ful, riotous, and ungodly, ready at the slightest cause of irritation to revolt, and disturb the harmony of society. Such relaxed systems of government are not only to be despised, but to be dreaded and avoided as a pestilence. The government that cannot defend the industry, lives, and property of a people, from the rage and depredations of the factious, is only the shadow of an authority too feeble to inforce, and too insignificant to command, respect. If a party arise whose opinions are opposed to the existing government, they will pull it down, and manage matters in their own way, until some ambitious leader shall get a body of military on his side, and dictate terms to the unruly. Look on the luxuriant and highly gifted provinces of South America. How many years have they thrown off the yoke of Old Spain, and called themselves free and independent! But what have they accomplished by their imitations of the paradise of republicans? Nothing but civil wars, discord, licentiousness, murder, and rapine! Not one of them that is denominated a republic has had any fixed or settled form of government for more than six or eight months at a time. Faction rises up against faction, headed by their military captains, who rule them with the despotic scourge of Liberty, so called; and whose attributes none but those whom religion and the strong arm of legitimate power have taken under their protection have a just idea of procuring, the phantom of the heated imaginations of republican theorists, the tool of ambitious and iniquitous popular leaders, the ladder they employ to climb over the heads of peaceful, honest, good subjects. Is it not surprising, that after all the horrors and bloodshed occasioned by this monstrous, ungodly, and preposterous spe

D

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.

nions, which had already deluged France with blood, were received in America with enthusiasm. However, the people have always been refractory, or led away by some ambitious demagogues. During Washington's, and also in Adams's administration, there had been already two or three insurrections against the government, which required the marching of an armed force to the spot in order to quell them. I mention these matters to prove the inconstancy and continued fretful impatience of democracy, and the impossibility of administering such a form of government so as to please all parties, and resist the shocks of human passions. The constitution of the general government, as it is styled, of those united provinces, is but a faint imitation of the monarchical form, with the three estates of King, Lords, and Commons, of the government of Great Britain, without its energy and efficiency, unless some president, like Mr Jackson, takes the law into his own hands, and dares to do what their constitution does not allow to their executive chief. That some ambitious demagogue will concentrate the executive power in himself before long, there seems little doubt. It would be difficult to give an appropriate appellation to such an extremely mixed-up dish of liberty and slavery, freedom and aristocracy, privileges and despotism; where pride, ostentation, wealth, licentiousness, vulgarity, and inhospitality, confound the modest, and overwhelm the urbanity of the mild and charitable. Then it is not merely the constitution of the general government that is to be administered and altered according to the prevalence of the opinion of those in power, patched, repaired, or modified by the political artificers of the day; but likewise all the constitutions of the whole