in your definition; as, therefore, you proceed, the original speck of error is multiplied at every remove; the same infirmity of knowledge besetting each successive definition. Hence you may set out, like Spinosa, with all but the truth, and end with a conclusion which is altogether monstrous; and yet the mere deduction shall be irrefragable. Warburton's "Divine Legation" is also a splendid instance of this mode of discussion, and of its inability to lead to the truth: in fact, it is an attempt to adopt the mathematical series of proof, in forgetfulness that the mathematician is sure of the truth of his definition at each remove, because he creates it, as he can do, in pure figure and number. But you cannot make any thing true which results from, or is connected with, real externals; you can only find it out. The chief use of this first mode of discussion is to sharpen the wit, for which purpose it is the best exercitation.