nence and advancement in the state, than by contriving and patronizing laws of public utility.

When intelligence of the condition, wants, and occasions of the people is thus collected from every quarter; when such a variety of invention, and so many understandings are set at work upon the subject, it may be presumed that the most eligible expedient, remedy, or improvement, will occur to some one or other; and when a wise counsel or beneficial regulation is once suggested, it may be expected from the disposition of an assembly so constituted as the British House of Commons is, that it cannot fail of receiving the approbation of a majority.

To prevent those destructive contentions for the supreme power, which are sure to take place where the members of the state do not live under an acknowledged head and a known rule of succession; to preserve the people in tranquillity at home by a speedy and vigorous execution of the laws; to protect their interest abroad by strength and energy in military operations, by those advantages of decision, secrecy, and despatch, which belong to the resolutions of monarchical councils ;-for these purposes, the Constitution has committed the executive government to the administration and limited authority of a hereditary Sovereign.

In the defence of the empire; in the maintenance of its power, dignity, and privileges with foreign nations; in the advancement of its trade by treaties and conventions; and in providing for the general administration of municipal justice, by a proper choice and appointment of magistrates,-the inclination of the Sovereign and of the people usually coincides; in this part therefore of the regal office, the constitution intrusts the prerogative with ample powers.

The dangers principally to be apprehended from regal government, relate to the two articles taxation and punishment.

Accordingly, every law which, by the remotest construction, may be deemed to levy taxes upon the property of the subject, must originate, that is, must first be proposed and assented to, in the House of Commons. By this regulation the levying of taxes is almost exclusively reserved to the popular part of the Constitution, who, it is presumed, will not tax themselves, nor their fellow-subjects, without being first convinced of the necessity of the aids which they grant.

The application also of the public supplies, is watched with the

:

same circumspection as the assessment. Many taxes are annual ; the produce of others is mortgaged, or appropriated to specific services the expenditure of all of them is accounted for in the House of Commons, just as computations of the charge of the purpose for which they are wanted, are previously submitted to the same tribunal.

In the infliction of punishment again, the power of the Crown and of the magistrate appointed by the Crown is confined by the most precise limitations. The guilt of the offender must be pronounced by twelve men of his own order, indifferently chosen out of the county where the offence was committed, while the punishment, or the limits to which the punishments may be extended, are ascertained and affixed to the crime, by laws which know not the person of the criminal.

And whereas arbitrary or clandestine confinement is the injury most to be dreaded from the strong hand of the executive government, because it deprives the prisoner at once of protection and defence, and delivers him into the power, and to the malicious or interested designs of his enemies, the Constitution has provided against this danger with double solicitude. The ancient writ of habeas corpus, the habeas corpus Act of Charles II. and the practice and determination of our sovereign courts of justice founded upon these laws, afford a complete remedy for every conceivable case of illegal imprisonment.

THE IDEA OF A STATE.

What constitutes a State ?

Not high-raised battlement or labour'd mound,
Thick wall or moated gate;

Not cities proud with spires and turrets crown'd ;

Not bays and broad-arm'd ports,

Where, laughing at the storm, rich navies ride;
Not starr'd and spangled courts,

Where low-bred baseness wafts perfume to pride:
No; men, high-minded men,

With powers as far above dull brutes endued,
In forest, brake, or den,

As beasts excel cold rocks and brambles rude:

Men, who their duties know;

But know their rights; and knowing, dare maintain; Prevent the long-aim'd blow,

And crush the tyrant while they rend the chain. These constitute a State;

And Sovereign Law, that State's collected will, O'er thrones and globes elate,

Sits empress, crowning good, repressing ill. Smit by her sacred frown,

The fiend Dissension like a vapour sinks;

And e'en the all-dazzling crown.

LESSONS ON BOTANY.

GENERAL DIVISION OF PLANTS.

A PLANT consists of certain parts which are called organs. The root, stem, and leaves are concerned in the nourishment of the plant, and are called nutritive organs; while the flowers are connected with the production of seeds, and are denominated reproductive organs. Some plants produce flowers and seeds, and are called flowering or phanerogamous; while others do not produce flowers, but have peculiar organs which give origin to germs, equivalent to seeds, and they are hence called flowerless or cryptogamous. To the former division belong our ordinary trees, shrubs, and herbaceous flowering plants; to the latter belong ferns, mosses, lichens, sea-weeds, and mushrooms.

In flowering plants the seed contains the young or embryo plant, either alone, as in the bean, pea, and wallflower (Fig. 1), or associated with a separate store of nourishment, as in the coco-nut, the cereal grasses, and the pansy (Fig. 2). When the skin of a bean or pea is removed, the young plant is found within, consisting of the rudimentary root and stem, with two

FIG. 1.3

FIG. 2.4

large lobes called cotyledons; these cotyledons in the pea are

1 Greek words phaneros, conspicuous, and yamos, reproduction. 2 Greek words cryptos, inconspicuous, and gamos, reproduction.

3 (Fig. 1.) Section of the seed of the common wallflower, showing the covering marked by a dark line, and the embryo or young plant inside, of a white colour, occupying the whole of the interior of the seed. On one side are seen the cotyledons or seed-lobes c, and on the other r the radicle or portion of the axis whence the root proceeds. A narrow dark line shows the folding of the radicle on the cotyledons.

4 (Fig. 2.) The seed of the common pansy or heart's-ease, cut vertically with its point of attachment h. The dark outer lines indicate the coverings of the seed, the white body in the centre is the embryo plant with its two cotyledons co, and its radicle r, and the dotted mass a surrounding it, is nourishing matter, stored up for the young plant.

thick and fleshy, and constitute the great bulk of the seed (Fig. 3). In the case of the coco-nut, the seed, which is contained within the hard shell, consists principally of a mass of nourishing matter (the white part used for food), in a cavity of which, at the end where the hole in the shell exists, the little embryo plant lies. The embryo is a small and somewhat club-shaped body: its parts are the rudimentary root, and the stem

GO

r

FIG. 3.1

with a single cotyledon, which is wrapped round it (Fig. 4). In flowerless plants, in place of seeds little germs are formed, called

e

spores,3 which do not exhibit any sepa-
rate parts and have no cotyle-
don (Fig. 5). Thus all the
plants in the world are divided
into three great classes, founded

on the nature of their embryo, FIG. 5.4 viz. 1. Dicotyledonous plants, having two cotyledons or seed-lobes or seed-leaves (Fig 6); 2. Monocotyledonous plants, in which there is one cotyledon (Fig. 7); and 3. Acotyledonous plants in which there is no cotyledon (Fig. 8). The first two divisions embrace flowering or phanerogamous plants, the last, flowerless or cryptogamous. Here we see a natural division of the vegetable productions of the globe, and we observe to some extent the plan on which they were formed by the Creator.

1 (Fig. 3.) The embryo or young plant of the pea separated from the coverings of the seed. This embryo consists of two cotyledons or fleshy seed-lobes cc, which remain underground when the plant sprouts; a general axis t to which the cotyledons are attached, and which gives origin to the radicle r, and the young ascending bud g, forming stein and leaves ultimately. The depression in which the young bud lies when the lobes are folded together, is marked f.

2 (Fig. 4.) Section of a part of the seed of the coco-nut showing the abundant nourishing matter p, which constitutes the eatable white part of the seed, and the small club-shaped embryo plant e, lying in a cavity at one end; the upper part is the radicle, and the lower is the young bud wrapped up in a single cotyledon.

4 (Fig. 5.) Spore or cellular body, which represents the seed and embryo in flowerless plants. There is no cotyledon present.

5 Greek words dis, twice, and cotyledon, a seed-lobe.

6 Greek words monos, one, and cotyledon.

7 Greek word a, meaning privation or absence, and cotyledon.