nence in literature and science-the urbanity and learning of their privileged orders-their deliberative assemblies, illustrated by so many profound statesmen, and brilliant orators. It is worse than Ingratitude in us not to sympathize with them in their present struggle, when we recollect that it is from them we derive the principal merit of our own CHARACTER-the best of our own institutions-the sources of our highest enjoyments-and the light of Freedom itself, which, if they should be destroyed, will not long shed its radiance over this country."

What will Mr Walsh say to this picture of the country he has so laboured to degrade?-and what will our readers say, when they are told that MR WALSH HIMSELF is the author of this picture?

So, however, the fact unquestionably stands.-The book from which we have made the preceding extracts, was written and published in 1810, by the very same individual who has now recriminated upon England in the volume which lies before us, -and in which he is pleased to speak with extreme severity of the inconsistencies he has detected in our Review !-That some discordant or irreconcileable opinions should be found in the miscellaneous writings of twenty years, and thirty or forty individuals under no effective controul, may easily be imagined, and pardoned, we should think, without any great stretch of liberality. But such a transmutation of sentiments on the same identical subject-such a reversal of the poles of the same identical head, we confess has never before come under our observation; and is parallel to nothing that we can recollect, but the memorable transformation of Bottom, in the Midsummer Night's Dream. Nine years, to be sure, had intervened between the first and the second publication. But all the guilt and all the misery which is so diligently developed in the last, had been contracted before the first was thought of; and all the injuries, and provocations too, by which the exposition of them has lately become a duty. Mr W. knew perfectly, in 1810, how England had behaved to her American colonies before the war of independence, and in what spirit she had begun and carried on that war:--our Poorrates and taxes, our bull-baitings and swindlings, were then nearly as visible as now. Mr Colquhoun had, before that time, put forth his Political Estimate of our prostitutes and pickpockets; and the worthy Laureate his authentic Letters on the bad state of our parliaments and manufactures. Nay, the EDINBURGH REVIEW had committed the worst of those offences which now make hatred to England the duty of all true Americans, and had expressed little of that zeal for her friendship which appears in its subsequent Numbers. The Reviews of the American Transactions, and Mr Barlow's Epic, of Adams's

Letters, and Marshall's History, had all appeared before this time--and but very few of the articles in which the future greatness of that country is predicted, and her singular prosperity extolled.

How then is it to be accounted for, that Mr W. should have taken such a favourable view of our state and merits in 1810, and so very different a one in 1819? There is but one explanation that occurs to us.-Mr W., as appears from the passages just quoted, had been originally very much of the opinion to which he has now returned-For he tells us, that he considers the tribute of admiration which he there offers to our excellence, as an Atonement for the errors and prejudices under which he laboured till he came among us,-and hints pretty plainly, that he had formerly been ungrateful enough to disown all obligation to our race, and impious enough even to wish for our ruin. Now, from the tenor of the work before us, compared with these passages, it is pretty plain, we think, that Mr W. has just relapsed into those damnable heresies which we fear are epidemic in Eis part of the country-and from which nothing is so likely to deliver him, as a repetition of the same remedy by which they were formerly removed. Let him come again then to England, and try the effect of a second course of personal experience and observation-let him make another pilgrimage to Mecca, and observe whether his faith is not restored and confirmed-let him, like the Indians of his own world, visit the Tombs of his Fathers in the old land, and see whether he can there abjure the friendship of their other children? If he will venture himself among us for another two years' residence, we can promise him that he will find in substance the same England that he left:--Our laws and our landscapes-our industry and urbanity;-our charities, our learning, and our personal beauty, he will find unaltered and unimpaired ;-and we think we can even engage, that he shall find also a still greater correspondence of feeling in the body of our People, and not a less disposition to welcome an accomplished stranger who comes to get rid of errors and prejudices, and to learn--or, if he pleases, to teach, the great lessons of a generous and indulgent philanthropy.

We have done, however, with this topic. We have a considerable contempt for the argumentum ad hominem in any caseand have no desire to urge it any further at present. The truth is, that neither of Mr W.'s portraitures of us appears to be very accurate. We are painted en beau in the one, and en laid in the other. The particular traits in each may be given with tolerable truth-but the whole truth is to be found in neither; and it will not even do to take them together-any more

than it would do to make a correct likeness, by patching or compounding together a flattering portrait and a monstrous carica

We have but a word or two, indeed, to add on the general subject, before we take a final farewell of this discussion. We admit, that many of the charges which Mr W. has here made against our country, are justly made-and that for many of the things with which he has reproached us, there is just cause of reproach. It would be strange, indeed, if we were to do otherwise-considering that it is from our pages that he has on many occasions borrowed the charge and the reproach. If he had stated them, therefore, with any degree of fairness or temper, and had not announced that they were brought forward as incentives to hostility and national alienation, we should have been so far from complaining of him, that we should have been heartily thankful for the services of such an auxiliary in our holy war against vice and corruption, and rejoiced to obtain the testimony of an impartial observer, in corroboration of our own earnest admonitions. Even as it is, we are inclined to think that this exposition of our infirmities will rather do good than harm, so far as it produces any effect at all in this country. Among our national vices, we have long reckoned an insolent and overweening opinion of our own universal superiority; and though it really does not belong to America to reproach us with this fault, and though the ludicrous exaggeration of Mr W.'s charge, is sure very greatly to weaken his authority, still such an alarming catalogue of our faults and follies, may have some effect, as a wholesome mortification of our vanity. It is with a view to its probable effect in his own coun try, and to his avowal of the effect he wishes it to produce there, that we consider it as deserving of all reprobation;-and therefore beg leave to make one or two very short remarks on its manifest injustice, and indeed absurdity, in so far as relates to ourselves, and that great majority of the country whom we believe to concur in our sentiments. The object of this violent invective on England is twofold; and we really do not know under which aspect it is most reprehensible. It is, first, to repress, if possible, the invectives which we, it seems, have been making on America; and, secondly, to excite, there, a spirit of animosity, to meet and revenge that which those invectives are said to indicate here:-And this is the shape of the argument-What right have you to abuse us for keeping and whipping slaves, when you yourselves whip your soldiers, and were so slow to give up your slave trade, and use your subjects so ill in India and Ireland?-or what right have you to call our Marshall a dull historian, when you have a Belsham and a Gifford

who are still duller? Now, though this argument would never show that whipping slaves was a right thing, or that Mr Marshall was not a dull writer, it might be a very smart and embarrassing retort to those among us who had defended our slave trade or our military floggings, or our treatment of Ireland and Indiaor who had held out Messrs Belsham and Gifford as pattern historians, and ornaments of our national literature. But what meaning or effect can it have when addressed to those who have always testified against the wickedness and the folly of the practices complained of, and who have treated the Ultra-Whig and the Ultra-Tory historian with equal scorn and reproach? We have a right to censure cruelty and dulness abroad, because we have censured them with more and more frequent severity at home; and their home existence, though it may prove indeed that our censures have not yet been effectual in producing amendment, can afford no sort of reason for not extending them where they might be more attended to.

We have generally blamed what we thought worthy of blame in America, without any express reference to parallel cases in England, or any invidious comparison. Their books we have criticised just as we should have done those of any other country; and in speaking more generally of their literature and manners, we have rather brought them into competition with those of Europe in general, than those of our country in particular.When we have made any comparative estimate of our own advantages and theirs, we can say with confidence, that it has been far oftener in their favour than against them;-and, after repeatedly noticing their preferable condition as to taxes, elections, sufficiency of employment, publie economy, freedom of publication, and many other points of paramount importance, it surely was but fair that we should notice, in their turn, those merits or advantages which might reasonably be claimed for ourselves, and bring into view our superiority in eminent authors, and the extinction and annihilation of slavery in every part of our realm.

We would also remark, that while we have thus praised America far more than we have blamed her-and reproached ourselves far more bitterly than we have ever reproached her, Mr W., while he affects to be merely following our example, has heaped abuse on us without one grain of commendation—and praised his own country extravagantly, without admitting one fault or imperfection. Now, this is not a fair way of retorting the proceedings even of the Quarterly; for they have occasionally given some praise to America, and have constantly spoken ill

enough of the paupers, and radicals, and reformers of England. But as to us, and the great body of the nation which thinks with us, it is a proceeding without the colour of justice or the shadow of apology-and is not a less flagrant indication of impatience or bad humour, than the marvellous assumption which runs through the whole argument, that it is an unpardonable insult and an injury to find any fault with anything in America, must necessarily proceed from national spite and animosity, and affords, whether true or false, sufficient reason for endeavouring to excite a corresponding animosity against our nation. Such, however, is the scope and plan of Mr W.'s whole work. Whenever he thinks that his country has been erroneously accused, he points out the error with sufficient keenness and asperity ;-but when he is aware that the imputation is just and unanswerable, instead of joining his rebuke or regret to those of her foreign censors, he turns fiercely and vindictively on the parallel infirmities of this country-as if those also had not been marked with reprobation, and without admitting that the censure was merited, or hoping that it might work amendment, complains in the bitterest terms of malignity, and rouses his country to revenge!

Which, then, we would ask, is the most fair and reasonable, or which the most truly patriotic ?-We, who, admitting our own manifold faults and corruptions, testifying loudly against them, and feeling grateful to any foreign auxiliary who will help us to reason, to rail, or to shame our countrymen out of them, are willing occasionally to lend a similar assistance to others, and speak freely and fairly of what appear to us to be the faults and errors, as well as the virtues and merits, of all who may be in any way affected by our observations ;--or Mr Walsh, who will admit no faults in his own country, and no good qualities in ours— sets down the more extensive of our domestic crimes to their corresponding objects abroad, to the score of -national rancour and partiality; and can find no better use for their mutual admonitions, which should lead to mutual amendment or generous emulation, than to improve them into occasions of mutual animosity and deliberate hatred?

This extreme impatience, even of merited blame from the mouth of a stranger-this still more extraordinary abstinence from any hint or acknowledgment of error on the part of her intelligent defender, is a trait too. remarkable not to call for some observation ;-and we think we can see in it one of the worst and most unfortunate consequences of a republican government. It is the misfortune of Sovereigns in general, that