ART. X. The Conftitutional Defence of England, internal and external; or, King, Lords, and Commons, defended against domeftic En mies: a Speech intended to have been spoken to the High Sheriff and Freeholders of the County of Lincoln, on the 6th of May, 1796. By John Cartwright, Efq. pp. 159. 8vo. 3s. Johnfon. London, 1796. THI HIS ftrenuous and vigilant defender of political liberty, and his leading principles of government, and fentiments of the English conftitution, are well enough known to our readers.It is the main object of the prefent publication to fhew, that a military force, adequate to our protection against the mighty preparations and menaces of France, cannot be raised on any other than conftitutional principles; that is, on principles of freedom. Minifters themselves, he thinks, mult first become patriots, and make up their minds to an immediate reform of parliament, as a measure neceffarily previous to the poffibility of arming to the extent the times require : - The perfuafive of our minifters to our yeomanry, through the agency of Mr. Secretary Young, naturally calls to mind the last perfuafive of the Emperor to the people of Brabant. He invited to voluntary enrollments in arms; they remembered former deceptions :he called with anxiety; they were torpid and deaf. The one thing needful was wanting, and the country was conquered. That one thing needful was a free conftitution-giving to the nation the exercife of its legislative will by reprefentatives under no control but its Own-and the exercise of its natural ftrength, by means of a natural militia, confifting of an armed inhabitancy, fubject to energetic laws for giving them motion, or keeping them at reft, as the fafety of the ftate requires. In the view I have taken of the fubject of arming, I trust that I cannot be fufpected of wishing to difcourage private individuals' from following the advice of Mr. Young. No: it is advice in which I will join that gentleman with my moft earneft exhortations. But I am not fo vifionary as to expect fuch advice, at fuch a juncture, to have the effect of faving the ftate; nor do I think it a proper fubftitute for the revival of conflitutional laws. As to myself, I had not waited for fuch a call. Three years ago a chest of mufquets from Birmingham armed me and my family. Some, for fecurity, direct their hopes to peace; but it is a dangerous error to fuppofe that by peace, without arming, fecurity can be obtained. Minifters, as I have faid, know that arming the nation muft, in its nature, produce a reform in parliament, and put an end to all corrupt power. This confideration-a confideration fo alarming to them-may induce them to accept fuch a peace as the Directory, penetrating their motives, and knowing the defenceless state of our island against such a gigantic power as theirs, may dictate. Bb 2 What What facrifices may thus be made by minifters to France, as the purchafe of continual power over England, time muft disclose. But fuch facrifices cannot do away the neceffity of arming; and the greater thofe facrifices, the fooner muft that neceflity become visible, and with increased danger, to a deluded nation. Will mere peacea triumphant peace extorted from monarchs by republican arms, difpofe France to caft away her prefent conftitution for the fake of returning to the corrupt, feeble, and odious government of defpotifm? If not, the will remain an armed nation; and there can be no fafety for England in becoming fo likewife. The military peace establishment of one country is regulated by that of another. Although the armies of France will not in peace be in the field, they will be in exiftence. By her conftitution every citizen is a foldier, ready to march at an hour's notice. What then must be the magnitude of our peace establishment; and what must be the enormity of our expence, if it be, as heretofore, to confift of a ftanding army? This then, on every account, is the time for recurring to our conftitutional fyftem of arming. The public mind is prepared for it by the prefent danger; and we have on foot a very confiderable land force towards our fecurity, until the measure can be completed; befides an immenfe navy, of which only a small portion can be kept in activity when the war is ended. If a peace be haftily patched up, the bulk of the nation, not then comprehending the neceffity, might revolt at the plan to the great hazard of public ruin. Such an arming, at this time, would be the means of obtaining a far better peace than can be obtained without it; and fuch an arming, while it provided a peace establishment of abfolute fecurity, not only from external enemies, but from mobs and infurrections at home, would leffen our military expences in a vaft proportion.' To devife and carry into execution a plan for effecting a reformation in parliament, at the prefent moment, and state of the public mind, might be attended with great danger. But, at the fame time, Mr. Cartwright convinces us that the danger from a French invafion is greater than, we believe, is commonly apprehended; and that, against this danger the voluntary enrolments and affociations of the yeomanry does not promife perfect fecurity. Notwithstanding the general affociations in England in 1745, four or five thoufand highlanders marched to the centre of the kingdom, and were not driven back but by a ftrong army, called home from the continent, under the Duke of Cumberland. ART. ART. XI. Additional Facts, addreffed to the ferious Attention of the People of Great Britain, refpecting the Expences of the War, and the State of the National Debt. By William Morgan, F.R.S, pp. 53. 8vo. Debrett. London, 1796. [R. Morgan, in an introduction, fays, I am now induced to give the following, in addition to my former ftatements, not with the idle hope of convincing minifters that the 'prefent fyftem of profufion is wrong, but with the more fa⚫tional hope of convincing the public that my accounts of it, fo far from being exaggerated, have hitherto been much too favourable.' The principal juftification of the prefent enor mous expence,' he fays, is founded on the ftupendous mag'nitude of our exertions in this war.'-From certain statements he concludes, that though the war eftablishment, during the laft three years, has been proved to exceed in expence the fame ⚫eftablishment during the first three years of the French and American war, by more than twenty millions; only nine fhips of the line, and on the whole number of every defcription, only three fhips have been annually employed in the one cafe more than in the other; but that in the army, on the contrary, the number of men employed, fo far from exceeding, appear to have been annually 7000 fewer in the prefent than they were in the former war. The enormity of our expenditure, therefore, does not proceed from any fuperiority in our exer ❝tions, and is even aggravated by the very statements which are intended to justify it.' ART. XII. Strictures on a Pamphlet written by Thomas Paine on the English System of Finance: To which are added fome Remarks on the War, and other National Concerns. By LieutenantColonel Chalmers, of Chelsea. pp. 68. 8vo. Debrett. London, 1756. N this arduous hour,' fays the Colonel, it becomes every good fubject to endeavour to expofe to public deteftation the defigns of an incendiary, whofe fole aim is to goad and plunge fociety into defpondency and anarchy. This effayift • would therefore mean to offer certain defultory observations on 'the pamphlet in question, and to add a few remarks on the · war, and other national concerns.'-The true mode of reviewing books is, beyond all doubt, the ANALYTICAL. To give a brief analyfis, or abridgment, of a work, is more just to the author of the work, and at the fame time more fatisfactory to the reader of a Review, than the most pompous critical declamation. But it often happens that books fet all attempts at analyfis at Bb 3 utter utter defiance. Analyfis is eafy in proportion to the excellence, and difficult in proportion to the defects, of compofition. The obfervations in this pamphlet are indeed defultory. In ftyle, and the art of expofition, or of communication, our author is miferably deficient; nor is there any thing in his fentiments fo new and ftriking as to compenfate the trouble of skipping about with him from one point to another. His obfervations are, indeed, not unfrequently juft; but when juft, they are obvious and trite; when they poffefs any thing of novelty, their folidity is queftionable. The first thirteen pages contain a review of the funding system. The national debt, confiderable as it is, is not, in truth, a heavier burden on the nation at prefent than fome eighty years ago, when it did not exceed fifty millions; particularly if we take into confideration the vaft increase of money, which gives a proportional ability to bear it; and this every one converfant in affairs may illuftrate by his own experience; for he must know that eftates, properly purchased eighty or a hundred years ago, would at this time fell or mortgage for three, four, five, fix, or eight times the fum they then coft.' This is the leading idea in the financical part of the pamphlet. The reader will perceive from this, as from the foregoing extract, that the Colonel is a very extraordinary writer. There is fcarcely a page in which this is not evident. We shall add another inftance of very extraordinary phrafeology: As human affairs are not always the refult of confequent conduct,' p. 41. Yet another: As the invariable tender of Paine's life, &c. p. 31.-As the worthy Colonel does not, we prefume, pretend to be a very learned clerk, all this will, no doubt, appear of little confequence; as indeed it is. We would only recommend to gentlemen, not converfant with the art of compofition, to put their manufcripts, for revifion, into the hands of fome perfon that is. But the Colonel is fometimes as inconfequent or illogical in his reafoning as he is faulty in the construction of his language. Among the reafons he urges why the infolvency to which Mr. Paine conftantly alludes can never happen, is the following, which he brings forward laftly, as the top of his climax: "And (finally), because fuch infolvency would difhonour the nation, and ruin a vaft body of good fubjects, whofe deftruction might convulse the empire to its very centre,' p. 25. We have always confidered the finking fund as a miserable juggle; taking from one hand to give to the other-and even as worie than nugatory. Confequently we do not agree with our author in his obfervations on that measure. It is not, indeed, of any confequence what a reviewer thinks on controverted matters; nor, in thefe, is it his province to decide. In the Colonel's remarks (and this is all that we have to do with) there is nothing new-of his obfervations relating to the war, we entirely ART. ART. XIII. Perfian Mifcellanies: an Effay to facilitate the reading of Perfian Manufcripts; with engraved Specimens, philo logical Obfervations, and Notes critical and hiftorical. By William Oufeley, Efq. pp. 210. 4to. White, Piccadilly. Lon don, 1796. WITHOUT a previous knowledge of minute matters, it in is almost impoffible to attain a high degree of eminence any science. The theory of mufical founds cannot be perfectly comprehended by him who is unacquainted with the gammut; nor is there any fcholar, however great, who has not learned the alphabet. With fuch fentiments as thefe Mr. Oufeley, encouraged by the example of fo illuftrious a critic as Quintilian, who thinks nothing unconnected with the art of oratory which is neceflary to the formation of an eloquent speaker, began to regard, as no inconfiderable branch of eaftern literature, the ftudy of the graphic art, as cultivated among the Perfian; without a knowledge of which no man can be pronounced a perfect orientalist: And having, by these confiderations, given a degree of import ance to the subject I was about to undertake, I naturally became de, firous to know the caufe why others had fo long neglected it; from the evident utility of a work which might tend to remove the ob ftacles oppofed to the ftudent on his first fetting out (and which must be overcome before the object of his purfuit can be attained), it appeared ftrange that no perfon had undertaken the task; and 1 lamented that it was left for one so infufficiently qualified as myself to execute. • But, on the commencement of the following work, I discovered the cause of this neglect; for the difficulty of arrangement, and the extreme drynefs of the fubject, have proved fuch as, more than once, have nearly forced me to abandon the defign, and must have deterred from the profecution of it any perfon not poffeffing a confi derable share of patience and perfeverance, With scarce any other qualifications than thefe, I undertook the work, and have collected in the following pages, and endeavoured to arrange in fome degree of order, the fcattered obfervations I had made during the infancy of my acquaintance with the Perfian language; when, in attempting to decypher manufcripts, a confiderable portion of time was neceffarily confumed, which fuch a work as I now offer to the public might perhaps have faved. • When we reflect on the difficulties that frequently occur among ourselves, in reading the familiar letters of our friends; when we confider that many are puzzled in decyphering even what has been written by themselves; we cannot wonder that more ferious obstacles are prefented to the learner of a new language and a ftrange character; a character, too, that, from its conftruction, and the facility Bb 4 with |