Men of Science; and the arts of war and peace; and its Citizens naturally strong and of habitual courage. Another State may possess none or a few only of these, or the same more imperfectly. Or of two States pos

branch of politics which relates to the necessity and 1st. In the quality and quantity of the powers. One practicability of infusing new life into our Legisla-possesses Chemists, Mechanists, Mechanics of all kinds, ture, as the best means of securing talent and wisdom in the Cabinet, will shortly occupy the public attention with a paramount interest.* I would gladly therefore suggest the proper state of feeling and the right preparatory notions with which this disqui-sessing the same in equal perfection the one is more sition should be entered upon: and I do not know numerous than the other, as France and Switzerland. how I can effect this more naturally, than by relating 2d. In the more or less perfect union of these powers the facts and circumstances which influenced my Compare Mr. Leckie's valuable and authentic docu own mind. I can scarcely be accused of egotism, as ments respecting the state of Sicily with the preceding in the communications and conversations which I Essay on Taxation. 3dly. In the greater or less ac am about to mention as having occurred to me during tivity of exertion. Think of the ecclesiastical State and my residence abroad, I am no otherwise the hero of its silent metropolis, and then of the county of Lancas the tale, than as being the passive receiver or audi-ter and the towns of Manchester and Liverpool. What tor. But above all, let it not be forgotten, that in the following paragraphs I speak as a Christian Moralist, not as a Statesman.

To examine any thing wisely, two conditions are requisite: first, a distinct notion of the desirable ENDS, in the complete accomplishment of which would consist the perfection of such a thing, or its ideal excellence; and, secondly, a calm and kindly mode of feeling, without which we shall hardly fail either to overlook, or not to make due allowances for, the circumstances which prevent these ends from being all perfectly realized in the particular thing which we are to examine. For instance, we must have a general notion what a MAN can be and ought to be, before we can fitly proceed to determine on the merits or demerits of any one individual. For the examination of our own Government, I prepared my mind, therefore, by a short Catechism, which I shall communicate in the next Essay, and on which the letter and anecdotes that follow, will, I flatter myself, be found an amusing, if not an instructive commentary.

ESSAY V.

Hoc potissimum pacto felicem ac magnum regem se fore judicans: non si quam plurimis sed si quam optimis imperet. niisse, nisi idem viris eruditione juxta ac vitæ integritate præcellentibus ditet atque honestet. Nimirum intelligit hæc demum esse vera regni decora, has veras opes: hanc veram et nullis unquam seculis cessuram gloriam.-ERAS. Rot. R.

Proinde parum esse putat justis præsidiis regnum suum mu

S. Poncherio, Episc. Parisien. Epistola.

Translation.-Judging that he will have employed the most effectual means of being a happy and powerful king, not by

governing the most numerous but the most moral people. He deemed of small sufficiency to have protected the country by fleets and garrison, unless he should at the same time enrich and ornament it with men of eminent learning and sanctity.

IN what do all States agree? A number of menexert-power-in union. Wherein do they differ?

*I am in doubt whether the five hundred petitions presented at the same time to the House of Commons by the Member for Westminster, are to be considered as a fulfilment of this prophecy. I have heard the echoes of a single blunderbuss, on one of our Cumberland lakes, imitate the volley from a whole regiment.

is the condition of powers exerted in union by a number of men? A Government. What are the ends of Government? They are of two kinds, negative and positive. The negative ends of Government are the protection of life, of personal freedom, of property, of reputation, and of religion, from foreign and from domestic attacks. The positive ends are, 1st. to make the means of subsistence more easy to each individ ual: 2d. that in addition to the necessaries of life he should derive from the union and division of labor a share of the comforts and conveniences which htmanize and ennoble his nature; and at the same time the power of perfecting himself in his own branch of industry by having those things which he needs provided for him by other among his fellow-citizens; including the tools and raw or manufactured materials necessary for his own employment. I knew a profound mathematician in Sicily, who had devoted a full third of his life to the perfecting the discovery of the Longitude, and who had convinced not only himself but the principal mathematicians of Messina and Palermo that he had succeeded; but neither throughout Sicily or Naples could he find a single Artist capable of constructing the instrument which he had invented.† 3dly. The hope of bettering his own condition and that of his children. The civilized man gives up those stimulants of hope and fear which constitute the chief charm of the savage life: and yet his maker has distinguished him from the brute that perishes, by making Hope an instinct of his nature and an indispensable condition of his moral and intellectual progression. But a natural instinct constitutes a natural right, as far as its gratification is compatible with the equal rights of others. Hence our ancestors classed those who were bound to the soil (addicti gleba) and incapa

†The good man, who is poor, old, and blind, universally esteemed for the innocence and austerity of his life not less than for his learning, and yet universally neglected, except by persons almost as poor as himself, strongly reminded me of a German epigram on Kepler, which may be thus translated: No mortal spirit yet had clomb so high As Kepler-yet his country saw him die For very want! the minds alone be fed, And so the bodies left him without bread.

The good old man presented me with the book in which he has described and demonstrated his invention: and I should with great pleasure transmit it to any mathematician who would feel an interest in examining it and communicating his opinions on its merits.

ble by law of altering their condition from that of their On entering and passing the streets of Alexandria, parents, as bondsmen or villeins, however advantage-I could not but notice the very marked satisfaction, ously they might otherwise be situated. Reflect on the direful effects of castes in Hindostan, and then transfer yourself in fancy to an English cottage,

"Where o'er the cradled Infant bending
Hope has fix'd her wishful gaze,"

which every expression and every countenance of all denominations of people, Turks and Frenchmen only excepted, manifested under the impression that we were the avant-courier of an English army. They had conceived this from observing the English jack saint, and because as is common enough every where, at our main, taking our flag perhaps for that of a would have been cruel to have undeceived them: they were ready to believe what they wished. It consequently without positively assuming it, we passed in the character of Englishmen among the middle and lower orders of society, and as their allies entered or wherever halted, we were surrounded by among those of better information. Wherever we the wretched inhabitants; and stunned with their benedictions and prayers for blessings on us. "Will the English come? Are they coming? God grant have no money-we have no bread! When will the the English may come! we have no commerce-we English arrive!" My answer was uniformly, Patience! The same tone was heard at Rosetta as among the Alexandrians, indicative of the same dispositions; only it was not so loud, because the inhab

and the fond mother dreams of her child's future fortunes-who knows but he may come home a rich merchant, like such a one? or be a bishop or a judge? The prizes are indeed few and rare; but still they are possible: and the hope is universal, and perhaps occasions more happiness than even its fulfilment. Lastly, the development of those faculties which are essential to his human nature by the knowledge of his moral and religious duties, and the increase of his intellectual powers in as great a degree, as is compatible with the other ends of his social union, and does not involve a contradiction. The poorest Briton possesses much and important knowledge, which he would not have had, if Newton, Luther, Calvin, and their compeers had not existed; but it is evident that the means of science and learning could not exist, if all men had a right to be made profound Mathematicians or men of extensive erudition. Still instruction is one of the ends of Gov-itants are less miserable, although without any traits ernment: for it is that only which makes the abandonment of the savage state an ABSOLUTE DUTY: and that Constitution is the best, under which the average sum of useful knowledge is the greatest, and the causes that awaken and encourage talent and genius, the most powerful and various.

of happiness. On the fourth we left that village for Cairo, and for our security as well as to facilitate our procurement of accommodations during our voyage, as well as our stay there, the resident directed his secretary, Capt. V—, to accompany us, and to give us lodgings in his house. We ascended the Nile leiThese were my preparatory notions. The influ- surely, and calling at several villages, it was plainly ences under which I proceeded to re-examine our perceivable that the rational partiality, the strong and own Constitution, were the following, which I give, open expression of which proclaimed so loudly the not exactly as they occurred, but in the order in feelings of the Egyptians of the sea coast, was genewhich they will be illustrative of the different arti-ral throughout the country: and the prayers for the cles of the preceding paragraph. That we are better return of the English as earnest as universal. and happier than others is indeed no reason for our On the morning of the sixth we went on shore at not becoming still better; especially as with states, as the village of Sabour. The villagers expressed an well as individuals, not to be progressive is to be re-enthusiastic gladness at seeing red and blue uniforms trograde. Yet the comparison will usefully temper the desire of improvement with love and a sense of gratitude for what we already are.

I. A LETTER received, at Malta from an American officer of high rank, who has since received the thanks and rewards of the congress for his services in the Mediterranean.

GRAND CAIRO, Dec. 13, 1804.

SIR,-The same reason, which induced me to request letters of introduction to his Britannic Majesty's Agents here, suggested the propriety of showing an English jack at the main-top-gallant mast head, on entering the port of Alexandria on the 26th ult. The signal was recognized; and Mr. B was immediately on board.

and round hats (the French, I believe, wear threecornered ones.) Two days before, five hundred Albanian deserters from the Viceroy's army had pillaged and left this village; at which they had lived at free quarters about four weeks.-The famishing inhabitants were now distressed with apprehensions from another quarter. A company of wild Arabs were encamped in sight. They dreaded their ravages and apprised us of danger from them. We were eighteen in the party, well armed; and a pretty brisk fire which we raised around the numerous flocks of pigeons and other small fowl in the environs, must have deterred them from mischief, if, as it is most probable, they had meditated any against us. Scarcely, however, were we on board and under weigh, when we saw these mounted marauders of the desert fall furiously upon the herds of camels, buffaloes, and cattle of the village, and drive many of them off wholly unannoyed on the part of the unre

We found in port, a Turkish Vice Admiral, with a ship of the line, and six frigates: a part of which squadron is stationed there to preserve the tranquil lity of the country; with just as much influence assisting inhabitants, unless their shrieks could be the same number of Pelicans would have on the same station.

deemed an annoyance. They afterwards attacked and robbed several unarmed boats, which were a

or false, is as natural as it is simple, and as influentia as natural. "The English," say they, "pay for every thing-the French pay nothing, and take every thing." They do not like this kind of debverers.

Well, thought I, after the perusal of this Letter, the Slave Trade (which had not then been abolished) is a dreadful crime, an English iniquity! and to sanction its continuance under full conviction and parliamentary confession of its injustice and inhumanity, is, if possible, still blacker guilt. Would that our discontents were for a while confined to our moral wants! whatever may be the defects of our Constitution, we have at least an effective Government, and that too composed of men who were born with us and are to die among us. We are at least preserved from the incursions of foreign enemies; the intercommunion of interests precludes a civil war, and the volunteer spirit of the nation equally with its laws, give to the darkest lanes of our crowded metropolis that quiet and security which the remotest Villager at the cataracts of the Nile prays for in vain,

few hours astern of us. The most insensible must
surely have been moved by the situation of the pea-
sants of that village. The while we were listening
to their complaints, they kissed our hands, and with
prostrations to the ground, rendered more affecting
by the inflamed state of the eyes almost universal
amongst them, and which the new traveller might
venially imagine to have been the immediate effect
of weeping and anguish, they all implored English
succor. Their shrieks at the assault of the wild
Arabs seemed to implore the same still more forcibly,
while it testified what multiplied reasons they had to
implore it. I confess, I felt an almost insurmountable
impulse to bring our little party to their relief, and
might perhaps have done a rash act, had it not been
for the calm and just observation of Captain V's,
that "these were common occurrences, and that any
relief which we could afford, would not merely be
only temporary, but would exasperate the plunderers
to still more atrocious outrages after our departure."
On the morning of the seventh we landed near a
village. At our approach the villagers fled: signals
of friendship brought some of them to us. When
they were told that we were Englishmen, they flock-in his mud hovel!
ed around us with demonstrations of joy, offered their
services, and raised loud ejaculations for our estab-
lishment in the country. Here we could not procure
a pint of milk for our coffee. The inhabitants had
been plundered and chased from their habitations by
the Albanians and Desert Arabs, and it was but the
preceding day, they had returned to their naked cot-
tages.

Grand Cairo differs from the places already passed,
only as the presence of the tyrant stamps silence on
the lips of misery with the seal of terror. Wretch-
edness here assumes the form of melancholy; but
the few whispers that are hazarded, convey the same
feelings and the same wishes. And wherein does
this misery and consequent spirit of revolution con-
sist? Not in any form of government but in a form-
less despotism, an anarchy indeed! for it amounts
literally to an annihilation of every thing that can
merit the name of government or justify the use of
the word even in the laxest sense. Egypt is under
the most frightful despotism, yet has no master! The
Turkish soldiery, restrained by no discipline, seize
every thing by violence, not only all that their neces-
sities dictate, but whatever their caprices suggest.
The Mamelukes, who dispute with these the right of
domination, procure themselves subsistence by means
as lawless though less insupportably oppressive. And
the wild Arabs availing themselves of the occasion,
plunder the defenceless wherever they find plunder.
To finish the whole, the talons of the Viceroy fix on
every thing which can be changed into currency, in
order to find the means of supporting an ungoverned,
disorganized banditti of foreign troops, who receive
the harvest of his oppression, desert and betray him.
Of all this rapine, robbery, and extortion, the wretch-
ed cultivators of the soil are the perpetual victims.
A spirit of revolution is the natural consequence.

The reason the inhabitants of this country give for preferring the English to the French, whether true

Not yet enslaved nor wholly vile,
O Albion, O my mother isle!
Thy valleys fair, as Eden's bowers,
Glitter green with sunny showers;
Thy grassy uplands' gentle swells
Echo to the bleat of flocks;
(Those glassy hills, those glitt'ring della
Proudly ramparted with rocks)
And ocean 'mid his uproar wild
Speaks safety to his island-child.
Hence for many a fearless age
Has social quiet lov'd thy shore;
Nor ever sworded warrior's rage

Or sack'd thy towers or stain'd thy fields with gore.
COLERIDGE'S Poems.

II. Anecdote of Buonaparte.

Buonaparte, during his short stay at Malta, called out the Maltese regiments raised by the Knights, amounting to fifteen hundred of the stoutest young men of the islands. As they were drawn up on the parade, he informed them, in a bombastic harangue, that he had restored them to liberty; but in proof that his attachment to them was not bounded by this benefaction, he would now give them an opportunity of adding glory to freedom-and concluding by ask ing who of them would march forward to be his fellow-soldier on the banks of the Nile, and contribute a flower of Maltese heroism to the immortal wreaths of fame, with which he meant to crown the pyramids of Egypt! Not a man stirred: all gave a silent refusal. They were instantly surrounded by a regi ment of French soldiers, marched to the Marino, forced on board the transports, and threatened with death if any one of them attempted his escape or should be discovered in any part of the islands of Malta or Goza. At Alexandria they were always put in front, both to save the French soldiery, and to prevent their running away: and of the whole number, fifty only survived to revisit their native country. From one of these survivors I first learned this fact,

which was afterwards confirmed to me by several of his remaining comrades, as well as by the most respectable inhabitants of Valette.

This anecdote recalled to my mind an accidental conversation with an old countryman in a central district of Germany. I purposely omit names because the day of retribution has come and gone by. I was looking at a strong fortress in the distance, which formed a highly interesting object in a rich and varied landscape, and asked the old man, who had stopped to gaze at me, its name, &c. adding how beautiful it looks! It may be well enough to look at, answered he, but God keep all Christians from being taken thither! He then proceeded to gratify the curiosity which he had thus excited, by informing me that the Baron

had been taken

eration."-A Catholic Priest, a Lutheran Divine, a Calvinist Minister, a Quaker, a Jew, and a Philosopher, were represented sitting around the same Table, over which a winged figure hovered in the attitude of protection. For this harmless print, said my friend, the artist was imprisoned, and having attempted to escape, was sentenced to draw the boats on the banks of the Danube, with robbers and murderers: and there died in less than two months, from exhaustion and exposure. In your happy country, sir, this print would be considered as a pleasing scene from real life: for in every great town throughout your empire you may meet with the original. Yes, I replied, as far as the negative ends of Government are concerned we have no reason to complain. Our Government protects us from foreign enemies, and our Laws secure our lives, our personal freedom, our property, reputation, and religious rights, from domestic attacks. Our taxes, indeed are enormous-Oh! talk not of taxes, said my friend, till you have resided in a country where the boor disposes of his produce to strangers for a foreign mart, not to bring back to his fami

out of his bed at midnight and carried to that fortress -that he was not heard of for nearly two years, when a soldier who had fled over the boundaries sent information to his family of the place and mode of his imprisonment. As I have no design to work on the feelings of my readers, I pass over the shock-ly the comforts and conveniences of foreign manufacing detail: had not the language and countenance tures, but to procure that coin which his lord is to of my informant precluded such a suspicion, I might squander away in a distant land. Neither can I with have supposed that he had been repeating some tale patience hear it said, that your laws act only to the of horror from a Romance of the dark ages. What negative ends of government. They have a manifold was his crime! I asked-The report is, said the old positive influence, and their incorrupt administration man, that in his capacity as minister he had remon-gives a color to all your modes of thinking, and is one strated with the concerning the extravagance of the chief causes of your superior morality in priof his mistress, an outlandish countess; and that she vate as well as public life.* in revenge persuaded the sovereign, that it was the Baron who had communicated to a professor at Gottingen the particulars of the infamous sale of some thousand of his subjects as soldiers. On the same day I discovered in the landlord of a small public house one of the men who had been thus sold. He seemed highly delighted in entertaining an English gentleman, and in once more talking English after a lapse of so many years. He was far from regretting this incident in his life, but his account of the manner in which they were forced away, accorded in so many particulars with Schiller's impassioned description of the same, or a similar scene, in his Tragedy of CABAL and LOVE, as to leave a perfect conviction on my mind, that the dramatic pathos of that description was not greater than its historic fidelity.

As I was thus reflecting, I glanced my eye on the leading paragraph of a London newspaper, containing much angry declamation, and some bitter truths, respecting our military arrangements. It were in vain, thought I, to deny that the influence of parliamentary interest, which prevents the immense patronage of the crown from becoming a despotic power, is not the most likely to secure the ablest commanders or the fittest persons for the management of our foreign empire. However, thank Heaven! if we fight, we fight for our own king and country: and grievances which may be publicly complained of, there is some chance of seeing remedied.

My limits compel me to strike out the different incidents which I had written as a commentary on the three former of the positive ends of Government. To the moral feelings of my Readers they might have been serviceable; but for their understanding they are superfluous. It is surely impossible to peruse them, and not admit that all three are realized under our Government to a degree unexampled in any other old and long peopled country. The defects of our Constitution (in which word I include the Laws and Customs of the Land as well as its scheme of Legislative and Executive Power) must exist, therefore, in the fourth, namely, the production of the highest average of general information, of general moral and religious principles, and the excitements and opportunities which it affords to paramount genius and heroic

*"The administration of justice throughout the Continent is partial, venal, and infamous. I have, in conversation with many sensible men, met with something of content with their governments in all other respects than this; but upon the question of expecting justice to be really and fairly administered, every one confessed there was no such thing to be look

ed for. The conduct of the judges is profligate and atrocious. Upon almost every cause that comes before them interest is openly made with the judges; and woe betide the man, who, with a cause to support had no means of conciliating favor.

either by the beauty of a handsome wife, or by other methods."-This quotation is confined in the original to France

under the monarchy; I have extended the application, and adopted the words as comprising the result of my own experience: and I take this opportunity of declaring, that the most important parts of Mr. Leckie's statement concerning Sicily I myself know to be accurate, and am authorized by what I

myself saw there, to rely on the whole as a fair and unexag

III. A celebrated Professor in a German University, showed me a very pleasing print, entitled, "Tol-gerated representation.