time and most flourishing nation of the globe. Let her statesmen now beware how they tamper with its reputation; the slightest breath of distrust, or the smallest indication of a want of confidence, would be productive of the most fatal consequences. Let the candle-end savers and curtailers of taxes, who would light up the palaces of kings with farthing rush lights, who would dress out their automaton monarchs in foil and false brilliants, and people the benches of their Houses of Parliament with illiterate, wrong-headed, ambitious egotists, look forward before they arrive at the brink of the precipice that already yawns before them, ready to swallow up Church and State"Finis coronat opus. "" Let them end as they may, I shall always pray for the preservation of a monarchy hitherto famed throughout the world for all the nobler virtues, arts, and sciences; and that the nation, feeling its present degradation, and the sense of its former dignity and importance, will shake off the Gallic serpent that has crept into her bosom and threatens to empoison her vitals. Britons strike home!at home, your altars, your fire sides, and all that is most dear and sacred to Englishmen are at stake. You are invaded, not by an open, but an insidious foe. Rouse, British Lion, and defend your Church and King! The strength of the righteous is always great, for God is with them, who suffers the wicked to flourish for a while, only to show them the madness of aheir presumption, and to put them down with he greater and more exemplary overthrow. Choose men who are not lukewarm in their re ligious principles, who will uphold the ancient dignity of your Crown and Parliament, and the safety and sanctity of your altars. Hear what one of your ancient and most respectable law writers once said of the British House of Commons:-"Si antiquitatem spectes, est vetustissima; si dignitatem, est honoratissima; si jurisdictionem, est capacissima."-Coke. If you look to its antiquity, it is most ancient-if to its dignity, it is most honourable—if to its jurisdiction, it is most capacious. What would this great man and most distinguished law character say, if he heard this very House that he exalts to the skies was going to disregard one of the most sacred laws of the realm,-the integrity of private property, and dispose of the funds of the Established Church of England according to its own will and pleasure? On beholding the present motley composition of those once dignified and most respectable benches, he would exclaim with Lucretius O miseras hominum mentes! The confusion of right and wrong cannot take place in a country where the laws are so well digested as in England, without an invasion of some overruling party to confound the spirit of justice. Arise, lovers of religion and order! exert your influence, nor suffer such a guilty stain to blot the fair fame of renowned Old England! CHAPTER II. "All is not gold that glistens." THE heroes of liberalism, and friends and panegyrists of republican institutions, have been so exceedingly lavish in their encomiums of the amazing felicity, prodigious wealth, and unbounded prosperity, of the United States of America, as to intitle them to the appellation of the El Dorado of modern days. A perspective of all those mighty wonders, at the distance of three thousand miles, seen through the magnifying lens of liberalism, has turned the brain of many a poor simple fellow who, on arriving near the objects, has found himself most egregiously deceived and disappointed. Many English and Irish, who have emigrated to that country, have suffered great hardships, where they least expected to meet them; and, where they imagined they should find an overflowing abundance, they have been put to their utmost shifts to exist. Republicans, not only in America but everywhere else, are coarse, cold, vulgar, and inhospitable as they have little religion they do not cultivate the charitable feelings and sentiments it inspires. They are freethinkers and egotists, who pay no attention to that first of all Christian precepts, "Love thy neighbour as thyself." A vast number of the enthusiasts of America and her institutions, although they have never been on her soil, to witness more nearly the administration of her laws, and the morals, manners, and customs of the people, are so excessively irritable on the subject of this paradise of freedom in chains, as to spurn and disbelieve all the plain unvarnished truths related by the lively and interesting Mrs Trollope and the discerning Captain Hall. The first settlers of America were certainly people of a very different cast of character from those of the present day, though I am sorry to add that their original pure and good principles were early debauched by the writings of Franklin and others, and the impious opinions of the French philosophers, even before their revolt. A war with the mother country, in which France took the part of America, cemented the bond of union between them and the French, and certainly contaminated their morals. Those causes joined to an excessive fondness for trade and money-making, have given a mercenary stamp, a tinge of selfishness and illiberality, to their characters, that strikes all foreigners, who have any intercourse with them, at the very first glance. Throwing aside altogether the grievances they had to complain of, and which, no doubt, brought about the rupture with the mother country, the propagation of the principles I have spoken of fanned the flame of rebellion, and induced the adoption of the loose and unsolid form of government that, for the fifty years they have been free, as they call it, has been in a constant state of agitation and fermentation. Having such a model of a solid monarchy before them as Great Britain was at that time, and being her children, one would have imagined they would have been induced to copy her more nearly, and have laid the foundation of a solid empire; but, unfortunately, irreligion had already made rapid progress amongst a band of hot-brained democrats, who conceived it necessary that the nation should banish every sentiment of their former dependence, by discarding what might serve to remind them of the glory, solidity, and splendour of their ancient monarchy. General Washington and Mr John Adams seem to have been the most moderate of any of the heroes of their revolution, and were both virtuous good men. They have left behind ⚫ them names which have never been assailed by the tongue of slander any where but in their own country. Insensible to the patriotism and devotion, courage, and constancy General Washington displayed in the most trying circumstances, during a life intirely occupied in the service of his country, the Americans, because he opposed the violent measures of the democrats, abused his administration, calumniated him in the public prints, raised a party against him, chose another president, and were guilty of the basest ingratitude to one of the best and most disinterested of men.* Mr Adams met with almost similar treatment, and his party, who were styled federalists, were at length put down altogether by the overbearing influence of the democrats, headed by Mr Jefferson and Mr Madison. The disciples of Thomas Paine and the French school now bore away all before them; innovations were made upon the first federal constitution, and such measures adopted as showed at once the great licentiousness and impiety that had so quickly found growth in this infant republic. Those revolutionary opi *The Americans never showed so much respect and honour to Washington, to whom they owed everything, as they did to M. La Fayette. |