object of raising aversion and distrust in the breasts of their countrymen. On this score, as well as every other, great injustice is done to the Americans. No small number of them are entitled to consider the imputation as a sort of ingratitude on the part of a Briton. I will venture to assert that in no nation, foreign to Great Britain, had she, until the second year of our last war, so many warm, firm friends, and blind admirers, as in the American. A great party, the Federalists, forming a decided majority in seven or eight states, numerous in most of the others, and having a full proportion of the desert, intelligence, and wealth of the country, were contradistinguished by their veneration for her character, and the deep, affectionate interest which they took in her prosperity. They exulted in her successes over France, even at the time when she was waging war upon their own firesides. This was not merely because they detested and dreaded the ascendancy of the French military despotism, but because much of the old positive kindness and reverence towards her remained. She might have revived it entirely by a course of generosity and justice; by teaching her philosophers to attempt the "improvement of our dispositions," and her politicians to regulate their language and conduct, upon a different system from that which they have pursued. Habitual ejaculations of contempt and ill-nature, joined to a new state of things, have a sure tendency to produce total alienation. The new state of things to which I allude consists in the prostration of the Gorgon in France, by which so many of us were petrified; the consequent restoration of our powers of vision and reflection, in regard to its colossal antagonist; and the remission of those intestine heats which, having their origin, in part, in an inordinate preference of the cause of one or the other European belligerent, conduced in turn to aggravate that preference. The Anglo-mania has, I believe, almost universally subsided; but, notwithstanding the studied contumelies and injuries to which no American can be insensible, it has not yet been replaced in the same VOL. I.-G* breasts by sentiments of hostility. We lament that perilous crisis at which England has arrived; when, with a crushing apparatus of government, a most distorted and distempered state of society, no reform can be admitted, lest it should run, by its own momentum, to extremes, and produce general confusion; when her statesmen, overpowered by the very aspect of so much morbidness and obliquity, are compelled to exclaim, Nec vitia, nec remedia pati possumus. We cherish and esteem the English individuals whom we possess, and, without coveting the presence of more, we are ready to entertain the same feelings, to practise all the charities, towards those who may come among us at any time, provided it be not for the purpose of holding us up to the scorn and derision of the world. CONTENTS. POLITICAL and Mercantile Jealousy of Great Britain. Peculiar fate of the North American Colonies in being constantly defamed by the mother country. Her early jealousy and selfish alarms. Testimony of Evelyn, Hume, Pos- tlethwayt, Child, Gee, &c. Measures to prevent the growth of American manufactures. Illiberal colonial policy. Testimony of Adam Smith, of Dummer, &c. Scheme of confining the North American settlements to the sea-coast. Early panic about emigration; attempts to repress it, &e. General Character and Merits of the Colonists. English testimony in their favour. Quarterly Review; Burke; Chalmers, &c. Character of the first settlers in New England; in Virginia; and the other provinces. Their respecta- ble rank in life, their love of liberty and independence; the excellence of their institutions; no obligations to the mother country on this score. Charters how obtained. Uniform endeavours of the mother country to destroy the Charters. System of religious freedom and equality esta- blished by the Colonists; disturbed, and, in some instances, subverted, by the mother country. Religious intolerance of Massachusetts extenuated. Political intrepidity of the Colonists; leading traits of it in their history. Their domestic morals and habits; religious spirit. Their attention to the object of general education. Their moderation and beneficence towards Difficulties surmounted by the Colonists. The conquest of the wilderness. Oppressive administration of the mother country. Absence of all external aid. Struggle with the Indians; with the French of Canada. Accusations of the mother country, as to the treatment of the Indians, retorted. Case of the Acadians in 1755; barbarous conduct of Great Britain towards them. Wars which she made in America, exclusively her own, and not induced by Great exertions and sacrifices of the colonies in the wars of Great Britain, be- management and imbecility of the British generals. Achievements of the SECTION V. Commercial obligations of Great Britain to the Colonies. Acknowledgments of SECTION VI. Affectionate loyalty of the Colonists at the peace of 1763. No designs of in- SECTION VII. Titles of the United States to the respect and good will of Great Britain. Ani- SECTION VIII. The Quarterly Review. Its implacable enmity; false logic; unworthy pro- Accusations of the Edinburgh Review respecting the existence of negro slavery in the United States. Early upbraidings of England on the same head. Her share in the establishment of that evil. Early denunciations of it by the colonists. Their repeated attempts to arrest the introduction of ne- groes. Inflexibility of the mother country. American abolition of the slave trade. Measures of the State Legislatures and of Congress on this subject. United States have the merit of priority. Historical deduction of the British slave trade. Its extent and criminality. Developments. His- tory of the British abolition of the slave trade. Its interested and imper- fect character. Selfish aims of the British government. Supineness of the ministry until the approach of the peace of 1814. Concession of the slave trade to Spain, Portugal, and France. Fatal consequences. British capital largely engaged in the illicit trade. Negociations at the Congress of Vi- enna. Insidious propositions of Lord Castlereagh. Miscarriage. British West Indies adequately supplied with negroes since the British abolition. West India slavery; its character; in no degree mitigated. Renewed ne- gotiations with foreign powers. Their well founded distrust of the views of Great Britain in relation to the general abolition of the slave trade. De- velopment of those views. Frustration of her scheme of establishing a right of search in time of peace. Hypocrisy and imposture. Present state of the slave trade. Vindication of the United States, as regards the exist ence of slavery within their bosom. What they have separately effected in the way of abolition. Colonization. Character and condition of the American negroes, free and enslaved. Character and deportment of the American masters. Denial of the allegations of the British travellers. Indian Warfare. Locke's Constitutions for Carolina. Religious toleration of |