band; at leaft, this would be nearer the truth, for fure I am, that Franklin will take him by the hand before the President of the United States will. Oh! cruel disappointment! Philofophy is in tears, and unitarianifm falls into hyfterics at the thoughts of it! Fame, blow it not forth! Hufh, babbling echo! Dear Eolus, let no malicious breeze bear it to the "land of roast beef!" The United Irishmen fhed an abundance of crocodile tears over Doctor Priestley and his friends Muir, Palmer, &c. and make out piteous ftories about the tyranny of the British laws: but who will believe them? Nobody here, above the rank of a potatoe digger. The late trials for high treason, in England, furnish us with an example of integrity and impartiality in a court of juftice that may be equalled, but that never has been yet. The cobler acquitted, and the peer condemned (the latter a friend to the government, and the former its profeffed enemy) while it leaves us but very little room to doubt of the guilt of the Botany Bay convicts, reflects eternal honour on British jurifprudence. Indeed, all the beneficent effects of the British constitution are now felt in their full force: never did it shine * I allude here to Hardy and Lord Abingdon, an account of whofe trials the reader must have seen in the gazettes. forth with fuch tranfcendant luftre as at this important and awful crifis. It was this conftitution that firft launched Britain from obfcurity, that has fince preferved her in fo many perils, and that now bears her steadily through the revolutionary tempeft, furrounded with the wrecks and ruins of her neighbours. If the reader fhould be prevailed upon to allow, that fome alterations was become neceffary in this conftitution, he will at once fee, that the pretended reformers were the laft people in the world in whofe hands the bufinefs ought to have been trufted. For, had they poffeffed abilities adequate to the task, they never would have agreed among themfeves. Every fociety, every projector, had a different plan. Muir, the convict, was for an Areopagus in the Greek mode; the United Irishmen paid us the compliment of imitation, in fome refpects, and the French in others; Paine would infift upon organizing the whole à la mode de Paris, and in this he was joined by Horne Tooke. But William's plan caused the moft mirth. He had the penetration to discover, that mankind by advancing in knowledge, grew foolisher and foolisher; for this reafon, he thought it neceffary to give them a different direction, and, if his hand not been held, he would have driven his countrymen back nine centuries at a fingle blow. In fhort, he was for reviving the Wittenagemot and Myclegemot of Alfred; and, accordingly, the eight millions of people who inhabit Great Britain, were to affemble every May day, under the great canopy of heaven, on Salisbury Plain, to fettle the affairs of the nation! Into what shocking abfurdities will not a factious difpofition lead the man that is curfed with it! Shall we blame the British then, fhall we call them tyrants and flaves, because they have driven from among them thefe diforganizing reformers, who agreed in nothing but deftroying, in nothing but doing mischief; and who, had they been fuffered to proceed, would, ere now, have fpread atheism and terror through the land, filled it with bloody tribunals, prifons and executions, reduced the happy Island (the country of our forefathers) to a ruinous wild, and left the starving fons of equality the miserable liberty of prowling about among the graves of their benefactors? Shall we applaud, fhall we hug to our bofoms, these political ferpents, * See « Ten leffons from an old Statesman to a young "Prince." L who, by joining themfelves to a defperate faction, would here revive their baffled projects, would here realize their schemes of equality? No; let America be what heaven feems to have defigned it for, an afylum for the oppreffed, but never let it be called the fanctuary of the infamous. DEMOCRATIC PRINCIPLES, ILLUSTRATED BY EXAMPLE. "Du principe eternel ils nient l'existence, UN LYONOIS. 1. THE proceedings of the united Irishmen, like those of the American felf-created focieties, contain general accufations against every branch of the government. An advantageous diftribution of the words liberty, tyranny, flavery, &c. does wonders with the populace; but the intelligent reader looks deeper, general accufations do not fatisfy him; he feeks for inftances of oppreffion, before he will believe that a government is oppreffive. Let us extract then the inftances of oppreffion, complained of by the united Irishmen, from the bombaftical rhap. fody in which they are buried, and fee to what they amount. They tell us that Butler, Bond, Rowan, and about four or five others, were |