ALGERNON SIDNEY ON ENGLAND'S CIVIL WARS.

William the Norman was no sooner dead, but the nation was rent in pieces by his son Robert contesting with his younger sons, William and Henry, for the crown. They being all dead, and their sons, the like happens between Stephen and Maud. Henry II. was made king to terminate all disputes; but it proved a fruitless expedient. Such as were more scandalous, and not less dangerous, did soon arise between him and his sons, who, besides the evils brought upon the nation, vexed him to death by their rebellion.

The reigns of John and Henry III. were yet more tempestuous. Edward II.'s lewd, foolish, infamous and detestable government ended in his deposition and death, to which he was brought by his wife and son. Edward III. employed his own and his subjects' valour against the French and Scots; but, whilst the foundations were out of order, the nation could never receive any advantage by their victories. All was calculated for the glory, and turned to the advantage of one man. He being dead, all that the English held in Scotland and in France, was lost through the baseness of his successor, with more blood than it had been gained; and the civil wars raised by his wickedness and madness, ended as those of Edward had done.

The peace of Henry IV.'s reign was interrupted by dangerous civil wars; and the victory obtained at Shrewsbury had not perhaps secured him on the throne, if his death had not prevented new troubles. Henry V. acquired such reputation by his virtue and victories that none dared to invade the crown during his life; but immediately after his death, the storms prepared against his family, broke out with the utmost violence. His son's weakness encouraged Richard, Duke of York, to set up a new title, which produced such mischief as hardly any people has suffered, unless upon like occasion; for besides the slaughter of many thousands of the people, and especially of those who had been accustomed to arms, the devastation of the best parts of the kingdom, and the loss of all that our kings had inherited in France, or gained by the blood of their subjects, four-score princes of the blood, as Philip de Comines calls them, died in battle, or under the hand of the hangman. Many of the most noble families were extinguished; others lost their most eminent men. Three kings, and two presumptive heirs of the crown, were murdered, and the nation brought to that shameful exigence to set up a young man to reign over them who had no better cover for his sordid extraction than a Welsh pedigree, that might show how a tailor was descended from Prince Arthur, Cadwallader, and Brutus. But the wounds of the nation were not to be healed with such a plaister. He could not rely upon a title made up of such stuff, and patched with a marriage to a princess of a very questionable birth. His own meanness inclined him to hate the nobility; and, thinking it to be as easy for them to take the crown from him as to give it him, he industriously applied himself to glean up the remainders of the house of York, from whence a competitor might arise, and by all means to crush those who were most able to oppose him. This exceedingly weakened the nobility, who held the balance between him and the Commons, and was the first step towards the dissolution of our ancient government; but he was so far from settling the kingdom in peace, that such rascals as Perkin Warbeck and Simnel were able to disturb it.

The reign of Henry VIII. was turbulent and bloody; that of Mary was furious, and such as had brought into subjection to the most powerful,

proud and cruel nation at that time in the world, if God had not wonderfully protected us. Nay, Edward VI. and Queen Elizabeth, notwithstanding the natural excellence of their dispositions, and their knowledge of the truth in matters of religion, were forced by that which men call " "jealousy of state," to foul their hands so often with illustrious blood, that if their reigns deserve to be accounted amongst the most gentle of monarchies, they were more heavy than the government of any commonwealth in time of peace; and yet their lives were never secure against such as conspired against them upon the account of title.

FREEDOM NOT BY FORCE.-It is not very long ago since the question of obtaining amelioration, of winning freedom,. by physical force, was mooted in England. Let the student of its history say at what age, under what sovereign, amid what arrangement of external circumstances, freedom in England has ever been won merely by the exercise of physical force. There is no instance of the kind. The same unvarying tale is told from the beginning to the end, from first to last, from Cade and Tyler to Frost and Williams. They all bear one self-same testimony; they all tell us that the intellectual is not to be gained by the physical; that freedom of institutions, and, above all, freedom of mind, are things to be wrought out by a different process; that there is no safety in battles won, or in armies sustained, unless the mind and morale of a nation go along with them in the struggle; and that by peaceful means alone has any advantage ever been gained that has proved a lasting benefit to the people of this country. There was no real exception to this in the civil wars in the time of.

Charles I. The Puritan army prevailed; the sovereign was brought to the block, the Protectorship established; but it was not a real Commonwealth, and all the advantage that had been gained passed away like the dry leaves of autumn when driven along by the breeze. Scarcely a trace was left behind; and for this reason, that how much soever those who were victors in that contest might have had right, truth, and justice on their side, they yet were anticipating the time when knowledge and opinion would have backed the change. They were in a state of things which made them rest upon violence; and the success which that violence gave them faded away, and left them forlorn and dejected; and the world had to begin over again, and by another process, that which they had endeavored to gain by their sudden irruption upon the ancient state of things, and which they thought to conquer only because they were "Ironsides," and knew how to wield their swords as well as their Bible. They add to the monitions which all other records furnish, and assure us, that in the action upon public opinion, in the resolve rather to endure martyrdom than to perpetrate aggression in the formation of our own characters for the possession and the exercise of intellectual as well as political liberty, and in the making our bond of union a peaceful, an intellectual, and a moral one, in this is our security; in this is the pledge of a success, which, as its rests not on the bayonet, the sword, or the cannon, so neither by the bayonet, the sword, nor the cannon can it be put down, or torn away from the people who have once in their enlightened mood made it their own possession.-W. J. Fox.

WHAT IS STILL LEFT OF OUR COUNTRY.

Of the fourteen sermons preached on the late Fast Day in Boston and its immediate vicinity, and reported more or less fully in the Boston Traveller, we select some extracts from that of Rev. Dr. Putnam, Roxbury, which can not fail to interest all right-thinking men, as striking the true key-note of the times :

The question is, what is left? What of hope, what of duty, what of nationality, what means of civil and social well-being? What remains we should inquire, and strengthen that, and build upon that, in faith, and patience, and patriotic determination.

1. There remains then, first, the hope, however faint you may think it, -the hope, not yet given up, that the breach may be healed, the seceders return, and the old harmony, or something better than that, be restored. Public men, and the press, seem to cling to this hope. God grant the prophecy may prove true! say I, and most of you will say; but not with overmuch confidence. It can only come to pass through great suffering and humiliation in one section or another. It is hard reuniting such a bond, thus broken, so as to give us back the country that we had, or thought that we had.

2. And if this best and first hope must fail, still the question recurs, what remains? There remains, secondly, the bulk of the old nationtwenty-seven States out of the thirty-four, a country of vast extent and of a vast population; only two or three millions of free citizens gone, their places to be made good by the natural growth of the population long before another census is taken. Boundaries as they are to-day, keep them fixed and perpetual; and what is lost will hardly be missed in the estimate of numbers, of power, or of resources.

Would that we could be sure the boundaries will remain as they now are; but they are insecure. As many more states are in suspense, doubting whether to stay or go, with strong proclivities towards going. And it seems but too probable that they will remain only upon such conditions, if at all, as cannot be granted without making their adhesion a worse calamity than their secession; for, even if everything be granted that they can ask on the question of slavery, they will only stay upon the understanding that they may go when they please, that they are not bound for a moment by any mutual obligations. They will stay only so long as they can have their own way, elect their men, and carry their measures; they will go whenever they get out-voted in anything. When their candidate is not chosen, their favorite policy not adopted, they will hold up their threatening finger, and prepare to go; and the other States through a majority, must always waive their principles and their rights, in order to avert the prospect of a new breach, a new convulsion, a new panic, and a new ruin to commerce and industry. If they remain upon such terms, with such an understanding, it is but a hollow truce and a transient peace they give us; a government without power or credit; a republic without all republican principle; a nominal union, with a match always in hand to fire it.

But still the question recurs, what remains? What remains to possess, or to do, or to hope, after all that? This is forever the question for the brave and the manly heart of the people to turn to and to ponder-not what we have lost, but what remains. We must choke down our grief, brush away our tears, and not go maundering, in broken-hearted despair, over the sad remembrances of an irrecoverable past, whose glory is departed, but look around to see what remains. If the land below the Ohio and the Potomac shall become foreign, what remains ?

3. There remains, thirdly, a country the largest in the world, I suppose, except perhaps Russia, stretching from the Atlantic to the Pacific; a country with two oceans, with rivers and lakes, with a rich soil, and resources hardly yet begun to be drawn upon, and a population of twenty millions, with room and opportunity to multiply that number twenty-fold; a people composed of various races, and those the strongest in the world, all of good blood, and the better for mixing-Saxon, Celtic, Teutonic, Scandinavian-inured to all pursuits of industry, trained to all knowledge. A country surely this is of magnificent capabilities; and, freed from that element of slavery which has proved so disturbing a one, accustomed to the republican system, to the rule of the majority, a country strong enough to maintain order at home and command respect abroad; with a climate favorable to physical strength, to industrious habits and to mental development. That is what remains.

It has been our pride and boast heretofore, that our country included all climates and all latitudes, yielding every variety of products; but instead of that, there may remain the satisfaction of having a homogeneous people, bound together by interests and pursuits and temperaments and sympathies, united and strong through those national and industrial sympathies which are more tenacious and reliable than any political ones. Surely it will be a splendid country, a powerful nation. And when once commercial relations and political power get adjusted to the new order of things, and we get reconciled to parting from the old, dear historic proprieties, I am not sure that there will not remain for us a stronger and more harmonious country than that which our fathers purchased with their blood, and gave to us, as they fondly hoped, for an everlasting inheritance.

But, it will be said, we are not sure of having even so much of a country

as that left to us. Some persons think that when once division takes place, and is acceded to, there will be subdivisions; that the process of disintegration, once begun, will go on until it cuts the nation up into various independent sovereignties, bringing upon us we know not what form of anarchy, or what form of social and political chaos.

The latest political programme of proceeding that I have noticed, is one in which it is proposed to cut off New England from the other States, and leave it alone to itself; and that fate is considered, by those who broach the scheme, as the direst calamity that could befall us. That is their vengeance upon New England. That threat, it is presumed, will be sufficient to bring us to any terms of humiliation, and to force from us a consent never again to have a mind of our own, never for a moment to think for ourselves, and never to speak out our thought, or to cast any vote except at the dictation of those States which claim a divine right to rule, and will never submit to be out-voted.

The next political map may possibly represent these six States dissevered from all political connection with the rest of the continent. Who knows? I do not believe it; I do not desire it. New England loves the Union, and loves loyalty to it; and the more States she can maintain her connection with, the better,-the whole thirty-four, if possible, and twenty rather than a less number.

But supposing the threat should be carried out, then it is still our duty manfully to meet the question, what remains? What remains to be strengthened, to be maintained, to be relied upon? And we need not be afraid to face that question. What if it should come to that, and New England alone be our country, what remains? A small corner of the continent, to be sure, a little corner, which the rest may think they can well spare. But countries are apt to be small corners of continents. They may be strong and prosperous, notwithstanding. I am not aware that the people of large countries are individually any more enlightened, or more prosperous, or more contented, than the people of small countries.

It does not appear that the people of Holland are any more wanting in the essential elements of well being than the people of Prussia, or the people of Belgium than those of France; or that Switzerland has any occasion to envy Austria for her size; or that it is a misfortune to be a citizen of Sweden rather than of Russia. As a matter of fact, it appears that great countries have proportionally great burdens to bear and great perils to undergo; that they have more frequent wars, and, generally, severer despotisms, and are liable to bloodier revolutions. What is there, after all, so dreadful in belonging to a small country? History would show, I think, that the advantages pretty well balance the disadvadvantages. Accustomed to contemplate the large spaces of the old continent, with its boundless outlying territories, we have perhaps come to conceive that New England is too small to be a country. But, if we come to comparisons, it is larger than Old England, with Wales added. It is nearly six times as large as Belgium or Holland-that Holland, too, which once waged a successful war of Independence against Spain, when Spain was the first power in the world, and which contended with England on equal terms for the naval and commercial supremacy of the seas.

New England is more than three times as large as Denmark, and four times as large as Switzerland. But in population it even now exceeds the joint nations I have named in comparison, and possibly Belgium, the thickest-peopled spot in Europe. Something, then, temains for a country, something as to extent and numbers, even upon this last and worst and direst supposition of New England's being cast out alone.

But the strength of a nation does not, any more than its general well