YOUNG LADIES' SEMINARY, NEAR PRINCE EDWARD COURT HOUSE, VA. We take great pleasure in recommending this valuable Institution to the patronage of the public. We do not suppose that it needs our praise; for the zealous and enterprising efforts of the Principal, Mr. E. ROOT, have already secured for it the extensive favor of the community. But we feel persuaded that we are promoting the cause of Female Education in Virginia, by this notice of an Institution, of whose management and general character we can speak advisedly, and whose mode of instruction we can confidently recommend, from having recently attended the recitations of some of the classes. We are acquainted with the Principal and Instructors, six in number, and know them to be individuals fully qualified for their stations. Mr. Roor has spared, and intends to spare, no expense in securing for the School the best Teachers. He has furnished the School Room with excellent MAPS and GLOBES, and a well selected CHEMICAL AND PHILOSOPHICAL APPARATUS; and has laid the foundation for a Mineralogical Cabinet. His mode of instruction is thorough, and the plan extensive. He aims to act on the principle, that "things unknown must be taught by things known;" and in READING, ARITHMETIC AND ENGLISH GRAMMAR particularly, we think he has succeeded remarkably well in its application. Three years are required to complete the course in this Seminary. Too small a portion of time has been usually allotted to a young lady's education in Virginia. Those whose influence on man's happiness literally follows him "from the cradle to the grave," ought by all means to be thoroughly furnished for their arduous and responsible duties. When the pupil enters School under twelve years of age, a longer course is expected. The longest will not occupy more than half the period allotted to the other sex. The discipline of the School is parental, and the affection of the pupils for the Principal affords the best evidence of its salutary influences. The location of this Institution in a healthy region, a refined and intelligent community, and directly within excellent moral and religious influence, affords advantages of a very decided character, while the vicinity of Hampden Sidney College, with whose vacations those of the Schools correspond, presents a great convenience to parents with sons and daughters to educate. Under the salutary restrictions of the Principal, and heads of the Boarding Houses, the intercourse between the two Institutions becomes a source of mutual advantage. This School is designed to be permanent, and this forms one of its chief recommendations. It will be to the interest of the public to sustain such. We suppose as good Schools may exist elsewhere. It is not pretended that this possesses claims to exclusive attention, yet being acquainted with it, we have felt that the statements made, while conducive to the general purpose mentioned, are deserved, and due from all who have enjoyed our opportunities for forming an opinion. Prince Edward, April 21, 1836. STEPHEN TAYLOR, The LITERARY MESSENGER contains 64 pages, being 4 sheets to each number, the postage on which, according to law, is, for 100 miles and under, five cents: over 100 miles, ten cents. RICHMOND, VA: T. W. WHITE, PRINTER AND PROPRIETOR, OPPOSITE THE BELL TAVERN. RIGHT OF INSTRUCTION.* The receipt of your letter afforded me much pleasure, not only on account of the interesting subject it treats of, but as a gratifying evidence of your remembrance of me. I fear, however, that you will have reason to repent of your kindness, as I shall presume upon it to task your patience with some observations in defence of my old federal notions upon your doctrine of instructions. I will endeavor to show that the extracts made in the Enquirer from the speeches of Messrs. King, Jay and Hamilton, in the New York Convention, do not sustain (even if we are to take the report of them to be verbally correct) the doctrine or right as it is contended for in Virginia. I understand that doctrine to be, that the instructions of a State Legislature to a Senator of the United States, are an authoritative, constitutional, lawful command, which he is bound implicitly to obey, and which he cannot disobey without a violation of his official duty as a Senator, imposing upon him the obligation to resign his place if he cannot, or will not, conform to the will of his Legislature. I confess that this doctrine appears to me to be absolutely incompatible with the cardinal principles of our Constitution, as a representative government; to break up the foundations which were intended to give it strength and stability, and to impart to it a consistent, uniform and harmonious action; and, virtually, to bring us back to a simple, turbulent democracy, the worst of all governmentsor rather, no government at all. I do not mean to enter upon the broad ground of argument of this question, with which you are so well acquainted, but to examine, as briefly as I can, but probably not so much so as your patience would require, the federal authorities which the writer in the Enquirer believes he has brought to the support of his opinions. No. VII. FIVE DOLLARS PER ANNUM. however honest in the intention, cannot be so strictly imputed to him. There is also an objection to extracts, even truly recited, inasmuch as they are often qualified or modified by other parts of the writing or speech. As I have not, immediately at hand, the debates of the New York Convention, I am unable, just now, to see how far this may have been the case in the speeches from which the quotations are made. I must, therefore, at present, be content to take them as they are given in the Enquirer, and even then it appears to me that they are far from covering the Virginia doctrine of instructions. Let us see. Mr. King is represented to have said, that "the Senators will have a powerful check in those who wish for their seats." This is most true-and in fact it is to this struggle for place that we owe much of the zeal for doctrines calculated to create vacancies. Mr. King proceeds-" And the State Legislatures, if they find their delegates erring, can and will instruct them. Will this be no check?" The two checks proposed, in the same sentence and put upon the same footing, are the vigilance of those who want the places of the Senators, and the instructions which the State Legislatures can and will give to them. They are said to be, as they truly are, powerful checks, operating with a strong influence on the will and discretion of the Senator, but not as subjecting him, as a matter of duty, either to the reproaches of his rivals or the opinions of the Legislature. To do this, a check must be something more than powerful; it must be irresistible, or, at least, attended by some means of carrying it out to submission-some penalty or remedy for disobedience. I consider the term instruct, as here used, to mean no more than counsel, advise, recommend-because Mr. King does not intimate that any right or power is vested in the Legislature to compel obedience to their instructions, or to punish a refractory Senator as an I cannot put out of the discussion, although I will official delinquent. It is left to his option to obey or not insist upon, the objection to the authority of the not, which is altogether inconsistent with every idea of reports of the speeches alluded to, especially when it a right to command. Such a right is at once met and turns upon a question of extreme accuracy in the use nullified by a right to refuse. They are equal and of certain precise words and phrases, any departure contrary rights. As we are upon a question of verbal from which would materially affect the sense of the criticism, and it is so treated in the Enquirer, we may speaker. We see daily in the reports of congressional look for information to our dictionaries. To instruct, debates, the most important mistakes or misrepresenta-in its primitive or most appropriate meaning, is simply tions, unintentionally made, not of expressions merely, to teach-and instruction is the act of teaching, or inforbut of the very substance and meaning of the speakers;mation. It is true that Johnson gives, as a more remote sometimes reporting the very reverse of what they actually said. I have occasion to know the carelessness with which these reports are frequently made, and, indeed, the impossibility of making them with accuracy. What a man writes he must abide by, in its fair and legitimate meaning; but what another writes for him, * Some months ago a number of the "Richmond Enquirer," containing an argument in favor of the mandatory right of a State Legislature to instruct a Senator of the United States, was forwarded to the author of this article. That argument was supported by the alleged opinions of Messrs. King, Jay and Hamilton, as expressed in the Convention of New York-and we think this reply well deserves publication. It is from the pen of a ripe scholar and a profound jurist. meaning, "to inform authoritatively." Certainly, the Legislature may instruct, may teach, may inform a Senator, and whenever they do so it will be with no small degree of authority from the relation in which they stand to each other; but the great question is, not whether this would be an impertinent or improper inthe Senator is bound, by his official oath or duty, imterference on the part of the Legislature, but whether plicitly to obey such instructions; whether he violates a duty he ought to observe, or usurps a power which does not belong to him, if he declines to submit to these directions, if he cannot receive the lesson thus taught, or adopt the information thus imparted to him. Does VOL. II.-52 in their hands, ought to be hardy, and must be so in opposition to the apparent and immediate, but transient, will of the people; and it is such hardy men who have deserved and received the gratitude and thanks of the people they saved by opposing them. The brightest names on the pages of history are those of such hardy men. The same answer meets the commentary on the word "dictating”—used, or said to be used, by Mr. King. the spirit of our Constitution (for clearly in terms it does not) intend to make a Senator of the United States a mere passive instrument or agent in the hands of a State Legislature. Is he required by any legal or moral duty or obligation, to surrender into the hands of any man or body of men, his honest judgment and conscientious convictions of right? To act on their dictation and his own responsibility; responsible to his country for the consequences of his vote, and to his own conscience and his God for the disregard of his oath of I would here make a remark upon this report of Mr. office, which bound him to support that Constitution King's speech, which shows how carelessly the report which his instructions may call upon him to violate, as was made, or how loose Mr. King was in his choice of he conscientiously believes. It will be a miserable apology words. In the beginning of the passage quoted, he for him to say, that he has done this because he was so refers to the State Legislatures, as the bodies who are ordered by a body of men, who may have thought or to check, by their instructions, the wanderings of the cared very little about it, and may hold a different Senators. In the conclusion he is made to sayopinion the next year without remorse or responsibility. “When they (the Senators) hear the voice of the people But if he cannot obey, must he save his conscience by dictating to them their duty," &c. Now, it can hardly resigning his seat? This is the most unsound and un-be pretended that the Legislature and the people are tenable of all the grounds assumed in this discussion. identically the same; or that a vote of the Legislature If it is the official duty of the Senator to do and perform by a majority of one-or by any majority, can always the will of his constituents, or rather of those who gave be said to be the voice of the people. It is as probable him his office, then he violates or evades that duty by that they may misrepresent the people, as that the resigning; and he may, in this way, not only abandon Senators should misrepresent them. It is not uncom his duty, but as effectually defeat the will and intention mon for the people to repudiate the acts of their Legisof his Legislature as by actually voting against it. To lature. It was understood to be so in Virginia, on the return to Mr. King-how does he propose or expect late question on the conduct of her Senators. The that this check of legislative instructions is to act upon solemn and deliberate opinion upon any subject, of the the Senator? What is the nature of the obligation he body from which an officer derives his appointment, considers to rest upon the Senator to obey them? He will always be received with great respect, as coming does not pretend that there is any power in the Legis- from a high source and with much authority, but the lature to enforce their instructions or cause them to be Senator, acting on the responsibility he owes to the respected. He does not suggest that disobedience is whole country, must take into his view of the case the a violation of duty on the part of the Senator, or the effect of his instructions upon the whole; he must not assumption of any right that does not practically and shut his eyes from examining the occasion which proconstitutionally belong to him; that he falls under any duced the instructions-the circumstances attending just odium or reproach, if after an honest and respectful them-the means by which they were obtained-the consideration of the instructions, he shall believe it to errors, or passions, or prejudices which may have inflube his duty to disregard them. Mr. King does not, enced and deceived those who voted for them; in short, by the most remote implication, intimate, that a State he must carefully and conscientiously examine the whole Legislature may, through the medium of instructions, ground, and finally decide for himself on the double directly or indirectly, put a limitation on the term of responsibility he owes to his own State and to the service of a Senator, which they will do if it is his duty United States; to those who appointed him to office to resign whenever they shall choose to require of him and to himself, and his own character. There is no to do what, as an honest man, a good citizen, and faith-doubt that this examination will be made with a dispoful officer, he cannot do. If instructions have the authority contended for, there is no exception; it is a perfect right or it is no right. The Senator cannot Mr. Jay expressed himself with more discrimination withdraw himself from it, however imperious the requi- and caution than Mr. King; and no inference can be sition may be, or however iniquitous the design in drawn from what he says, that there is any right or making it. The Senator has a discretion to judge of power in a State Legislature to demand obedience or it in all cases or in no case. He may take counsel of resignation from a Senator, to their instructions. He his own conscience and judgment in every call upon considers their instructions to be, what in truth and him-or in none. The check that Mr. King promises practice they have always been, nothing more than from the State Legislatures upon their Senators, is advice or information coming from a high source and nothing more than the natural influence they will have entitled to great respect. He says, "the Senate is to upon the minds and conduct of the Senators, and this, be composed of men appointed by the State Legislain my apprehension, is more likely to be too much than tures. They will certainly choose those who are most too little. What does Mr. K. say will be the conse-distinguished for their general knowledge. I presume quence of a refusal on the part of a Senator to obey? Not that he is corrupt-or unfaithful-or ought to resign-but simply that they will be "hardy men." Assuredly they will be so; I wish we had more of these hardy men, for certainly there are occasions on which public men, holding the destinies of their country sition sufficiently inclined to conform himself to the wishes of his constituents. they will also instruct them." In these reported debates, Hamilton is represented to have said--that "it would be a standing instruction of the larger States to increase the representation." Observe, this is not applied to the Senators only, but to the delegates or representatives of the States in Con |