neither wants nor produces. There was then a demand for remorseless and violent energies, and the demand created its sup- ' ply of this, as it does of every thing else. These men, howeyer detestable their characters, and deplorable the actual conse quences, did, is one repect, nevertheless, the work they were called for.-They extricated their country from the dangers that assailed it, and they defended it against the world; but in deing this, they' eventually, and inevitably laid the foundation of that military predominance, which has fatally alike triumphed over their own liberties, and those of mankind. It is from this career of glory that the French nation derives some consolation for the free destinies it has lost; whilst the rest of Europe, which endeavoured to suppress them, can find no consolation.-Contrary, then, to the assumption of Lord S. I trust I have shewn, both that the horrors of the French Revolution were not even the natural, far less the necessary, consequences of mere political change or reform of government; but that they were the direct consequences of the imprudent combination of the governments of Europe against her liberties, and that that actual military scourge, also, whose successes Lord S. so feelingly deprecates, did not naturally arise out of the French Revolution, but was the offspring of the same ill-fated Conspiracy. In pointing out the atrocities committed during the Revolution, Lord S. has accidentally overlooked one little matter; an omission the more surprising as his lordship seems to have thought the national purse of so much consequence, as to have been anxious that the French should have foregone every security for public liberty in consideration of the check upon Taxation, which was offered by the King to the Etats Generaux. The little omission to which I allude, is that of the National Assembly having in its first year reduced nine millic sterling of the annual Taxes! somewhat, it is true by a sale of national domains, but more by retrenchment; and this upon a revenue and expenditure quite triding, when compared with the sum of British Taxation. A final reflection here suggests itself to us upon this topic, which Lord S. had better not have introduced; and this is, that a government, after half a score of centuries' continuance, must have very ill answered the purposes of one, when its subjects either shewed so much hatred to it, or had been so little humanized by it, as to already shewn, together with some intemperance on the part of a few of the leaders of the Revolution, did unquestionably between them create a ferment, to which several lives fell an unavoidable sacrifice; and which in the event, had they been left to themselves, might have produced a Civil War, with its usual terrible consequences. This is the ultimate and (protract it as long as you will) the inevitable termination of bad government, and resisted melioration, either in France, or any other country; and this to a certain degree did, and to an indefinite degree might have happened in France. But, although the combinations of the few within the country against the interests of the many, might have produced a Civil War with conceivable consequences, they would have been quite inadequate to the production of the inconceivable, and bloodfreezing horrors of the subsequent stages of the Revolution. These, like all other consequences, were nevertheless produced by co-extensive and adequate causes. They were produced by the combinations of all the trembling despotisms in Europe leagued against the cause of freedom and mankind. It was into this conspiracy that Mr. Burke and Mr. Pitt so fatally precipitated England, to the entailment of consequences which Lord S. so naturally regrets; to which all these Governments, except our own, have already fallen sacrifices, and of which no human wisdom and foresight can yet discover the end! To these regrets of the noble writer I heartily unite my own; and the more so, because, having been on the spot at the time, I know that no national sentiment was ever more sincerely or universally (I might say unanimously) felt and expressed, than that of a desire on the part of the French nation for lasting peace and amity with England; but regrets are unavailing, and the only good which we can derive out of this evil must result from reasoning justly upon its causes, in order that we may avert its consequences from ourselves. It was not, then, the change in its Government, or political Revolution in France, as Lord S. assumes, but the ensuing Continental War, which produced, as it were, and solely raised to power the most atrocious of the revolutionary characters. The Girondists in part were patriots and philosophers; but the desperate crisis of the war and the country superseded those men, and called for characters, which, happily for mankind, peace make war upon it in a way which would disgrace the history of cannibals and savages! The Revolutions of France and of Spain, which I have touched upon, are examples of the violent Reforms, the natural and necessary results of abuses; I hope they are the last of the chapter! On the other hand, two or three changes of federal Government, as well as of provincial Constitutions, which have quietly taken place in America through the means of Conventions, assembled for that express purpose, exhibit bloodless and salutary examples of timely Reforms. I will merely allude to the most important, which assembled in Philadelphia in 1787, for the alteration of the Federal Constitution of America, where the Convention, having performed that business, having recommended its alterations to the consideration of the separate States, and having fixed the period, at which, if these alterations obtained their approbation, the new Constitution should begin to operate, the members peaceably dissolved the Meeting, dispersed, and went home. Thus was a National Reform quietly accomplished by the people, or nation, the Government not having been party, or actor in the whole transaction. I have merely cited the case as a proof (though I think it superfluous) that there is no necessary connection, as some suppose, between an amendment of political Constitution, and Civil Warfar less between Reform and the horrors of a French Revolution; and that, when Civil Wars are produced by these occasions, it is the sinister interference of an Aristocracy, of a Court, or of some Cabal, with interests different from those of the Nation, which produces them. Mankind in fact, (for it is ridiculous to suppose otherwise) agree always in what is right and reasonable, on its being shewn to them when their selfish passions do not make them do otherwise; and never quarrel, and cut each others throats, in matters which regard their temporal concerns, unless where their interests clash.I have now, I conceive, given a satisfactory answer to the specific points in Lord S.'s Pamphlet of Analogy; it remains but to take a look at his general conclusion and scope, which appears to me to be impartially this, viz. that because frightful excesses followed the train of the French Revolution, therefore a corrupt representation of the people is to be perpetuated in England! Now, had Lord S. without feeling himself called upon to give any reasons for his change of opinion, merely said that his former opinion in this respect was changed, the public might have received such notification with the deference due to his lordship's talents and character; and would have naturally concluded that the noble author had solid reasons for the change. But when a man of his lordship's talents condescends to come before the public to assign the grounds of his change of opinion, and, in doing so, assigns no grounds which can warrant a change, the public will neces sarily conceive that his lordship, in the hurry of composition, may have omitted the real motive of the change, which they would be peculiarly gratified at seeing supplied in a more copious edition. And this is the more necessary for his lordship to do, because, in the posture in which this agitated question now stands, the opponents of Parliamentary Reform have gained but the Name of the Earl of Selkirk appended to a pamphlet, which does not contain one trait of those qualities, which have deserv edly made that name a favourite of the public. In the means then of which the government has so assiduously and inauspiciously availed itself for strengthening its own side in the contention about Reform, it has, as in a late proceeding in Parliament, contrived materially to corroborate the cause of its assailant, by exhibiting to a train of apologies, or reasonings, which can convince nobody, a name which has never hitherto been annexed to a position which it did not elucidate and establish. The reader will necessarily draw his own, (which can be but one,) inference. Lord S.'s apology then for his desertion of his political tenets resolving itself into a mere dictum, or solitary matter of opinion, that Governments should never radically reform their abuses for fear of consequences, I shall oppose to his lordship's the opinions of two other illustrious men, who appear to have thought that a restitution of the securities for Liberty did warrant some considerable risks; the one, Dean Swift, the cement of the Tory Ministry of Queen Anne, the friend of Harley and of Bolingbroke. The other, the most eminent Lawyer of his day, Lord Ashburton. It is true neither of these men witnessed the French Revolution; but the opinion of Swift, which I am going to cite, was written about 30 years after the English Revolution, of which he had been a mature observer, and which unfortunately, as Lord S. will think, for it is very unfortunate indeed for his argument, occasioned no bloodshed" rapacity and from the violence of preat all; and the opinion of Dunning was nearly contemporary with the Revolution of America which established her grandeur and independence; an event, which, tanding as an encouring example to all resisters of tyranny, Loid S. may also, by parity of reasoning, think very unforcunate. It was many years after Swift had retired from party, and from politics, hat he wrote to Pope, as follows: " As to what is called a Revolution principle, my opinion was this; that whenever those 'evils, which usually attend and follow a violent change of Government, were not in probability so pernicious as the grievance we suffer under a present power, then the public good will justify such a "Revolution." "As to Parliaments, I 'adore the wisdom of that Gothic institution, which made them annual; and I was confident our liberty could never be placed upon a firm foundation, until that ancient law was restored among us. For who sees not, that while such assemblies are permitted to have a longer duration, there grows up a commerce of Corruption between the Ministry and the Deputies, wherein they both find their accounts, to the manifest danger of liberty? Which traffic would neither answer the design, nor expence, if Parliament met once a year." He then Proceeds to his antipathy to standing armies in time of peace, the abomination of the scheme of Government of setting up a monied interest in opposition to the landed, his incapability of discovering the necessity of suspending any law, upon which the liberty of the most innocent person depended, &c." ith other matters equally irrevelant to ur times. Mr. Dunning's opinion was as llows: "If ever a period should arrive, when the three branches of the legislature should unite in a scheme to destroy the Liberties of the People; or if the House of Commons, forgetting their origin and their duty, should become the mere creatures and slaves of the Crown, it would then be no longer illegal for the Commonality of England to resume their just share in the legislature, and the means whereby they accomplished this, whether by association, by remonstrance, or by force, would be not only right but laudable; It would be an honourable imitation of the conduct of their ancestors, by which the Constitution had been wrested from the rogative." Lord Chatham's opinions to this purport are so well known, that it would be superfluous to quote them.-An opportunity is only now afforded me for a flying word or two on the Jobs and political profligacy of America, which Lord S. asserts far to exceed our own! and there-from deduces an argument against the meliorations, which we conceive would be accomplished by a purer state of representation. I can readily take for granted, even without Lord S.'s authority for it, that very dirty Jobs are transacted and disgraceful acts committed by politicians every where; but comparisons are odious; and candour really obliges me to suspect that the noble writer, at the instant of a virtuous indignation, may have omitted to make those allowances for America, which she will reasonably require. If America be so full of despicable faction, from which, happily for us, we are exempt, we should on the other hand take into account what we pay to allay faction.-Again, acknowledging, as every Englishman must do. with pride, the superior redundance of our crops of political virtue, let us not, in de scribing America, reproach her soil with sterility, because it does not spontaneously produce what we force! Lord S. certainly has not treated the Americans fairly, or he would never have drawn a parallel between their wretched, and our happy Government; he ought to have compared them with Kamptschatka or Otaheite. Why, the Grenvilles and the Percevals have offices amongst them of four times the emolument of the salary of the President of the United States; and Mr. Perceval has reversions and possessions in his person of more than double the amount. Even Lord Liverpool, whose eminent services I am as free to acknowledge as his gracious master, has as much emoluments as the President of the United States!Is not this a bounty on political virtue? And can one wonder at its abounding; and when we can so well afford to pay this encouragement, which we besides so cheerfully pay, does it become us in our fine equipage to lord it over and taunt our beggarly neighbours? Lord S. will see that I very cheerfully admit his account of the disgraceful proceedings of" the American legislature, hardly to be conceived by us. But still it appears to me that his lordship has not shewn the natural or necessary connection, (which of course must exist) between effective re ་ pia of Sir T. More; a writer of reveries, whom every one knows not to have possessed a single grain of political judgment, or practical wisdom.-But, to be serious over the jobs both of the Government of America and our own, (which have enough in them to make us so) when one considers that the American Government has paid off all its debts; has kept the peace with very bad neighbours; that it rules over a country ten times as large as England, at one fortieth of the expence; that infancy and age there do not go to the poor house, and youth to the gallows; but on the contrary, that a decent and universal inde pendence prevails, without a vestige of any sort of civil, or political monopoly, or religious intolerance; I say, when one contrasts this, on the one hand, with the Jobs Political, Jobs Ecclesiastical, Jobs Military, Jobs Parliamentary, Jobs Oriental, Jobs Official, and finally the Job of Jobs, or Jobometer (as sir F. Burdett pleasantly called it) on the other, one must imagine, that the noble Earl is indulging in an irony, of which we do not see the drift, or else, that he has just this moment arrived from an Island where Flappers, like those in Swift's Laputa, may be indispensible for some time, to those who have lately left it, and that his lordship had writte. his pamphlet without one. Before concluding, I must thank the noble writer for having omitted one common-place-tha of time. The language of the plausible and artful, but inveterate Anti-Reformist= used to be that of Felix: When I have presentation, and political profligacy. I have no doubt of the fact, but I own I do not see how corruption in the constituent body must unavoidably produce integrity and virtue in the representative; or even (for I am naturally dull) how the public morals of a nation can have been meliorated by transactions between the elector and the elected, which, even in the Edinburgh Reviewers' opinion, " stain "them both with dishonour." In good truth, justice compels us to make vast allowances for the Americans. Is it not obvious, that every one should be bred to the calling which he is to practice if he ever hopes to practise it with dexterity? The episode of Sancho's government is admired and approved by every body; and did not Teresa Panza desiré her husband to breed his son a Governor for that reason? Can it be expected, that a man born a farmer, or a shop-keeper, or a private land-holder, can ever legislate like another, who is born and bred a legislator? Can an unpractised private man, of between 40 and 50, when bad habits are inveterate, and obstinacy incurable, ever act the prince or the sovereign, like another, who has been born one, and bred to great things, and high contemplations? And as to representation, are not three or four persons who may not know the candidate's name, more likely to be impartial in choosing a fit person to send to legislate for the nation at large, than his neighbours and acquaintances, who are so apt to be biassed by malice, or affection; and who, it is notorious, never see each other but through a medium of prejudice?" convenient season, I will call for thee." But if there is one thing above another, wherein the Americans are never enough to be blamed and pitied, it is their blindness, in having lately let pass them the most delightful occasion for going to war, that ever occurred to any nation! I mean, when they passed their famous Non-Importation Act. What would not a war have done for them? It would have raised a debt, and embarked the fortunes of individuals in the stability of the Government; it would have put an army and navy at the disposition of the executive, with commissións, offices, promotions, and jobs, innumerable! all which, with other advantages, are lost. But the thing for which they are the most to be despised, is their having borrowed their Non-Intercourse measure, (in lieu of "a just and necessary war") from the institutions of the visionary Uto A better time, however, for reforming than the present, can never recur; for con ruptions must and will encrease, and the dangers of Reform, as I have shewn, b proportionate. The only time for accom plishing a Reform is the time, be it whe it may, when the nation comes forwar and says, we must have it.-This is the time and there is no other. I conclude with the apostrophe of the most eminent philos pher that our country or any other has pra duced; who, after laying 'own that " Tim is the greatest innovator," adds, "an "if Time, of course, alter things to th "worse, and wisdom and counsel shall n alter them to the better, what shall b "the end!!!"-1 have the honour to r main, Dear Sir, with high esteem and r spect, yours, J. C. WORTHINGTO Isle of Wight, 20th August, 1809. LONDON :-Printed by T. C. HANSARD, Peterborough - Court, Fleet - Street ; Pablished by R. BAGSHAW, Brydges-Street, Covent Garden :-Sold also by J. BUDD, Pall-Mall. VOL. XVI. No. 9.] LONDON, SATURDAY, SEPTEMBER 2, 1809. [Price 18. "And for their beating giving thanks, SUMMARY OF POLITICS. HUDIBRAS. -[290 "the 27th of July; and, on this occasion, owing to the local circumstances of its BATTLE OF TALAVERA.- When writing "position, and to the deliberate purpose upon this subject, in my last Number, little" of the enemy to direct his whole efforts did I imagine, that we should so soon hear" against the troops of his Majesty, the Briof the retreat of our "victorious" army; "tish army sustained nearly the whole weight and stiil less, that the General, who com- "of this great contest, and has acquired the manded it, and who had, of course, led it" glory of having vanquished a French army into such a perilous situation, would, in" double their numbers, not in a short and good earnest, be made a peer on account of " partial struggle, but in a battle obstithat "victory." The hireling prints had, │“ nately contested on two successive days indeed, asserted, that he was to be peered ; (not wholly discontinued even through but, still, I could not believe it. The next "out the intervening night) and fought day, however, when I came to see the "under circumstances which brought both GENERAL ORDERS," issued, by the Com-" armies into close and repeated combat. mander in Chief, to the army, and dated"——III. The King, in contemplating so on the 8th of August; when I came to glorious a display of the valour and see this extraordinary and unprecedented" prowess of his troops, has been graciously document, I began to think, that the hire-" pleased to command that his royal aplings were correct, and that it really was probation of the conduct of the army intended to make SIR ARTHR WELLESLEY serving under the command of Lieute a; ut, even then, how was I to be- nant-General Sir Arthur Wellesley shall lieve it possible, that he was to be made a "be thus publicly declared in General OrDiscount?Let us, before we proceed "ders.IV. The Commander in Chief any further with our own remarks, take a "has received the King's commands to look at this singular ORDER, which, as the " signify, in the most marked and special reader will not fail to perceive, was at once, manner, the sense his Majesty entertains an Order to the Army, and a sort of De- "of Lieutenant-General Sir Arthur Welclaration to the People.—I shall number |“ lesley's personal services on this memor the paragraphs for the sake of reference. "able occasion, not less displayed in the "I The Commander in Chief has re- "result of the battle itself, than in the con"ceived THE KING'S COMMANDS to "summate abili'y, valour, and military re"notify to the army the splendid victory" source, with which the many difficulties "obtained by his troops in Spain, under" of this arduous and protracted contest "the command of Lieutenant-General the" were met, and provided for, by his ex Right Honourable Sir Arthur Wellesley, "perience and judgment.-V. The con66 on the 27th and 28th of last month, at "the battle of Talavera de la Reyna. * I is Majesty is confident that his "army will learn with becoming exulta 66 His "duct of Lieutenant-General Sherbrooke, "second in command, has entitled him to "the King's marked approbation. Majesty has observed with satisfaction tion, the enemy, after escaping by a "the manner in which he led on the troops precipitate retreat, from the well-con-" to the charge with the bayonet, a spe"certed attack with which Sir Arthur"cies of combat, which on all occasions so "Wellesley, in conjunction with the Span-"well accords with the dauntless character "ish army, had threatened him on the" of British soldiers.--VI. His Majesty 24th of July, concentrated his force, by "has noticed with the same gracious ap*calling to his aid the corps under the " probation, the conduct of the several French General Sebastiani, and the gar"General and other Officers.-All have "rison of Madrid; and thus reinforced, "done their duty; most of them have had again approached the allied army on" occasions of eminently distinguishing K |