writings, than in controverting the particular propofitions and arguments advanced in them. He fays, that Mr. Paine has the natural eloquence of a night-cellar, and writes in defiance of grammar, as if fyntax were an aristocratical invention, and with a difregard of decency worthy of his politics;' and he introduces the following as a fort of parody on his mode of writing and reafoning:

The republican landed and monied gentry of the North of Ireland, have, it is faid, circulated 20,000 Rights of Man at twopence a-piece. I recommend to their attention the following fhort addrefs, which they may, if they pleafe, difpenfe at a farthing. "To all Servants, Labourers, Handicrafts-men, and Manufacturers. "Now or never, my boys!

"You must know, my honest friends, that your masters and landlords have found out that the king, and the lords, and bishops, and parliament-men, ought to be all put down, because, as we are told in the holy fcriptures, God has made all men alike; and this is very true; for is not one man made of just the fame flesh and blood as another? Are not your mafters and landlords as good men as lords? and are not you as good men as either of them? To be fure you are.

"I hope all of you have read a new book, called Rights of Man, or elfe got fomebody to read it to you. This book fhews as clear as the fun at noon-day, that all men ought to be equal now, the fame as God made them at firft; and that kings and bifhops, and lords and gentlemen, are all downright inventions of the devil. Now, my boys, God certainly no more made landlords and masters than he did lords and gentlemen; and for my part I believe the devil had a greater hand in these than in the others, when I think how many hard landlords and bad mafters there are in the world. When God made the world, he gave the fruits of the earth alike to all, but the land to nobody; and if fo, is it not a very hard cafe when any of you has planted an acre of potatoes with the labour of his hands and the fweat of his brow, that he dares not dig one of them to fave himself and his family from ftarving? To be fure it is, and a very wicked thing too.

"This book alfo fhews as plain as can be, that you have no need to mind the laws, becaufe they were made by men who are dead and gone; and you know very well that the dead have no bufinefs at all to govern the living.

"And then it proves that any greater number of people may make any laws they please for the reft; and you are to be fure thirty or forty to one against the gentle folks; and fo may make whatever laws you like.

"Now when God has made one man just as good as another, are not you afhamed of yourselves to be fervants to your equals! To ftand behind a man's back not a bit better than yourselves, while he refts his lazy in an eafy chair. If you are not ashamed of this I am fure you ought to be ashamed of it, and to put an end to it too.

"And

"And you, day-labourers, are not you damned fools to work your guts out for poor pitiful eight-pence or ten-pence a day, hardly enough for tobacco and whisky, all the while that the farmer (who would ftarve you all if he could get a penny by it) makes perhaps two fhillings or half a crown clear profit, and the idle rafcal of a landlord may be five or fix more, all out of your work? To be fure you are.

Why now in this linen trade, there's many a master keeps mayhap forty or fifty men at work at loufy ten pence a day, while he is getting as rich as a Jew by your labour; and ten to one the fellow does not know how to fet a loom or handle a shuttle so well as the worst workman amongst you. Is not this a great shame? To be fure it is.

"Now, my brave boys, what you have to do is quite easy. You must begin by helping your mafters and landlords to pull down king and lords, and bishops, and every body above them; and then you must pull them down too. For to be fure if all men are equal there fhould be no fuch things as landlords or mafters in the world and in the mean time you are no better than affes if you don't bring them all to an account every Saturday night, and make them divide all the profits fairly and equally amongst you all. "If you should be fools enough to help your mafters to pull down those above them, without pulling them down too, let me tell you you will be a great deal worfe off than ever, because your matters will then have all the power in their own hands, and may use you just as they pleafe; and I believe you know pretty well how that would be. The best of them would make you do a deal of work for a little pay; and many of them would ufe you as bad as the blacks in America, if they durst.”

Some of Sir Brooke's obfervations on particular arguments and affertions made by Mr. Paine, are no doubt juft: but, in many inftances, he mif-ftates the pofitions of his opponent; understanding them, either by mistake or by choice, in a fenfe and latitude which the author does not warrant; and thus he contends against one thing, while his adverfary is pleading for another. This is particularly the cafe in page 108, where he reduces the great outlines of Mr. Paine's fyftem to three propofitions, neither of which is affirmed by Mr. Paine in the fenfe there explained. On fuch modes of controversy, we may quote, with a fmall variation, the words of our author, in p. 45. Nothing is more eafy than to confute another, when we are allowed to ftate the argument in our own manner and

terms.'

In this fecond part of the Obfervations, are feveral things. which may be confidered rather as digreffions from Mr. Paine. The merit of thefe is very various. The remarks on the French Declaration of Rights, which occupy twenty pages, appear to us no better than mere cavil, and a contradiction to

all

all that is valuable in Whigifm. At leaft, if fuch be Whigism, "we'll none of it *." Let us turn to fomething better.

There is one good arifing from the most abufive of these publications, that the more the question + is agitated, the more the neceffity will appear for taking away this reproachful diforder, with the bafe traffic, the turpe commercium it creates, emphatically called after a great authority the rotten part of the conflitution. This reform may, it ought to be, nay, I think it must be speedily obtained. It cannot be brought forward under more fortunate aufpices. It was the laft legacy of the dying Chatham, and the virgin effort of our prefent minifter. His honour and piety are both engaged to perfevere in it to effect. And if the fon's face is not ftamped with thofe grand and prominent features, which gave fuch irrefiitible command to the countenance of the father, his powers of influence are not lefs efficacious. After ten years, his best friends will advise him to fecure fome one action of eclat against the mutability of human affairs. Though he now ftands like a Coloffus, with one foot on the throne and another on the people, the caprice of fortune may have already decreed fome fatal reverfe. As in common life, perfons who have any property to difpofe of, do not wait for the warnings of mortality to make their last will, the man whose name is deftined to defcend to pofterity will labour betimes that it fhall not go down unaccompanied with fome honourable addition. In the vigour of his career, he will not forget that the day muft come when all his glories will be comprised in the narrow compafs of an epitaph. Customs and excife, and three per cents, will make but a forry figure upon marble. HERE LIES THE MAN WHO RESTORED THE CONSTITUTIONAL REPRESENTATION, would be no inglorious infcription.'

We will close our extracts with what we think no bad advice, in the prefent pofture of political affairs, to those who guide the helm of state:

Did it become an obfcure and humble man to offer advice to the fublime perfonages who direct our affairs, I fhould, with all diffidence, recommend it to them at this juncture to prevent the wishes of the nation by bringing forwards in a manly honest way thefe conftitutional reparations and reforms which time has made neceffary, or for which no opportunity has been given to the prudent caution of our fathers. The final fuccefs of the French revolution becomes every day more probable; a new generation is rifing up faft to its fupport, unbroken to the faddle or the yoke; and if the English fhould become jealous of any fuppofed fuperiority in a nation on whofe political exiftence they have been fo long accustomed to look down with difdain, fomething in this way

* Whether it favours of Whigitm to fay with Sir B. B. (p. 206.) that the principle of the game-laws feems juft and fair,' we are not very folicitous to determine Let thofe decide the point who value themfelves on the name of a Whig. Savour of what it will, we are clearly of opinion that it can never favour of freedom. †The queftion of a parliamentary reform.

muft

must be done; by moderate conceffions, granted above all while they can ftill wear the captivating graces of a free gift, things may always be prevented from running to dangerous extremes. In a crifis, too, like the prefent, where men who have vilified the conftitution are upon the watch for fomething to authorise their evil report, it might be prudent to reftrain a little of the adulatory correfpondence, of which the minifter and not the monarch is in reality the object. A minifter chaunting forth his own praises in a canticle known to be of his own inditing, echoed back by thanking himfelf, for his own exploits, furely rather gives a proof of his vanity than his difcretion. Though a good understanding between the different branches of the legislature is always to be wished, they have also separate rights and duties of which they cannot be too tenacious; and their exceffive complaifance for each other ought at all times to awaken a prudent jealoufy in those whose agents they are. The minifters who conceive that because we are attached to the monarch as holding and preferving the balance of the conftitution, we are therefore at all difpofed to allow him to affume the power of controuling the conftitution, will be taught, that we know how to diftinguish between the conftitution and the adminiftration of it. Let them not deceive themselves; the temporary anarchy produced in France by going too far may ferve to place the value of our well-poifed government in a stronger light, and make us therefore more unwilling to relinquish it; but furnishes at the fame time a terrible example of the facility with which arbitrary inftitutions may be deftroyed. If as things now ftand our govern ment is deftined to undergo any change, it will not be towards an arbitrary government either in form or effect; the fpirit of the times is fo far very happily otherwife directed. If any minifter shall venture to attempt to force it into that direction, it will recoil upon that minifter's head with a very dangerous momentum. I would allo recommend it to them to reprefs within more decent bounds the zeal of their mercenary prints: a laboured panegyric upon the conftitution comes with a fufpicious effect, while publications commonly fuppofed to be in pay of miniftry are allowed uniformly and fyftematically to maintain doctrines the most adverfe to it: paffive obedience and blind fubmiffion, are fitter for an Afiatic vizier than a British minifter; bafe and unlimited compliance, such as a free people fhould difdain to beflow, and the agent of a free people be ashamed to receive.'

Sir Brooke Boothby is not always accurate in his facts, nor in the confequences which he deduces from them. In page 134, a paffage is quoted from the Unbeliever's Creed, which creed is faid to have been published in a periodical work conducted by Mr. Moore, under the title of The World, by Adam Fitz-Adam: it is not in The World, but in The Connoiffeur, that this creed is to be found. This is a matter of no

confequence in itself, but it argues inattention in the author, and leads to a fufpicion that, in other cafes, he may not be so fcrupulous and exact as a writer, especially when quoting, ought to be.

A more

A more important inftance of loofe and negligent affertion, accompanied with vague inference, occurs in page 233: where we have the following note, • Men do not feem less prone to fuperftition in this enlightened age than formerly. Swedenborgers, Animal-magnetifers, Unitarians, &c. are the produce of our own days.' We would here observe, that no one of these three defcriptions of men can be properly produced as examples of fuperftition. The first two may, perhaps, be rather more juftly confidered as inftances of fanaticifm. Even then, if we compare the little progrefs which they have made, or are likely to make, with the rapid growth of fanatical delufion in former times, the fair inference is, that men are less prone to enthufiafm now than formerly; -and in page 270, Sir B. himself affirms, that the long age of religious fanaticifm appears to decline apace.'

We were most furprized, however, to find the Unitarians accused of fuperftition. We believe that fuch a charge never was brought against them before. The common objection is, that, in order to get away from fuperftition, this clafs of Chriftians has gone too far into the oppofite extremity, and, with the corruptions, has difcarded fome of the genuine doctrines, of revelation. When David Hume was at Paris, fome converfation on religious fubjects is faid to have paffed between himself and Meffrs. D'Alembert, Diderot, and other fublime geniuses, remarkable for their noble contempt of thofe narrow notions and vulgar prejudices which debafed the understanding of a Bacon, a Newton, and a Locke. In the courfe of the conference, it was difcovered that Hume did not go quite so far in the unbeliever's creed as fome of the company. He contended for the existence, and for the moral government, of a Deity. After he left the room, one of the philofophers being asked what he thought of Mr. Hume, replied, that he certainly was a man of an enlarged and liberal turn of mind, and that it was a great pity that he had not been able wholly to divest himself of fuperftition, and to shake off the remaining prejudices of his education. To fuch liberal fpirits as thefe, we can easily fuppofe that Unitarians may appear fuperftitious, as long as they retain any thing of Chriftianity: but how they should be viewed in that light, by one who is in any degree a believer himself, we cannot conceive!

For an account of Sir Brooke Boothby's Letter to Mr. Burke, fee Rev. New Series, vol. v. p. 70.

ART,