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. 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 originality 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 I 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 respects, 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 acquaintance, (yours, it appears, are a more enlightened tribe) who believed commerce to be essential to our existence, to entertain more manly and just ideas of our indepen 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 speer 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, not my forefathers either, as far as I know), must " be a Scotch-dence. man," 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 anger, on account of the injustice you have done me.-To proceed 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 wy pamphlet were maintained by me at least But surely, Mr. Cobbett, your experience must have taught you, that opi nions may be promulgated over and over again without working conviction: and though I knew, therefore, that similar opinions 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 originally 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 agricul ture 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) bas 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 reimarks 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 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 dif fer 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 once at least, am 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 vengeance 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 cur 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 gardens; 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 econe "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 unlike ly, as you are a pertinacious gentleman, but you will still insist that I have drawn my sentiments from your condary fountain; and, as you have given extracts from your Register 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 pamphlet; 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 entered 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 even 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 had, 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 publish ed, 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 1800. 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 82, 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 barvo, 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 22d August, and my pamphlet was published on the 3d of the same month, that is, three weeks before!!! Who is the plagiarist now, Mr. Cobbett? Your multum in parvo ex-: tract, 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 informa-› tion. If you had looked into the newspapers of the 3d August, you would have seen an and sensible remarks of W. F. S. deserve more attention; and, I beg to recommend to his notice, and to that of all your readers who may doubt of the possibility of finding employment for the manufacturers that may be thrown out of employment by the loss of foreign trade, the following passage of Mr. Hume. It occurs in his essay on commerce. "When the affairs of the society are once brought to this situation, a nation may "lose most of its foreign trade, and yet con"tinue a great and powerful people. If strangers will not take any particular commodity of ours, we must cease to la"bour in it. The same hands will turn "themselves towards some refinement in "other commodities which may be wanted "at home, and there must always be male"rials for them to work upon; till every person in the state who possesses riches, enjoys as great plenty of home commodi"ties, and those in as great perfection as "he desires; which can never possibly happen. China is represented as one of the "most flourishing countries in the world; though it has very little commerce beyond "its own territories."--I am, Sir, your most obedient, servant,-WILLIAM SPENCE. Drypool, Dec. 1, 1807. CAPTAIN SCOTT. advertisement which would have prevented your committing yourself, in the way you have done. In this matter I can lay claim to greater liberality. I was actually asked by a friend, on the appearance of your extract, if I did not think you had stolen your ideas from me. But I, knowing that you had maintained similar opinions before, and moreover, that nothing is more easy than for two writers to stumble on the same ideas, gave no countenance to the supposition. So much for my defence against your charges. I have been obliged to enter into a detail, which I dare say will be as tiresome to your readers to peruse, as it has been to me to write; but the impossibility of compressing into smaller space, the explanations which your insinuations seemed to call for, must plead my excuse for this prolixity-While I have the pen in my hand, I may as well say a word or two, in reply to the objections which you have thrown out against some of the subordinate parts of my reasoning. You treat as absurd, the idea of the government maintaining those who may be thrown out of employment by the loss of our foreigu export trade, and occupying them in public works. You must recollect that I recommend this, only," until a demand from new branches of industry shall have caused for them independent and profitable empleyment." You admit they must be supported in some way, and the question therefore is, whether this burthen had better be defrayed by the nation at large, employing them in public works that are wanted, or be thrown upon particular parishes that could not find. employment for the poor. Your position, that roads, canals and other public works should never be undertaken, until they can be profitably undertaken, seems to me very untena-gations to that gallant and distinguished ofble. But it is impossible to enter into this subject here. You say also, that I am in error in supposing that hemp and flax could be grown upon waste land. This I never meant to say, but merely, as you have better expressed my ideas, that corn might be grown upon waste land, and hemp and flax upon the rich land now appropriated to corn. But these productions will grow freely upon bog-land, and there are many hundred thou sand acres of this, unreclaimed in Great Britain and Ireland. (See Young's Annals of Agriculture, the last No.)-Two of your 'correspondents have honoured me with their remarks. To both I can only say, that if they had read the whole pamphlet in question, they would have found their difficulties, which are occasioned by having seen detached passages of it only, attempted to be resolved. The polite expressions, however, Sir-You will much oblige me by inserting in your paper, for the satisfaction of others, the following letter, which I have authority to say, is the truest account that has been received of the loss of the Boreas. The kind and mindful testimony of Sir James Saumarez to the character of my beloved and deeply lamented brother, so worthy of a British seaman, lays me under the most lasting obli ficer.I am, &c. WILLIAM SCOTT.-Sera H everset, and became a complete wreck, at about two o'clock; and I am truly grieved to be obliged to add, that captain Scott, with the officers and men, except those mentioned in the inclosed list where lost with the ship; lieut. Berwick (second lieut.), with lient. Wilson, of the Royal Marines, and 6 men, were sent off in the gig, and landed in the western part of the island; and about 30 others in the launch and large cutter, were also landed, and the boats returned to the ship, but have not been heard of, and there is every reason to fear were lost on nearing her-Through the great exertions of lieut. colonel Sir Thomas Saumarez, in collecting the pilots and boatmen in the vicinity of Rorquains, about 30 seapen and marines were taken off the Rock of the Hannois at day light, which I fear are the whole that have been saved.-The greatest praise appears to be due to captain Scott, and all his officers and men, for their steadiness and good conduct, under such perilous circumstances, in a dark and tempestuous night, in the midst of the most dangerous rocks that can be conceived; and I have most sincerely to lament the loss of so many brave officers and men who have perished on this most melancholy occasion.-Capt. Scott has been long upon this station, and has always shewn the greatest zeal and attachment for his Majesty's service, and in him articularly, his country meets a great loss, beinga most valuable and deserving officer. I am, Sir, &c. (Signed) Js. SAUMAREZ."-TO the Hon. W. W. Pole, Secretary to the Admiralty. WASTE LANDS. SIR,I should not so soon have intruded upon you, had I not thought it necessary to mention something relative to ray letters, which you have done me the honour of inserting in your Register. You brought forward in the whole, four letters of mine; the first of these, p. 338, was upon the Internal Situation of Ireland; the second, p. 439, through mistake was also entitled Ireland's Internal Situation; the 3d and 4th letters were numbered 2d and 3d. If you will have the goodness to peruse my second letter again, you will, I doubt not, think that England's waste lands would have been more apposite than the title given to that letter. I mention these errors, because I imagine, that in consequence of them my second letter may be passed over; and I am undoubtedly, very anxious that this should not happen; for, I am in hopes that what 1 have said of the advantages to be derived from bringing into cultivation a greater breadth of land in this kingdom, may induce some person of abilities, or what is of more consequence, some person in power, to write upon the subject of waste lands, or to bring the matter once more forward in parliament. When I addressed my second letter to you, I was not aware that Sir John Sinclair (while President of the Board of Agriculture), contrived to get something like a general inclosure bill, passed through the House of Commons, which was thrown out by the House of Lords.-Mr. Hobhouse, a member of parliament, in a letter which may be found in the Ninth Vol. of the Bath Agricultural Society's Papers, states this, with other circumstances, well worth notice. -I am, &c.-M. H.-Oct. 30, 1807. P. S. Without doubt my letters are very incorrect as to language. I shall point out two considerable errors which may render my meaning unintelligible, in p. 625 line 25, instead of discontinued' it should be read continued.' In p. 627 line 47, read without the smallest partiality' instead of 'impartiality.' IRELAND. SIR,If your correspondent Mentor has proved, that if Ireland was conquered by Buonaparté, England might be invaded from the several points mentioned in Mentor's let ter, I should in that case be inclined to think, England could not hold out against such a variety of attacks for any length of time. Al I have now to say is, that Britons would no doubt do their duty under the most trying circumstances. However, I have no dread that it should ever fall to their lot to defend their country against their Irish fellow subjects leagued with the French The Irish may feel their having been neglected; some may have eired when one half the world was in error, but all are now too wise not to make a common cause with England. The blindness of England in not promoting her own interest, by acting justly towards Ireland, but, on the contrary, denying her the enjoyment of those benefits freely granted to the whole of Great Britain, has in my mind, been chiefly owing to the mass of Englishmen being as little acquainted with the real state of reland, as of the real state of China. From what Mentor has said, I presume in his we are agreed. It often occurred to me, that could have an opportunity of pointing 2 F |