cret, over calamities apparently irremediable, the spirits of revenge, rapine, and assassination, have stalked abroad in open day-light; and, instead of being dreaded and detested as heretofore, seem to be viewed by the people with levity and indifference, if not with secret satisfaction: as if the shocking devastations they have produced, were only a just retaliation upon those, whom it is supposed are daily heaping distress upon public bodies equally with private individuals.

1

On this ground, it has been observed, that

every crime has its shade; and that even assassination, the greatest of all crimes, so universally condemned, has its distinctions, which lessen, in the general estimation of mankind, the enormity of its guilt!" Further,. with respect to Mr. Bellingham, whose part has been so fatally conspicuous in the life of Mr. Perceval, it has been observed,

that, if he had been one of those political assassins recommended by some of the venal prints; or, if, on the other hand, "he had been engaged by France or America to exterminate the man, whom they consider (no matter how erroneously) as the great obstacle to peace, there would then have been no difference of opinion respecting the atrocity of a doctrine so diabolical by its practical effects on the first minister of the country." And yet the unfortunate man who could deliberately devote himself to certain death, and his children to the chance of infamy and want, rather than suffer the love of life to soften his resentment, though an acute sufferer, was perhaps not many degrees more so than hundreds of his survivors, who, like him, have experienced the sad reverses of a declining commerce.

The thoughts on the sudden overthrow of

Mr. Perceval's administration, are derived from facts alone, and require no support from any party in or out of power.

In the development of the Delicate Investigation, much new light is thrown upon that transaction, and the public are now put upon their guard against any of the impositions that have appeared in print, pretending to detail particulars which never existed but in the imagination of the writers.

The most important of the correspondence between Marquis Wellesley, the Earl of Liverpool, Mr. Canning, and others, we have included in this Work. This strange negociation has assumed a different shape almost every day. The parties, it has been observed, "have been twisted and divided and united again in all possible forms; but up to the 28th of May (nearly three weeks since the death of Mr. Perceval), no concordant body had been made up of them!"

The last reports on the subject were, that Marquis Wellesley had retired and given up the task of forming a Ministry to Earl Moira. It is certain, that the state into which the Country has been thrown by the sudden assassination of the prime minister, is singularly awful and alarming; it is still hoped, that by the more auspicious interference of Divine Providence, the calamities which seem to be threatened by the disunion of the parties, may yet be averted, and harmony once more restored to our divided councils...

MEMOIRS

OF THE

LIFE AND ADMINISTRATION

OF THE RIGHT, HONOURABLE

SPENCER PERCEVAL.

MR. PERCEVAL, the late Chancellor of the Exchequer, was descended from a very ancient family; and it has been mentioned as a remarkable circumstance concerning them, "that their ancestors, for more than a century, had been engaged, in some shape or another, in public affairs, but chiefly in collecting the revenues of the sister kingdom." The first of them who went to Ireland was John, Lord Lovel: this was at the request of Richard II.

But as the minds of men, in general, love to dwell upon the memory of departed worth, or fallen greatness; and as it may be particularly gratifying to the numerous

B