its capital from such destinations as far as possible, by repealing banking laws; by prohibiting under sufficient penalties the circulation of every species of paper currency; by prohibiting with internal protecting duties, the introduction of all manufactures from other states, sent to collect eleemosynary taxes; by suppressing all gratuitous pensions; by reducing legislative wages; by a legislative forbearance to exercise judicial functions; by shortening legislative sessions; by suspending improvement and catch-penny projects, until it shall be ascertained how the suspension will work; by applying all its resources to the payment of its debts; and by reducing its taxes down to the rate, which such a policy would justify. It would then experimentally appear, whether the policy of condemning national capital to eleemosynary uses, or of leaving it to the use of its owners, was most favourable to national prosperity.' pp. 338, 339.

If this moderate scheme had originated in other quarters, and in other times, we think it would have been stigmatized as a proposal to dissolve the union; though it seems here to be only a pretty little experiment in the science of government.

We gave as an excuse for remarking on the style of this work, that we feared it might find imitators, as we had already picked up one, which, before the printer's shoes were old,' who impressed Mr. Taylor's work, made its appearance at its very heels. This is the pamphlet that forms the second item at the head of this article.

We are inclined to speak cautiously of what we do not understand; but this performance strikes us, as one of the most exquisite absurdities we have ever seen. We can recollect but one parallel to it, as regards obscurity, which we mention for this author's benefit. Some years since an English banker in Rotterdam published a work, which he called The Doctrine of Equivalents.' It is probably scarce in this country, but may be procured in Holland, and if the author of the pamphlet before us will obtain and read it, he will be able to estimate the situation into which his own work has thrown us. It is without the name of author, printer, or place; but this excess of precaution is wholly superfluous, because, if it contains any thing illegal, we do not believe any jury could have been made to comprehend it. If in a total inability to comprehend it, we may venture an opinion, we should say, that the work bears marks of being written by

some catechumen of the Bentham platform. It is a sublimation of political metaphysics, the contents of which are contained in the following table:

1. View of actual affairs.

2. Political problem.

3. Import of terms.

4. Universal principles.

5. Characteristic distinctions.

6. Organic outline.

7. Social body.

8. Sovereignty.

9. Constitutional life."

This will afford but an imperfect idea of the work, from which we have found it very difficult to make any extracts; for, in attempting to draw a single thread, we found the whole mass coming with it. The following passage is tolerably entire in itself, and we have chosen it partly on that account, though chiefly because it is one of the most perspicuous, and will show the transparency of the author's manner.

How shall the EXECUTIVE AUTHORITY be organized so as to have this uniform efficiency?

Nothing less than the plenipotent strength of society can constitute the force which such efficiency implies. It is the associa tion of the physical power of the whole social body that must sustain the universal authority of the social will. It is this association that forms the compacture of force which is to give irresistible energy to the sword of justice. The social force thus united and compacted assures the public efficiency of executive power.

This power is to be called forth as may be right for the benefit of the respective portions of society. Destined to be ordered into action in pursuance of their reciprocal will, it is made a deposite and sequestrated as a physical security that such will shall be observed. For effectuating the eventual determinations of right there is constituted a depositary of the power so sequestrated. And the high betrustment of taking care that such determinations be faithfully executed is given in charge to this depositary.

Such is the EXECUTIVE CHIEF.' &c. pp. 43, 44.

Had the taste which directed the mechanical presided also over the literary execution of this pamphlet, we might have had the pleasure of giving a different account of it. It is rare to see better printing or paper from the American or any other press.

ART. XVI.—A Grammar of the English Language, containing a variety of critical remarks, the principal part of which are original. By John Barrett, of Hopkinton, state of Massachusetts; teacher of the Greek, Latin, and English languages. The second edition. Boston, 1819, 12mo, pp. 214. No true friend of good parsing or good humour can justify it to his conscience, certainly not to his interest, to remain long out of possession of this book. It may be regarded, in a twofold light, either as a system of English Grammar, in which respect it contains all that is necessary to be known, about the parts of speech; or, what is far more precious in our sight, as a specimen of primitive simplicity of character. As to parsing, however valuable it may be for that class of men who probably first cultivated it, the grammarians, we are jealous that it is not an exercise extremely well adapted to the comprehension of children. The imitative principle is much stronger, in them, than the reasoning; and we imagine they would learn to read and write English correctly by simple practice, quite as soon as by this scholastic and to them unintelligible process of generalization, called parsing. If the child for instance says it is me,' why is it not enough to be told that he must say it is I?' It does not give him any additional light on the subject, to add that me is an objective case and cannot govern the verb. If he be mature enough to reason about this, he will perceive no other force in the reason thus given, than that which is derived from the arbitrary practice of the language; and to feel the force of this reason, he must learn, by constant repetition, what that practice is. For mere English learners the process is the more preposterous, as the names of the parts of speech, of most of the inflections, and of the rules of grammar are a dead letter to them, built on etymologies wholly unknown to them, and often grounded on the analogy of languages wholly different in their structure from the English. Much of our grammar is accordingly not English grammar, but rules for translating Latin into English. We have but two cases in our nouns, but are taught in some grammars that there are six. Not more than half our adjectives have degrees of comparison; and all that is strictly true about the rest is, that pulcrior, instead of being rendered beautifuller, should be rendered more beautiful. In the verbs, we have but one tense besides the

present, and yet our English grammars fit out the verb with six tenses. But to say that the perfect tense of love, is I have loved, means that amavi, for want of a corresponding English inflection, must be translated I have loved, which by the way it does not mean, more than half the time. Much the same is the case with the modes; and had the Arabian Grammarians attained the ascendancy in the European schools, which the Latin ones did, our verbs would probably have been adorned with twenty-eight conjugations in imitation of that copious language.

The most, which can be useful in the science of English grammar, is to have a name and a rule for all the inflections and peculiarities, which really exist. But to have an Eng lish tense or an English case for every thing analogous in Latin and Greek, is to study Latin and Greek, and not English. Nor is there any greater propriety in having a first and second future in English, than a first and second aorist and a dual number. And since there exists, and probably will continue to, a strong hankering after what is called parsing, we really wish some judicious teacher would have courage to analyze the language as it is, and teach his children not Latin and Greek grammar in disguise, but simple English. A good approach toward this was made some years since, in a short system of English grammar, extracted by Mr. Biglow from Adam's Latin Grammar; but the process might be carried farther, and the learning of the language be much facilitated to children.

But we turn to the little book before us. Mr. Barrett, it seems, from several highly respectable testimonials prefixed to his Grammar, is a teacher of some celebrity both of the English and of the learned languages. He has not been permanently fixed in that capacity, in any one spot, but has laboured at intervals in Hopkinton and Franklin, and if we are not grossly misinformed also at Attleborough and Mendon. Without pertinaciously rooting down on one spot, and teaching on, whether the children have learned out or the parents paid out, or not, Mr. Barrett goes where he is most wanted, and thus scatters abroad what light it is in his power to dispense. We presume we shall excite no one's jealousy, by pronouncing him the teacher of the first pretensions, in this walk of his profession; and in the practice of talking Latin with his pupils, as soon as they can understand it, we are

fearful he might be recommended as an example to some in its highest stations. We shall give our readers at once an idea of his character, by pronouncing him an enthusiast; a man whose heart is wrapped up in the pursuit, to which his life has been devoted, and who has transferred to Corderius and Virgil those affections which common men are prone to waste on a thousand gaudy vanities, of no real value in a grammatical point of view. From the indications of character contained in this little book, as well as the voice of fame, we should fancy he was not unlike the venerable personage, who in his transports of joy threw the manuscript of Eschylus into the fire; and if ever the happy day is to dawn upon us, when some cheerful spirit, with a cool observing eye, a benevolent temper, and a happy pen, shall look round about on society, and gather up the original traits of manners, which exist among us, to be embodied into a national novel, we are sure that such a character as this will be among the first, on which he will seize.

Madame de Stael says, in her Germany, that it would be well worth one's while to take some one leading idea (we think she has it) and devote his life to the pursuit of that. Mr. Barrett seems evidently to have been of her mind, and chosen parsing for his cynosure. Some philosophers have defined man a laughing animal, some a tool-making animal; and a distinguished living historian broadly hints, that he might be correctly characterised as a cooking animal. Whether our author would go the length of defining him to be a parsing animal, we know not; but at any rate he plainly considers that parsing is the final cause of language, and not the understanding of language the final cause of parsing. Thus,

'Methinks I tread in air,

Surprising happiness, unlooked for joy!'

• Methinks is a most wretched word, and though we frequently find it in some of our best authors, yet it is so ridiculous and absurd, that it ought to be expunged from the English language; for there is no word, which carries more of stupidity on the front of it; and in my opinion can be parsed upon no principle what

ever.'

Mr. Barrett accordingly proposes in all cases to correct methinks into I think, and gives the following instance of the correction;