Weekly national intelligencer. [volume] (Washington [D.C.]) 1841-1869, 1845-05-17
NATIONAL INTELLIGENCER.
NOTES ON NEW BOOKS.


The DEMOCRATIC REVIEW No. SO. Decd
edly, il is high time that this Magazine shoule
add to It's titles, as long since fairly won, another
for il surely was not, when begun near sever
years ago, named " democratic" only by figure 0
anticipation and, since it is the high doctrnal ane
literary organ of the Progressive" party is sure
ly time to move on to the further style of the De
mocratic Review, Dorr Indoctrinator, and Jacobir
Journal"
Though often presenting papers executed with 4
certain flow and facility which, in the present day
easily win the reputation of fine writing, no matter
how destitute OF those real qualites--hought truth
taste-which can alone inform any thing into excel
lence OF composition, the s. Democratic" rarely Of
fers any thing but literature as crude as its poll
tics are subversye. The erudton and the critical
judgment which assign in prose lofty rank to
Mr.. CORNELIUS MATHEWS, and in verse classic
splendor and purity to Miss ELIZABETH BARRETT,
are fairly matched with the political illumination
that can expound Agraranism and laud Dorrism.
For long time we have felt, in examining these
monthly issues of Radcalsm in verse and prose, in
morals politics, religion, and letters, that such
journal. the ever-ready vehicle of every wild idea
that could, under color of liberal opinions unsettle
the minds of the halfnformed and spread that sys-
tematc disorder from which bad men can shape
themselves sway of, tumult, was precisely what
Marat or Robespierre might have desired as the
sword and shield OF their system OF freedom, or
Jack Cade have tolerated as the promoter of such
learning as would have perfectly suited him. For,
after all, though not yet invented in that worthy's
day, there is a mode of that reading and writing
which he abhorred more fatal to knowledge and
virtue than his too sudden expedient of hanging
men, with their ink-horns about their necks. for
speaking Latin.
Cade was but a novice in destruction who saw.
indeed, admirably what was to be brought about,
that such as he might become the lords of all, and
establish In State a perpetual eminence for men
who can rule only amidst public infatuation; but
ne was headlong. He had wise horror of Latin
but to subyert it, he should have countenanced the
sort called canine, and uprooted Latin with Latin
itself, our Radicals overthrow all liberty by pro-
noting its excess. He detested books which, in
deed was natural enough in that unbalanced age,
when, few but the good and wise writing Them they
were the friends of sense and order and morality
Gould ne have known what French novel is, or
have heard OF Godwin's "Political JUSTICE or
Palne's Age OF Reason" he would have turned
patron OF literature, founded Democratic Review,
and have been not only its Mecenas or Augustus,
but perhaps one of its distinguished contributors.
All good, IN governments, philosophy, letters,
morals, and every thing else, is perpetual fight
against not only too little but too much and Of
these two the latter is usually far the more fatal
enemy; tor the love of whatever seems to carry
men forward is stronger than any opposite tenden-
Cyl vi philosophy, the dangerous foe has ever
oeen not british aversion TO knowledge but sophis-
Try, system-building, schools Of specialists that
generalize and refine too much instead of refusing
TO experiment and to think Letters have usually
decayed, not Of the want Of authors, but of their
growing numbers which swelled till literature fair
ly wrote itself out Of all credit Morals were pro-
gresslve until men grew tired of the plain the prac-
tca, the modest, and invented that exquisite code
called sentiment, which gave birth to the " Sen
timental Journey" Of that dissolute parson, Lau-
renee Sterne, to Rousseau's g Nouvelle Heoise y
and Confessions" to Goethe's Sorrows" of the
suicide seducer and his " Elective Afinities," TO
Bulwers /" Falkland" and Eugene Aram,' and to
the many like favorite books of the present very
moral day. which delights in pirate that talks po-
etry, and will let any man be villain upon the
easy condition of dscoursing all the while ethics
too pure for any practice but that of angels Reli-
gion threatens to become lost in the multiplication
OF sects; politics perishng of party; philan-
thropy is turning to raging and fighting fanaticism
which, to set free two and half millions of slaves,
would not only freely hazard the threats of as many
masters, but will aid in a national enormty worse
than slavery, because voluntary, with the prospect
OF bloody foreign war, and for the express pur-
pose of breaking up the Union So powerfully |
does, IN these and many other great instances the
extreme OF thing prove the surest instrument of
It's destruction.
Now, IN politics and government, there NAV be- as
IN every thing else, too much as well as too little
there may be too much power there may be too little
there may be too much governing, and there may be
sotte check upon individual will that in effect there
IS no real government al all, but every thing is the
sport OF the wild collective mass of individual pas
sons and notions, that fuctuate in every direction
and know as little any certain control of law as any
suggestion Of regular and intelligent policy or
plan. These seemingly opposite states are really
but the same both are despotsms: for what is al
despotism, after all but government in which the
public good Is not regarded, and where no man
knows what his rights are
II Is to this condition that Iacobnism strives all
the while to bring our Government BY continually
carrying it, through the allurement of greater and
greater freedom, into greater and greater absence
OF all restraint, and the substitution of each mans
personal will for law and constitution the deliberate
results of the choice of the entire society. Under
the forms and legal hindrances by which, in true
republic, each foregone conclusion Of the general
wisdom Is to be sustained, there is freedomthat is
there is public action within certain appointed
bounds, which neither they who WELD for the time
the public powers, nor they on whom those powers
act, can pass. On the other hand, the moment YOU
strike with impotence the law and transfer an un-
oridled authority elsewhere, whether to one or TO
many, II Is a TYRANNY misrlile. not govern