their project of bringing us into disrepute with mankind.

It is, certainly, wretched sophistry to argue, as they do, from single instances of disorder and vice; and neither fair nor charitable to display only what is bad in a mixed system, in which the good may greatly predominate. We would not be entitled to follow this example, but for the purpose of repressing it, by shewing how severely Great Britain may suffer in her turn from its adoption elsewhere. Upon the principles of the logic which she has used against the United States, she might be proved to be the most miserable and wicked nation that has ever existed. The publicity which she gives to all her domestic transactions and circumstances; the discussion which her foreign policy and administration undergo, in and out of parliament, lay bare all her vulnerable points. Never before was such a mass of materials prepared for the satirist of national vices and distempers, as is to be found in the debates and reports of her legislature, and in the innumerable chronicles of her internal history, which, as we there have it, is but a tissue of the grossest enormities and the most cruel distresses.

In endeavouring to establish her invariable unkindness and injustice to this country, and her liability to reproach in an indefinite degree beyond ourselves, on the grounds of disparagement which she is never weary of repeating, it is not to American writers and travellers, to obscure and vulgar witnesses, labouring under the suspicion of national prejudice, personal pique, or gross venality, that I shall have recourse; but to British authorities of the highest standard; to British historians and legislators, and even to the very journals, which serve as the spiracles, through which the torrents of venom are incessantly spouted against the American people. Our accusers in Great Britain have built their charges upon English testimony, and that the least respectable of its kind. I shall be found, in impeaching her in return, to use not suspicious foreign, but, in almost every instance, unquestionable British statements; not the allegations of General Pillet-quite as VOL. I.-B*

trustworthy as those of the Jansons and Fearons-but the records of Parliament and the oracles of the British empire. Here, it cannot escape the reader, how much more dignified and warrantable the retaliation, than the attack; and that, in repelling aggression with evidence derived from these sources, we do not descend to the level of those who bespatter us with ordure amassed by natural or hired scavengers of their own blood and temper.

"The libels of the present day," said Mr. Burke, in his retort upon the Duke of Bedford, "are just of the same stuff as the libels of the past. But they derive an importance from the rank of the persons from whom they come, and the gravity of the place where they are uttered. In some way or other they ought to be noticed." We think and reason thus, in respect to the calumnies with which we have been lately assailed in Great Britain. All that is accumulated, for instance, in the Edinburgh and Quarterly Reviews, in the articles which form the immediate provocation upon which I now write, is an old compost of vile ingredients and impure leven, in itself unfit to be handled, and much more unfit to be imitated. Those journals, however, exert an unrivalled influence over the British public; they are not without considerable authority on the continent of Europe, where they are widely circulated; they have credit and sway with numbers of readers, even in the United States: in the catalogue of their authors and special patrons we find men of eminence, both in letters and politics; some who have a material share in the public councils of their country, and whose writings, on other subjects than the affairs of America, possess a degree of excellence, which invests the pamphlets in question with a general character of great weight and value.

2. I will pass from the instance of these Reviews to another, worthy of particular observation, on many accounts; in which, also, the merest, most hacknied ribaldry respecting America, is rendered important and memora

ble by "the rank of the persons from whom it came, and the gravity of the place where it was uttered."

دو

Westminster school is one of the principal seminaries of classical education, for the sons of the British nobility and gentry; for those who are destined, either by birthright or custom, to become her legislators and rulers; to wield the national power, and give the tone to national sentiment. It has been long the practice, in this institution, to exhibit annually a Latin play, of which the characters are filled by the senior students, about to be translated to one of the great universities. The performance is attended by a crowd of great personages-by ministers of state, dignitaries of the church, and patrician families; and all the eclat is given to the occasion of which we can suppose it susceptible. A Latin prologue and epilogue, serving as specimens of scholarship, usually accompany the play. In an exhibition of the kind, which took place about the conclusion of our late war with Great Britain, the subject chosen for the epilogue was emigration to the United States. It was treated in the form of a colloquy between a person preparing to embark, and a patriotic Englishman attempting to dissuade him from the adventure. Nothing can exceed the terseness of the latinity, but the virulence of the abuse lavished upon America, in this piece. Whatever the writings of the British travellers could furnish, that was most injurious, and insulting to the American people, is here elaborately condensed, and imbued with a new and more active venom. The following is a translation of part of this classical lampoon.

"DAVUS TO GETA.

"Whither do you propose to fly? Get. To Hesperia (America). -Da. What! to that country which is beyond the ocean; a country barbarous in itself and inhabited by Barbarians! In that country Geta, Astræa is not a virgin, but a virago: sometimes, as report goes, she is a drunkard, often a pugilist; sometimes even a thief. Nor is it easy to say whether the tenor of their manners is more to be admired for simplicity or elegance: a negro wench, as we are told, waits on her master at table in native nudity; and a beau will stri pimself to the waist, that he may dance unincumbered, and with more agility. Do you love your glass, every hour brings with

it a fresh bumper. There you have the gum-tickler, the phlegmcutter, the gall-breaker, the antifogmatic. No man is a slave there, for negroes are not considered as of the human species in America. Every man thinks what he pleases, and does what he pleases. The young men spurn the restraint of laws and of manners: his own inclination is there every man's sufficient diploma. Bridewell and the stews supply them with senators, and their respectable chief jus-, tice is a worthless scoundrel. Does a senatorial orator dexterously aim to convince his antagonist? he spits plentifully in his face; and that this species of rhetoric may be more efficacious, tobacco furnishes an abundance of saliva for the purpose. The highest praise of a merchant is his skill in lying. Then their amusements! to gouge out an eye with the thumb, to skin the forehead, to bite off the nose! and to kill a man, is an admirable joke. Believe me, Geta, even if the black vessel of transportation you embark in, should bear you safely to this elysium of yours, the very passage would exhaust all your funds, and your whole life would be held in pledge, never to be redeemed: your destiny at last would be to feed the rats of a prison. But come, think better of this scheme while you have it in your power. Let the ruined man, the impious wretch, the outlaw, praise America; if you are yet in your senses, Geta, stay at home."

The whole of the dialogue may be read in the Port Folio, into which it was copied in the year 1816, from the English Gentleman's Magazine for April, 1815, to which it was committed thus for circulation, three months after the signature of the treaty of peace and amity between Great Britain and the United States. The able writer who introduced it into the American journal, attached to it a commentary which equally deserves to be read entire, and of which I adopt the following passages, as speaking what is due from me to the occasion.

"Thus it is, that at an age when impressions are apt to take the strongest hold of the mind,-with the associations most calculated to give vividness and effect to the sentiments uttered at the direction and under the superintendence of the reverend preceptors in the first school of classical education that Great Britain can boastin the presence, and with the sanction of persons deemed highly respectable for rank, learning, character, and station-the young sons of the nobility and gentry of England are taught to pronounce, applaud, and give effect to, the most glaring and disgusting falsehoods, and the most virulent and vulgar abuse against this country and its inhabitants universally.

"There is nothing in the invectives of the Quarterly Review more abusive and flagitious than this epilogue. I am no advocate for keeping up national animosity, but I do not approve of the doctrine of non-resistance; nor do I feel the obligation upon Americans of submitting tamely to the insult, when the persons who have descended to these aspersions are themselves liable to the retort. Had this attack been the hasty effusion of a political partizan, or the witty scurrility of a writer whose sarcastic talent furnishes his daily bread, or had we been subjected even to the mistaken correction of a well-meaning observer, it might have been passed over: but this, the studied, deliberate composition of deep-rooted enmity, deserves no quarter. One style of reply to impartial and friendly reprehension, another to the sarcastic rancour of a 'proud and insulting foe.'

"It may be, as it seems to be, the intention in Great Britain, to educate their youth in sentiments of the most sarcastic and rancorous hostility towards America; and I dare say, the attempt will succeed; and I dare aver also, that it will be met, as it naturally must, by correspondent feelings on this side the water."

3. We were not altogether ignorant, in the United States, that much of the favour shown to us, since the commencement of the present century, by the whig party in parliament, and their connexions out of doors, arose from the relation of a minority or opposition, in which they stood in the British government. Yet we believed, that there was enough of real cordiality in their feelings, and of elevation in their sentiments, to prevent them, at all times, from countenancing gross misrepresentations of our condition and character, and raising groundless clamours against our political transactions and views; from setting us in a false or invidious light, merely to embarrass and discredit the ministry, or to promote some domestic ends, such as those of checking emigration, and counteracting extravagant plans of parliamentary reform. An attentive observation of the language concerning our affairs, held of late by the whig journals and the parliamentary opposition, has convinced me that we were deceived in supposing they had not always acted, in relation to this country, altogether from party feelings and aims, and would not readily sacrifice justice and truth, where it was concerned, to selfish considerations.

There is but one interpretation to be put upon the