times to have, and sometimes to think, is the qualification, who cari count the tickets of admission, who can tell how many there are of either title, and how many are to be deducted from the joint number for unity of rights? It appears to me that this public is continually varying, according to the nature of events, and the pressure of circumstances. An habitual public is an indolent public, a small and idle sect of lounging politicians; necessity and danger enlarge the circle, till it takes in every condition of life, and spreads to Man himself. The succession to a crown is the concern of great families; but in a besieged city, every porter is a politician. In the "piping times of peace," politics are a science and a profession; in the exigencies of war and troubles, they are common thought, and care, and nature. In peace they are speculation: but in war, instinct: in prosperity the hope of a few, in danger the anxiety of all; in this ambition, in that sentiment; here prudence, or perhaps pride; there necessity, or interest at the least. To compute, therefore, these moving sands, seems to me as difficult as to fix the seas that displace or accumulate them. But without counting, we may perceive their encrease; we may observe the mass, without separating the units; and ignorant as we are of their number, we need not hesitate to pronounce, that it is greater to-day than it was yesterday, and that it will exceed to-morrow the sum-total of to-day. The corruptions of these times have filled the political tribes, and whether they are to vote by the head or by classes, is the question that involves the safety of the state. Í need not recommend to your consideration the importance of this new occurrence: we have, in fact, a new public, before and by means of which our parties contend and dispute for power. Now though the cause were the same, it would be of some consequence to have changed the judge and the tribunal. The Government of Rome was overturned, when her factions called in the scum and dregs of Italy to vote in the Comitia. It was a new public that gave away her liberty, and enthroned Marius, and Sylla, and Cæsar, on the ruins of the constitution. What Rome suffered in her elections, we are openly threatened with in ours; and in our natural representativeour political public are actually suffering-we have suffered opinion to be corrupted and depraved a thousand ways, and we permit those to vote, and their vote to sway and govern, who, in any other part or period of the world, would have been deprived of the quality of citizen, for personal immorality, and private brands.' When Mr. Burke invites me to his crusade, with that eloquence which has no rival, and that zeal which outstrips even itself, I assent only while I listen to him; I know not how it happens, but when the charm of his voice ceases, my concurrence stops with it. He leaves no impression, I think, and certainly no conviction, for he neither proves to me the probability of succeeding, nor, shall I own it to you, the interest in success! When Mr. Fox belies, or slanders the country, I listen with impatience, I scarce can listen; and when he represents us as aggressors in the war, or as bankrupts in public faith, or as defeated and incapable of reducing our enemy to just and adequate conditions of peace, my heart and my understanding repel ΙΟ the the libel; and when he counsels to abandon to France all that she may desire to occupy, I cannot perceive, in the circumstances of either country, that necessity which could alone render his advice any thing but treachery or madness. From both of these, therefore, I turn, equally dissatisfied and unconvinced, though not with equal disgust and aversion; yet I would ask of those, whose fastidious ears cannot hear the very whispers of peace, who encourage their country to persevere so nobly in an eternal internecine war with France, till they shall replace the monarch on his throne, and the host on the altars-I would ask, what hope they entertain of rousing, by their eloquence, a sluggish people, deaf to all the cries of honour, interest, and duty? Let them throw their eyes at home, and tell me what high thoughts, what generous desires, what honourable spirit they discover? Let them shew me the funds that they rely upon, of public virtue, of disinterestedness, of self-devotedness, amongst our people, or our wealthy merchants, or our wealthy nobility if they please, or, if they please our wealthy clergy? Why was the Bank besieged when a handful of felons landed in Pembrokeshire? Why was the specie of the realm pumped out of circulation, to be hidden in cellars, or buried in the earth, when there was but a threat of invasion? What superfluous valour do they find amongst us? What virtues of supererogation, that we should spend them in a foreign cause? Are they sure that we possess more energy, and zeal, and patriotism, than are necessary to the defence of our own throne, of our own churches, of our own soil-they who would persuade Mr. Pitt to assume a task, at which his father would have trembled when we were Britons? 'Let us not deceive ourselves, the very name of country has disappeared from the midst of us; that name, so dear, so tender, and so powerful, skeeps in our ears. Hypocrisy blushes to pronounce it; credulity listens to it no more; it seems fraud, and sounds declamation. Commerce has done its perfect work; it has withdrawn our eyes from every general public care, from every generous manly thought, to our ledgers and our day-books-we are a nation of tills and counters, not of states and provinces! a cold, callous, calculating race, whose plodding head looks down and mocks our heart, who reason ourselves out of honour, out of patriotism, out of every great propensity of our soul. If our funds fall a sixteenth, this war of rehgion, principle, necessity, becomes a ministerial trick, or a crusade of kings; for half a crown in an hundred pounds, we abandon our laws, our altars, our independence, and our fields; upon all this globe of earth we discern no speck but the Stock-Exchange: we tremble for no generous nation: no unhappy confederate; we throw our eyes not to the temple where we worship, or the place where we were born, but to the Stock-Exchange.Has Jourdan passed the Rhine? thank heaven, stocks rise.-Does he approach the Danube? thank heaven still; he will dictate peace to the emperor in Vienna, and stocks will rise still higher. What is it to us, if rape and murder prowl through the provinces of Germany?-What, if desolating fires and military massacres destroy the villages and the peasantry?-What, if universal conquest subject all mankind to the REV. MAY, 1797 H French French vandal, and set his obscene dominion on the neck of all the human race? the stocks rise.-But, if a naked band of miserable wretches, disembarked by force in the Welch mountains, and prisoners of the peasantry, bring the shade of danger to ourselves, Oh! it is another thing; draw a line round the bank, overwhelm the public credit, and steal the palladium of the country.' This is the most eloquent piece of rant that we have seen for this long time past. Art. 23. A Vindication of the Privilege of the People in respect to the - Constitutional Right of Free Discussion: With a Retrospect to various Proceedings relative to the Violations of that Right. pp. 80. 25. Stockdale. 1796. 8vo. We have found nothing in this pamphlet sufficiently striking to induce us to recommend it to the attention of our readers. It relates principally to the subject of the libellous pamphlet of which Mr. Reeves was the reputed author. Art. 24. Three Letters addressed to the People of Great Britain, on the late Negociation. Including a few Hints on the Conduct proper to be adopted in the present Situation of Affairs. 8vo. PP. 51. Is. Jordan. 1797. The chief question discussed in these Letters, namely, the cession of Belgium to the French Republic, has been already determined by that able political casuist, General Buonaparte. Art. 25. An Examination into the Particulars of the two last Elections for the Borough of Southwark, in May and November 1796; wherein it is proved from the Spirit of the Act of King William, commonly called, The Treating Act, that the late Determination upon it by a Committee of the House of Commons was, with the best Intentions, founded in Error; with Thoughts on the Privileges of that House in general, and those in particular on Cases of Elections. By M. Dawes, Esq. of the Inner Temple, Barrister at Law, and one of the Assessors to the Returning Officer. pp. 69. Is. 6d. Johnson. 1797. 8vo. This is an ingenious argument against the determination of the Committee, appointed by the House of Commons to inquire into the merits of Mr. Tierney's petition. Mr. Dawes treats the subject with great candour. Art. 26. A Display of the Spirit and Designs of those who, under pretext of a Reform, aim at the Subversion of the Constitution and Government of this Kingdom. With a Defence of Ecclesiastical Establishments. By the Rev. G. Bennet, Minister of the Gospel in Carlisle. 8vo. pp. 160. 3s. Boards. Richardson. 1796. This is a feeble effort to bring the cause of liberty and its advocates into disrepute, by representing them as Atheists, plunderers, and assassins. Art. 27. An Appeal to the Moral Feelings of Samuel Thornton, Rowland Burdon, Hawkins Brown, Esqrs. and to every Member of the House of Commons who conscientiously supports the present Administration. In a Letter to William Wilberforce, Esq. 8vo. pp. 51. 1s. Johnson. 1797. None None who are acquainted with the history of mankind, or with the world, will hesitate to admit that we sometimes act amiss without being conscious of error :-but how it is possible for men, who respect morality and reverence religion, to give their steady support to a system which is founded on contempt of all the moral duties, and to wars, in the prosecution of which, every principle and precept of religion are atrociously violated by all of the conflicting partics, we are, equally with the author of this tract, at a loss to conceive. We hope that the following passage will have its effect on the person to whom it is addressed: • The debauchee or the drunkard, pernicious as is his conduct, injures himself or his family chiefly, and his example extends comparatively to a very small distance in weakening the bonds of society, but the mischief of political profligacy is still more widely diffused it involves in it the fate of millions-it overwhelms whole empires with woe and devastation. 'It may seem unnecessary to have dwelt so long upon the magnitude and reality of legislative duties, in an address to you, Sir, or to gentlemen of your character. But when I compare the measures of the Administration which you support either with the precepts of Christ or the rules of morality, I feel myself forcibly urged to make an appeal to your conscience, and most solemnly to call upon you at this momentous period to explain, how you reconcile such measures with any one religious principle? If you cannot, then I conjure you in the name of God, and of your country, to return without delay to the execution of that trust, to the sacred and indispensible nature of which I have endeavoured to draw your most serious attention.' Of that seduction which is commonly termed influence, the author speaks thus: ་ How heinous then is that transgression which daringly breaks down this sacred barrier, which God himself has raised to shield the weakness of the human heart, and directly attacks its most unguarded recesses? 'Such and so foul is the crime of tempting men under the guileful mask of influence, to betray the dearest interests of their country; to desert their most sacred principles; to abandon that truely exalted virtue Patriotism; and sink that palladium of civilized nations, Political Integrity, to the lowest point of contempt! Need I appeal to the numerous instances of its baneful application among the highest ranks of the community? No, Sir, these are too recent, too notorious, and too humiliating. It is impossible that facts so glaring can have escaped your observation, although the frequency of them may have familiarised dereliction of principle even to your mind, and lessened in your estimation the magnitude of that guilt, which is invariably attached to the man who sells the virtue, the happiness, and the freedom of his country, for a title, a place, a ribbon, or a pension. Guilty indeed that man is-but how much more guilty is he who presents the temptation? Can you be innocent, who furnish the means of seduction? You, Sir, who have it always in your power to dry up the source from whence corruption flows, and have not done H 2 done it! I have brought the matter home to your own breast, that the criminality of exercising this influence, which is now so lightly esti mated, may appear before you in all its horror. Yes, Sir-Here is a sort of Treason, shall I call it? which is truely terrific-This it is which insensibly saps the foundations of civil society-This it is which like a rank and subtle poison relaxes the sinews, and at length totally dissolves the bonds of social union-This it is which taints the very fountain of national security, works upon the weakest parts of human nature, and becomes every hour more dreadful in its consequences, in proportion to the number of its victims and the increasing facility of its triumphs. But the criminality of tempting men from the paths of rectitude is not confined to the rich and great. Corruption among them assumes greater degrees of refinement. Its hostility to the liberties of the subject is more concealed, and its annihilation of principle less suspected-but among the poorer classes seduction is practised in the most undisguised manner, and here it appears in all its native deformity.' With one more extract, we shall take our leave of this sensible and sometimes nervous writer. It The partition of French territory being frustrated by the chances of war; a most infernal plan, new and unequalled in the annals of the universe, was next projected a plan too atrocious for language to reprobate in terms sufficiently forcible-Human nature herself sickens at the bare idea of the scheme, which had for its object the reduction of twenty-six millions of human beings by famine. The British nation has ever been accustomed to wage war. with magnanimity as well as courage but this was to have committed to a painful, lingering, and horrid death, millions of the innocent, the helpless, the aged, and the infirm. This was to have spread wide wasting calamity in its most hideous forms over myriads of unoffending creatures, and to have introduced an incalculable mass of misery chiefly and principally among those who have the strongest. claims to the protection and tenderness of their fellow creatures. is impossible to present to your imagination a more heart-rending. picture than that of a whole nation sinking under the united horrors of pestilence and famine, the inseparable concomitants of each other, and committed without the possibility of relief to one of the most barbarous modes of dissolution which humanity can suffer. I blush to ask you, Sir, whether you have had any share in such an enterprise. Just and eternal God! where is the boasted humanity of Englishmen! Where sleeps the pride, the honour of the nation? Where slumbers its justice that the inventor of a crime so enormous should not instantly receive the reward of his guilt. The bloody relentless tyrant, who sacrificed such numbers of his countrymen on the groaning scaffolds of France, was an angel of mercy compared. with that wretch, who conceived the idea of consigning twenty-six. millions of people to be gradually famished to death. Could the bene volent advocate for African emancipation suffer the execution of such a scheme to be attempted, without testifying his marked and public abhorrence!My pen refuses to reply-and every idea L had |