hurry them into excesses, but the original fault is in government. Perhaps there never was an instance of a change, in the circumstances and temper of a whole nation, so sudden and extraordinary as that which the misconduct of ministers has, within these few years, produced in Great Britain. When our gracious sovereign ascended the throne, we were a flourishing and a contented people. If the personal virtues of a king could have insured the happiness of his subjects, the scene could not have altered so entirely as it has done. The idea of uniting all parties, of trying all characters, and distributing the offices of state by rotation, was gracious and benevolent to an extreme, though it has not yet produced the many salutary effects which were intended by it. To say nothing of the wisdom of such a plan, it undoubtedly arose from an unbounded goodness of heart, in which folly had no share. It was not a capricious partiality to new faces, it was not a natural turn for low intrigue, nor was it the treacherous amusement of double and triple negociations. No, Sir, it arose from a continued anxiety, in the purest of all possible hearts, for the general welfare. Unfortunately for us, the event has not been answerable to the design. After a rapid succession of changes, we are reduced to that state which hardly any change can mend. Yet there is no extremity of distress which, of itself, ought to reduce a great nation to despair. It is not the disorder, but the physician; it is not a casual concurrence of calamitous circumstances, it is the pernicious hand of government, which alone can make a whole people desperate.

Letter i.

II.

Professions of patriotism are become stale and ridiculous. For my own part, I claim no merit from endeavouring to do a service to my fellow subjects. I have done it to the best of my understanding; and, without looking for the approbation of other men, my conscience is satisfied. What

remains to be done concerns the collective body of the people. They are now to determine for themselves, whether they will firmly and constitutionally assert their rights, or make an humble slavish surrender of them at the feet of the ministry. To a generous mind there cannot be a doubt. We owe it to our ancestors to preserve entire these rights, which they have delivered to our care; we owe it to our posterity, not to suffer their dearest inheritance to be destroyed. But if it were possible for us to be insensible of these sacred claims, there is yet an obligation binding upon ourselves from which nothing can acquit us; a personal interest which we cannot surrender. To alienate even our own rights, would be a crime as much more enormous than suicide, as a life of civil security and freedom is superior to a bare existence; and if life be the bounty of Heaven, we scornfully reject the noblest part of the gift if we consent to surrender that certain rule of living without which the condition of human nature is not only miserable but contemptible.

Letter xx.

III.

The affections But before you

You have still an honourable part to act. of your subjects may still be recovered. subdue their hearts, you must gain a noble victory over your own. Discard those little personal resentments which have too long directed your public conduct. Pardon this man the remainder of his punishment; and if resentment still prevails, make it what it should have been long since, an act, not of mercy, but contempt. He will soon fall

back into his natural station, a silent senator, and hardly supporting the weekly eloquence of a newspaper. The gentle breath of peace would leave him on the surface, neglected and unremoved. It is only the tempest that lifts him from his place.

Letter xxxv.

WILLIAM PITT. 1759-1806.

I.

FOR his part, though the honourable gentleman who made the motion, and some other gentlemen, had been more than once in the course of the debate severely reprimanded for calling it a wicked and accursed war, he was persuaded and would affirm, that it was a most accursed, wicked, barbarous, cruel, unnatural, unjust, and diabolical war! It was conceived in injustice, it was nurtured and brought forth in folly; its footsteps were marked with blood, slaughter, persecution, and devastation; in truth everything which went to constitute moral depravity and human turpitude were to be found in it. It was pregnant with misery of every kind. The mischiefs, however, recoiled on the unhappy people of this country, who were made the instruments by which the wicked purposes of its authors were effected. The nation was drained of its best blood, and of its vital resources of men and money. The expense of it was enormous, much beyond any former experience; and yet, what had the British nation received in return? Nothing but a series of ineffective victories, or severe defeats :victories celebrated only by a temporary triumph over our brethren, whom we would trample down and destroy; which filled the land with mourning for the loss of dear and valuable relations, slain in the impious cause of enforcing unconditional submission, or with narratives of the glorious exertions of men struggling in the holy cause of liberty, though struggling under all the difficulties and disadvantages which are in general deemed the necessary concomitants of victory and success. Where was the Englishman, on reading the narratives of those bloody and well-fought contests, who could refrain from lamenting the loss of so much British blood spilt in such a cause? or from weeping, on whatever

H

side victory might be declared? Add to this melancholy consideration, that, on whichever side we looked, we could perceive nothing but our natural and powerful enemies, or lukewarm and faithless friends, rejoicing in our calamities, or meditating our ultimate downfall.

Speech on the American War.

II.

But that country, it is said, has been in some degree civilised, and civilised by us. It is said they have gained some knowledge of the principles of justice. What, sir, have they gained principles of justice from us? Their civilisation brought about by us!! Yes, we give them enough of our intercourse to convey to them the means, and to initiate them in the study of mutual destruction. We give them just enough of the forms of justice to enable them to add the pretext of legal trials to their other modes of perpetrating the most atrocious iniquity. We give them just enough of European improvements, to enable them the more effectually to turn Africa into a ravaged wilderness. Some evidences say, that the Africans are addicted to the practice of gambling; that they even sell their wives and children, and ultimately themselves. Are these, then, the legitimate sources of slavery? Shall we pretend that we can thus acquire an honest right to exact the labour of these people? Can we pretend that we have a right to carry away to distant regions, men of whom we know nothing by authentic inquiry, and of whom there is every reasonable presumption to think, that those who sell them to us, have no right to do so? But the evil does not stop here. I feel that there is not time for me to make all the remarks which the subject deserves, and I refrain from attempting to enumerate half the dreadful consequences of this system. Do you think nothing of the ruin and the miseries in which so many other individuals, still remaining in Africa, are involved in conse

Do you

quence of carrying off so many myriads of people? think nothing of their families which are left behind? of the connections which are broken? of the friendships, attachments, and relationships that are burst asunder? Do you think nothing of the miseries in consequence, that are felt from generation to generation of the privation of that happiness which might be communicated to them by the introduction of civilisation, and of mental and moral improvement? A happiness which you withhold from them so long as you permit the slave trade to continue. What do you yet know of the internal state of Africa? You have carried on a trade to that quarter of the globe from this civilised and enlightened country; but such a trade, that, instead of diffusing either knowledge or wealth, it has been the check to every laudable pursuit. Instead of any fair interchange of commodities; instead of conveying to them from this highly-favoured land, any means of improvement, you carry with you that noxious plant by which everything is withered and blasted; under whose shade nothing that is useful or profitable to Africa will ever flourish or take root. been known to navigators, the of its coasts is all with which Europe is yet become acquainted; while other countries in the same parallel of latitude, through a happier system of intercourse, have reaped the blessings of a mutually beneficial commerce. But as to the whole interior of that continent you are, by your own principles of commerce, as yet entirely shut out. Africa is known to you only in its skirts. Yet even there you are able to infuse a poison that spreads its contagious effects from one end of it to the other, which penetrates to its very centre, corrupting every part to which it reaches. You there subvert the whole order of nature; you aggravate every natural barbarity, and furnish to every man living on that continent, motives for committing, under the name and pretext of commerce, acts of perpetual violence and perfidy against his neighbour.

Long as that continent has extreme line and boundaries