diate vicinity, were not alone affected by the enemy; his operations extended their influence to our great towns on the Atlantic coast; domestic intercourse and internal commerce were interrupted, whilst that with foreign nations was, in some instances, entirely suspended. The Treasury documents for 1814, exhibit the phenomenon of the State of Pensylvania not being returned in the list of the exporting States. We were not only deprived of revenue, but our expenditures were very much augmented. It is probable the amount of the expenditures incurred on the borders of the Chesapeak, would have been adequate to provide naval means for the defence of those waters: the people might then have remained at home, secure from depredation in the pursuit of their tranquil occupations. The expen ses of the Government as well as of individuals, were very much augmented for every species of transportation. Every thing had to be conveyed by land carriage. Our communication with the ocean was cut off. One thousand dollars were paid for the transportation of each of the thirty-two pounder cannon from Washington city to Lake Ontario, for the public service. Our roads became almost impassable from the heavy loads which were carried over them. These facts should induce us, in times of tranquillity, to provide for the national defence, and execute such internal improvements as cannot be effected during the agitations of war.' p. 679.

Expenditure.-The President of the United States receives about 6000l. a year; the Vice-President about 600.; the deputies to Congress have 8 dollars per day, and 8 doliers for every 20 miles of journey. The First Clerk of the House of Representatives receives about 750l. per annum; the Secretary of State, 12007.; the Postmaster General, 750l.; the Chief Justice of the United States, 1000l.; a Minister Plenipotentiary, 22001. per annum. There are, doubtless, reasons why there should be two noblemen appointed in this country as Postmasters General, with enormous salaries, neither of whom know a twopenny post letter from a general one, and where further retrenchments are stated to be impossible. This is clearly a case to which that impossibility extends. But these are matters where a prostration of understanding is called for; and good subjects are not to reason, but to pay. If, however, we were ever to indulge in the Saxon practice of looking into our own affairs, some important documents might be derived from these American salaries. Jonathan, for instance, sees no reason why the first clerk of his House of Commons should derive emoluments from his situation to the amount of 6000 or 7000l. per annum; but Jonathan is vulgar, and arithmetical. The total expendi ture of the United States varied, between 1799 and 1811 both. inclusive, from 11 to 17 millions dollars. From 1812 to 1814, both inclusive, and all these years of war with this country, the

expenditure was consecutively 22, 29, and 38 millions dollars. The total expenditure of the United States, for 14 years from 1791 to 1814, was 333 millions dollars; of which, in the three last years of war with this country, from 1812 to 1814, there were expended 100 millions of dollars, of which only 35 were supplied by revenue, the rest by loans and government paper. The sum total received by the American Treasury from the 3d of March 1789 to the 31st of March 1816, is 354 millions dollars; of which 107 millions have been raised by loan, and 222 millions by the customs and tonnage: so that, exclusive of the revenue derived from loans, 222 parts out of 247 of the American revenue, have been derived from foreign commerce. In the mind of any sensible American, this consideration ought to prevail over the few splendid actions of their half-dozen frigates, which must, in a continued war, have been, with all their bravery and activity, swept from the face of the ocean by the superior force and equal bravery of the English. It would be the height of madness in America to run into another naval war with this country, if it could be averted by any other means than a sacrifice of proper dignity and character. They have, comparatively, no land revenue; and, in spite of the Franklin and Guerrière, though lined with cedar and mounted with brass cannon, they must soon be reduced to the same state which has been described by Dr Seybert, and from which they were so opportunely extricated by the treaty of Ghent. David Porter, and Stephen Decatur, are very brave men; but they will prove an unspeakable misfortune to their country, if they inflame Jonathan into a love of naval glory, and inspire him with any other love of war than that which is founded upon a determination not to submit to serious insult and injury.

We can inform Jonathan what are the inevitable consequences of being too fond of glory;-TAXES upon every article which enters into the mouth, or covers the back, or is placed under the foot-taxes upon every thing which it is pleasant to see, hear, feel, smell, or taste-taxes upon warmth, light, and locomotion-taxes on every thing on earth, and the waters under the earthon every thing that comes from abroad, or is grown at home→ taxes on the raw material-taxes on every fresh value that is added to it by the industry of man-taxes on the sauce which pampers man's appetite, and the drug that restores him to health-on the ermine which decorates the judge, and the rope which hangs the criminal-on the poor man's salt, and the rich man's spice-on the brass nails of the coffin, and the ribands of the bride-at bed or board, couchant or levant, we must pay :The schoolboy whips his taxed top-the beardless youth ma

self back upon his chintz-bed which has paid 22 per cent.makes his will on an eight pound stamp, and expires in th arms of an apothecary who has paid a license of an hundre pounds for the privilege of putting him to death. His whole pro perty is then immediately taxed from 2 to 10 per cent. Beside

the probate, large fees are demanded for burying him in th chancel; his virtues are handed down to posterity on taxe marble; and he is then gathered to his fathers,-to be taxed n more. In addition to all this, the habit of dealing with larg sums will make the Government avaricious and profuse; and the system itself will infallibly generate the base vermin of spie and informers, and a still more pestilent race of political tool and retainers of the meanest and most odious description ;while the prodigious patronage which the collecting of thi splendid revenue will throw into the hands of Government, wil invest it with so vast an influence, and hold out such mean and temptations to corruption, as all the virtue and public spirit even of republicans, will be unable to resist.

Every wise Jonathan should remember this, when he sees the rabble huzzaing at the heels of the truly respectable Decatur or inflaming the vanity of that still more popular leader, whose justification has lowered the character of his Government with all the civilized nations of the world.

Debt.-America owed 42 millions dollars after the revolutionary war; in 1790, 79 millions; in 1803, 70 millions; and in the beginning of January 1812, the public debt was diminished to 45 millions dollars. After the last war with England, it had risen to 123 millions; and so it stood on the 1st January 1816. The total amount carried to the credit of the commissioners of the sinking fund, on the 31st December 1816, was about 34 millions of dollars.

Such is the land of Jonathan-and thus has it been governed. In his honest endeavours to better his situation, and in his manly purpose of resisting injury and insult, we most cordially sympathize. We hope he will always continue to watch and suspect his Government as he now does remembering, that it is the constant tendency of those entrusted with power, to conceive that they enjoy it by their own merits, and for their own use, and not by delegation, and for the benefit of others. Thus far we are the friends and admirers of Jonathan: But he must not grow vain and ambitious; or allow himself to be dazzled by that galaxy of epithets by which his orators and newspaper scribblers

endeavour to persuade their supporters that they are the greatest, the most refined, the most enlightened, and the most moral people upon earth. The effect of this is unspeakably ludicrous on this side of the Atlantic-and, even on the other, we should imagine, must be rather humiliating to the reasonable part of the population. The Americans are a brave, industrious, and acute people; but they have hitherto given no indications of genius, and made no approaches to the heroic, either in their morality or character. They are but a recent offset indeed from England; and should make it their chief boast, for many generations to come, that they are sprung from the same race with Bacon and Shakespeare and Newton. Considering their numbers, indeed, and the favourable circumstances in which they have been placed, they have yet done marvellously little to assert the honour of such a descent, or to show that their English blood has been exalted or refined by their republican training and institutions. Their Franklins and Washingtons, and all the other sages and heroes of their revolution, were born and bred subjects of the King of England,—and not among the freest or most valued of his subjects: And, since the period of their separation, a far greater proportion of their statesmen and artists and political writers have been foreigners, than ever occurred before in the history of any civilized and educated peo ple. During the thirty or forty years of their independence, they have done absolutely nothing for the Sciences, for the Arts, for Literature, or even for the statesman-like studies of Politics or Political Economy. Confining ourselves to our own country, and to the period that has elapsed since they had an independent existence, we would ask, Where are their Foxes, their Burkes, their Sheridans, their Windhams, their Horners, their Wilberforces?-where their Arkwrights, their Watts, their Davys?their Robertsons, Blairs, Smiths, Stewarts, Paleys and Malthuses?-their Porsons, Parrs, Burneys, or Blomfields? their Scotts, Campbells, Byrons, Moores, or Crabbes?—their Siddonses, Kembles, Keans, or O'Neils?—their Wilkies, Laurences, Chantrys?-or their parallels to the hundred other names that have spread themselves over the world from our little island in the course of the last thirty years, and blest or delighted mankind by their works, inventions, or examples? In so far as we know, there is no such parallel to be produced from the whole annals of this self-adulating race. In the four quarters of the globe, who reads an American book? or goes to an American play? or looks at an American picture or statue? What does the world yet owe to American physicians or surgeons? What new substances have their chemists discovered ?

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or what old ones have they analyzed? What new constellations have been discovered by the telescopes of Americans? what have they done in the mathematics? Who drinks out of American glasses? or eats from American plates? or wears American coats or gowns? or sleeps in American blankets?— Finally, under which of the old tyrannical governments of Europe is every sixth man a Slave, whom his fellow-creatures may buy and sell and torture?

When these questions are fairly and favourably answered, their laudatory epithets may be allowed: But, till that can be done, we would seriously advise them to keep clear of superlatives.

ART. IV. A Critical Examination of the First Principles of Geology; in a Series of Essays. By G. B. Greenough, President of the Geological Society, F. R. S. F. L. S. 8vo. pp. 340. London, 1819.

WE E are partial, perhaps, to this book, from its hostility to that geological dogmatism with which we have been so often offended, and its patronage of that wholesome scepticism to which we have always been so much inclined; and yet, if it had fallen in less happily with our own opinions, we think we should have had the candour to say, that we had never before met with such a treasure of information, and so much bold and free reasoning in so small a volume, and on such a subject. We have no time at present to grapple with the author's arguments; and it is extremely difficult to give any continuous abstract, or analysis of statements already so compactly arrayed. But we must endeavour to give our readers some notion of their general tenor, and shall touch on some of the more prominent features of each Essay-referring to the work itself for a great variety of important particulars, and especially for a rich display of illustrations and examples.

ESSAY I. On Stratification.-From a great collection of contradictory passages in the writings of eminent geologists, Mr G. proves, not only that the stratification of granite, and some other rocks, is a point not yet ascertained; but that some of the main principles connected with the doctrine of stratification in general, are by no means satisfactorily established. Thus, although the parallel planes exhibited by the surfaces of different beds, may frequently have been effected by alternate suspensions and renewals of depositions, yet the same phenomenon is often produced by other causes; as in basaltic