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was glad he had asked the information; "because the answer he had received from "the right hon. gent. afforded him the,

But has this sapient President no appre"ciations that the experiment might be fatal to the interests and independence of "his own country, and that should France

finally prevail over England, the liberty of America would not long survive? "There is another circumstance of which "we should suppose Mr. JEFFERSON cannot "be ignorant; that war with this country "must be a war without hope; not only "without hope, but with certain destruc"tion to the American commerce? But "" perish commerce!" is perhaps the motto of "the American President, as well as of ** certain wiseacres on this side the water.

During his residence in France, he be"came enatoured of the doctrines of the Economists and Turgotists, and he wishes, pitiably, to try the experiment of a nation relinquishing foreign com"merce, living upon the produce of its own territories, and confining itself to the pursuits of agriculture. If such "be his wishes, we know not that he could have found out a more likely means of realizing them than by going to war with "this country.-War with this country, it "is scarcely possible to concieve he is not "desirous of provoking, by the concealment "of every fact which might dispose Con

gress or the people of America to adopt amicable or pacific measures. It is utter"ly improbable that he could have been "ignorant, when Congress met, of the "disposition and feelings of his Majesty's Ministers, with respect to the affair of the Chesapeake. It was known in this country about the 26th of July, on the 27th July "the subject was alluded to in both Houses of "Parliament. To a question from Mr " WHITBREAD in the House of Commons, "Mr. Perceval, tho chancellor of the exchequer, replied, that "All he could say "" was, that if, upon receiving the neces

sary information, it should appear that ""there was any thing improper or unjus"❝tifiable in the conduct of the officers *** concerned, there certainly would be e

very wish, on the part of his Majesty's ministers, to make the fullest reparation "the nature of the case would admit of"

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greatest consolation.*This declara"tion of Iris Majesty's ministers must have "reached America long before October; "indeed we have seen it ourselves in the "American papers. We have every reason "to believe also that government did trans"mit a distinct disavowal of the effair; "and we are confident too that Mr. Jefferson was informed of the fact that our go"vernment did not claim the right of arching neutral ships of war.” Don't try! I thought that NO-POP RY" had more vigour. What, can you show vigour towards nobody but the hish? - Come, wipe your gentle, sweet, no-popery eyes, and tell us all about your wrongs. And so, you sent this unreasonable man word, did you, as "did not аз possible, that you "claim the right of searching ships of war," and, of course, that you gave up Admiral Berkeley, and were ready to make the ful"lest satisfaction the nature of the case "would admit of?" You hastened to tell him this, did yon? Well, and what then? He turned his back upon you, did he, in expression of his contempt, and represented the affair to the Amphyctionic Council, just the same as if he had not received your private apology. Really, that was pretty well, I think; for, if he had spoken to the Council about your apology, it is probable they would have spitten in your face, for they did actually spit at one another when I was in America. But, my dear gentle no popery, are you surprized to find, that "America is not to be conciliated by concession; "that she has mistaken your moderation for meanness, that she bas imputed your for"bearance to fear?" Why, evangelical nopopery, why should you be surprized at this, when, upon the first appearance of your proclamation, I told you it would be so, and that, too, almost in the very words, wherein you now state your conviction. Nay, I warned you of it at the time when Mr. Perceval gave the above quoted answer to Mr. Whitbread. I expressed my regret, that that answer foreboded yielding: and, I explicitly told you, that to give signs of a readiness to yield was the only possible way to produce a rupture with America; but, either from the natural softness of your disposition, or from having all your vigour engaged in Ireland, you went on

* See Cobbett's Parliamentary Debates, vol. is, p. 930.

what are you, that we should have believed your predictions?" Soften that killing frown, my angelic no-popery, and I will tell you what I am. I am a person, rendered by experience (which makes fools wise, you will observe), thoroughly skilled in the American character, manners, interests, and motives of political conduct. I understand well the nature of their government, the resources of their country, the means and the wants of the people; and I understand, too, the nature and extent of their connections with this and with other countries. Farmer (to construct a sentence after the manner of the learned George Chalmers), Farmer there is not, who knows his cattle better than I my Americans. I have summered them and wintered them for eight long years; I have tried them upon all sorts of grounds and in all their paces; I know all their tricks (and they have not a few), all their ailings and failings; all their bad qualities and all their good ones. And this, no-popery, is what I am, a person, I presume, better calculated to give you advice than Mr. Whitbread, or Mr. A. B, of the Morning Chronicle, who calls upon you to make further concessions, in order to "break the French faction in "America;" but, be assured, sweet saint, that you may break your heart and neck, and give your body to be burned in the attempt, and that you will fail at last; of the truth of which you must, one would think, be now pretty well convinced. The ruling party in America like you just as well as your political opponents; they laugh at your cries of no-popery and of danger to the church. These, your wars, are matter of diversion for them. They hate us all together, and would annihilate us, if they could, without any of those considerations, which you seem to suppose they ought to have, about not favouring Napoleon in his views upon us, lest he should finally fall upon them, and take their

liberty" from them, no such idea having ever come athwart their minds. As to real liberty, they have not much to lose, any more than certain other nations that I could name; and, they could talk about it, under a Buonaparté as well as under a Thomas Jefferson.You have nothing left, therefore, but to bow down your neck at once, or to gird on your sword. Nay, draw it out, lay aside your sweet consenting con. ceding disposition, screw up your mouth and knit your brows, as Pitt used to do, when a hard gravelly truth fell upon his ear, and

refractory Americans. But, if you do yield, as, from the known mildness of your nature, I suppose you will, let me beseech you to do it openly and without reservation. Down upon your saint-like marrow-bones, nay prostrate yourself at full length. Let us have no more private apologies; none of your penance performed in a corner; come forth in the white sheet at once.You are in a sadly "unsatisfactory state," I must confess -Speaking now to my readers, I would ask them, what, if our doctrines respecting commerce be sound, we have to fear from a war with America, who, it is allowed, on all hands, cannot touch us with her arms? The truth is, that it is only cowardice in our councils that can, even now, produce a war. The wise man of the Morning Chronicle thinks the President has called the Congress together to consult with them. Not at all. They have been called, at an earlier period than usual, merely for the purpose of intimidating us by the President's address, which was written for our use and not for that of the "Amphyctionic Council." If we remain firm, they will give way; if we recoil, they will tread upon us, step after step, till we are down and trampled under their feet. They cannot maintain war against us for a year. The thing is impossi ble; and, even during that year, they must and will have our goods. We have nothing to do but to send out from ten to fifteen frigates; their trade is at an end in a month, and their people soon afterwards in mutiny. Mr. Jefferson's hatred may be great, and his party may be strong; but, he will have two most formidable enemies to cope with at home; namely, the back and the belly. Coffee, molasses, and ruth, afe, in that country, nearly necessaries of life; and, these come only in ships. Of the absolute necessity of woollens I spoke before. In short, it is downright madness to talk of their carrying on a war for the purpose of obtain ing concessions of speculative good from us. A war, upon such grounds, would not only overset Mr. Jeferson's party, but his government. Does any one imagine that the people of New England, who have long wished, and expressed their wishes, for a separation from the Southern States, will forego that commerce, which is necessary, not to their comfort, but to their existence, to humour the partialities of those whom they hate? The people of New England are wise, brave, and virtuous; they are the soul of the country; and, we may be assured, that they will not tamely submit to be made the instruments of their own misery. A

war it is that would, therefore, " break the French faction in America;" but, no concessions would have such a tendency; while they must, in the end, work our ruin, because they would destroy our power upon the sea -Botley, Dec, 10, 1807,

LETTER FROM MR. SPENCE.

SIR,As the dissemination of opinions, which at this juncture I deem particularly important, was the object I had in view in publishing the pamphlet on Commerce, from which you have of late made such large extracts, I cannot but feel highly obliged to you for so effectually promoting my purpose. I have to thank you also for the compliments which you pay me. But, along with these you couple a charge of plagiarism. You broadly insinuate, that however excellent my ideas may be, they are wholly stolen from your Political Register. Such a charge requires some notice, and I intend this letter as a refutation of it; for, of all stealing, literary stealing is the most indefensible; and I should have little hope that my opinions would have any weight with your readers, if, influenced by your inuendoes, they believed them to be advanced by a plagiarist. I should have written what I now send you, immediately after seeing your No. of the 21st of Nov., but your charges seemed to thicken so marvellously, that I was induced to wait a week longer for their probable accumulation. In your last No. I perceive you appear to have exhausted your accusations; and, I therefore, lose no time in transmitting my defence. Before, however, I enter upon it, you must suffer me to premise, that I feel no ill humour towards you on account of your insinuations. On the contrary, conscious how groundless they are, I have been highly gratified by your critique. Your sneer at "my weakness in putting F. L. S. after my name," and your sage conjecture that I (who was never out of England in my life, nor my forefathers either, as far as I know), must be a Scotchman," have amused me much more, I dare say, than any of your readers. And the gratification I have derived from seeing the opinions which we hold in common, so ably and staunchly supported in a work which has such extended circulation, has far outweighed any sensations of auger, on account of the injustice you have done me.--To pro ceed with my reply to your accusation of plagiarism. In the first place, I might state, and bring forward the evidence of at least a dozen literary friends in support of my assertion, that all the main positions of By pamphlet were maintained by me at least

six years ago; and, indeed, I have now by me a paper which was read to a literary society in 1801, expressly in support of these doctrines. But there is no necessity for proofs of this kind. Such proofs would be necessary only, if I had claimed any origi nality in the positions which I maintain; but you, Mr. Cobbett, well know,, that I make no such claim. You know, that I explicitly adduce the arguments which L employ, in support of doctrines which I state to have been maintained long ago, by philosophers known by the title of the French Economists. I ask you, therefore, in the second place, whether there was ever. since the creation of the world, such a charge of plagiarism brought forward as yours? Is there an instance on record, of one author charging another with stealing his ideas, when that other expressly declares, that he is maintaining opinions supported by writers who flourished before either of them. were born? Yet precisely such a charge is yours. The doctrines that agriculture is the sole source of wealth, and that 'commerce cannot enrich a nation, were insisted upon 50 years ago, by certain philosophers in France. In my pamphlet, avowing the source whence I derived them, I profess merely to place these doctrines in a new point of view, to restrict them in some re spects, to elucidate them more fully in others, and to deduce some conclusions from them, which, as far as I knew, were novel. How preposterous, then, to charge me with stealing these ideas from you! You talk of my taking pains to premise that I was the first to promulgate such sentiments.". But, where do I take any such pains? I say, indeed, that the motive which induced me to publish on the subject, was the wish to lead the 99 out of 100 of those of my acquain tance, (yours, it appears, are a more enlightened tribe) who believed con- ierce to be essential to our existence, to entertain. more manly and just ideas of our independence. But surely, Mr. Cobbett, your ex-perience must have taught you, that opinions may be promulgated over and over again without working conviction: and though I knew, therefore, that similar opinious with mine had frequently been before: the public, I did not, on, that account, think it unnecessary once more to give them in a new form; especially since, if digestion be allowed to assimilate our mental food to our own substance, I might fairly consider these ideas my own, for I had not read one of the works from which they were original ly drawn, for at least 6 or 7 years previous to the writing my pamphlet, and since, be

sides, as a combined whole, my system differs essentially from that of any political economist. Your opinions on these topics, seem to have been drawn from the stores of your own mind. You have much greater merit, therefore, than I can lay claim to. But be contented with this praise. Usurp not a title to originality, which cannot be conceded to you. You please yourself with the idea of being the creator of these doctrines, and you amuse yourself with playing on my language, and calling me the transmuter or manufacturer of them. I am content with the latter designation, but, alas! I must deprive you of the glory of the former. You the creator of the opinions, that agriculture is the great source of wealth, and commerce, merely a transfer of it! Why, my good Sir, these opinions were maintained 2200 years ago by an old Grecian named Aristotle. Your antipathy to the learned languages prevents my referring you to this philosopher in his own tongue, but take the trouble to look over Dr. Gillies's translation of his ethics and politics, and you will see that the vile plagiarist (pardon the anachronism; you will shortly find that you have set me the example) has run away with all your discoveries. If this research be too fatiguing for you, I have another of these forestalling rogues of antiquity to bring to your notice. Turn to the 1st vol. 8vo. edition of Gibbon's "Decline and Fall," p. 341, and you will find that a certain monarch, named Artaxerxes, gave it as his opinion 2000 years ago, "that agriculture is the sole source of wealth, and that all taxes, must in the end, fall upon the produce of the soil." But, I foresee that you have still a hole to creep out at. A saving clause in one part of your remarks teaches me, that, you will say, "that, at least, you are the first promulgator of these opinions in Britain." But if you solace yourself with such a hope, I am once more obliged to demolish your airbuilt castles. Look over the Querist of good Bishop Berkeley, and you will be convinced that all these discoveries which you claim, were perfectly familiar to him. Adam Smith, too, however opposed to our tenets he may appear at the first glance, if sifted to the bottom, will be found, not widely to differ from us. The very object of Lord Lauderdale's "inquiry" is to prove that "land and labour are the sole sources of wealth;" and to omit other instances, a pamphlet was published a few years ago by Dr. Gray, which carries these doctrines to a greater length than any of us. Even your old friends the Edinburgh Reviewers (would you have thought it Mr. Cobbett ?) have cnce at least,

whatever they may be now, been of our opinion on these points. Refer to Vol. I. p. 445 of their Review, and you will find them arguing that all taxes fall eventually upon the land proprietors; and that, consequently, agriculture must be the grand source of wealth. Thus, you see, even if you had maintained these important positions, more strenuously than you have done, I could with no propriety have given you the credit of being their first discoverer Such an unjust distribution of literary merit, if it had not raised the ghost of Bishop Berkeley from his grave, would certainly have brought Lord Lauderdale, Dr. Gray, and a whole tribe of enraged authors about our ears; and I even tremble, when I think of the ven geance which those terrific Scotch dissectors, the Edinburgh Reviewers would have taken on us. As it is, I should not wonder, if, losing sight of their identity, they were to fall foul of us; but with what whetted beaks, and sharpened talons, would they not have pounced upon us, had they caught us monopolizing the credit of discoveries which were made ages since!--As you may not have Bishop Berkeley's works at hand, to prove to your readers, that we have great authority on our side, suffer me to quote one of his queries. Q. 123 "Whether one may "not be allowed to conceive and suppose a "society or nation of human creatures, clad "in woollen cloths and stuffs, eating good

bread, beef, and mutton, poultry, and "fish in great plenty; drinking ale, mead, "and cyder; inhabiting decent houses built "of brick and marble; taking their plea"sure in fair parks and gerdens; depending "on no foreign imports whether for food or "raiment: and whether such a people

ought much to be pitied?" Two more queries may serve to dissipate the fears of those good souls who think we shall be ruined, if we cannot get tea and brandy. Q. 159. Whether, if our ladies drank sage or "balm tea out of Irish ware (Bishop Berke"ley was an Irishman your readers will re

member) it would be an insupportable "national calamity?" Q. 156.-" Whether, "if people must poison themselves, they "had not better do it with their own "growth?"-In concluding this head of my letter, I have one question seriously to put to you, to which I should wish to have an explicit answer. The extract which you first copied from my pamphlet, in the pamphlet begins thus, That the examination of the "truth of the opinion of the French econo"mists, that agriculture is the only source "of wealth, &c." In your extract you have omitted the words "of the French eco

nomists," and only these, in an extract of five pages. What could be your motive for this omission? I cannot bring myself to believe that it was for the purpose of making this extract square with your insinuation, that I was copying from you: but, I confess I cannot easily account for it on any other supposition. On this point, therefore, I must request an explanation from you, and I shall be glad if it prove satisfactory.-Notwithstanding the above host of evidence proving it is not probable I should copy from you, opinions maintained above 2000 years by authors without number, it is not unlikely, as you are a pertinacious gentleman, but you will still insist that I have drawn my sentiments from your secondary fountain; and, as you have given extracts from your Regis ter to prove this idea, it requires some notice. You are right in your conjecture, that I am in the habit of reading your weekly publication. I have seen it for about 3 years at a news' room; not, however, constantly, for my occasional absences from home have frequently prevented my reading it for months together. Amongst much of your publication that I approved, and much that I disapproved, I was of course gratified to see you now and then, advancing opinions similar to my own, on the subjects of my painphlet; but, I confess, it never struck me that you had established your doctrine in such an argumentative and logical way, as to preclude their further discussion: and, as I can with truth say, that I am not conscious of being indebted to you for one single idea advanced in my publication, it certainly never eptered into my head that there was any necessity for adverting to the circumstance of your having maintained similar doctrines; especially, as I had no reason for supposing them original with you, any more than with myself. But to proceed to your extracts. The one which alone has any such similarity with a parallel passage of mine, as to justify eveu a suspicion of plagiarism, is that in which you argue on like grounds with me, that the revenue is indebted for the duty paid on tea, not to the East India Company, but to the consumers of that article. The similarity here, is merely accidental. Most assuredly, I never saw the passage quoted in your Register, when it was originally published, for if I hari, its accordance with my own opinions would have fixed it in my memory whereas it was perfectly new to me. But even if I had seen it when first published, as it was an illustration which had occurred to me years before, I should not have scrupled to make use of it as my own. You surely will not pretend that an idea, which

you say is so obvious, that it must have struck the most stupid of the human race, is one which might not have occurred to two persons meditating on the same question.You say, too, that you have long ago advanced the arguments which I employ to show that the nation does not get rich by the East India trade. This may probably be the case, though I was not aware of it; and you do not point out the passages in your Register, where your opinions on this head are to be found. But you must see, that my fixing upon the East India trade to show that we do not get rich by import commerce, was merely, because, as in that trade, we exchange bullion for a luxury, the chain of argument is more simple. I might just as well have instanced the Baltic trade, or the Turkey trade; and, in that case, I suppose you would not have pretended that I was indebted to you for my arguments.-On the remainder of your parallel extracts, I shall be very brief. You give two of the 6th and 20th Dec. 1806. I have only to say, that my pamphlet was written in November 1806. You may be made sure of this, either by inquiring of the printer, who had it in his hands in the beginning of Jan. 1807; or, by the internal evidence of the fact at pages 2 and S2, where the conquest of Buenos Ayres is spoken of as a recent transaction, and the sugar distillery question as being then under the consideration of parliament. But, your last extract is the greatest curiosity. This, you say, contains multum in parvo, the sum and substance of all my publication; and you verily believe is more calculated to work conviction than my elaborate arguments. All very probable, my good Sir; but what, in the name of consistency and of common sense, had become of your eyes when you adduced this extract as a proof of plagiarism? Surely you must have been sleeping. Why, Sir, your extract was published on the 224 August, and my pamphlet was published on the 3 of the same month, that is, three weeks before!!! Who is the plagiarist now, Mr. Cobbett? Your nullum in parvo extract, the source of all the arguments in a pamphlet published three weeks before it! Admirable logic to be sure! You see the anachronism of making Aristotle steal from you, is not without authority. You will say, perhaps, you were ignorant of the date of the publication of my pamphlet. This I cannot help. It was your business before you brought forward a charge of plagiarism, to have consulted the documents which would have given you the requisite information. If you had looked into the newspapers of the od August, you would have seen an