Act of Parliament, which according to his conviction entrenches on a Principle of natural Right; which natural Rights are, as we have seen, not confined to the man in his individual capacity, but are made to confer universal legislative privileges on every subject of every state, and of the extent of which every man is competent to judge, who is competent to be the object of Law at all, i. e. every man who has not lost his Reason.

In the statement of his principles therefore, I have not misrepresented Major Cartwright. Have I then endeavoured to connect public odium with his honoured name, by arraigning his motives, or the tendency of his Writings? The tendency of his Writings, in my inmost conscience I believe to be perfectly harmless, and I dare cite them in confirmation of the opinions which it was the object of my introductory Essays to establish, and as an additional proof, that no good man communicating what he believes to be the Truth for the sake of Truth, and according to the rules of Conscience, will be found to have acted injuriously to the peace or interests of Society.

The venerable State-Moralist (for this is his true character, and in this title is conveyed the whole error of his system) is incapable of aiding his arguments by the poignant condiment of personal slander, incapable of appealing to the envy of the multitude by bitter declamation against the follies and oppressions of the higher classes! He would shrink with horror from the thought of adding a false and unnatural influence to the cause of Truth and Justice, by details of present calamity or immediate suffering, fitted to excite the fury of the multitude, or by promises of turning the current of the public Revenue into the channels of individual Distress and Poverty, so as to bribe the populace by selfish hopes! It does not belong to men of his character to delude the un

* I must again remind the Reader, that these Essays were written October 1809. If Major Cartwright however, since then acted in a different spirit, and tampered personally with the distresses, and consequent irritability of the ignorant, the inconsistency is his, not the Author's. If what I then believed and avowed should now appear a severe satire in the shape of a false prophecy, any shame I might feel for my lack of penetration would be lost in the sincerity of my regret.

instructed into the belief that their shortest way of obtaining the good things of this life, is to commence busy Politicians, instead of remaining industrious Labourers. He knows, and acts on the knowledge, that it is the duty of the enlightened Philanthropist to plead for the poor and ignorant, not to them.

No! From Works written and published under the control of austere principles, and at the impulse of a lofty and generous enthusiasm, from Works rendered attractive only by the fervor of sincerity, and imposing only by the Majesty of Plain Dealing, no danger will be apprehended by a wise man, no offence received by a good man. I could almost venture to warrant our Patriot's publications innoxious, from the single circumstance of their perfect freedom from personal themes in this AGE of PERSONALITY, this age of literary and political Gossiping, when the meanest insects are worshipped with a sort of Egyptian superstition, if only the brainless head be atoned for by the sting of personal malignity in the tail; when the most vapid satires have become the objects of a keen public interest purely from the

number of contemporary characters named in the patch-work Notes (which possess, however, the comparative merit of being more poetical than the Text), and because, to increase the stimulus, the Author has sagaciously left his own name for whispers and conjectures!--In an age, when even Sermons are published with a double Appendix stuffed with namesin a generation so transformed from the characteristic reserve of Britons, that from the ephemeral sheet of a London Newspaper to the everlasting Scotch Professorial Quarto, almost every publication exhibits or flatters the epidemic distemper; that the very "Last year's Rebuses" in the Lady's Diary, are answered in a serious Elegy "On my Father's Death," with the name and habitat of the elegiac Edipus subscribed ;-and " other ingenious solutions were likewise given" to the said Rebuses-not, as heretofore, by Crito, Philander, A B, X Y, &c. but by fifty or sixty plain English Sirnames at full length, with their several places of abode ! In an age, when a bashful Philalethes or Phileleutheros is as rare on the title-pages and among the

signatures of our Magazines, as a real name used to be in the days of our shy and noticeshunning grandfathers! When (more exquisite than all) I see an EPIC POEM (Spirits of Maro and Mæonides, make ready to welcome your new compeer!) advertised with the special recommendation, that the said EPIC POEM contains more than a hundred names of living persons! No-if Works as abhorrent, as those of Major Cartwright, from all unworthy provocatives to the vanity, the envy, and the selfish passions of mankind, could acquire a sufficient influence on the public mind to be mischievous, the plans proposed in his pamphlets would cease to be altogether visionary: though even then they could not ground their claims to actual adoption on self-evident principles of pure Reason, but on the happy accident of the virtue and good sense of that public, for whose suffrages they were presented. (Indeed with Major Cartwright's plans I have no present concern; but with the principles, on which he grounds the obligations to adopt them.)

But I must not sacrifice Truth to my reverence for individual purity of intention. The