standard of reason; and the fortuitous occupier of these necessary ap pendages to civil society must no longer claim from others that respect for his station which he neglects to pay it himself; he must also bear in mind, that the most dangerous and the worst of levellers in society are those who degrade the station to which fortune has raised them; who lower the eminence on which they erect the standard of their pride; and abet the cause of that equality they affect to depreciate and despise, making the necessity of subordination grievous, and submission to vice, arrogance, and folly, disgraceful. How pointed, yet how just, is the contempt with which reason and philosophy now regard the famed exploits, the rapine, the mur ders, the insatiable pride and ambition of that "crowned ruffian” of antiquity, Alexander the Great! They may now give a bold and decisive answer in the affirmative to the question of the humane, indignant poet, "And shall not twice a thousand years unpraise Dr. YOUNG's Love of Fame. His valour, his occasional magnanimity, his noble confidence, may still be admired; but his excesses, his pride, and his tyranny, will, in this enlightened age, meet with the detestation they deserve. How despicable, how sordid, how abject, does the sanguinary ambition of Louis XIV. appear! How does it shrink from the mortifying comparison with the invincible Grecian Hero! No sprig of laurel graced the brow-no genius informed-no virtue irradiated the mind of the gloomy ferocious bigot. The haughty unrelenting despot compelled armies of slaves to sacrifice their lives in the unjust and unavailing attempt to swell his triumphs, and extend his sway. Rioting in luxury and debauchery, or chaunting, with impious hypocrisy, Te Deums for battles he dared not fight and for victories he did not obtain, he saw Europe's fertile plains desolated and drenched with blood at his command; while the indignant, agonizing, awful groan of suffering millions ascended to heaven, to call down vengeance on his guilty head.' • Englishmen and Frenchmen have, ever since the Norman conquest, been told they are natural enemies. This gross libel on nature they have always considered as an article of their political creed; and have very conscientiously, and willingly, followed their leaders to cut each other's throats, for the glory of their respective kings and countries; and to revenge themselves on their "natural enemies," though all the time without any "malice or hatred in their hearts," except what their wise and righteous "governors, teachers, political pastors, and masters," might have found it convenient to instil into them. If two numerous armies of these natural enemies should even, at this moment, when the national animosity created by ambition, nursed by prejudice, and strengthened by a long reciprocation of injuries, has attained its highest pitch, be eagerly waiting the dreadful event of battle; battle; and if the meditated slaughter should be suddenly and unexpectedly suspended by the happy tidings of peace, would not the joyful acclamations of either host assert the rights of injured nature? Her children, liberated from the cruel tyranny of human restrictions, and absolved from the stern commands of honour, would obey her awful voice, and embrace as brethren. 'A natural enemy "is a monster" which the world" ne'er saw," and national animosity is the creature of political delusion. Should a Frenchman and a Briton be cast on a desolate island, the national prejudice would instantly vanish, and the joy of meeting with an associate in affliction would obliterate for a moment the idea of their mutual difress. So powerful is the principle of UNIVERSAL PHILANTHROPY which the all-wise Creator has implanted in the breast of man, that it exists, and occasionally bursts forth, even in those who have been inured to acts of rapine, violence, and cruelty; who have been systematically barbarised. When the decree was passed in the convention, that the armies of the French Republic "should take no prisoners," a decree which is so supereminent in atrocity as to cast at an awful distance the vilest acts of deliberate barbarity which history has recorded, the armies of France, to their immortal honour, indignantly refused to obey the infernal mandate. In the late glorious action, when the Indefatigable and the Amazon attacked Les Droits De L'Homme, and the two latter, while fighting with equal bravery, ran on shore on the coast of France, the humane and generous natives, respecting the valour of their gallant enemy, by which they saw their own ship destroyed, were equally attentive to the preservation of Englishmen as of their countrymen, from the common calamity to which the fate of war had brought them. Are such heroic, generous nations to be longer considered as natural enemies? Forbid it, righteous Heaven! and grant that their fierce, their impolitic, their destructive contention may be immediately succeeded by an alliance as durable, an amity as sincere, as their present hostility is irrational! • The French are not, by nature, a cruel or malevolent people; nor are either their national prejudices, or the cruelties or enormities which stain the annals of the sanguinary reign of Robiespierre and his associates, to be attributed to the depravity of the people, but to their inverted education, to the examples of turpitude and barbarity continually before their eyes, and to the immoral and atheistical principles industriously propagated among them.' Art. 37. A Letter to the Right Hon. William Pitt, on the additional Tax of Two Shillings and Six Pence on every Cwt. of Sugar; with some Observations on the Slave Trade. 8vo. Is. 6d. Egerton. This tract is neither forcibly nor elegantly written, but it displays local knowlege, and contains observations which merit. attention. attention. The author, seemingly with great reason, contends that the duties on sugar, like those on tea, should be regulated by the quality of the commodity. As coarse teas (he observes) are exempted from [part of] the duty, on the principle of accommodating the poor, so should coarse or muscovado sugar be favoured in like manner.' If we mistake not, this principle prevails in the tax on sugar imported from the East Indies, which pays ad valorem; and we conceive that no solid argument can be adduced, to prove that it should not be extended to the imports from our colonies in the west. The chief intention of this pamphlet, however, is to urge a claim on behalf of the inhabitants of Barbadoes, which, if it were urged in the house of commons, would probably surprize the minister. The author contends that they ought to be particularly, and exclusively, exempted from any additional tax whatever on their sugar imported into this kingdom, on the plea that they are groaning under burdens to which the sister colonies are not subject. The writer admits that the Islands of St. Christopher, Nevis, Antigua, and Montserrat, are equally liable with Barbadoes to the duty of 4 per cent. on their produce but he observes that there is something so peculiar in the misfortunes which have befallen Barbadoes, that, upon a thorough scrutiny, the immediate claims of this island must be allowed in preference to every other.' He states the following circumstances in support of this conclusion : On the 14th of May 1766 a most dreadful fire consumed the greater part of Bridge Town, the capital of the island. On the 27th of December in the same year, a second conflagration broke out and destroyed the remaining part of this town. These fires so injured many of the principal planters, that a number of years elapsed before they were enabled to recover themselves; and numberless others (not in possession of those means of rallying which the more wealthy had recourse to) sunk under the weight of their misfortunes. In fact, these horrid calamities occasioned universal distress throughout the island, and the unfortunate inhabitants had scarcely recovered from these direful events, when that most awful and tremendous hurricane in the year 1780, levelled to the ground the whole of that industry which had cost them so much pains and labour. This was a stroke for which they were little prepared, and which filled the measure of their woes! but these fires, and this horrid convulsion of nature, were not the only ills that the Barbadians have had to encounter, Pandora's box, replete as it was with misery, contained not half the calamities that desolated and laid waste this once fertile land. The security which enveloped them upon the extinction of the conflagrations, served only to aggravate those misfortunes which quickly at tended them. They had imagined, that, from the extent of those evils, no others of greater magnitude could follow. They had consoled themselves, with these ideas, and they had in the true spirit of "Exulting Ilion" exclaimed "Hic Dolopum manus: Hic sævus tendebat Achilles: Classibus hic locus: Hic acies certare solebant." But this was but the rhapsody of the moment. Mischief engendered mischief, and from those fatal fires in the year 1766 to the unfortunate year 1780, the country was laid waste by bo rers vers*, black and yellow blasts, ants, and a series of dry and unproductive seasons. The planters were brought to the very threshold of indigence. Merchants, loud in their demands; government, positive in its levies. Thus were the Barbadians environed with difficulties; and thus were their concerns disregarded and perplexed.' This is a gloomy and, we fear, a faithful picture but that it will divert, in the smallest degree, the claims of ministerial rapacity from the inhabitants of Barbadoes, we suppose the author himself is not sanguine enough to expect. Concerning the remarks on the slave-trade, we have only to observe that they have been anticipated by other writers. Art. 38. The Questions stated, Peace or War? and who are the Men fittest to make Peace and to keep it? submitted to the Consideration of the People of Great Britain and Ireland. 8vo. pp. 84. 1s. 6d. Johnson. 1797. This whimsical author is an advocate for immediate peace and liberal reform. Our readers may judge of his principles and style from the following extract. Reader. You have not told us your opinion whether the war has been ably planned and conducted. war. Author. We may presume that those who had the management did their best. But they have not eclipsed the merit of Carnot. Few people are capable of forming or judging of the plans for conducting We know, however, what has been the success; and if we were to judge of measures both at home and abroad by their result, we might be apt to suppose that our military operations had been contrived" by a Lord Chancellor; our naval affairs directed by a general of horse; our state-trials eonducted by a Scotch advocate, bred in the despotic maxims of the law of the Roman emperors; our finances and taxes contrived by pick-pockets; and the police of the country exercised by a provost-martial. Reader. You have said nothing of Mr. Burke's advice to carry on eternal war with the republic of regicides, as he calls the French go vernment. • Author. I should think myself as mad as Mr. Burke, if I were to regard a phrenzy which not above one or two men in the whole kingdom avow; and I should as soon make a serious attack upon Don Quixote and his squire Sancho, while they were glorying in their self-importance of being the universal deliverers of distressed damsels, as I would reason with Mr. Burke, and his follower Mr. Windham, while they affect to be the knights-errant of regular government, religion, and humanity, and are popping their light artillery of air-guns loaded with tropes, metaphors, riddles, quibbles, and quaint phrases, at the huge giant, Regicide.' Art. 39. Thoughts on the Conduct both of Ministers and Opposition; submitted by a true-born Englishman to the serious Consideration of his Countrymen. Svo. 3d. Longman. The very wise, philosophical, and humane purpose of this little * A worm or grub which does incredible mischief to the sugarcanes. Rev. pamphlet, pamphlet, which consists chiefly of extracts from" a third letter * to a British merchant," may be seen in the following passage of the compiler's preface. As to my foreign politics, they consist chiefly in a settled and unconquerable aversion to our natural enemies the French-not, indeed, as individuals, but as a nation; an aversion which I sucked in with my mother's milk, and which I trust my children have sucked in with theirs, as I am convinced that, as a national sentiment, it has not only been one principal cause of our greatness and prosperity, but also that it is necessary for our security against a bitter and perfidious foe. And as the French Nation, bad as they always were, are lately much changed for the worse, I think it my duty to hate them more than ever, and I wish there was an Antigallican club in every parish throughout the kingdom.' Art. 40. New Circulating Medium: being an Examination of the Solidity of Paper Currency, and its Effects on the Country at this Crisis. 8vo. 6d. Johnson. The object of this pamphlet is to prove that the new circulating Medium, the Bank of England notes not exchangeable for gold and silver, will in a short time lose value rapidly; and that notes of private bankers will be preferred to them in circulation, as a security less fluctuating. The note-holders, whenever their property depreciates, will probably solicit their being made a legal tender,-a measure deprecated by the acute and ingenious author, as inefficient, ruinous, and tyrannical. Art. 41. Letters written to the Directors and Governors of the Bank of England, in Sept. 1796, on the Pecuniary Distresses of the Country, and the Means of preventing them With some additional Observations on the same Subject, and the Means of speedily re-establishing the public and commercial Credit of the Country. By Sir John Sinclair, Bart. President of the Board of Agriculture. 8vo. IS. Nicol. 1797. The character of Sir John Sinclair as a writer stands justly high: a cosmopolite spirit graces his reflections; and his information on topics of finance, agriculture, and statistics, is sought as authority throughout Europe :-but it may be doubted whether he deserves as a practical statesinan all the confidence which he possesses as a literary politician. During the scarcity of corn, the stir and reports of the Board of Agriculture certainly increased the dearth, and have supplied the strongest argument for granting indemnities to the merchants who lost money by their importations; and a late inquisitive numbering of the cattle along the coast is by some thought to have helped to bring on the critical alarm which stopped the Bank of England. In the letters now before us, Sir John takes it for granted that we are in want of circulating medium; whereas we apprehend that our want is of a different kind, a want of productive circulation. It is not *We have not yet seen the third Letter to a British Merchant; our opinion of the 1st and 2d appeared in our Review for Nov. 1796, P. 332. enough |