VI.-Inquiries concerning Instinct: exhibiting a Brief View of the Mental Faculties of the Lower Animals com- pared with those of Man; and also the State of VII. On the Easiest Mode of Learning the Greek and Latin Languages, with occasional Strictures on the Greek and Latin Grammars taught in Public Schools, VIII. On the Connection and the mutual Assistance of the Arts and Sciences, and the Relation of Poetry to IX. Politics and Poetics, or the desperate Situation of a Journalist unhappily smitten with the Love of XII. On the Inconveniences resulting from being hanged, XIII.-On the Responsibility of Members of Academies of Arts, and in Vindication of the late Professor Barry from the Aspersions of the Edinburgh Review, XIV.-On Theophrastus :-prefaced with some Remarks on the supposed Inferiority of the Ancients to the Mo- derns in the Arts of Ridicule, XV. On the Danger of confounding Moral with Personal Deformity, with a Hint to those who have the ART. XVI. On the probable Effects of the Gunpowder Treason R. F. E. on the Proper Objects in the Education of the Middle and Lower The Editor is obliged to Mr. S. for his three several Communications, but The articles politely sent by Mr. B. entitled Theatrical Criticism and the Systems, are alsó returned, not altogether on the same grounds, but the former as being deficient in novelty, and the latter as perhaps not exactly publish→ The verses by O. J. are declined not because they have nothing to recom- mend them, for they really have considerable merit as the production of a Youth; but because the publication of such productions is of still less service to the writer than to the publisher. The Editor would not discourage O. J.'s attachment to poetry:-on the contrary, he would advise him to cultivate it's acquaintance till familiarity wears off the habit of imitating it's common lan- guage, and he has learnt to think and speak for himself, as the present spe- cimen shews that he may. Good imitation is a very good sign of success ; F THE REFLECTOR. No. I. ART. 1.-The English considered as a thinking People, in reference to late Years. NATIONS, like individuals, have their distinct characters, and acquire them, in the same way, from education and habit. Much has been said of the influence of climate in this respect, but it is an influence always subordinate to that of manners and government. It is not the sunshine that has made the same Romans glorious and contemptible, the same Spaniards enterprising and enervate, the same Arabs the preservers of learning and the despisers of it. A few extraordinary minds, well or ill disposed, and the concurrence of petty circumstances, lead the way to those actions and habits, which for ages determine the character of a people; and the nation takes it's epithet accordingly. Some countries gradually lose the whole of their character; others lose but a part of it; and others retain it altogether; but the climates ever preserve theirs: it is the men only who are changed. Thus the Egyptians, who gave the first rudiments of philosophy and the fine arts to the Greeks, are at present purely stupid: the Spaniards have retained their generosity, but their emulous pride has become an ignorant self-sufficiency; while the French, escaping like quicksilver from the pressure of the severest evils, and becoming a greater nation than ever they were before, still retain the bubble at the top of their character, are still fickle, extrinsic, and vainglorious. The English, who were said to have no distinct character, because the nature of their religion and government allowed every one his own peculiarity, had for that very reason the finest character in Europe. They who always think for themselves will soon think for others; and in England arose that genuine and disinterested philosophy which was destined to supersede the schools, and to prepare the downfal of pedantry and superstition. This, and the jealous interest which the people took in political matters, procured it the most glorious appellation that a civilized country can obtain: the Spaniards were called a generous, the French French an illustrious nation; but the English were a thinking nation. It was but half a century ago, that we enjoyed this distinc tion at our ease: our rival neighbours in particular, who in catching the truths of our philosophy became so enthusiastic in decorating and displaying them, made a fashion of praising us; and the greatest man of their age paid the last homage to the laurels round our forehead by styling us "the only nation in Europe who thought profoundly." Great events arose: we treated them not in our wisdom, but with passion and with prejudice : and at length, I am afraid, the philosopher's eulogy is the greatest satire that can be passed on us. In truth, we have too long lived upon credit in more than one respect, upon the credit of our reputation, as well as money. We are too apt to think that our ancestors have done enough for us in point of thinking: having been once a thinking nation, we mistake former reputation for present desert; we quote to ourselves the panegyrics which have been won from rival nations by the preeminence of our philosophers; and upon the strength of having produced Hume, and Locke, and Bacon, and other great reasoners, flatter ourselves that we must always be a thinking nation. But the surest way to do nothing, is to be persuaded that we have nothing to do. We live, just in the same way, upon the credit of our national institutes, our Bill of Rights, and Magna Charta; and like true rakes, whose worst enemies are thought and foresight, are content to see innovation creeping on our health, satisfying ourselves that it is but a small innovation natural to those who live expensively, and thanking Heaven that we have a glorious Constitution! But it is with political corruption, as with sickness: it's worst effects are not those that are more immediately perceivable, or even more acutely felt, but those which gradually deaden our sensations and at last unsettle our powers of reason. The greatest evil therefore of a long system of corruption is it's injuriousness to a right spirit of thinking. All inroads upon public liberty may be repelled or remedied as long as we have our proper faculties about us, for corrupt statesmen are as little disposed as other knaves to entrap, plunder, or destroy us with our eyes open; but let them succeed in blinding our understanding,-let them succeed in making us iguorant of, or indifferent to, our danger, and the chains are already on our hands; the fingers already, revel at their ease in our poc kets; and ere long, we feel the last stab that is to ensure the present safety of the plunderers. It is not however in absolute monarchies only, that government wages war with sound thinking. The influence of a corrupt minister in a free state will sometimes go farther in corrupting public opinion than that of the most arbitrary monarch, because people are more willing to acquiesce in a delusion into which they are flattered; and h Fagland England as well as France can be cajoled into measures against her liberty by being called a Great Nation. The money system pur. sued by Mr. Pitt and his unphilosophic school aimed all at once a deadly blow at the spirit of public opinion. It diffused corruption among the middle orders, who give the intellectual tone to a nation, and as the politics of that minister became the interest of all who had an eye to patronage and government service, they were disseminated with an industry proportioned to their facilitations of gain they became the current coin of political speculation, the circulating medium, through which the independence of mens' minds was bought and sold. Thirty years of debauched, money-wasting, and most unfortunate policy, have at length brought us to the climax of absurdity and corruption. A generation of jobbers inevitably produces a generation of slaves, for what was inclination. in the former becomes education and habit in the latter,-what was a want of principle in the one, becomes, if so it may be called, a vital principle in the other. Where the art of money-getting predominates, it is made a substitute for all other kinds of knowledge, moral and political; and indeed, as this art, in it's perfection, involves great dereliction of principle, it is necessary that the determined money-getter should shut his eyes to all calculations not decidedly profitable. To admire the funding system and Mr. Pitt's strong measures, was the first step into advantageous life; to admire Mr. Pitt and his measures, gradually became to acquiesce in every species of political compromise; and at last, political compromise, whether it consisted in borough-mongering, or in drawing for government exigencies upon the constitution, or in drawing for public exigencies upon the last shilling of the next age, became the Athanasian creed of the politicians, by which every one who differed with them was anathematized for doubting impossibilities. These principles reigned at every table, where a bottle of wine was to be found: they were the passport to toleration not only with the tenth part of the nation, who looked up to government for bread, but with every species of dependant, with tradesmen of all kinds, with civil, religious, and military expectants, with high and low, with old and with young: they even pervaded our scholastic foundations, and together with the indecencies of Ovid and the bestialities of Aristophanes, the young novice learnt to venerate the corruption of public government. What gave consistency and continuance to this delusion, beyond the abilities of former Ministers to compass, was the war with France, which was first said to be an impoverished nation, whom we were to starve, then an insolvent nation, whom we were to ruin by bankruptcy, then a monstrous nation, whom we were to strangle by drawing together the fetters of surrounding potentates. It was in vain, that the poverty of France sharpened her genius and her sword; |