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tion, (the votes by which the choice is finally made being the votes of states as represented in their electoral colleges, and the votes of individual citizens being given not for the president directly but for the presidential electors,) it may on that very account be so much the better for the purpose of illustration.

You are inquiring then, in reference to the election of a president, how your vote may be given so as to tell most effectually for the true welfare of the country. We give for your guidance these suggestions; and it is for you to say whether they do not commend themselves to your common sense and to your conscience.

1. Is there any great question concerning the public welfare, which this election will decide? Does the question of a war with Britain or with Mexico, or the question of the extension of the area of slavery, or the question of abolishing the infamous slave-trade in the District of Columbia, or the question of sweeping away all the old corruptions of the Post-Office Department,-hang trembling in the scales of this election? Is one of the two leading candidates pledged one way, and his party with him; while the other candidate and his party are pledged the other way? And is it a matter of doubt which of these two candidates will be successful? Is it obvious that the defeat of one particular candidate, whose prospects of success are such as stimulate his friends to every effort, is the only human possibility of preventing that great national mischief and wickedness to which he is committed ?

2. Supposing this to be the case, you come next to the question, whether your ballot and your personal influence in your legitimate sphere can make any difference in the result. Is the result doubtful so far as your own state is concerned? -for you know, it is there only that your ballot can be counted. Are

the opinions of your fellow-citizens in your own state so divided that it can not be known, till the votes are counted, which side is to preponderate? Is there a possibility, on the one hand, that the six votes, or the twelve, or the thirty-six, which the electoral college of your state is to give in the final election, will be given for the candidate and the party that are pledged to put the country upon some new career of crime, or pledged against some great and salutary reformation? And is there also a possibility, on the other hand, that your ballot and the ballots of those with whom you have some influence and who will be likely to go with you, will be just what is wanted to turn the scales the other way, and to make out a plurality for a different ticket? Suppose that, in such a case, you and your friends, instead of uniting to defeat the candidate that has pledged himself to a policy of wickedness and mischief, permit yourselves to be controled by party discipline; and accordingly, bewildered with the idea that the cohesion of your party is the first thing to be regarded, you give your ballots for him; and your ballots determine the vote of your state, and the vote of your state determines the election. Or suppose that instead of casting your ballots in such a way that they shall be of some avail in the counting, you throw them away upon some third ticket, with precisely the same result. There is one of these United States, whose electoral votes, four years ago, turned the scale for the immediate annexation of Texas and for all the crimes and mischiefs which that measure could not but draw after it. The electoral college which gave those fatal votes was chosen not by a majority, but only by a plurality. Of that plurality there were thousands who gave their ballots, protesting against the impolicy and the iniquity of the measure to which their candidate was pledged, and which was

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in fact the one great issue. Had they then broken their shackles as they have since done-had they then voted manfully against the nomination of their party, all the results would have been reversed. There would have been no immediate annexation-no Mexican warno squandering of a hundred and fifty millions of our treasure-no slaughtering of twenty thousand of our citizens-no extension of the area of slavery-and no "old Rough and Ready" to be hurraed into the presidency. Nay, had those other thousands in that same state, who, instead of meeting the question really at issue, yielded themselves up to be governed by a narrow formula -had those men who threw their votes away upon a ticket for which they knew there was no chance of success-voted for that other lead ing candidate whose pledges were for peace and against the madness of immediate annexation, they would have saved their country.

3. The two preceding questions are often to be answered in the negative. If it so happens that there is no great issue of peace or war, of freedom or slavery, of justice or iniquity, involved in the choice between two leading candidates ;-or if it so happens that there is no doubt which way your state will go, and no chance that your vote will have any effect on the issue ;-then the question of your duty may be determined by other considerations, which under the former hypothesis were in abeyance. Your vote in such a case may be regarded not as a power that is to affect the result, but as a testimony that is to bear upon the formation and utterance of public opinion. In such a case, questions like these demand a serious consideration. Can I give my vote, either alone or by agreement with others, in such a way as to testify against slavery? Is there any way in which my vote may be made effective as a testimony against the pas

sion for war and the mad admiration of military glory? Is there any way in which my vote will tend to the disorganization and dispersion of those great factions which have turned politics into a meaner game than that of the cock-pit, and all the offices and honors of the Union and of the states into one great fund of corruption? Is there any way in which my vote can tell against the demoralizing practice of conferring honors and emoluments upon unworthy men? In the case now supposed, such considerations as these are the great considerations by which your action may reasonably and safely be determined.

If other questions arise, of which we have taken no notice, let it be remembered that we have not at tempted a complete analysis and discussion of the subject, but only to offer such thoughts of our own as may stimulate inquiry in other minds, and may lead in the end to a full and exact investigation in some other quarter. Far less do we attempt to give the mechanical rules of duty that shall supersede the necessity of thought; we would rather waken our readers to the conviction that in such a matter as this they can not perform their duty at all without thinking and inquiring earnestly for themselves. Duty and thought are intimately connected with each other. A crea ture made for duty is a creature made for thought. The science of doing right in all the complicated relations in which men live and act, can never be reduced to a few self-applying formulæ by which the necessity of deliberation, inquiry and analysis shall be done away. The practical and prudential understanding, perceiving fitnesses and tendencies, and the relation of means to ends, can not be safely trusted unless it is invigorated by a living and healthy moral sense; and on the other hand, the moral sense, if it does not constantly summen to

its aid and hold under its control all the thinking powers,-if it indolent ly and slavishly yields itself to the dominion of one narrow formula and another, becomes perverted, dull,

diseased, and loses its vital sympathy with Him, the Infinite Wisdom, who "is light and with whom is no darkness at all."

LITERARY NOTICES.

The Genius of Scotland; or Sketches of Scottish Scenery, Literature and Religion. By ROBERT TURNBULL. Third edition. New York and Pittsburg. Robert Carter.

1847.

THE emigrant leaves his early home, and yet in a most import ant sense brings it with him. The scenery on which his eyes first opened, and with which his senses in childhood were familiar, never fades from his recollections. It haunts his memory through all his life. The manners, domestic and social, with which his earlier years were encompassed as with the atmosphere, seem the only natural and rational manners. The early recollections of the great men of his country; the great in arms, in literature and religion, are invested with an interest which he can not transfer to the heroes of his adopted land.

It is not surprising that he should desire to communicate to others these recollections which are to him so dear, and the feelings which these recollections inspire. If he have an ardent temper, he longs to excite the sympathies of others, in the things which interest him so intensely, and can not avoid the effort to introduce them to his new friends, and to explain his love for his early home. If he can write, it is not at all surprising that he should seek by a book to lead his adopted country men to understand the secret of his attachment to the land of his Fathers.

We honor this impulse. It is generous and elevating. We value

its results. We believe it will make American literature more liberal and catholic than that of England. It will also enrich it with a variety and copiousness which the literature of no other country has seen. The Scotchman, the German, and the Sclavonian, may be expected to acquaint us with their world of thought and feeling, and to make familiar to us their peculiar national spirit.

The work before us was written by a native of Scotland, who has been favorably known as a writer, for his pleasant style and generous enthusiasm. A year or two since, after his return from a visit to his native land-in which his youthful remembrances had been revived, and his youthful enthusiasm had been re-inspired-he was prompted to write the volume before us the object of which should be "in an easy, natural way, to give his readers an adequate conception of the Scenery, Literature and Religion of Scotland." The uniqueness of the design is only surpassed by the felicity of its execution. There are woven together the incidents of personal adventure-conversations with Scottish peasants-descriptions of scenery-with sketches of Knox, Burns, Wilson, and Chalmers, and others. This various matter might seem to involve confusion and disorder; but the writer has managed to express himself in a style so natural and flowing, and to pass from one to another of his various themes, by transitions so easy and graceful, as to produce an instructive and de

tion of profane history as "Philoso phy Teaching by Example."

Several of the leading incidents in sacred history, are here considered in their relations to the funda mental principles of morality, and to both the moral and the providential government of God. These incidents, in themselves so fitted to arrest attention, are thus brought be fore the mind in an attractive and instructive manner, and are applied to the use for which they were chiefly recorded. The style of the author is lucid, and sometimes ele gant; occasionally too rhetorical for the general character of the work. He commonly avoids vexed questions in theology; though in considering the "origin and issues of sin," in the first chapter, he seems to be needlessly confused for want of just views of free agency. Regarding the fallen angels as having been "created holy," he can not conceive "how pride, or any other sinful emotion, could find an entrance to their hearts." But he wisely, though ungrammatically disposes of the sub

lightful volume. We only do justice to our view of it, when we say, that in every good sense with none that is bad, it is a truly "readable" book. It would seem that some skill, and perhaps not a little sacrifice of principle, would be required to write sketches of men so different as Knox, Wilson, Walter Scott, Burns, Chalmers and Duncan, in such a way as to make the one compatible with the other or so as to satisfy the admirers of the one without displeasing those of another. We can not see that Mr. Turnbull has failed in principle. We are quite sure he has not failed to put the most generous construction upon the faults of the men whom he criticises. He has also explained the secret of their popularity with his countrymen, and in so doing has done much to enable the American to read them with the eye and heart of a Scotchman. The genial yet unobtrusive religious feeling that runs through this volume, is honorable to the writer as a clergy. man. It would have been dishonorable to him not to exhibit it; and yet the piety is natural rather than project by saying, "no matter in what fessional, which is a rare merit, and way the angels fell-here is the one that deserves our praise. Such fact; and it is equally unphilosophi contributions as this volume to what cal, as well as undevout, to reject is called our "lighter literature," it because we are not able to explain have a greater value than at the first synthetically all the phenomena in view they seem to possess; and which it is concerned." We ad every successful effort of the kind mire the candor and amiability of merits a generous recompense. the writer, and commend his book to those who would see the religion Religion Teaching by Example.- of the Bible developed in its various relations to human nature.

By RICHARD W. DICKINSON, D.D. New York: Robert Carter, 1848. pp. 456.

THE title of this book does not at once suggest the precise nature of its subject. One expects to find in it an exhibition of the power of Christian example; whereas its object is, to present some of the prom. inent truths and precepts of religion, in the light of sacred history. It is rather, religion taught or inculcated by examples; though the author may justify his title, from the defini

Fundamental Philosophy, or Ele ments of Primitive Philosophy; being the first Division of a Com plete System of Philosophical Science. From the German of WILLIAM TRAUGOTT KRUG, Prof. of Philos. in the Univ. of Leipsic. Hudson, Ohio. W. Skinner & Co. 1848. pp. 59. 18mo.

THIS is a faithful translation of the 132 propositions in Krug's Fun damental Philosophy, omitting alto

gether the explanations, illustrations and proofs, which constitute the greater part of the original work. The German work was first published in 1803, 8vo. It passed to a second edition in 1819, and to a third, with many improvements and enlargements, in 1827. The author pronounces it his hauptwerk," chief work; which, he says, must not be read cursorily, but must be studied thoroughly, if one would fully understand the author's system of philosophy." We entirely agree with him in this last remark; for, not having the original with all its explanations before us, we read over this little book three times, and were not then able fully to understand it without recurrence to the same author's great Dictionary of Philosophy on the main propositions. We therefore regret that the accomplished translator did not present the entire work to his American readers, who can not be supposed very familiar with the Kantean phraseology pervading this book.

Prof. William Traugott Krug was educated in the Kantean school, became a Professor of Philosophy at Wittemberg in 1794; at Frankfort on the Oder in 1801; at Königsberg, in the chair of Kant, in 1805; removed to Liepsic in 1809, relinquished his professorship in 1813, served one year in the army as a volunteer, and then resumed his professorship at Leipsic, where he continued till his death in 1842, at the age of 72. He wrote much, on philosophy, ethics, law, politics,' &c., and was a pleasing writer, learned, lucid, and accommodating himself to men of ordinary minds. His great Dictionary of Philosophy, though too subservient to the propagation of his particular views, is a very useful work.

For several years in the early part of life, Krug adhered strictly to the philosophical principles of Kant. But when Fichte, Schelling and others, began to overleap the bounds prescribed by Kant to all

true philosophy, Krug caught something of their spirit. Yet he did not altogether abandon the Kantean doctrines, but he attempted, like Bouterwek, Fries, Calker, and some others, to perfect the system of Kant, by modifying its basis, and laying a broader foundation for scientific knowledge. Instead of admitting, with Kant, that we passively receive the crude matter of all our knowledge of material things through the senses, and that we know nothing of the essential nature of their objects, but only their phenomena, or the impressions they make on us; and that of supersensible things, spiritual beings, animal and vegetable life, &c., we know nothing but their attributes or powers; Krug supposed we can obtain true objective knowledge both of sensible and supersensible things. He makes consciousness the primary source of all true knowledge. For, consciousness, as he maintains, is the Synthesis of Being and Knowledge. In other words, if we can understand him, in all our acts of consciousness, some object is present to the mind, and we behold it and have a knowledge of it. This knowledge may indeed be at first obscure and unsatisfactory; but by repeated acts of consciousness, and a careful inspection of those acts, the knowledge becomes clear, distinct and perfect.-This Synthesis of Being and Knowledge, he pronounces to be a Transcendental Synthesis; or a synthesis the cause or ground of which is wholly beyond our investigation. It is an ultimate fact, and we can not go beyond it.

This theory Krug first published in his New Organon of Philosophy, in the year 1801. He afterwards more fully developed and defended it in his Fundamental Philosophy, the epitome of which is contained in the little volume before us. During forty years the author labored untiringly to propagate this modifi cation of the Kantean philosophy But, if we are not misinformed, this

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