sign of throwing off all legal restraint; incapable of discerning, or at least comprehending, the great revolution that was going on in morals, politics, and religion, by alternately endeavoring to conciliate the different parties into which the state was split-at one moment courting the favor of the Presbyterians in Scotland, and the next, insisting on the immediate establishment of Episcopacy among them, in opposition at once to their prejudices and the plainest dictates of common sense, he shows that his object was only to gain their support, in order to domineer over the rest; faithless to his promises, when it became his interest to break instead of to keep them, he disgusted all men of probity and sense, and created a universal distrust among all classes-that greatest fault of which ever a sovereign can be guilty;-the more inexcusable, as it not only undermined his own authority, but opened the door to anarchy and confusion. Placing no confidence in their king, the people can have no respect for the laws; obedience to them, in all monarchical countries, springs directly from the spirit of loyalty, infused into them by educa'tion, and confirmed by habit, which has a visible object of worship in the person of the sovereign; distrusting him, they are cast into a state of utter doubt about everything; there is no point in which the ideas, the reasoning, the affections can centre; outward havoc and revolution soon bear witness to the inward conflict. It is idle, however, to suppose, as many often do, that the Revolution, in which Charles I. lost his life, and a military despot was placed at the head of a pretended free Commonwealth, was the work of design. Men were led to rebel against the government and faith of their ancestors, with no definite object in viewthey were uneasy with their present situation, in which the chains of tyranny galled them too severely; the mind had become active-ideas were propagated among the mass, which contained the germs of all that was hereafter to burst forth with such vigorous growth; the advocates of new theories and principles newly-discovered, were made fanatics by persecution-fanaticism ripened into hypocrisy, and hypocrisy, by a natural re-action, after the excesses and vices of reformers had made men look back with regret upon the days of the old regimé, was the cause of the overthrow of the very edifice it had so long and so laboriously helped to raise. Cromwell, like Napoleon, was the follower of chance-unlike the great man who came between them, whose judgment alone, guided by his piety, has achieved for him a far more enduring and grateful remembrance-and both, therefore, had no end in view; they floated along with the current of fortune, uncertain whither it would bear them; careless of the thousands they trampled down in their course, and both vainly endeavoring to transmit to their descendants the power to which they had been finally conducted.

Such was the age in which Milton lived-society agitated to its very centre-the bonds which held it together well-nigh ruptured-civil war devastating the country-a king disputing, inch by inch, the patrimony of his ancestors, with a stern, uncompromising bigot-sects let loose against each other-Roundheads and Cavaliers, Presbyterians, Episcopalians, and Catholics, virulently abusing one another, each striving for the supremacy-everything in commotion-how was it possible for a mind like Milton's to escape the contagion? It did not escape it; but the genial influences of religion and philosophy were at hand to soothe and elevate it. Like the sage of old, he was thrown into the fiery fur

nace, but, like him, he came forth unscathed. The inspirations of the prophets and apostles he drank in with a holy ardor-throwing off the superstitions and prejudices which sixteen centuries of ignorance had engendered-rejecting the dogmas of fallible men, and the decrees of human councils, he turned, with devout reverence, to the pages in which are recorded the sublime teachings of the Great Master-finding there that life, and drawing thence that faith, which, by its purity and its sublimity, is destined to regenerate the world.

Shakspeare, on the contrary, lived in an age of no political excitement; tragic events, indeed, were happening, both abroad and at homeas they happen in every age and every country;-but though they may have afforded subjects for his muse to dwell upon, they had no influence upon it. Had they never occurred, he would have been what he isother events, equally startling in tragedy, equally ludicrous in comedy, would have been sought for. He would have found in the history of other times, and other countries, what he had but to look around him to witness in his own; the events of his age were not the results of any progressive action of the mind-they were isolated in their nature, so far as all events can be isolated which proceed solely from the passions, which have been the same since the creation of man. Chateaubriand has amused himself in giving a summary of the principal events of Shakspeare's times; and at the close says: "The very genius of the age wakened the genius of Shakspeare." It may have wakened it, but it had not the same influence upon it as the era of Cromwell had upon that of Milton; it did not mould it. Shakspeare might have laid one hand on the hoary heads menaced by the last, but three, of the Tudors, and the other on the auburn locks of the second of the Stuarts; -on that head which was painted by Vandyke, and subsequently struck off by the Parliament party. Filling this position, contemplating these tragic objects, the great poet descended into the tomb. His life was employed in drawing his spectres and his blind kings, in depicting female sorrow, and the punishment of ambition, so as to unite, by analogous fictions, the realities of the past with the realities of the future.". Vol. I., p. 299.

Shakspeare cared not for his fame; his genius was great, but his foresight little. He seems scarcely to have comprehended the extent of his powers; he wrote because nature prompted him; he analyzed man because he discerned the texture of humanity; but not a thought did he cast on posterity; he threw his plays out into the world, and left them to take care of themselves. Milton, on the other hand, was plainly conscious of his great abilities; the ferment of the times had kindled in his mind those latent sparks of universal benevolence, which only wanted some occasion to call them forth; he engaged with all the force of his intellect and his heart in the sublime work of reformation and regeneration, to which his age was summoned.

We have hardly alluded to many points which we should be glad to discuss and to which we hope to be able to do ample justice in another number; beside criticising somewhat more at length the work which stands at the head of our present article.

RATIONALE OF LAND REFORM.

THE "Land Reform" has now attained such considerable importance, that its discussion is not offensive in any circle of society. Its progress has been as rapid as that of any other reform of recent centuries. Its trinity of principles-Homestead Exemption, Freedom of the Public Lands to actual settlers only, and Land Limitation—are so richly laden with good to the masses, that all minds of accurate thought, and of more than ordinary benevolence, have readily espoused them on being made acquainted with their foundation and tendency.

In giving a brief statement of the Rationale of this reform, we shall not refer to its history while the Gracchi-those glorious sons of the noble Cornelia agitated Rome, from its centre to its circumference, with an exposure of the dreadful evils of land monopoly, the oppressions of the patricians, and the poverty of those who had fought for their country; neither shall we stop to summon from impartial historians the proof of the greatness, both of head and heart, of those pioneers of Land Reform; nor the evidence that the term " Agrarianism," used as one of reproach, is entirely free from all connection with falsehood and wrong, which it is usually made to represent by the enemies of progress.

We can leap from the epoch of these martyrs, to the great cause of Free Homes for a Free People, several centuries toward the present, and beginning with the heart of the " Middle Ages," still find, that there is nothing in Land Reform that should be considered strange, or foreign to that stupendous system of policy out of which the rights of those who speak the English language, both in Europe and America, have grown, and by which they have been maintained. We shall show, in this paper, that the liberties of the people were originally offered up on the altar of land monopoly, and that all progress that has been or will be made, whether in Great Britain or America, has been, and will continue to be, made at the expense of that usurpation which a few have maintained over the people's earth. Every advance that is made in popular freedom and equality, is an invasion of monopoly, and Liberty will not consummate her missiou until the right of every human being to a free home is practically enforced, and all monopolies of wealth entirely suppressed.

The first question arising here, is, as to the morale of ownership in the soil. Venturing the charge of paradox, we shall assert, that the moral right of an individual to the soil does not cover one inch more than he desires to use for a home, and for cultivation with his own hand. As long as a single individual is in'want of acres for his comfort, so long is it wrong for one to hold more than his necessities require This is a legitimate conclusion from the great truth, the major premise, that every human being has a right to a portion of the earth, because he cannot exist without the fruits which the earth produces; and those whom he finds in possession of the soil, have no right to impose a single condition on which he shall hold a place in which and from which he shall exist for if they have, then have they the power of life and death over all who may come into the world, which is a rank absurdity. The absolute right, then, in an ethical point of view, covers no more land than the possessor desires

to cultivate with his own hands; and, therefore, the whole system of landlordry and tenantry is wrong, and a blasphemy on the name of Him who fashioned the earth, and created every one with the equal and inalienable right to its enjoyment.

This is paradoxical, we grant, for no political or moral philosopher, in good standing, has dared to question the moral right of an individual to as much of the earth as he can bargain for. Land monopoly has been universally held consistent with true Christianity, by our great teachers, and he who has had the presumption to call it wrong, has been spurned, until within a brief period, as a robber and an infidel.

The great doctrines, of the absolute right of each to as much of the earth as he needs, and of no one to more, as well as of the inalienability of the homestead, are but the latest manifestation of the same Land Reform that has been in progress ever since the Great Charter was extorted from John, at Runing-Mead, or since Henry I. found it politic to voluntarily correct some of the abuses of the Feudal Tenure. This reform can be traced through English history for nearly a thousand years, and every step taken has been thought an invasion of the moral right, of the great baron to all that was transmitted from his ancestors, or acquired by his own prowess or sagacity.

For ages after that valiant robber, the Norman, subdued England, and introduced the feudal system in its purity, the king was considered the rightful lord paramount, the exclusive proprietor, of all the lands of the realm and that no man doth or can possess any part of it, but what has mediately or immediately been derived as a gift from him, to be held upon feudal services." These were the ages of land monopoly in the zenith of its glory; and the fruit thereof, was the reduction of the mass of the people to villeinage and slavery. William the Conqueror divided England unto his chiefs, that they might continue interested in his safety, and be able to keep the conquered Britons in subjection. Let us consult Hume, and see how munificently this mighty land-robber and monopolist partitioned the realm among his favorites:

"He gave, for instance, to Hugh de Abrincis, his sister's son, the whole county of Chester, which he erected into a palatinate, and rendered by his grant almost independent of the crown. Robert, Earl of Montaigne, had 973 manors and lordships; Allan, Earl of Brittany and Richmond, 442; Odo, Bishop of Baieux, 439; Geoffrey, Bishop of Coutanee, 280; Walter Gifford, Earl of Buckingham, 107; William, Earl of Warrenne, 298, besides 28 towns and hamlets in Yorkshire; Todenei, 81; Roger Bigod, 123; Robert, Earl of Eu, 119; Roger Mortimer, 132, besides several hamlets; Robert de Stanford, 130; Walter de Eurus. Earl of Salisbury, 46; Geoffrey de Mandeville, 118; Richard de Clare, 171; Hugh de Beauchamp, 47; Baldwin de Ridous, 164; Henry de Farrars, 222; William de Percy, 119; Norman d'Arcy, 33. Sir Henry Spellman computes, that, in the large county of Norfolk, there were not, in the Conqueror's time, above sixty-six proprietors of land. Men, possessed of such princely fortunes and jurisdictions, could not be long retained in the rank of subjects. The great Earl of Warrenne, in a subsequent reign, when he was questioned concerning his right to the lands which he possessed, drew his sword, which he produced as his title, adding, that William the Bastard did not conquer the kingdom himself, but that the barons, and his ancestor among the rest, were joint adventurers in the enterprise."*

* Hume's England, vol 1, page 450. Phillips, Sampson & Co., Boston.

Land monopoly, therefore, first arose from robbery, devastation, and war. The right of might is the only right by which it ever has been, is, or can be sustained. As the Earl of Warrenne rested his title upon his sword, so the monopolists of our day repose their right securely upon the parchments, with the seal of the state, which is backed by the whole army of the nation, if not respected. The principle which supported the right of the earl, still upholds the absentee landlord of Ireland, and the servant of the queen's household who holds 30,000 acres in Michigan, the citizen of England who owns 20,000 acres in Wisconsin, and the land speculators of Boston and New-York, who have title-deeds for thousands of acres in the West, whose value is increasing out of the toil and sweat of the hardy settler. Some may say they have purchased their deeds by money they have made; this changes not the principle; it is still the right of might-the might of mind, which is the gift of God, to be used for enriching, instead of impoverishing the poor, by extorting from their labor, and driving them from all use of the soil, except that of the public highways, the public parks, and the Potter's fields, for the burial of the homeless, the penniless and friendless!

Should a thousand adventurers discover an island, and one hundred of the principal men seize the whole, and divide it to the nine hundred according to their pleasure, exacting such services or rental for its use as would gratify their ambition or avarice, we would consider the transaction wholly indefensible on any moral ground. But should they make war upon the nations, destroy, or subjugate them as slaves, and also seize the lands as before stated, we should not hesitate to pronounce the affair one of the grossest outrages that could be committed against human nature.

Not unlike this was the introduction of the feudal system by those northern conquerors who triumphed over Europe and the British Isles. Before they advanced upon the Roman provinces of the continent, the lands were held in pure allodium-that is, wholly independent of any claim of superiors. The Salii, Burgundians, and Franks, broke in upon Gaul, the Visigoths on Spain, and the Lombards upon Italy, and carried with them that northern system of polity which was chiefly distinguished as a vast military system, serving at once to distribute and protect the territories they had newly acquired. They had scarcely established themselves in their new dominions, says Blackstone, when the wisdom of their constitutions, as well as their personal valor, alarmed those princes of Europe who had revolted from the Roman power, and they adopted the same plan of policy for their own defence. In this manner was the feudal system gradually extended all over the continent, before William the Norman carried it to England. The military strength of the system forced those of a different policy to adopt it for self-defence, among whom feudal chiefs had settled. Those who took lands of a superior, obliged themselves to defend their lord's territories and titles against all enemies, and to march under his command whenever he chose to make war upon a neighboring chief.

"Besides an oath of fealty, cr profession of faith to the lord, which was the parent of our oath of allegiance, the vassal or tenant, upon investiture, did usually homage to his lord; openly and humbly kneeling, being ungirt, uncovered, and holding up his hands both together, between those of the lord, who sat before him, and then professing, that he did become his man, from that day