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the other, he cannot refuse them without creating unfounded suspicions, and unjustly prejudicing himself. The negative evils are quite as great; perhaps greater. In this case, the mischievous consequences of the law recur in one or other of three different forms. The questionable problem of his return must often prevent a particular person from being originally placed in the situation for which he is best adapted. In other words, the test of the qualifications of public servants, becomes what is the probability of their re-election. It will not be so much the selection of the Prime Minister, as the calculation of the Treasury runners. Again, owing to this regulation, the result of translating a member of the government from one department to another, is to make two vacancies; and accordingly to produce two elections instead of one. A temptation is thus created, to keep down experience and ability below the rank to which they otherwise would rise, and to raise inexperienced novices over their heads. Lastly, the evident tendency of vacating the seat of a member of the House of Commons on accepting office, whilst a member of the House of Lords is exposed to no similar liability, is to fill up by means of peers all the offices which peers can conveniently hold. Were there any reason in the rule laid down by the statute of 1706, some measure of analogy should have been meted out in the case of the two Houses. The actual anomaly in our proceedings with respect to them, amounts to a contradiction. The House of Lords is affecting a legislative equality with the House of Commons. It is the language of the Constitution. Yet, the purity and independence of the one have been guarded with almost a feverish lover's apprehensive jealousy; while, not only no equivalent precautions, but no precautions at all have been taken for the virtue of the other.

There are other and serious injuries, arising out of the present law, which are the same in kind, (differing only in degree), whether the change of Administration is total or partial. A Minister is hurried away from his office at the very moment when in all probability his personal presence there is of the most importance; and he is forced to waste on the petty details of his election the time and the attention which he ought to be devoting to the pressing exigencies of the state. Then, the expense of elections is a much greater public, as well as private, evil than the generality of people sufficiently consider. Except in a few highly praiseworthy instances, this still continues to be a severe tax on honourable ambition. If public life should not be expected to enrich, far less ought it wantonly to impoverish. The career on which a public man has entered gives the public a positive interest in

his pecuniary independence. Every unnecessary re-election is an unnecessary aggravation of one of the most painful circumstances attendant on the working of a popular Government, according to the expensive habits with which elections are usually conducted. These habits are among the evils which we have inherited from the old system, and which have not as yet been at all efficiently reformed by the Reform bill. Even in cases untouched by corruption, the expense is a hardship and a peril which the country is bound in honour and in prudence to reduce as low as possible; especially in the instances of those, who may fairly be presumed to be among its most laborious and most distinguished servants. The last objection we will mention is the false notion, so zealously circulated by political opponents, and so foolishly adopted by a considerable portion of the community, that the result of these partial elections is any adequate criterion of the popularity of an Administration. In propor

tion to the value of a correct test is the mischief of a fallacious one. A thousand local circumstances may account for the success or failure of this or that candidate, without the slightest reference to the merits of the Government of which he is a member. Besides, a Government may happen to be very unpopular in one or two places, whilst it is in full possession of the confidence of the majority of the nation.

We feel certain that this subject cannot be much longer left in its present unsatisfactory condition. Persons who wish to form a just estimate of its real importance must have recourse to Lord Northampton's pamphlet. In taking leave of the alarmists, who are transferring to our own times the fear of that undue influence which modern reductions has pretty well demolished, it may be as well to warn them that jealousy defeats its object, unless it is directed to proper points. This point never could be a proper one; or, if it were so formerly, it has ceased to be so now. The eloquent patrons of popular control and popular criteria, cannot be more thoroughly convinced than we ourselves are, that the Constitution ought to be armed with summary means both for ascertaining the opinion of the people concerning the conduct of the Govern ment, and for enforcing that opinion. A free government is a noble but difficult experiment. It wants every aid. Its institutions are healthy and secure only just in proportion as political knowledge is disseminated, and as the interest of the Commonwealth (that inspiring word!) is made by the public spirit of individuals the personal interest of every member in the state. For this purpose, the liberty of the press, the right of petitioning, an unlimited freedom of assembly and of discussion in open meetings, are the appropriate and sufficient means. It is thus

that the political opinions of individuals will best be formed, collected, and expressed. But, in this there is nothing to distinguish the case of an Administration-as regards the forming or the joining one-from a hundred other cases. And we have no hesitation in saying, that the mechanism of a representative Government is organically false in its principle, and will of necessity become cumbersome and disorderly in its practice, which is so contrived as to lodge a specific restraint upon the Executive any where else than in Parliament itself.

ART. IV.-Lectures on Intellectual Philosophy. By the late JOHN YOUNG, L.L.D., Professor of Philosophy in Belfast College. With a Memoir of the Author. Edited by WILLIAM CAIRNS, A. M., Professor of Logic and Belles Lettres in Belfast College. 8vo. Glasgow: 1835.

DR R YOUNG, as we learn from the Memoir prefixed to this work, was a native of Glasgow, who had distinguished himself as a student during his university career, notwithstanding numerous difficulties and disadvantages, which the inherent force of his mind, and his persevering habits of study, enabled him to overcome. On the establishment of a College in Belfast, in the north of Ireland, he was chosen Professor of Moral Philosophy, and continued for many years to discharge the duties of that situation with credit to himself, and with advantage to the seminary with which he was connected. His death took place in March, 1829; and, judging from the numerous tributes which were paid to his memory in the periodical and other publications of the north of Ireland, he must have occupied a high place in the estimation of that intelligent community.

Simplification is the leading object of all the recent classifications of the phenomena of mind; and to this object the labours of the late Dr Thomas Brown, unquestionably one of the most illustrious metaphysicians of this or any other country, were especially directed. It must, however, be confessed that, if Dr Brown had the merit of bringing within a narrower circle the multiplied powers' and faculties' of preceding systems, his own was disfigured by a somewhat fantastic terminology. What, for instance, is the value of his grand distinction between the internal and external states of mind?' When the subject is regarded philosophically, is there not an anomaly, if not a positive absurdity, in the very expression external states,'

as referable to the mind? It is true, Dr Brown explains his meaning to be, that the two phenominal classes in question are denominated according to the nature of the circumstances which precede them;' but if this ground of distinction be sustained, then must we denominate intellectual states generally according to their antecedent circumstances; and hence his subdivision of the internal states' into intellectual conditions and emotions, is at once rendered nugatory; for emotions are most frequently the effect of external causes operating upon the mind. The greater number of our emotions ought, therefore, according to Dr Brown's own rule, to be referred to the class of external states' of the mind; and thus one of the leading peculiarities of his system is destroyed. It may, however, be alleged, that the emotions referred to are produced by external causes only indirectly; as their first effect is the consciousness of a certain sensation, which, in its turn, calls up a corresponding emotion, according to the fixed laws of our intellectual nature; but to this, it is obvious to answer, that the sensation is just as much an internal affection of the mind as is the emotion which follows it. The one possesses not a whit more of real externality than the other; and hence, if we wish to describe things by their own nature, and not by the nature of other things with which they have nothing in common, we must reject the absurdity of seeming to place affections outside the mind, which are truly in it. We do not mean to deny that an important difference exists between the two classes of phenomena referred to; which difference cannot be overlooked without involving the errors of Condillac, and of the later school of French sensualism: what we mean to say is, that it would be quite as proper for a scientific astronomer to asume that the earth is the centre of the planetary system, and to make his deductions accordingly, as for a scientific enquirer into the phenomena of consciousness to talk of states of consciousness external' to that consciousness itself. In another respect also, the terminology of Dr Brown is defective. Not content with ordinary language, he has invented the terms simple and relative suggestion to take the place of the more intelligible terms, memory, and judgment,―meaning by the latter the faculty of discriminating relations. When the system of Dr Brown, therefore, is divested of its technicalities, it amounts to this, that the whole of the primary phenomena of consciousness are reducible to three classes, viz. sensation, memory, and judgment; for the class of feelings indicated by the strange phrase 'external affections,' is simple sensation; and the intellectual 'states' comprehended under the first division of the internal 'affections,' are memory and judgment, disguised under the names

of simple and relative suggestion. The class of 'emotions' is common to the systems both of Dr Brown and of the writer before us, and may be conveniently enough omitted in a comparison between them; especially as emotions are usually referred to a distinct head of metaphysical enquiry, and are to be regarded as in some sense consequents depending upon the previous exercise of the powers which we have named; although it is admitted that emotions constitute in themselves a totally distinct class of mental phenomena from those whose antecedent developement in the order of nature we have supposed to be necessary. The system of Dr Young is, that sensation, memory, and judgment are the three primary elements of all our various forms of consciousness; and our object has been to show that, in reality, this is Dr Brown's classification, when the latter is stated in the language of common life. We are aware that Dr Brown's general division is nominally only twofold; though, if characteristic distinctness of phenomena be regarded, it ought to have been at once made fourfold, including emotions; or if it be necessary, as it perhaps is, to consider the circumstances which precede intellectual affections in arranging them into classes, the Sensation and Reflection of Locke would have been a more intelligible nomenclature than that which Dr Brown has adopted. Simple and relative sugges tion are with Dr Brown pro forma merely subdivisions of one general class; but when allowance is made for differences of phraseology, his account of the primary affections of the mind will be found to correspond with that of Dr Young, at least in all points that are of any importance in such enquiries.

We have been thus particular in our notice of the opinions of Dr Brown, on account of this virtual coincidence between his system and that of Dr Young, and which the latter in a passage of one of his lectures, written after the publication of Dr Brown's work, declares to have been entirely accidental. The division of the intellectual powers to which we have adverted was certainly that with which Dr Young commenced his academical prelections in Belfast, in the year 1815; and, indeed, he may himself have adopted its outline from others; for the threefold division in question is by no means peculiar to him. The general tendency of his speculations led him strongly to the adoption of a simplified scheme of classification; but not less so to the enforcement of certain fundamental laws of human belief,' and the consequent expulsion of philosophical scepticism from its own peculiar strongholds.

In regard to one important principle, which, since the time of Hartley, has been extensively applied to mental analysis by some philosophers, the opinions of Dr Young are expressed with

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