It is an ordinance of religion to expound the laws without straining them. He who has been religiously educated, and whose life is religious, will not in promulgating pervert or misrepresent the law. No consideration of the greater or the less advantage to bodies of men, however authorized, however founding their title to be supported on expediency, on laws of distinct guarantee, is to justify, or can justify the violation of the principles of universal, in the interpretation of mu nicipal, and much less of corporative, laws. Had the archbishop lived in our times he would have perceived that this, an ordinance of the religion of Christ, was not to be, in all events, maintained without violation. He would have shuddered to have been told, that the laws of his country were, strained on the mere grounds of a pretended policy, and that too a chartered policy-the policy that would immolate, on the altars. of a corporation, the unfortunate victim of the resent ments of that corporation..

This is a grievous retrospect we are briefly taking of a momentous incident. The laws ought never to be forced in exposition. The laws ought to be interpreted as laws; not as flimsy conventions, made to uphold a sinister ambition, or that rapacity, prodigal of the blood of mankind, which can see nothing in law but the intention to give security to particular bodies, to corporations local in origin and jurisdiction; and to do this, whilst the lives of men, in favour of whom six out of eleven of their judges shall have decided, are to be given up to execution.

This is quite opposite to the injunctions of the Gospels. Were it not, it would have been irregular to have in any sense discussed it here. But inasmuch as the power of religious motive is the greater, the greater the deference to its precepts manifested by those in high station, so is it a religious obligation to jealously watch the conduct of those who may well be supposed to influence, by their example, the conduct of the rest of the world.

Secker would have thought, on this occasion, as we do. He would not, on any such occasion, have sought to have concealed it from himself, that, if laws find in religion the best guarantee for their observance, the observance of the laws is no less an article of religion.

This is a most important subject: but we hope that decision, to which we allude, will not be finally ratified and sealed with the blood of the victim, as we are conscious we still live in a religious age and nation. Secker would have held up both his hands, in and out of parliament, to have deprecated such an event. Secker would not have taken the life of the greatest enemy of his religion: Secker could not have even permitted the intention to have obtruded itself upon his meditations, of a sacrifice of blood at the shrine of the goddess of Gain.

Let no man presume to think lightly of these matters. The celebrated HOOKER, in a vein of pious eloquence, in a strain of sublime devotion, thought that "of Law nothing less can be said than that her seat is

the bosom of GOD." Law is the offspring in this world of that reason which God gave us in the beginning, for our government agreeably to His eternal wisdom, justice, and mercy. Shall then those, whose high title is, that they are the vicegerents of God himself, think to strain the laws in extremities pregnant with the dissolution, for ever, of the social tie! Shall it be thought not relevant, in a book professedly written to inspire all mankind—the young, the middle aged, the oldwith just notions, and a just awe of the Christian religion and its ordinances; to warn kings, legislators, judges, and magistrates of the tremendous peril to themselves, their country, and their religion, of exercising their functions, of employing their capacities, of eliciting their decisions, in violation of mercy, of truth, and of law! Forbid it power! Forbid it, Lights of THE WORLD! It is forbidden of God.

Without entire assurance of the undue straining of the law, we certainly never should have introduced these observations. We know the law has been strained. The very expounders of the law themselves have avowed that it has; and this rather more than justifies our commentary.

We feel that religion and its interests must experience deadly violations, if that enormous violation we here deprecate shall be committed; for, unless the apprehension of the divine displeasure deter men from transgressing the laws in a point so essential, and where we might suppose all sinister passion to be extinct, it is

altogether silly to expect, that religion can acquire influence over the actions of the mass of mankind. Only zeal, that zeal displayed by Secker, actuates, or could have actuated the narrator, in the living instance. What might have been the feelings of the archbishop is here understood. He well knew that LAW enjoys for her seat the bosom of eternal wisdom. We know what the bishop knew. We hold up our hands to implore that there may be perpetrated no great crime by great men against great laws. We implore the forgiveness of heaven to the unfortunate. We insist that we are devoid of unwarrantable solicitude. The cause of religion alone impels our zeal. Our zeal is of the soul!

Man is prone to speculate respecting the future. In the constitution of things, among particular descriptions of men, this natural tendency of our reason becomes habitual. There is no more in that man's speculating, whose unremitting employment it is to reckon up the gains, or the chances of gains to others, than there is of the wonderful in the mechanic's pursuing the trade to which (to use the familiar dialect) he has been brought up. Each is a tradesman, only one has his trade almost all in his head, the other almost all in his hands. The tradesman who works by his head is ten thousand times more liable to miss his object than he who works by his hands. Both, however, possess, in degree, an equal right to speculate. With this limitation, both indubitably possess that right.

It need not be hinted, that, so far as relates to the

business of the world, we are all of us the creatures of circumstances. We are, in ordinary, what circumEven in extraordinary cases,

stances have made us. we are the same. For instance-one, is a high officer (we will presume) in the Bank of England; another, officiates in a high situation under the crown. The officer in the Bank of England is unremittingly working figures or making calculations of gain by adventure. He is thoroughly skilled in the mysteries of the money market. He is himself a speculatist; for he is by duty of office incumbently bound to watch the progress of all events that might contribute to raise or to lower the value of money to his employers. And if he were not, he is from his habits not capable of resisting that temptation to speculate which daily opportunities afford.

Two positions then are established-the right to speculate at all; and, that to speculate some, is from circumstances, unavoidable.

Whatever we do in the spirit of adventure we do contingently. The die is in the air; on the other hand, the thing in itself may happen to be perilous every way. Impossible not to speculate; yet it may be alike impossible to speculate but to lose. Would you have men perform impossibilities? Speculation in money is a trade. If a tradesman become bankrupt, do you take away his life? Do you take away his life, even though the principal creditor were the Bank of England.