We have a high regard for Mr. Cooper, for his love of independence, and his willingness to hazard his literary reputation in the cause of the people. We respect him for the fact, that he had the moral courage to approve and defend some of the measures of General Jackson's administration, and those measures, too, the most assailed by that portion of the community on which literary men are thought to be the more immediately dependent, and with which they are the more intimately connected. We respect him for his rebellion against Cant, for his earnest defence of individual freedom, and his manly assertion of every individual's right to form and express his own opinions, without being called to an account, abused, insulted, injured in his person, feelings, or reputation, for so doing. We respect him because he loves his country, and would make her true to the democratic creed she avows, as independent on foreign nations in her thoughts, as she is in her politics. In these particulars at least, he deserves the gratitude of his countrymen, and we trust he will receive it. He is willing to be known as a democrat, and the literary man, not ashamed to be called a democrat, in this democratic country, deserves to be held in more than ordinary consideration.

The work before us is written with ability, in a clear, strong, and manly style, and handles a subject with great freedom and with much justice, on which American citizens, - shame to say,-need to be instructed. Mr. Cooper thinks he sees two tendencies among us, which are alike dangerous to the stability and beneficial working of our free institutions. The upper classes, the affluent, the fashionable, he thinks are somewhat Anti-American in their thoughts, principles, and affections. They do not accept heartily our free institutions, and set themselves seriously at work to develop the practical good they contain. They imbibe too readily the notions as the fashions of foreign countries, especially of England, and sigh to reproduce an order of things, which can never exist, and

They

which ought never to exist on this continent. magnify the evils of the American system of government and society, and laud beyond measure the excellences of the monarchical or aristocratical institutions of the Old World. "Fifteen years since," he says, "all complaints against our institutions were virtually silenced, whereas now it is rare to hear them praised, except by the mass, or by those who wish to profit by the favors of the mass."

The lower classes, or the mass, he thinks, are governed by an opposite tendency, which is pushing them to a dangerous extreme. Notions that are impracticable, and which, if persevered in, cannot fail to produce disorganization, if not revolution, are getting to be widely prevalent; and there is a multitude who are looking ahead in the idle hope of substituting a fancied perfection for the ills of life. This disorganizing tendency in the mass, he thinks, if not arrested, will check civilization, destroy the arts and refinements of civilized life, and reduce us all to a dead level of barbarism. This book, it may therefore be readily conjectured, is a double battery, charged alike against those who believe too much in the past, and those who believe too much in the future. The author aims to demolish those who have too much democracy and those who have too little. To be democratic over much, is ungentlemanly, and may lead to a kind of levelling not agreeable to those who are ambitious of being distinguished, and to be democratic not enough, is unwise, not to say absolutely foolish.

This is, no doubt, to a certain extent, true, and the author's efforts to recall his countrymen from extremes, and to induce them to maintain the golden mean, are, no doubt, praiseworthy; but that they will be successful is not altogether so certain. Men in masses, as well as in their individual capacity, are logicians, and have an irresistible tendency to push their first principles to their last consequences. They can never be arrested by being pointed to the dangerous

extremes into which they are running. Wise, practical observations are useless. The masses go where their principles logically developed require them to go. To arrest them we must change their principles, alter or enlarge their premises. But this is what Mr. Cooper has not done, and what he has not attempted to do. He does not seek for the causes of these opposite tendencies to dangerous extremes, to point out the defects in our first principles, and by changing our logical direction, to change also our practical direction. He does not appear to believe that the practice of a nation is merely its experimenting in verification of its theory, or the mere practical application of its theory. Change the theory, the philosophy of a nation, its ideas, and you change its history. But Mr. Cooper has no faith in theories, no love for the abstract. He affects the character of a wise man, who has seen the world; of a shrewd observer, who is above the speculations of the student, and not at all dependent on closet thinkers. He has seen, and he knows. He is a common sense man, and says, away with your visionary theories, and let us have a little common sense. All this is very well. Common sense is unquestionably a very excellent thing, and Mr. Cooper, no doubt, has it; but if it be common sense, we see not why we may not claim it as well as he. We think he ought to pronounce the word with fewer airs, for, if what he calls common sense, really be common sense, it must be common to all men, and he can in no wise claim a monopoly of it.

Again; Mr Cooper, though he abjures all theories, and has many a biting sarcasm at theorizers in general, is himself a theorizer, and that too of no commendable sort. Does he not theorize, when he lays it down as a general proposition, that common sense is worthy of credit? Does he not theorize, when he declares this notion is practicable and that is not? When he tells us this amount of equality may be attained, and this other amount cannot be ? He

affects to have analyzed the powers of the human mind, and to have ascertained how much it is wise to aim at, and what it is merely visionary to attempt. And what are his views on these matters, but the theories he has adopted respecting the Desirable and the Undesirable, the Wise and the Foolish, the Attainable and the Unattainable? Has he not speculated in coming to his conclusions? or has he jumped to his conclusions? And is it his theory that all men ought to jump to their conclusions ? If so, we say he is a theorizer, whom a wise man may well hesitate to follow. Mr. Cooper does not, we must needs think, prove himself so wise in declaiming against theorizing, which is in fact declaiming against reasoning, reflection, as he fancies; and his common. sense, we imagine, may, in many instances, be found to be very uncommon sense, a very peculiar sense, even an idiosyncrasy.

This is not all. The man who is accustomed to analyze the works he reads, and reduce them to their lowest denominations, will, without much difficulty, perceive that Mr. Cooper's common sense rests, in most cases, for its support on the philosophy of Hobbes. We presume he has never read Hobbes, perhaps he has never heard of him, certainly, we presume, is unconscious of ever coinciding with his philosophic theory. But Hobbes's philosophy is, in political matters, the common sense of most Englishmen and Americans; and all Englishmen and Americans, who eschew philosophy and professedly follow common sense, are sure to be Hobbists. Mr. Cooper, we are sorry to say, forms no exception to this remark. For proof of what we allege we refer to his definition of liberty, and to the fact, that he seems to have no faith in abstract justice. Liberty with him is the right to do what one pleases. Perfect liberty, or a state of society, if society it may be called, in which there is no restraint placed on men's natural right, is a state of war, oppression, injustice. Government is instituted for the purpose of maintaining peace and

order, by restraining natural liberty. This is Hobbism, and it is the doctrine of the book before us; only Mr. Cooper thinks we may leave men a larger portion of their natural liberty than Hobbes believed could be done with safety.

Now we contend that the design of government is to maintain to every man all his natural liberty. Liberty, according to our definition of it, is freedom to do whatever one has a natural right to do; and one has a natural right to do whatever is not forbidden by natural or absolute justice. Mr. Cooper admits the right of governments to restrain the natural liberty of the citizen, to a certain extent, but we admit no such right. The government that restrains or abridges in any sense, in any degree, the natural liberty, that is the natural rights, of any, the meanest or the guiltiest citizen, is tyrannical and unjust. In checking the tendency to extremes then, which Mr. Cooper deplores and against which he arms himself with so praiseworthy a zeal, we should endeavor to point out the precise limits prescribed by justice. We should deny the justice of all restraints upon natural rights. We should then check at once the tendency to arbitrary government. Mr. Cooper, however, permits restraint to a certain extent. Why not to a greater extent? say his fashionable, affluent, and polite acquaintances. Why to so great an extent? Why not give more liberty yet? say the visionary mass, in pursuit of an ideal perfection never to be realized. What can he answer? Nothing that will satisfy either, because the question is in both cases, not a question of principle, but merely a question of more or less. This book, therefore, we think, will hardly succeed in arresting the tendency to extremes, because it leaves both parties their starting-points, and with their faces in the same direction, and merely beseeches them not to go quite so far as they have hitherto been disposed to go.

But notwithstanding our want of faith in the great influence of this book in accomplishing the object for