love of the human race. No; they wore the mask of friendship and love, that unsuspected they might present the cup of poison, or point the knife of the assassin; there was no hatred on their lips, as there was no love in their hearts. In this country the subject has been brought before the public by a lover of his country, (Sir Samuel Romilly;) the public have listened, and only wait till the whole of the facts, and till the reasoning of both parties be fully developed, ere they determine which side they will sanction with their authority. The subject, till now, has not found the minds of our countrymen sufficiently at rest to take it up: accustomed to the intoxicating draughts of war attended with victory, they could not immediately descend from the highly elevated car, whence they viewed our armies victorious on land, our navies floating triumphant by the wrecks of their world-oppressing rivals, to the more humble, though equally useful, scenes of helping individual humanity. To prove, however, the justice and necessity of such a reform as this proposed, it is only required that we consider the subject coolly. Let us weigh it in every scale, and in every way we shall find the necessity of reform is pressing.
When man voluntarily joined himself with man, whether it was that he was tired of a life in which every moment was a moment of anxiety and fear, or that he was originally ordained by nature, to be an aggregating animal, none have denied, but that there were some stipulations, which, though neither exposed in writing, nor expressed by word of mouth, were supposed to have tacitly been formed—one of which must undoubtedly have been, that he should not be exposed to insult or offence from others—but in doing this, did he yield his life to be played with by the erring breath of every petty Lycurgus or Solon, who might with power in his hand lay down the
