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than that of a soldier. A British officer is often employed at such a distance from his own country, and has so few opportunities of communication with his government, that he ought more than the general of any other nation, to teach himself to depend on the resources of his own mind. There is no service in which extensive views and great knowledge and information will be found so essentially necessary on particular occasions, as that of Britain. We would therefore give the best possible education to an officer; we would instil into his young mind, that if he wishes to distinguish himself in his profession, he must commence by laying the foundation of his superiority as a mun."

The inattention of Britain to her foreign relations is the more to be regretted, on account of the high and honorable character of her government, as contrasted with the political fraud and baseness of that of France. This will readily appear by examining the

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Papers relative to the Negociation with France, presented by his Majesty's command to both Houses of Parliament, 22d Dec. 1806," French and English, 159 folio pages; and to the "Correspondence with the Russian and French governments, relative to the overtures received from Erfurth," in December, 1808; wherein are plainly depicted the manly, national, upright policy of Britain, on the one hand; and the systematically false, shuffling, disingenuous conduct of France on the other. It is an universal fashion among certain political philosophers in this country, to assert that there is no difference of national character in the different governments of the world; and that they are all guided solely by the dictates of their own selfish expediency. Are these gentlemen prepared to include the government of the United States within the circle of their doctrine? But there is a national justice independent of and super-added to national convenience. For the character of a govern

ment must be influenced and in a great measure regulated by the opinion and sentiments of its people; and where religion, and morality, and integrity very generally prevail, as in Britain, the government, even if it were inclined, would not dare entirely to disregard the laws of right and wrong. Hence its prompt and liberal compensation for unintentional injuries, whether to its own subjects or to the people of other countries. But in France, where iniquity, fraud and violence, constitute the main ingredients of its system of policy, the government uniformly refuses or evades compensation for its intentional, deliberate injuries to its own people and to those of other nations. Witness the present unqualified bondage of the French themselves; and witness our American merchandise to the amount of fifty millions of dollars, plundered and detained in defiance of every law, human and divine; witness also its daily and hourly atrocities committed in the face of the whole world, and ostentatiously proclaimed as "the philanthropy of the Great Nation extending itself over the whole earth." As long as the distinctions of right and wrong are recognised practically among men, the tone of popular sentiment and morals will always influence the government. The aggregate character of a nation must be made up, by multiplying the individual character of its people; and if that individual character be generally upright and honorable, the average national character must be good also, and conversely. What is wrong in A, as an individual, cannot be made right, by joining B, C, or a million more individuals to A. For farther particulars respecting the ambassadors and the foreign policy of Britain, see "Hints," &c. pp. 543, 563.

A very prevailing doctrine among the French in their own country, and their partisans here, is, that Britain, in addition to her existing national bankruptcy, and her speedily approaching subjugation to

Buonaparte, is now on the eve of a most terrible political revolution, from the furious contentions of the various internal factions, which are tearing out the bowels of their native land. In these United States it is thought quite sufficient to quote scraps from Cobbett's "Political Register," pages from the " Edinburgh Review," extracts from the oppositionspeeches in Parliament, and the reform harangues of the Crown-and-Anchor Tavern, as conclusive proofs that the British constitution is about to be overturned, the public debt sponged, the nobility degraded, the two Houses of Parliament dissolved for ever, the clergy butchered, the merchants robbed, all the people and property of the nation put in requisition; in a word, that all the horrors of anarchy and violence, of cruelty and blood, which have been acted on so extensive a scale in France, are to be immediately renewed, "with greater perfidy and barbarity in England."

But all such speculations are founded in extreme ignorance of the real state of political parties in Britain. That nation is pretty equally divided into two great sections; one following the system of policy marked out by the late illustrious William Pit; the other adhering to the political tenets of Mr. Fox. Each of these parties includes within itself a vast body of talent, rank, property, influence, and character. Both are strenuously attached to the present form of government, both are desirous of upholding the Constitution and the Monarchy; they only differ in their views respecting the best means of accomplishing this great and desirable end. Where the government is both stable and free, as in Britain, political parties may be safely allowed to take their full range of exertion. There must be differences of opinion, and mutual opposition will engender bitterness of contest and some personal feeling. There must be rivalships among those whom genius,

rank, wealth, or reputation have made powerful; and the conflicts of such opponents will often deeply agitate, but seldom endanger the safety of a nation. For the common aim of both parties is to obtain power and place under, not over, the government; as was the case in France during the explosion of the Revolution, and as must ever be the case in the struggles of democracy. It is an act of gross and flagrant injustice, to confound the strictures of the Edinburgh Review and the speeches of the opposition in Parliament, with the ignorant scurrility of Cobbett's Political Register and the ravings of Sir Francis Burdett, and his jacobin reform-faction at the Crown-and-Anchor. The very able and temperate letter of the Earl of Selkirk to Major Cartwright, published in the London Newspapers in 1809, sufficiently unfolds the views of the reformers, the universal suffrage, and annual Parliment-men. Whoever carefully peruses the pages of the Edinburgh Review, and the speeches of the Opposition in Parliament, will find that however violent or intemperate they may be in their expressions of censure against the existing Administration, yet they are both equally resolute to maintain the Constitution and government of Britain, against all the attacks of the common enemy of mankind.

In the reign of George the 'Second, the ambassador from Spain to the court of St. James, expressed his wonder to a gentleman in London, that the two contending parties in England should so desperately hate each other, and observed that the nation must be so weakened by their mutual opposition, as soon to fall a prey to the invasion of a foreign foe. The gentleman led away the Spaniard to see two British bulldogs fight, which they did most furiously, tearing each other very terribly; after a while a bear was turned in upon the floor where they were fighting; they instantly ceased their mutual strife, attacked the bear, speedily drove him off, and then renewed their quar

rel with each other. This, said the Englishman te the Spaniard, is a correct resemblance of the two political parties, the Ministry and the opposition, they worry one another incessantly, but should any bear in the shape of France or Spain dare to attack their common country, they will instantly unite to buffet him, which being done, they will worry each other as before. Lord Chatham's glorious war which followed soon after, and for a season completely crippled the power both of France and Spain, fully verified the correctness of the parallel between the political parties and the bull-dogs of Britain.

The great question of Reform in England is most ably and most constitutionally discussed in the Edinburgh Review, Vol. 10th, pp. 386-421,-Vol. 14th, pp. 277-306. These admirable state-papers express the most decided opinions upon government; at once beating down the advocates for single despotism, and also for that most detestable of all the species of tyranny, the misrule of a mob. In the House of Commons on 8th of May, 1809, during the discussion of the "Third Report of the Committee on public offices," and the investigation of the question, how much could be saved to the nation in point of expense by adopting a more economical system; Lord Henry Petty, a great leader of the opposition, said, that Mr. Perceval, the chancellor of the exchequer, had behaved very honorably; that the whole sphere of reform, including pensions, salaries, places, sinecures, &c. &c. would amount to only one fifty-second part of the public expenditure, and excluding those to the Royal family, only to one-eightieth. The House would be wrong therefore to hold out a hope that by any alteration in the management of the finances of the kingdom, any sensible alleviation of the public burdens could be effected.

No one will suspect Mr. Burke of any revolutionary or democratic tendencies, and yet the opinions

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