either to perform actions worthy to be recorded, or to write things worthy to be read: happier still are they in whom both powers are united."

PRECOCIOUS CHILDREN-whose early intellectual development is often the harbinger of a premature decay, may be compared to Pliny's Amygdala, or almond tree, of which the early buds and immature fruits were cut off by the frosts of spring.

PRESS The steam engine of moral power, which, directed by the spirit of the age, will eventually crush imposture, superstition, and tyranny. The liberty of the press is the true measure of all other liberty, for all freedom without this must be merely nominal. To stifle the nascent thought, is a moral infanticide, a treason against human nature. What can a man call his own, if his thought does not belong to him? King Hezekias is the first recorded enemy to the liberty of the press: he suppressed a book which treated of the virtues of plants, for fear it should be abused, and engender maladies; a shrewd and notable reason, well worthy of a modern Attorneygeneral.

PRIDE." My brethren," said Swift in a sermon, "there are three sorts of pride-of birth, of riches,

and of talents. I shall not now speak of the latter, none of you being liable to that abominable vice."

If we add to our pride, what we cut off from less favourite faults, we are merely taking our errors out of one pocket to put them into another.

PRIESTHOOD.

When the word of God,

chained up in the Latin tongue, was a sealed book to the public; when the mere ability to read entitled a man to the privilegium clericale; when the nation, steeped in ignorance, and consequently in superstition, looked up to the clergy as the means of salvation, and the sole depositary of that learning and knowledge which are always worldly power; we can understand why their authority should be almost unlimited, and little marvel, that, like all despotism, it should be grossly abused. The laws, of which the clergy then had the chief enactment, having exempted them from almost every personal duty, they attempted a total exemption from almost every secular tie. "But, as the overflowing of waters," says Sir Edward Coke, "doth many times make the river to lose its proper channel, so, in times past, ecclesiastical persons, seeking to extend their liberties beyond their due bounds, lost those which of right belonged to them."

Of these perversions and usurpations the most grievous were abolished by the Reformation; which, however, effectually provided for the corruption, and

final unpopularity of the Church, when it bequeathed to it a spiritual nobility, tithes, pluralities, wealthy sinecures, and non-residence. In morals, piety, and learning, the clergy, as a body, are not only unexceptionable, but most exemplary; and yet, in the most religious country in the world, they are confessedly not so popular as they ought to be. Why? Because, instead of being a-head of the people, as has always hitherto been the case, they are only on a par with them in general information, and occasionally behind them in the desire of improvement, in liberality, and in the spirit of the age, the only articles whereof some of their body do not seem anxious to take tithe. This censure must not be passed without excepting many distinguished individuals, to whose enlightened views the writer is proud to do justice. A substitution for the obnoxious tithes, and a reform of the Church abuses, may restore to the clergy all their lost influence and popularity, nor yet encroach upon that decent and sufficing provision, beneath which, or above which, no minister can long preserve the respect of his flock. Upon the aggregate property of the Church none seek to make inroad, but all must feel that it would be much better secured by a more equal distribution, and by a timely reform, which, in order to ensure its friendly spirit, ought to emanate from the Church itself.

PRIMOGENITURE- Disinheriting a whole unoffending family, in order that the accident of an accident, viz., the eldest son of an eldest son, very possibly the last in merit, though the first in birth, may be endowed with the patrimony of his brothers and sisters, each of whom may exclaim

"Sum pauper, non culpa mea, sed culpa parentum,
Qui me fratre meo non genuere priùs."

Equally opposed to nature, reason, morality, and sound policy, this barbarous remnant of the doctrine which maintains the many to be made for the few, not the few for the many, has been a pregnant source of private as well as public corruption. The father whose estate is entailed has lost much of his moral influence over his children, being equally unable to reward the duty and affection of the juniors, or to controul and punish the excesses of his heir, whose independence too often occasions him to be prematurely extravagant, profligate, and unfilial. Numerous and notorious are the family feuds thus engendered, for Primogeniture destroys all the ties of consanguinity. An observant foreigner has noticed, that the English aristocracy, generally alienated from their eldest son, doat, nevertheless, on their eldest grandson, because they see in him an avenger of their wrongs, and the future tormenter of him by whom they them

selves have been tormented.

ture of perverted affection!

What a revolting pic

Nor are the social and fraternal feelings less distorted. With what a calm heartlessness will an elder son, rolling in wealth and luxury, see his brothers struggling with poverty, nor feel himself bound to offer them the least assistance! "I must live," sorrowfully exclaimed a poor cadet, when soliciting a smalþ loan from the heir of a rich family. "Je n'en vois pas la nécessité," was the brother's reply; and his unfeeling rejection of the suit was abundantly justified by that law of Primogeniture, which has completely superseded the law of nature. So much for its corrupting effects upon private life.

That it is not less demoralising in a public point of view, is established by the fact, that our aristocracy, for ages past, have had no other means of providing for their younger sons, than by making them statepaupers, and procuring them pensions, sinecures, civil or military appointments, and places in the colonies or the Church; so that they have a deep interest in upholding abuses of every description, and in monopolizing for their own order, and by an undue influence, those employments which ought to be open to merit, and to candidates of every class. What can we then expect from an unreformed House of Lords? Primogeniture, as a constituent element of nobility, begins in injustice, continues by acquiescence, and