-the Mr. Woodbridge Odlin, who transacted the business of the Bubona; and Mr. Andrew Leinau, a respectable inhabitant of Philadelphia, who served as general agent for the foreign redemptioner ships, as they were styled, and who has in his hands official vouchers, which I have examined, of their respective national character, the number of their passengers, &c. It is known, moreover, that as soon as the abuses practised in the trade became notorious, the American Congress passed a law designed to prevent the recurrence of them, and remarkable for the humanity and efficaciousness of its precautions.

دو

If Fearon really visited the Bubona, which may be doubted, he, an Englishman, could not have mistaken her national character, nor that of the captain. This " tall American, with an eye flashing Algerine cruelty, is a phantasm manifestly intended to heighten the injurious effect of the whole malignant fiction. So the use of the present tense by the Quarterly Reviewers, in their unwarrantable assertion, argues the design of giving it to be understood, that the trade is still carried on by American vessels, with the same abuses as existed before the passage of the preventive law.

Whether Earl Grey has found "the greatest fairness and impartiality" in the article of the Quarterly Review, on Fearon's Sketches, as well as in the latter, I know not; but it is certain that the noble lord and the reviewer differ much in their views of the character of the traveller. "We find Mr. Fearon," says the reviewer, "whenever England is concerned, venting his ignorant sneers, or indulging his spiteful calumnies, at the expense of decency and truth: he crouches with base servility before Cobbet; he grossly libels his fair countrywomen; he is solicitous to entice the poor of Europe from their country, by fallacies and lies; he has greedily seized upon every opportunity of traducing the best and bravest officers of England; his prejudices are rooted in the profoundest ignorance; he deals in flippant and frequent abuse of scripture; he is evidently a man of very limited faculties; he is in a state of

perpetual childhood; his total want of knowledge is sufficiently apparent, &c." It is a witness thus blackened, blighted, and stultified by themselves, and whom in fact, they convict, in their examination of his book, of gross inconsistency and prevarication, that the master critics of London bring forward to explode the pretensions of the United States to any degree of moral worth, intellectual dignity, or physical comfort. It is upon his testimony, "who violates truth and decency, whenever England is concerned," they affect to believe, and would have the world believe, besides what, I have quoted from him, and a multitude of other general imputations and particular calumnies, that "the churches in America, are filled by fanatics, hypocrites, and buffoons;" that "gain is the education, the morals, the politics, the theology, and stands instead of the domestic comfort of all ages and classes of Americans ;" that "the worst degree of corruption which the inventive malice of the worst Jacobin ever charged upon the government of England, is more than realized at the American capital;" that "every election in America, from the president downwards, is carried on \by bribery, corruption, and intrigue."

I cannot refrain, in dismissing Mr. Fearon and his compurgators, from offering to my American reader, some random testimony concerning the nature of those abuses in the system of British suffrage and representation, greater than which Lord Grey is pleased to believe, may or do exist under that of the United States.

In the year 1793, the honourable Mr. Grey, then a member of the House of Commons,-now Earl Grey, and a member of the House of Peers-made a motion in the Commons, for a reform in parliament, grounded upon a petition which he presented, and vehemently supported, and was understood to have himself composed. The following quotations are parts of that petition, and the

The Edinburgh Reviewers have also so far forgotten their station, as to bestow on Fearon, the epithets "enlightened and intelligent," and to recom mend his book, with the simple reservation that he is "a little given to exagge ration in his views of vices and prejudices." See their 61st number.

facts stated in them, which did not admit of denial, are equally true of the subject at the present day.

"Your petitioners complain, that the elective franchise is so partially and unequally distributed, and is in so many instances committed to bodies of men of such very limited numbers; that the majority of your honourable House, is elected by less than fifteen thousand electors, which even if the male adults in the kingdom be estimated at so low a number as three millions, is not more than the two hundredth part of the people to be represented.

"The second complaint of your petitioners, is founded on the unequal proportions in which the elective franchise is distributed, and in support of it,

"They affirm, that seventy of your honourable members are returned by thirty-five places, where the right of voting is vested in burghage and other tenures of a similar description, and in which it would be to trifle with the patience of your honourable House, to mention any number of voters whatever, the elections at the places alluded to being notoriously a mere matter of form. And this your petitioners are ready to prove.

"They affirm, that in addition to the seventy honourable members so chosen, ninety more of your honourable members are elected by forty-six places, in none of which the number of voters exceeds fifty. And this your petitioners are ready to prove.

"They affirm, that in addition to the hundred and sixty so elected, thirty-seven more of your honourable members are elected by nineteen places, in none of which the number of voters exceeds one hundred. And this your petitioners are ready to prove.

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They affirm, that in addition to the hundred and ninety-seven honourable members so chosen, fifty-two more are returned to serve in Parliament by twenty-six places, in none of which the number of voters exceeds two hundred. And this your petitioners are ready to prove.

"They affirm, that in addition to two hundred and forty-nine so elected, twenty more are returned to serve in Parliament for counties in Scotland, by less than one hundred electors each, and ten for counties in Scotland by less than two hundred and fifty each. And this your petitioners are ready to prove, even admitting the validity of fictitious votes.

“They affirm, that in addition to the two hundred and seventynine so elected, thirteen districts of burghs of Scotland, not containing one hundred voters each, and two districts of burghs, not containing one hundred and twenty-five each, return fifteen more honourable members. And this your petitioners are ready to prove. And in this manner, according to the present state of your representation, two hundred and ninety-four of your honourable members are chosen, and being a majority of the entire House of

Commons, are enabled to decide all questions in the name of the whole people of England and Scotland."

"Religious opinions create an incapacity to vote. All Papists are excluded generally, and, by the operation of the test laws, Protestant dissenters are deprived of a voice in the election of representatives in about thirty boroughs, where the right of voting is confined to corporate officers alone; a deprivation the more unjustifiable, because, though considered as unworthy to vote, they are deemed capable of being elected, and may be the representatives of the very places for which they are disqualified from being the electors.

"A man paying taxes to any amount, how great soever, for his domestic establishment, does not thereby obtain a right to vote, unless his residence be in some borough where that right is vested in the inhabitants. This exception operates in sixty places, of which twenty-eight do not contain three hundred voters each, and the number of householders in England and Wales (exclusive of Scotland,) who pay all taxes, is 714,911, and of householders who pay all taxes, but the house and window taxes, is 284,459, as appears by a return made to your honourable House in 1785.

"In Scotland, the grievance arising from the nature of the rights of voting, has a different and still more intolerable operation. In that great and populous division of the kingdom, not only the great mass of the householders, but of the landholders also, are excluded from all participation in the choice of representatives.

"Your honourable House knows, that the complicated rights of voting, and the shameful practices which disgrace election proceedings, have so loaded your table with petitions for judgment and redress, that one half of the usual duration of a parliament has scarcely been sufficient to settle who is entitled to sit for the other half.

"From the peculiar rights of voting, by which certain places return members to serve in parliaments, eighty-four individuals do, by their own immediate authority, send one hundred and fiftyseven of your honourable members to Parliament, and your petitioners are ready to name the members and the patrons.

"Your petitioners are convinced that in addition to the one hundred and fifty-seven honourable members above mentioned, one hundred and fifty more, making in the whole three hundred and seven, are returned to your honourable House, not by the collected voice of those whom they appear to represent, but by the recommendation of seventy powerful individuals, added to the eighty-four before mentioned, and making the total number of patrons altogether only one hundred and fifty-four, who return a decided majority of your

honourable House.

"Your petitioners inform your honourable House, and are ready to prove it at your bar, that they have the most reasonable grounds to suspect, that no less than one hundred and fifty of your honourable

members owe their elections entirely to the interference of peers; and your petitioners are prepared to show by legal evidence, that forty peers, in defiance of your resolutions, have possessed themselves of so many burghage tenures, and obtained such an absolute and uncontrolled command in very many small boroughs in the kingdom, as to be enabled by their own positive authority to return eighty-one of your honourable members.

"The means taken by candidates to obtain, and by electors to bestow a seat in your honourable house, appear to have been increasing in a progressive degree of fraud and corruption. In the 31st year of the reign of his present majesty, the number of statutes found necessary to prevent bribery, had increased to sixty-five."

In confirming the allegations and pressing the object of the petition, the honourable Mr. Grey said, that "the evils of the American war were, in his mind, entirely owing to the unequal and corrupt representation in Parliament." And Mr. Sheridan made the following observations in the course of the debate, to which Mr. Grey's motion gave

rise.

"As to the general challenge of proving the abuse which subsists in our government, he (Mr. Sheridan) had no delight in it; but as he must answer, he should say, that some of the abuses of which he complained, and of which a reform of Parliament was the only remedy, were, that Peers of the other house sent members to the House of Commons by nomination; that the Crown sent members into that house by nomination too; that some members of that house sent in members by their own nomination also-all these things made a farce of an election for the places for which these were returned; that men were created peers without having been of the least service to the public in any action of their lives, but merely on account of their Parliamentary influence-the present minister had been the means of creating a hundred of them. He did not blame him, but the fault was in the system of government; corruption was the pivot on which the whole of our public government affairs turned; the collection of taxes was under the management of wealthy men in Parliamentary interest, the consequence of which was, that the collection of them was neglected; that to make up the deficiency, excisemen must be added to the excise-this soured the temper of the people; that neither in the church, the army, the navy, or any public office, was any appointment given, but through Parliamentary influence; that, in consequence, corrupt majorities at the will of the minister.*

* See the Debate in the 30th vol. of the Parliamentary History. VOL. I.-E*