paign was to perfuade the nation to renounce, not merely the French war, but war in general, and to cultivate the bleflings of peace: but, in his last page, it appears that the principal object of his wish for peace with France is that we may be at liberty to prepare ourselves for war with Ruffia; to the end that we may be in a condition to with ftand the mighty whirlwind gathering in the north, which threatens to overwhelm again the whole of civilized Europe with a horde of needy and lawless barbarians, more deftructive to the peace and happiness of society, than a fwarm of locufts to the vegetation of the east. That fuch a ftorm is likely to rife, we have but too great reafon to apprehend; and should it break forth when France is exhausted, we shall have to lament that our war on that country has fatally feconded the ambitious views of Ruffia, fo hoftile to liberty, and deprived the fouth of Europe of one of its strongest bulwarks against the armies of the north.

Art 50. The two Syftems of the Secial Compact and the Natural Rights of Man examined and refuted. 8vo. pp. 34. 1s. Debrett. 1793. The author of this very fenfible pamphlet ftates, with great precifion, the principles of the two celebrated writers Mr. Burke and Mr. Paine, who have divided the public opinion on the fubject of the rights of man; and, fo far from agreeing with either, he differs widely from both, and aims at refuting their refpective fyftems. Through the whole of his work he breathes the fpirit of freedom :if, on the one hand, he ridicules the idea of a government founded on, and deriving a never-ending authority from, old compacts or parchments, it is not because he is difpofed to unhinge the ftate and to endanger the national tranquillity; and if, on the other, he treats as chimerical and impracticable a fyftem formed on the natural rights of man, it is not because he is a friend to flavery, oppreffion, and tyranny; for he wages a mortal war against them. He rejects all fyftems that are built on abstract reafonings, and contends that wife men, in forming conftitutions, ought never to lofe fight of circumflances. The following extract, which will give an idea of the au thor's mode of thinking, will be perufed with pleasure by the unprejudiced reader:

• Government is a power, a tranfcendent power, which muft, from its nature, be poffeffed by a part and (fuch fhould feem the condition of our being) by a small part of the community; but which, by an equal neceffity and an equal lot, must not only be binding on the whole, but may extend in its effects, and operate as a bleffing or a curfe on furrounding multitudes and unborn generations. Whoever believes, therefore, let the foundation of his faith be what it may, a doctrine of religion, the will of Providence, or the order of naturewhoever believes that the proper end of all power is the good of fentient nature, and of all political power, the good of congregated man, will infer, that thofe only can have a right to govern from whom, in the exercife of that power, the greatest good may be expected; and, that the right of thefe can continue fo long only as this expectation lafts. In the mind of fuch a man, confequently, the right to govern mult depend on circumstances. From causes, infcrutable perhaps, but certainly beyond the reach of our control,

10

..the

the human animal is differently modified in different countries, and in the fame country in different ages, in his tafte and manners, in his paffions and prejudices, in his virtues and vices, in whatever we are to provide for, and in whatever we are to provide against by politic inftitutions. Such inftitutions, too, whether we will or not, fubfift, are interwoven into the texture of fociety, produce fome good, avert fome evil, operate in fome way, and will have fome weight with him who feels himself born into a fyftem where he must make the beft of things as he finds them. To treat all this as nothing, to decide tho right, to govern by mufty parchments; or waving parchments and circumstances, to confider the bipes implumis of a Tartar hord and an European ftate as precifely the fame beings, and to arrange them according to fome abstract principle, which, as it applies to man under all circumstances, muft, if we were justly collected, be founded on thofe qualities only which are common to man in all fituations, which must leave out of queftion, confequently, whatever conftitutes man what he is in any particular ftation, are both of them proceedings fo perfectly prepofterous, that I cannot determine, to which the excefs of abfurdity belongs.

Originally, indeed, the fundamental articles of both thefe fyf tems, though erroneous as principles, may have had their ufe as correctives to error. Locke referred us back to a ftate of nature, to destroy a prejudice in favour of the fanctity of monarchs: the founders of the new fyftem referred us back to the fame ftate, to cure our prejudices in favour of any other domination, than that of a majority. But those who never poffeffed the prejudice, don't want the retrofpect. What does it fignify what man was 500 or 5000 years ago, or how the power which I behold originally came into being? I have no refpect for any human inftitution, but for the good it produces I am placed in a certain department; I must fight my good fight; I must deal with man as he is: I must make the best of things as they are. Whatever is, is, according to the course of nature and the order of Providence; and if it were not, what would it avail us? To declaim and whimper about the prerogatives of favages, will not recall what is paft. We are not favages: we have inftitutions; we have laws; we have manners; we have morals; we have the binding ties of a fecond nature upon us: we must confider thefe; we must confult our subject, and act for the bett; looking abroad to the world and forward to pofterity. What is the best form of government-what is the best cure for diforders? We mult know the complaint; we must know the fex, the age, the conftitution of our patient; the habits he has led, the regimen he has pursued; we muft inform ourselves of the circumftances of the cafe becaufe a man is naturally a two-legged, naked, vagrant animal; to prefcribe eternally nudity and acorns, would be a fimplification of prac tice, to be fure, but I fear not more fuccessful than Sangrado's. We are all by far too fond of fimplicity; too much of Sangrados at the bottom: it would be pleafant, no doubt, to account for every operation in nature, by gravitation alone; it would be foothing, certainly, to reduce all government to the telling of nofes; but it cannot be.

་ The

are

The great evil against which the friends to mankind have hitherto No had to ruggle, has been the infolent domination of a few. feeling mind can contemplate what our nature has endured from the grinding tyranny of thefe proud oppreffors without a poignant indig nation. We are not made of stone: we are moved to pity; we inflamed to rage; at what humanity has fuffered, and at the wrongs fhe fuffers ftili, from lordly ruffians, who, born by accident to power, have treated their brethren as beafts, and ported with the miferics of millions our hearts are wrung at thefe fufferings, as men bearing about us the common fympathies of our nature; but, as philofophers, we behold and we deplore an effect ill more extenfive and of an afpect transcendently more dreadful. Longinus, in his immortal Treatife on the Sublime, concludes his labours with an enquiry into the caufes of that decline of genius, which, in his own time, no Jonger furnished fuch inftances of this gigantic figure, as in his various illuftrations he had to profufely quoted from the authors of aniquity. The reafon I think is very jutly affigned. "As thofe engines in which factitious dwarfs are enclofed, not only prevent their bodies from expanding to their proper dimenis us, but actually occafion them to dwindle from the fize they had already attained; fo fervitude, even under the most exact and just adminiltration, is a kind of priton, in which the mind is cramped in its efforts, and inks into debafement." To feel that we owe whatever we enjoy to the gracious forbearance of any human power, and to look up to this power with all that deep and abject humiliation which fuch a fervile dependence mut neceffarily imprefs, is fuch a proftitution of the dignity of manhood, has fuch a tendency to deprave the human intellect, to rob us of that just confidence and crectnefs of mind, which is the root of all exalted fentiment and vigorous enterprize, and to thrust us down from that proper elevation, which God and nature intended we fhould attain, into a ftate of low, ftupid, and brutal infenúbility; that, for this caufe, perhaps, above all others, an impaffioned love for freedom has fired the good and great of every age and every country."

Art 5.

An Addrefs to the Public, on a Subject new and interefting. By J. Cook. 8vo. IS. Richardson, &c. 1793.

"Prevent crimes," is the excellent doctrine of this little pamphlet ; -a doctrine which more than ever demands the attention of govern ment and of the community at large. Gentlemen, in their refpect. ive counties, have manifefted a willingness to exert themfelves to remedy the moral diforders of fociety: but, unfortunately, they have ken up the bufinefs entirely at the wrong end. They have provided for an increasing number of criminals; when their principal care ought to have been to ftrike at the root of the evil. On furveying Some of the large and expensive prifons which have litely been built in various parts of the kingdom, we have been led to reflect whether manch of the money which they have coft might not have been better employed in preventing, as far as may be, the neceffity of these melanch.ly erections. Can the Ethiopian change his fkin? Imprifonment comes too late after the character is formed. The folitary cell may check vice, but it probably will not infpire virtue. The villain

may be rendered melancholy at being fecluded from his companions in iniquity but, deftitute, through a neglected education, of thofe principles which are effential to right conduct, what reafon have we to conclude that, on being liberated from his cell, he will become a valuable member of fociety, even if he should have felt fome ftings of conscience in the moments of feclufion and melancholy? We are entirely of opinion with this writer as to the importance of attending to the education of the poor in the first principles of virtue and decorum, in the early part of life. Though his plan of country-fchools of industry, and of cbliging the profligate poor to fend their children to them, may not be fufficiently confidered and matured for practice, the idea is a good one, and ought not to be lot. If we may farther give our opinion, fmall parochial are preferable to large custy inftitutions; and if the clergyman of every parish, and the miuiter of every congregation of feparatifts, were paid by government, in proportion, for the poor children whom they fuperintended, to lead them into the habits of religion and virtue, it would be a better application of public money than fome which we could mention; and if this fhould not bring back the kingdom to be what it was in Alfred's golden days, when it contained but one prifon, it might perhaps render any farther creation of thefe gloomy houses of confinement unneceffary.

Art. 52. The Catechifm of Man. Pointing out, from found Principles, and acknowledged Facts, the Rights and Duties of every rational Being. 8vo. 6d. Eaton.

This catechifm is the very quinteffence of political herefy. In defance of the irrefiftible demonftration with which contrary doctrines have been supported, the writer has the effrontery to teach-that all men are born perfectly equal in refpect to their rights; that government originates in the will of the people; that the people have a right to choose their own magiftrates, and to deliberate on other matters of general concern; that all magiftrates are, or ought to be, fubject to the law; that refiftance to the ufurpations of deipotic government is lawful; that obedience to free government is a duty; and that the best form of government is that which promotes the people's profperity and happiness in the highest degree, and at the least expence.

Art. 53. Extermination, or an Appeal to the People of England, on the prelent War with France. 8vo. 6d. Eaton.

This writer talks of a war of extermination, and a war against freedom, with a degree of indignation which could only be juftified on the fuppofition that fuch a war really existed, and was carrying on by a nation of men and of freemen: --a fuppofition, furely, too abfurd and felf contradictory to gain a moment's credit!

* Art. 54. - Adaitional Letters of Brutus. 8vo. pp. 150. Is. Edinburgh.-London, Longman.

Some account of the manner of the former part of these letters, with a few ftrictures on their ftyle, and on the fpirit in which they are written, will be found in our New Series, Vol. v. p. 468. The fame pointed turn of language, the fame zealous attachment to ad

miniftration,

miniftration, and confequently the fame vehemence of cenfure of oppofition, which marked the former letters, appear in thefe. If they be at all inferior to the former in ftrength of ftyle, they are by no means fo in acrimony of fentiment, nor in illiberality of abufe.

Art. 55. An Anfaver to Mr. Pitt's Speech, May 7, 1793, against a Reform of Parliament. 8vo. pp. 60. 1s. Ridgway.

This anfwer, which is given in the form of a fpeech, was not delivered in the House of Commons, but is ftated to be fuch as might have been made by a man truly independent.' The question of parliamentary reform has been so often and so ably difcuffed, that it is not now an easy matter for an author to fay any thing new on it. The writer of this little pamphlet, however, has placed the subject in very ftriking points of view, and has enforced the neceffity of reform by very strong and cogent obfervations. For our part, we muft fay that we needed not this work to be fully convinced that our conftitution called loudly for revifion, particularly in that part of it which relates to the formation of the House of Commons; and we believe that none can differ from us on that head, but thofe who have an intereft in the continuance of the abufes which make the letter of our conftitution a departure from its fpirit. If our author be wrong in any point, it is in embracing too many objects of reform at once": it is not found policy to increase the number of enemies to a falutary change; it would be prudent, perhaps, to attack each abufe feparately and in turn, rather than to drive the different fupporters of them to the neceffity of forming a confederacy against all reform. The House of Commons being once conftituted fo as to be practically as well as theoretically the reprefentative of the people, an orderly redress of all grievances, and the removal of oppreffive abufes, might be expected as a neceffary confequence. Many fenfible men and fincere friends to Jiberty are of opinion that the rock, on which the French have been caft, was not the attempting to reform every abuse, but to reform every abufe at the fame time: thus they united the most difcordant bodies, the nobility, the clergy, the judges belonging to the twelve parliaments, the land owners, the fupporters of unlimited monarchy, and the numerous train of dependants, who lived only by the corruption of the court; and, making them forget their former difputes and divifions, they forced them to form a compact and well-concerted oppofition, which drove the people to madness, ultimately overturned the new conftitution, and occafioned all thofe horrid exceffes, which have proved as injurious to the caufe of liberty, as they have been difgraceful to humanity.

The prefent author is pretty fevere, but not without reafon, on Mr. Arthur Young; whom he convicts of grofs inconfiftency, by comparing his last publication against reform with his former works, in which he ftrongly pleaded the neceffity of the very meafure which he now condemns: after this our author leaves to the world to determine whether Mr. Young's late appointment to the office of fecretary to the new board of agriculture ought to be confidered as a reward for his twenty years' labours in the caufe of liberty, or as a bribe for undertaking to write down all his former arguments in favour of reform.

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