and with an accurate observance of its governing principles, would probably be the best that human infirmity will allow men to administer; but when the capital mistake is made of supposing that mere numbers are to control all things, regardless of those great fundamental laws that the state has adopted for its own restraint, it may be questioned if so loose, and capricious, and selfish a system, is not in great danger of becoming the very worst scheme of polity that cupidity ever set in motion.  The tendency—­not the spirit of the institutions, the two things being the very antipodes of each other, though common minds are so apt to confound them—­the tendency of the institutions of this country, in flagrant opposition to their spirit or intentions, which were devised expressly to restrain the disposition of men to innovate, is out of all question to foster this great abuse, and to place numbers above principles, even when the principles were solemnly adopted expressly to bring numbers under the control of a sound fundamental law.  This influence of numbers, this dire mistake of the very nature of liberty, by placing men and their passions above those great laws of right which come direct from God himself, is increasing in force, and threatens consequences which may set at naught all the well-devised schemes of the last generation for the security of the state, and the happiness of that very people, who can never know either security or even peace, until they learn to submit themselves, without a thought of resistance, to those great rules of right which in truth form the spirit of their institutions, and which are only too often in opposition to their own impulses and motives.

We pretend to no knowledge on the subject of the dates of discoveries in the arts and sciences, but well do we remember the earnestness and single-minded devotion to a laudable purpose, with which our worthy friend first communicated to us his ideas on the subject of using the electric spark by way of a telegraph.  It was in Paris, and during the winter of 1831-2, and the succeeding spring, a time when we were daily together; and we have a satisfaction in recording this date, that others may prove better claims if they can.  Had Morse set his great invention on foot thirty years earlier, Roswell Gardiner might have communicated with his owner, and got a reply, ere he again sailed, considerable as was the distance between them.  As things then were, he was fain to be content with writing a letter, which was put into the deacon’s hand about a week after it was written, by his niece, on his own return from a short journey to Southold, whither he had been to settle and discharge a tardy claim against his schooner.

“Here is a letter for you, uncle,” said Mary Pratt, struggling to command her feelings, though she blushed with the consciousness of her own interest in the missive “It came from the Harbour, by some mistake; Baiting Joe bringing it across just after you left home.”