HANDEL AND HIS "MESSIAH." By J. A. Macfarren, 135 A PLAN FOR IMPROVING THE NATIONAL FINANCE. By Ammiel J. Willard Esq., 193 HON. JACOB COLLAMER, OF THE HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES, SONNET, CONGRESSIONAL SUMMARY, FOREIGN MISCELLANY, 202 207 208 216 CRITICAL NOTICES, 220 *See Erratum on p. 220 NEW-YORK: PORTRAIT OF THE HON. HENRY CLAY. Some of our July, 1848, subscribers having written to know in what way they may become entitled to this plate, we take this method of replying. The Portrait of Hon. Henry Clay, being offered only for such subscribers as would remit to this office their dues to the end of 1849 (see advertisement in December and January Nos.,) such of our subscribers as began in July last will be supplied with the plate at the end of their present term (July next) on remitting then a year's subscription, or if they please to remit the amount now, the plate will be forwarded as soon as ready. We would beg leave to say to our friends that it is necessary for us to have a full year's subscription free from agents' or collectors' commissions, to enable us to give them the plate, as it is a very great expense to us. The plates cannot be sent by mail. Being on large paper, they would be crushed. Subscribers will, therefore, direct how they shall be sent. Feb. 1st, 1849. AMERICAN REVIEW, No. XIV. FOR FEBRUARY, 1849. DANGERS AND SAFEGUARDS OF THE UNION. SCARCELY any period of ten years has elapsed since the commencement of our government, in which many have not been found who believed a crisis had arrived which must prove fatal to American Institutions. And yet crisis after crisis has come and gone, and still those institutions survive apparently gaining new strength with every such trial of them, and affording new proof of the wisdom in which they were conceived, and the truth of the principles with which, on the whole, they are administered. The reason of these apprehensions undoubtedly is, that opinion is governed more by the passions excited in individual minds by the temporary disappointments connected with the conduct of political affairs, than by calm and dispassionate reflection upon the deep conservative philosophy which is constantly acting beneath the surface of events, to modify and control them. There is nothing more natural or more common, at least with the great mass of minds, than to invest general views with the hues and colorings which belong to the excitements of particular events; and hence ruin, desolation, even death itself is often imagined to stand directly before us, when the lapse of a little time, and the passing of the crisis which has occasioned so much fear, prove that the trouble which we have experienced has really been nothing more than a very slight and easily corrigible difficulty. and the blessings of free government incident to it at any rate, the matter must be considered as open for discussion; and we propose to offer a few thoughts upon it. THE PROBLEM OF THE DURABILITY OF OUR NATIONAL UNION, then, naturally suggests three topics of inquiry: 1. The elements which tend to union. 2. The elements which tend todisunion, or are supposed to do so. 3. Which of these classes of elements will most probably predominate in a general result. The elements which tend to union are mainly four :- 1. Unity of language. 4. Unity of government as distinguished from confederation. The elements which tend, or are thought to tend to disunion, are mainly five :1. The predominance of excesses of party spirit. 2. The dissent of particular States from the occasional policy of the general government. 3. The enlargement of our territorial limits. 4. Slavery. 5. Universal suffrage. We shall discuss these two classes of elements in the order in which we have stated them. Of the first class, unity of language is the first named. If these reflections be true, and we believe they are, there would seem to be First, then, of unity of language. The some doubt of the reasonableness of the simplest truths have often the deepest phimisgivings we daily and hourly hear ex-losophy, though they generally pass withpressed, about the perpetuity of our Union out observation because they are not strik |