219

While Kings were poor, and all those schemes un- Frankly avow'd his bold enslaving plan,

known

Which drain the People, but enrich the Throne;

Ere yet a yielding Commons had surplied

And claim'd a right from God to trample man!
But Luther's light had too much warm'd mankind
For Hampden's truths to linger long behind;

Those chains of gold by which themselves are tied; Nor then, when king-like Popes had fallen so low,
Then proud Prerogative, untaught to creep
With Bribery's silent foot on Freedom's sleep,'

Could pope-like Kings' escape the levelling blow.
That ponderous sceptre (in whose place we bow
It is the nature of a people in general to attend but to the Too gross, too visible to work the spell
To the light talisman of influence now,)
externals of Government. Having neither leisure nor abili
ty to discuss its measures, they look no deeper than the sur- Which Modern Power performs, in fragments fell:
face for their utility, and no farther than the present for their In fragments lay, till, patch'd and painted o'er
consequences. Mrs. Macaulay has said of a certain period, With fleurs-de-lys, it shone and scourged once more!
"The people at this time were, as the people of Great

Britain always are, half-stupid, half-drunk, and half-asleep," "Twas then, my friend, thy kneeling nation quaff'd
and however we may dissent from this petulant effusion of Long, long and deep, the churchman's opiate draught
a Scotch-woman, it must be owned that the reasoning pow- Of tame obedience-till her sense of right
ers of John Bull are not very easily called into action, and

Which neither force could storm nor treachery mine!
But no-the luminous, the lofty plan,

that even where he does condescend to exert them, it is like And pulse of glory seem'd extinguish'd quite,
Dogberry's display of his reading and writing, "where there And Britons slept so sluggish in their chain,
is no need of such vanity;" as upon that deep question about That wakening Freedom call'd almost in vain!
the dangers of the church, which was submitted for his dis-
cussion by Mr. P-rc-v-l at the late elections. It follows, Oh England! England! what a chance was thine,
however, from this apathy of the people, that as long as no When the last tyrant of that ill-starr'd line
glaring exertion of power, no open violation of forms is ob- Fled from his sullied crown, and left thee free
truded upon them, it is of very little consequence how mat-
ters are managed behind the curtain; and a few quiet men, To found thy own eternal liberty!
getting close to the ear of the Throne, may whisper away How bright, how glorious in that sun-shine hour,
the salvation of the country so inaudibly, that ruin will be Might patriot hands have raised the triple tower?
divested of half its alarming preparatives. If, in addition to
this slumber of the people, a great majority of those whom Of British freedom on a rock divine,
they have deputed to watch for them, can be induced, by
any irresistible argument, to prefer the safety of the govern-
ment to the integrity of the constitution, and to think a con-
nivance at the encroachments of power less troublesome Like mighty Babel, seem'd too bold for man;
than the difficulties which would follow reform, I cannot The curse of jarring tongues again was given
imagine a more tranquil state of affairs than must necessa- To thwart a work which raised men near to Heaven!
rily result from such general and well-regulated acquies-
cence. Instead of vain and agitating efforts to establish While Tories marr'd what Whigs had scarce begun,3
that speculative balance of the constitution, which perhaps While Whigs undid what Whigs themselves had done,^
has never existed but in the pages of Montesquieu(a) and
de Lolme, a preponderance would be silently yielded to one
of the three estates, which would carry the other two almost
insensibly, but effectually, along with it; and even though
the path might lead eventually to destruction, yet its spe-
cious and gilded smoothness would almost atone for the
danger-like Milton's bridge over Chaos, it would lead

"Smooth, easy, inoffensive, down to ****.

his "dog Steenie" (the Duke of Buckingham,) which we 1 The drivelling correspondence between James I. and find among the Hardwick Papers, sufficiently shows, if we wanted such illustration, into what doting, idiotic brains the plan of arbitrary power may enter.

2 Tacitus has expressed his opinion, in a passage very frequently quoted, that such a distribution of power as the 1 Though the Kings of England were most unroyally theory of the British constitution exhibits is merely a subject harassed and fettered in all their pursuits by pecuniary dif- of bright speculation, "a system more easily praised than ficulties, before the provident enactments of William's reign practised, and which, even could it happen to exist, would had opened to the Crown its present sources of wealth, yet certainly not prove permanent;" and, in truth, if we reflect we must not attribute to the Revolutionary Whigs the credit on the English history, we shall feel very much inclined to altogether of inventing this art of government. Its advan-agree with Tacitus. We shall find that at no period whattages had long been understood by ministers and favourites, ever has this balance of the three estates existed; that the though the limits of the royal revenue prevented them from nobles predominated till the policy of Henry VII. and his exercising it with effect. In the reign of Mary, indeed, the successor reduced their weight by breaking up the feudal gold of Spain, being added to the usual resources of the system of property; that the power of the Crown became Throne, produced such a spirit of ductility in her Parlia-then supreme and absolute, till the bold encroachments of ments, that the price for which each member had sold him-the Commons subverted the fabric altogether; that the alterself was publicly ascertained: and if Charles the First could nate ascendancy of prerogative and privilege distracted the have commanded a similar supply, it is not too much to suppose that the Commonwealth never would have existed. But it was during the reign of the second Charles that the nearest approaches were made to that pecuniary system which our debt, our funds, and our taxes, have since brought to such perfection; and Clifford and Danby would not disgrace even the present times of political venality. Still, however, the experiment was but partial and imperfect, (b) and attended with scarcely any other advantage than that of suggesting the uses to which the power of the purse has been since converted, just as the fu'minating dust of the chemists may have prepared the way for the invention of gunpowder.

(a) Montesquieu seems not a little satisfied with his own ingenuity in finding out the character of the English from the nature of their political institutions; but it appears to me somewhat like that easy sagacity by which Lavater has discovered the genius of Shakspeare in his features.

(b) See Preface to a Collection of Debates, etc. in 1694 and 1695, for an account of the public tables kept at Westminster, in Charles the Second's time, "to feed the betrayers of their country." The payment of each day's work was jeft under their respective plates.

period which followed the Restoration; and that, lastly, the Acts of 1688, by laying the foundation of an unbounded court influence, have secured a preponderance to the Throne which every succeeding year increases. So that the British constitution has never perhaps existed but in theory.

3 "Those two thieves (says Ralph) between whom the nation was crucified."-Use and Abuse of Parliaments, page 164.

4 The monarchs of Great Britain can never be sufficiently grateful for that generous spirit which led the Revolutionary Whigs to give away the Crown, without imposing any of taken advantage of such a moment to enforce, and in framthose restraints or stipulations which other men might have limitations proposed by the Lords Essex and Halifax, in the ing of which they had so good a model to follow as the debate upon the Exclusion Bill. They not only condescended, however, to accept of places, but they took care that these dignities should be no impediment to their "voice poafter many years suffered to pass, which by one of its artitential" in affairs of legislation; and though an Act was cles disqualified placemen from serving as members of the House of Commons, yet it was not allowed to interfere with the influence of the reigning monarch, nor indeed with that of his successor Anne, as the purifying clause was not to

The time was lost, and William, with a smile,
Saw Freedom weeping o'er the unfinish'd pile!
Hence all the ills you suffer, hence remain
Such galling fragments of that feudal chain,'
Whose links, around you by the Norman flung,
Though loosed and broke so often, still have clung.
Hence sly Prerogative, like Jove of old,
Has turn'd his thunder into showers of gold,
Whose silent courtship wins securer joys,2
Taints by degrees, and ruins without noise.

66

take effect till after the decease of the latter sovereign, and
she very considerately repealed it altogether. So that, as
representation has continued ever since, if the King were
simple enough to send to foreign courts ambassadors who
were most of them in the pay of those courts, he would be
just as faithfully represented as his people. It would be
endless to enumerate all the favours which were conferred
upon William by those
apostate Whigs." They compli-
mented him with the first suspension of the Habeas Corpus
Act which had been hazarded since the confirmation of that
privilege; and this example of our Deliverer's reign has not
been lost upon any of his successors. They promoted the
establishment of a standing army, and circulated in its de-
fence the celebrated "Balancing Letter," in which it is
insinuated that England, even then, in her boasted hour of
regeneration, was arrived at such a pitch of faction and cor-
ruption, that nothing could keep her in order but a Whig
ministry and a standing army. They refused, as long as
they could, to shorten the duration of Parliaments; and,
though the declaration of rights acknowledged the necessity
of such a reform, they were able, by arts not unknown to
modern ministers, to brand those as traitors and republicans
who urged it. (a) But the grand and distinguishing trait of
their measures was the power which they gave to the Crown
of annihilating the freedom of elections, of muddying for
ever that stream of representation, which had, even in the
most agitated times, reflected some features of the people,
but which then, for the first time, became the Pactolus of
the Court, and grew so darkened with sands of gold, that it
served for the people's mirror no longer. We need but con-
sult the writings of that time, to understand the astonish-
ment then excited by measures, which the practice of a cen-
tury has rendered not only familiar but necessary. See a
pamphlet called "The Danger of mercenary Parliaments,"
1698; State Tracts, Will. III. vol. ii. p. 638; and see also
"Some Paradoxes presented as a New Year's Gift." (State
Poems, vol. iii. p. 327.)

While Parliaments, no more those sacred things
Which make and rule the destiny of Kings,
Like loaded dice by ministers are thrown,
And each new set of sharpers cog their own!
Hence the rich oil, that from the Treasury steals,
And drips o'er all the Constitutions wheels,
Giving the old machine such pliant play,'
That Court and Commons jog one joltless way,
While Wisdom trembles for the crazy car,
So gilt, so rotten, carrying fools so far!

Et perrumpere amnat saxa, potentius,
Ictu fulmineo.
Horat. lib. iii. od. 16.

The Athenians considered seduction so much more dan

gerous than force, that the penalty for a rape was merely a with death. And though it must be owned that, during the pecuniary fine, while the guilt of seduction was punished reign of that ravisher, Prerogative, the poor Constitution was treated like Miss Cunegund among the Bulgarians; yet I agree with the principle of the Athenian law, that her present state of willing self-abandonment is much more hopeless and irreclaimable, and calls for a more signal vengeance

upon her seducers.

It would be amusing to trace the history of Prerogative from the date of its strength under the Tudor princes, whet Henry VII. and his successors "taught the people (as Nathaniel Bacon says) (a) to dance to the tune of Allegiance," to the period of the Revolution, when the Throne, in its attacks upon liberty, began to exchange the noisy explosions of Prerogative for the silent and effectual air-gun of Influence. In considering it too since that memorable era, we shall find that, while the royal power has been abridged in branches where it might be made conducive to the interests of the people, it has been left in full and unshackled vigour against almost every point where the integrity of the constitution is vulnerable. For instance, the power of chartering boroughs, to whose capricious abuse in the hands of the Stuarts we are indebted for most of the present anomalies of representation, might, if suffered to remain, have in some degree atoned for its mischief by restoring the old unchartered boroughs to their rights, and widening more equally the basis of the legislature. But, by the Act of Union with Scotland, this part of the prerogative was removed, lest Liberty should have a chance of being healed even by the rust of the spear which had wounded her. The power, however, of creating peers, which has generally been exercised for the government against the constitution, is left in that celebrated Bill for the limitation of this ever-budding free, unqualified activity; notwithstanding the example of branch of prerogative, which was proposed in the reign of George I. under the peculiar sanction and recommendation of the Court, but which the Whigs rejected with that characteristic delicacy, which has generally prevented them, when in office themselves, from taking any uncourtly advantage of the Throne. It will be recollected, however, that the creation of the twelve peers by the Tories in Anne's reign (a measure which Swift, like a true party man, defends,) gave these upright Whigs all possible alarm for their liberties.

1 The last great wound given to the feudal system was the Act of the 12th of Charles II. which abolished the tenure of knights' service in capite, and which Blackstone compares, for its salutary influence upon property, to the boasted provisions of Magna Charta itself. Yet even in this Act we see the effects of that counteracting spirit, that Arimanius, which has weakend every effort of the English nation towards liberty, which allowed but half the errors of Popery to be removed at the Reformation, and which planted more abuses than it suffered to be rooted out at the Revolution. The exclusion of copyholders from their share of elective rights was permitted to remain as a brand of feudal serviWith regard to this generous fit about his prerogative tude, and as an obstacle to the rise of that strong counter which seized the good king George I., historians have said balance which an equal representation of property would that the paroxysm originated more in hatred to his son than oppose to the weight of the Crown. If the managers of the in love to the constitution: (b) but no person acquainted Revolution had been sincere in their wishes for reform, they with the annals of the three Georges, could possibly suspect would not only have taken this fetter off the rights of elec-any one of those gracious Monarchs either of ill-will to his tion, but they would have renewed the mode adopted in heir, or indifference for the constitution. Cromwell's time of increasing the number of knights of the 1 "They drove so fast (says Welwood of the Ministers shire, to the exclusion of those rotten insignificant boroughs, of Charles I.,) that it was no wonder that the wheels and which have tainted the whole mass of the constitution. Lord Clarendon calls this measure of Cromwell's "an alteration fit to be more warrantably made, and in a better time." It formed part of Mr. Pitt's plan in 1783; but Mr. Pitt's plan of reform was a kind of dramatic piece, about as likely to be acted as Mr. Sheridan's "Foresters." -fore enim tutum iter et patens, Converso in pretium Deo. Aurum per medios ire satellites,

2

(a) See a Pamphlet, published in 1693, upon the King's refusing to sign the Triennial Bill, called "A Discourse between a Yeoman of Kent and a Knight of a Shire.""Hereupon (says the Yeoman) the gentleman grew angry, and said that I talked like a base commonwealth man."

chariot broke." (Memoirs, p. 35.)-But this fatal accident, if we may judge from experience, is to be imputed less to the folly and impetuosity of the drivers, than to the want of that suppling oil from the Treasury which has been found so necessary to make a government like that of England run smoothly. If Charles had been as well provided with this article as his successors have been since the happy Revolution, his Commons would never have merited from the Throne the harsh appellation of "seditious vipers," but would have been (as they are now, and I trust always will be) “dutiful Commons," "-"loyal Commons," etc. etc. and would have given him ship-money, or any other sort of money he might take a fancy to.

(a) Historic. and Politic. Discourse, etc. part ii. p. 114 (b) Coxe says that this Bill was projected by Sunderland

And the duped people, hourly doom'd to pay
The sums that bribe their liberties away,'
Like a young eagle, who has lent his plume
To fledge the shaft by which he meets his doom,
See their own feathers pluck d, to wing the dart
Which rank corruption destines for their heart!

221

But soft! my friend-I hear thee proudly say,
"What! shall I listen to the impious lay,
That dares, with Tory license, to profane
The bright bequests of William's glorious reign?
Shall the great wisdom of our patriot sires,
Whom H-wk-sb-y quotes and savoury B-rch
admires,

1 The period that immediately succeeds a coronation has
been called very aptly the Honey-moon of a reign; and if Be slander'd thus ? shall honest St-le agree
we suppose the Throne to be the wife, and the People the With virtuous R-se to call us pure and free,
husband, (a) I know no better model of a matrimonial trans-Yet fail to prove it? Shall our patent pair
action, nor one that I would sooner recommend to a woman

of spirit, than that which the arrangements of 1688 afford. Of wise State-Poets waste their words in air, In the first place, she must not only obtain from her husband, And P-e unheeded breathe his prosperous strain, an allowance of pin-money or civil-list establishment, suf And C-nn-ng take the people's sense in vain ?" ficient to render her independent of his caprice, but she must

also prevail on him to make her the steward of his estates,

and to intrust her with the management of all his pecuniary The people!-ah! that Freedom's form should stay concerns. I need not tell a woman of sense to what spirited Where Freedom's Spirit long hath pass'd away'

uses she may turn such concessions. He will soon become

so tame and docile under her hands, that she may make him That a false smile should play around the dead, play the strangest and most amusing tricks, such as quarrel- And flush the features where the soul has fled !2 ling with his nearest and dearest relations about a dish of When Kome had lost her virtue with her rights, tea, (b) a turban, (c) or a warfare; (d) preparing his house for defence against robbers, by putting fetters and handcuffs on When her foul tyrant sat on Caprea's heights two-thirds of its inmates; employing C-nn-g and P-re-v-1 Amid his ruffian spies, and doom'd to death in his sickest moments to read to him alternately Joe Miller and the Catechism, with a thousand other diverting incon- Each noble name they blasted with their breath! sistencies. If her spouse have still enough of sense remain- Even then (in mockery of that golden time, ing to grumble at the ridiculous exhibition which she makes When the Republic rose revered, sublime, of him, let her withhold from him now and then the rights of the Habeas Corpus Act (a mode of proceeding which the And her free sons, diffused from zone to zone, women of Athens once adopted,) (e) and if the good man Gave kings to every country but their own,) .oves such privileges, the interruption will soon restore him Even then the Senate and the Tribunes stood, o submission. If his former wife were a Papist, or had any Insulting marks, to show how Freedom's flood tendency that way, I would advise my fair Sovereign, whenever he begins to argue with her unpleasantly, to shout out Had dared to flow, in glory's radiant day, 'No Popery, no Popery!" as loud as she can, into his ears, And how it ebb'd, for ever ebb'd away !4 and it is astonishing what an effect it will have in disconcerting all his arguments. This method was tried lately by an old woman of Northampton, and with much success. Šeriously, this convenient bugbear of Popery is by no means the east among the numberless auxiliaries which the Revolution noyes, ce ne serait pas grand dommage;" but I am aware 1 Somebody has said "Quand tous les Poëtes seraient has marshalled on the side of the Throne.-Those unskilful that this would be most uncivil language at a time when our tyrants, Charles and James, instead of profiting wisely by birth-day odes and state-papers are written by such pretty that useful subserviency which has always distinguished the poets as Mr. P-e and Mr. C-nn-ng. I can assure the latter, ministers of our religious establishment, were blind enough too, that I think him (like his water-proof colleague Lord to plan the ruin of this best bulwark of their power, and C-stl-r-gh) reserved for a very different fate from that connected their designs upon the Church so closely with which the author I have just quoted imagines for his poetitheir attacks upon the Constitution, that they identified in cal fraternity. All I wish is, that he would change places the minds of the people the interests of their religion and with his brother P-e, by which means we should have sometheir liberties. During those times, therefore, "No Popery" what less prose in our odes, and certainly less poetry in our was the watchword of freedom, and served to keep the pub-politics. lic spirit awake against the invasions of bigotry and 2 "It is a scandal (said Sir Charles Sedley in William's gative. The Revolution, however, by removing this object reign) that a Government so sick at heart as ours is, should of jealousy, has produced a reliance on the orthodoxy of look so well in the face;" and Edmund Burke has said, in the Throne, of which the Throne has not failed to take every the present reign, "When the people conceive that laws possible advantage, and the cry of "No Popery" having, by and tribunals, and even popular assemblies, are perverted this means, lost its power of alarming the people against the from the ends of their institution, they find in these names encroachments of the Crown, has served ever since the very of degenerated establishments only new motives to discondifferent purpose of strengthening the Crown against the tent. Those bodies which, when full of life and beauty, lay claims and struggles of the people. The danger of the in their arms and were their joy and comfort, when dead Church from Papists and Pretenders was the chief pretext and putrid become more loathsome from the remembrance for the repeal of the Triennial Bill, for the adoption of a of former endearments."-Thoughts on the present Dis standing army, for the numerous suspensions of the Habeas contents, 1770. Corpus Act, and, in short, for all those spirited infractions of the constitution by which the reigns of the last century were so eminently distinguished. We have seen too, very lately, how the same scarecrow alarm has enabled the Throne to select its ministers from men, whose servility is their only claim to elevation, and who are pledged (if such an alternative could arise) to take part with the scruples of the King against the salvation of the empire.

prero

3

tutor haberi

Principis, Augusta Caprearum in rupe sedentis
Cum grege Chaldæo. Juvenal. Sat. x. v. 92.

The senate still continued, during the reign of Tiberius, to
manage all the business of the public; the money was then
and long after coined by their authority, and every other
public affair received their sanction.

We are told by Tacitus of a certain race of men, who were called "Instrumenta regni," or "Court Tools," from were particularly useful to the Roman Emperors; they which it appears, that my Lords M-lgr-ve, Ch-th-m, etc. etc. are by no means things of modern invention.

(a) This is contrary to the symbolical language of prophecy, in which (according to Sir Isaac Newton) the King is the husband, and the people the wife. See Faber, on the Prophecies.-I would beg leave to suggest to Mr. Faber, that his friend Sir R-ch-d M-sgr-ve can, in his own proper per-us of the hopes that revived in a few patriot bosoms, when 4 There is something very touching in what Tacitus tells son, supply him with an exposition of "the Horns of the the death of Augustus was near approaching, and the fond Beast."

(c) India.

(b) America. (e) See the Lysistrata of Aristophanes.-The following (d) Ireland. is the form of suspension, as he gives it:

Όπως αν ανηρ επιτυξη μαλιστα μου

Κουδέποθ' εκουσα τ' ανδρι των μω πεισομαι

expectation with which they began "bona libertatis incassum disserere."

Ferguson says, that Caesar's interference with the rights of election made the subversion of the Republic more felt than any of the former acts of his power."-Roman Republic, book v. chap. 1

Oh! look around-though yet a tyrant's sword
Nor haunts your sleep nor trembles o er your board,
Though blood be better drawn by modern quacks
With Treasury leeches than with sword or axe;
Yet say,
could even a prostrate Tribune's power,
Or a mock Senate, in Rome's servile hour,
Insult so much the rights, the claims of man,
As doth that fetter'd mob, that free divan,
Of noble tools and honourable knaves,
Of pension'd patriots and privileged slaves?
That party-colour'd inass, which nought can warm
But quick Corruption's heat-whose ready swarm
Spread their light wings in Bribery's golden sky,
Buzz for a period, lay their eggs, and die!

That greedy vampire, which from Freedom's tomb
Comes forth with all the mimicry of bloom
Upon its lifeless cheek, and sucks and drains

A people's blood to feed its putrid veins !—

66

Yet, yet I own, so venerably dear

Are Freedom's grave old anthems to my ear,
That I enjoy them, though by rascals sung,
And reverence Scripture even from Satan's tongue
Nay, when the Constitution has expired,
I'll have such men, like Irish wakers, hired
To sing old Habeas Corpus by its side,
And ask, in purchased ditties, why it died ?1
See that smooth Lord, whom nature's plastic pains
Seem'd to have destined for those Eastern reigns
When eunuchs flourish'd, and when nerveless things
That men rejected were the choice of Kings.
Even he, forsooth (oh, mockery accurst!)
Dared to assume the patriot's name at first-3
Thus Pitt began, and thus begin his apes;
Thus devils, when first rais'd, take pleasing shapes-
But oh, poor Ireland! if revenge be sweet

Heavens, what a picture!"-yes, my friend, 't is For centuries of wrong, for dark deceit

dark

"But can no light be found, no genuine spark
Of former fire to warm us? Is there none
To act a Marvell's part ?"-I fear, not one.
To place and power all public spirit tends,
In place and power all public spirit ends;2
Like hardy plants, that love the air and sky,
When out, 't will thrive, but taken in, 't will die!

Not bolder truths of sacred freedom hung
From Sidney's pen or burn'd on Fox's tongue,
Than upstart Whigs produce each market-night,
While yet their conscience, as their purse, is light;
While debts at home excite their care for those
Which, dire to tell, their much-loved country owes,
And loud and upright, till their price be known,

And withering insult-for the Union thrown
Into thy bitter cup, when that alone

2

Of slavery's draught was wanting"-if for this
Revenge be sweet, thou hast that demon's bliss ;

1 I believe it is in following the corpse to the grave, and not at the wakes (as we call the watching of the dead,) that this elegiac howl of my countrymen is performed. Spenser says, that our howl "is heathenish, and proceeds from a despair of salvation." If so, I think England may join in chorus with us at present.-The Abbé de Motraye tells us, that the Jews in the East address their dead in a similar manner, and say, "Hu! Hu! Hu! why did you die? Hadn't you a wife? Had'nt you a long pipe ?" etc. etc. (See his Travels.) I thought for a long time with Vallancey, that we were a colony of Carthaginians; but from this passage of de Motraye, and from the way in which Mr. P-rc-vwould have us treated, 1 begin to suspect we are no better than Jews.

2 According to Xenophon, the chief circumstance which recommended eunuchs to the service of Eastern princes, was the ignominious station which they held in society, and

They thwart the King's supplies to raise their own-the probability of their being, upon this account, more de

But bees, on flowers alighting, cease their hum-
So, settling upon places, Whigs grow dumb!
And though I feel as if indignant Heaven
Must think that wretch too foul to be forgiven,
Who basely hangs the bright, protecting shade
Of Freedom's ensign o'er Corruption's trade,3
And makes the sacred flag he dares to show
His passport to the market of her foe!—

1 Andrew Marvell, the honest opposer of the court during the reign of Charles the Second, and the last Member of Parliament who, according to the ancient mode, took wages from his constituents. How very much the Commons have changed their pay-masters!-See the State-Poems for some rude but spirited effusions of Andrew Marvell.

voted to the will and caprice of a master, from whose notice alone they derived consideration, and in whose favour they found a refuge from the contempt of mankind. Adoğa οντας οι συνούχοι παρά τοις άλλοις ανθρώποις και δια τούτο δέσποτου επικούρου προσδέονται. (α)-But I doubt whether even an Eastern Prince would have chosen an entire Administration upon this principle.

3 Does Lord C-stl-r-gh remember the reforming Resolutions of his early days?

4"And in the cup an Union shall be thrown."

Hamlet.

Three Cs were branded in the Sibylline books, as fatal to the peace and liberties of Rome. Tрix xxxxx xxxIFT (Cornelis Sylla, Cornelius Cinna, and Cornelius Lentulus.) (b) And unree Cs will be remembered in Ireland as long as C-md-n and cruelty, Cl-re and corruption, C-stl-r-gh and contempt, are alliteratively and appropriately associated.

5 Among the many measures which, since the Revolu 2 The following artless speech of Sir Francis Winning- tion, have contributed to increase the influence of the ton, in the reign of Charles the Second, will amuse those Throne, and to feed up this "Aaron's serpent of the conwho are fully aware of the perfection which we have at-stitution to its present healthy and respectable magnitude, tained in that system of Government whose humble begin- there have been few more nutritive than the Scotch and nings seem to have astonished the worthy Baronet so much. Irish Unions. Sir John Parker said, in a debate upon the "I did observe (says he) that all those who had pensions, former question, that "he would submit it to the House, and most of those who had offices, voted all of a side, as whether men who had basely betrayed their trust, by giving they were directed by some great officer, exactly as if their up their independent constitution, were fit to be admitted business in this House had been to preserve their pensions into the English House of Commons." But Sir John would and offices, and not to make laws for the good of them who have known, if he had not been out of place at the time, sent them here."-He alludes to that Parliament which was that the pliancy of such materials was not among the least called, par excellence, the Pensionary Parliament! a dis- of their recommendations. Indeed the promoters of the tinction, however, which it has long lost, and which we Scotch Union were by no means disappointed in the leadmerely give it from old custom, just as we say The Irish Re-ing object of their measure, for the triumphant majorities of

bellion.

3 "While they promise them liberty, they themselves are the servants of corruption." 2 Pet. ii.-I suggest, with much deference, to the expounders of Scripture-Prophecy, whether Mr. C-on-ng is not at present fulfilling the prediction of "the scoffers," who were to come in the last days."

the Court-party in Parliament may be dated from the admission of the 45 and the 16. Once or twice, upon the altera

(a) See a pamphlet on the Union, by "a Philosopher." (b) See a Treatise by Pontus De Thiard, "De recta Nominum Impositione," p. 43.

For oh! 't is more than hell's revenge to see
That England trusts the men who 've ruin'd thee!
That, in these awful days, when every hour
Creates some new or blasts some ancient power,
When proud Napoleon, like the burning shield'
Whose light compell'd each wondering foe to yield,
With baleful lustre blinds the brave and free,
And dazzles Europe into slavery!

That, in this hour, when patriot zeal should guide,
When Mind should rule, and-Fox should not have
died,

All that devoted England can oppose

To enemies made fiends, and friends made foes,
Is the rank refuse, the despised remains2

Of that unpitying power, whose whips and chains
Made Ireland first, in wild, adulterous trance,

Turn false to England's bed, and whore with
France!-

Those hack'd and tainted tools, so foully fit
For the grand artizan of mischief, P-tt,
So useless ever but in vile employ,

INTOLERANCE.

PART THE FIRST

"This clamour, which pretends to be raised for the safety of Religion, has almost worn out the very appearance of it and rendered us not only the most divided but the most im moral people upon the face of the earth."-Addison, Free holder, No. 37.

START not, my Friend, nor think the Muse will stain
Her classic fingers with the dust profane
Of Bulls, Decrees, and fulminating scrolls,
That took such freedom once with royal souls,'

ful in commerce, he says, "According to the nature and
common course of things, there is a confederacy against
them, and consequently in the same proportion as they in-
crease in riches, they approach to destruction. The address
of our King William, in making all Europe take the alarm
at France, has brought that country before us near that ine-
vitable period. We must necessarily have our turn, and
Great Britain will attain it as soon as France shall have a
declaimer with organs as proper for that political purpose
as were those of our William the Third..
out doubt, my Lord, Great Britain must lower her flight.
Europe will remind us of the balance of commerce, as she
has reminded France of the balance of power. The ad-
dress of our statesmen will immortalize them by contriving
for us a descent which shall not be a fall, by making us
rather resemble Holland than Carthage and Venice."-Let-

So weak to save, so vigorous to destroy!
Such are the men that guard thy threaten'd shore,
Oh England! sinking England!' boast no more.
tion of their law of treason and the imposition of the malt-
tax (measures which were in direct violation of the Act of
Union,) these worthy North Britons arrayed themselves in
opposition to the Court; but finding this effort for their
country unavailing, they prudently determined to think
thenceforward of themselves, and few men have kept to a
laudable resolution more firmly. The effect of Irish repreters on the French Nation.
sentation upon the liberties of England will be no less per-
ceptible and no less permanent.

Ουδ' εχε ΤΑΥΡΟΥ

Δείπεται ΑΝΤΕΛΛΟΝΤΟΣ. (α)

1 The magician's shield in Ariosto:

E tolto per vertù dello splendore
La libertate a lora. Cant. 2.

We are told that Cæsar's code of morality was contained in the following lines of Euripides, which that great man very frequently repeated:

Είπερ γαρ αδικειν χρή τυραννίδος περι Καλλιστον αδικειν· ταλλα δ' ευσεβείν χρέων. This appears to be also the moral code of Bonaparte.

2 When the Duke of Buckingham was assassinated, Charles the First, as a tribute to his memory, continued all his creatures in the same posts and favours which they had enjoyed under their patron; and much in the same manner do we see the country sacrificed to the manes of a Minister at present.

With

1 The king-deposing doctrine, notwithstanding its many mischievous absurdities, was of no little service to the cause of political liberty, by inculcating the right of resistance to tyrants, and asserting the will of the people to be the only The infusion of such cheap and useful ingredients as my true fountain of power. Bellarmine, the most violent of the Lord L-mr-ck, Mr. D-nn-s Br-wne, etc. etc. into the Legis-advocates for papal authority, was one of the first to mainlature, must act as a powerful alterative on the Constitution, tain (see De Pontif. lib. i. cap. 7,) "That Kings have not and clear it by degrees of all the troublesome humours of their authority or office immediately from God nor his law, but only from the law of nations;" and in King James's honesty. "Defence of the Rights of Kings against Cardinal Perron," we find his Majesty expressing strong indignation against the Cardinal for having asserted "that to the deposing of a King the consent of the people must be obtained"-" for by these words (says James) the people are exalted above the King, and made the judges of the King's deposing." p. 424. -Even in Mariana's celebrated book, where the nonsense of bigotry does not interfere, there are some liberal and enlightened ideas of government, of the restraints which should be imposed upon Royal power, of the subordination of the Throne to the interests of the people, etc. etc. (De Rege et Regis Institutione. See particularly lib. i. cap. 6. 8, and 9.)-It is rather remarkable, too, that England should be indebted to another Jesuit, for the earliest defence of that principle upon which the Revolution was founded, namely, the right of the people to change the succession.-(See Doleman's "Conferences," written in support of the title of lishmen, therefore, say that popery is the religion of slavery, they should not only recollect that their boasted Constitution is the work and bequest of Popish ancestors; they should not only remember the laws of Edward III. "under whom (says Bolingbroke) the constitution of our Parliaments, and the whole form of our Government, became reduced into better form;" but they should know that even the errors of Popery have leaned to the cause of liberty, and that Papists, however mistaken their motives may have been, were the first promulgators of the doctrines which led to the Revolution.-But, in truth, the political principles of the Roman Catholics have generally been made to suit the convenience of their oppressors, and they have been represented alternately as slavish or refractory, according as a pretext for tormenting them was wanting. The same inconsistency has marked every other imputation against them. They are charged with laxity in the observance of oaths, though an oath has been found sufficient to shut them from all worldly advantages. If they reject some decisions of their church, they are said to be sceptics and bad Christians; if

It is invidious perhaps to look for parallels in the reign the Infanta of Spain against that of James I.)-When Engof Charles the First, but the expedient of threatening the Commons with dissolution, which has lately been played off with much eclat, appears to have been frequently resorted to at that period. In one instance Hume tells us, that the King sent his Lord Keeper (not his Jester) to menace the House, that, unless they despatched a certain Bill for subsidies, they must expect to sit no longer. By similar threats the excise upon beer and ale was carried in Charles the Second's reign. It is edifying to know, that though Mr. C-nn-ng despises Puffendorf, he has no objection to precedents derived from the Court of the Stuarts.

3 The following prophetic remarks occur in a letter written by Sir Robert Talbot, who attended the Duke of Bedford to Paris in 1762. Talking of states which have grown power

(a) From Aratus (v. 715,) a poet who wrote upon astronomy, though, as Cicero assures us, he knew nothing whatever about the subject-just as the great Harvey wrote "De Generation," though he had as little to do with the matter as my Lord Viscount C.