GOVERNMENT.

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Office. —The duty of a king- appears to consist in theexercise of superior wisdom. He should be skilled in thearts of defence and attack, as a general;—should be ableto discriminate character, to know worth of every descrip-tion, and where to find it;—should be remarkable for soundpolicy, inflexible justice: in brief, he should possess everyvirtue which ennobles man;—should cause the laws, by whichthe society is governed, to be impartially executed, with justiceand judgment: should cause to be punished with severityall ill/ immoral, and scandalous members of the society, ofwhat state or condition soever: should have the legal sen-tence of law executed with the strictest justice and impar-tiality : yet, where it can be exerted with safety to thegeneral weal, and where it is not scandalous to the moralsof the people, he should incline to mercy; for that shouldbe his distinguishing characteristic.

In searching the history of this country, the best, wisest,and most virtuous of her princes were those who appear tohave been educated, in the early part of their lives, in theschool of adversity, without much prospect of enjoying theregal dignity, or who lived in factious and troublesometimes. Such were Alfred, Henry the Second, Elizabeth,James her successor, and some few others, who appear tohave got to the throne after the endurance of much trouble.

Attributes of Sovereignty —Consist of a crown, sceptre,and imperial throne : the first, ]i"lp , kohen, was the namefirst given by the astonished Israelites to those brilliant andtranscendant rays which proceeded from the face of thelegislator Moses , on his descent from Mount Sinai, after hisconversation with the Lord, Jehovah, so intensely bright,that they dared not view his super-human appearance; infact, could not, without experiencing a sacred dread andreligious terror: see Exod. xxxiv. 29. Therefore, theyhad previously prayed Moses , “ Speak thou with us, andwe will hear ; but let not God speak with us, lest we die.”Exod. xx. 19. From the record of the above circumstancethe word is presumed to have its root; but it is subsequentlyused in 1 Esdras, ii. 62, with a different termination, thoughevidently derived from the preceding radical, HJJp, kennah,rendered Kinnan sacerdotalis presbyterium cat us judicium : 16derived immediately from ^Hp, kohen, or cohen. Cohensacerdos politice administer .' 6 The sceptre was also a veryancient scriptural word, denoting supremacy or authority,

16 VAbbt Pluche's Hist, du Ciel; et Buxtorff’s Lexicon Hebraic*.

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