1828.] 



Domestic and Foreign. 



3(5 



and Barbour and Marshall his ministers." 

 His meaning is obvious though his terms 

 are equivocal. The president's selection 

 .has however evidently been very judicious ; 

 he has obliged all parties ; the amalgama- 

 tion calculated to lull the murmurs of dis- 

 content is contemplated by many as likely 

 to produce the most serious consequences to 

 the freedom of America. 



But the time is fast approaching, when 

 these speculations will perhaps all be baffled 

 the election must take place in the com- 

 ing summer though appearances bid fair 

 to realize them. Wealth is augmenting, 

 and poverty also that is, every day there 

 are more who are rich, and more who are 

 poor ; this produces separation of interests, 

 feelings, and prejudices; and divides the 

 country into the governing and the governed; 

 and the sovereignty of the people, which 

 has been something real, is fast dropping 

 into few hands. The great hope of the 

 democratic party is Jackson ; but he is now 

 more than seventy, and his day is gone by. 



The account which the author gives of 

 the state of religion in America must sur- 

 prise, and may stagger, the admirers of 

 establishments. After afl the gloomy pro- 

 phecies, religious rites do not appear to be 

 neglected, nor the ministers of religion to 

 be treated with disrespect. On the con- 

 trary, they are every where influential 

 and respectable. Hierarchies have silently 

 sprung up, and ministers are regularly or- 

 dained and churches every where abound. 

 The greatest toleration actually and prac- 

 tically exists; every one goes, unrebuked, 

 where he pleases, and many attend on the 

 services of two or three different denomina- 

 tions, and contribute in distant quarters to 

 the building of churches they never visit, 

 and the support of ministers they never 

 hear almost without a bias for one more 

 than another; and yet there is no indif- 

 ference as to the benefits to be derived from 

 public worship or public instruction, for the 

 Americans are truly and habitually a church- 

 going people. For attending one place ra- 

 ther than another no body is remarked upon 

 the censure is reserved for those who at- 

 tend nowhere and then perhaps it is not 

 spared. The Unitarians are said, by the 

 author, to increase particularly among the 

 higher classes, in the larger towns, and then 

 he adds in a note, Unitarianism, especially 

 in the Western States, is pure Deism, and 

 not, as in England, a partial belief in reve- 

 lation. This we do not credit quite. We 

 doubt if any one minister of Unitarianism 

 disclaims explicitly all revelation however 

 he may, in effect, be paving the way to it. 



We have no more space ; but the author's 

 view of society, in its several classes, and in 

 the character of the several states, is very 

 distinctly given and, after all the books we 

 have read on these matters, good and bad, 

 is well calculated to arrest the attention of 

 the reader, and make him if he be not 

 quite out of. the pale of society thankful 



M.M. New Series VOL. V. No. 27. 



for the refinements and decorums of polished 

 life, where forbearance is enforced, and inso- 

 lence repelled. The author speaks out, and 

 for this reason it probably is, that he w ith- 

 holds his name it may not be safe, or not 

 expedient, to incur offence. We are obliged 

 by the communications, and recommend the 

 book to our readers. 



Letters from Greece, with Remarks' 

 &c.> by E. Blaqtiiere, Esq. ,- 1828. 

 This is a miscellaneous volume relative to 

 the affairs of Greece, written by the inde- 

 fatigable Captain Blaquiere, and furnishing 

 another proof of the deep and undying in- 

 terest in the struggle which that gentleman 

 has manifested from its very commence- 

 ment. No depths of despair into which the 

 cause at times has sunk could ever shake 

 his confidence* He has borne up with irre- 

 pressible elasticity against the contentions 

 and even civil wars of the chiefs against the 

 apathy of real friends, and the roguery of 

 pretended ones against the selfishness of 

 patrons and the blunders of agents and 

 hoped even against hope. The Interven- 

 tion Treaty, however notwithstanding the 

 personal bickerings, and opposing views of 

 parties at home, is likely to be enforced 

 nay a pledge has been given in the Com- 

 mons and if no body else rejoices, Capt. 

 Blaquiere at least will rejoice, and justly so, 

 in the fruition of his own honest wishes. It 

 cannot be so long as the parties concerned 

 in the triple treaty concur, and at present no 

 "symptoms of separation appears 4>ut some 

 sort of arrangement will sooner or later fol- 

 low, by which the Greeks will be relieved of 

 some part of the weight of the Turkish yoke. 

 Humanity, for once, may well over-rule 

 policy and precedent. The cry about " in- 

 terference" and the law of nations, raised by 

 the older tories, will soon subside, now when 

 their very representatives in power cease to 

 swell it ; and never, indeed, was any cry 

 more absurd. The law of nations, accord- 

 ing to the dicta of the civilians, is not surely 

 matter of revelation ; and interference to 

 check violence is surely something different 

 .from interference to plunder, and divide the 

 spoil. If a grasping cupidity has prompted 

 rulers to interference for half a century, 

 with little interruption, let it for once be 

 allowed, for humanity's sake. All prece- 

 dents must have a beginning, and the cause 

 and the opportunity before us are good for 

 instituting a new one. 



Capt. Blaquiere's new volume contains 

 some introductory matter of sixty pages, on 

 Greek affairs generally, political and finan- 

 cial embracing also a sketch of the history 

 of the revolution from Alex. Ipsilanti to the 

 battle of Navarino, with some conjectures on 

 the secret causes of the Intervention Treaty. 

 Then follows a series of letters from Greece, 

 dated from Dec. 1826, to May 30, 1827, in 

 which such events of the period as fell under 

 his own immediate purview, or were com- 

 municated by authorities on the spot, are 



2 R 



