the ribands of the bride-at bed or board, couchant or levant, we must pay. The schoolboy whips his taxed top-the beardless youth manages his taxed horse, with a taxed bridle on a taxed road; -and the dying Englishman, pouring his medicine which has paid seven per cent. into a spoon that has paid fifteen per cent.— flings himself back upon his chintz bed which has paid twentytwo per cent.-makes his will on an eight pound stamp, and expires in the arms of an apothecary, who has paid a license of an hundred pounds for the privilege of putting him to death. His whole property is then immediately taxed from two to ten per cent. Besides the probate, large fees are demanded for burying him in the chancel; his virtues are handed down to posterity on taxed marble; and he is then gathered to his fathers,-to be taxed no more. In addition to all this, the habit of dealing with large sums will make the government avaricious and profuse; and the system itself will infallibly generate the base vermin of spies and informers, and a still more pestilent race of political tools and retainers, of the meanest and most odious description ;—while the prodigious patronage, which the collecting of this splendid revenue will throw into the hands of government, will invest it with so vast an influence, and hold out such means and temptations to corruption, as all the virtue and public spirit, even of republicans, will be unable to resist. Sir,—It matters very little what immediate spot may be the birthplace of such a man as Washington. No people can claim, no country can appropriate him; the boon of Providence to the human race, his fame is eternity, and his residence creation. Though it was the defeat of our arms, and the disgrace of our policy, I almost bless the convulsion in which he had his origin. If the heavens thundered and the earth rocked, yet, when the storm passed, how pure was the climate that it cleared; how bright in the brow of the firmament was the planet which it revealed to us! In the production of Washington, it does really appear as if nature was endeavoring to improve upon herself, and that all the virtues of the ancient world were but so many studies preparatory to the patriot of the new. Individual instances no doubt there were; splendid exemplifications of some single qualification. Cæsar was merciful, Scipio was continent, Hannibal was patient; but it was reserved for Washington to blend them all in one, and like the lovely chefd'œuvre of the Grecian artist, to exhibit in one glow of associated beauty, the pride of every model, and the perfection of every master. As a general, he marshaled the peasant into a veteran, and supplied by discipline the absence of experience; as a statesman, he enlarged the policy of the cabinet into the most comprehensive system of general advantage; and such was the wisdom of his views, and the philosophy of his counsels, that to the soldier and the statesman he almost added the character of the sage! A conqueror, he was untainted with the crime of blood; a revolutionist, he was free from any stain of treason; for aggression commenced the contest, and his country called him to the command. Liberty unsheathed his sword, necessity stained, victory returned it. If he had paused here, history might have doubted what station to assign him, whether at the head of her citizens, or her soldiers-her heroes, or her patriots. But the last glorious act crowns his career, and banishes all hesitation. Who, like Washington, after having emancipated a hemisphere, resigned its crown and preferred the retirement of domestic life to the adoration of a land he might be almost said to have created? "How shall we rank thee upon glory's page, 14. FEMALE PATRIOTISM.-Madame Roland. Minds which have any claim to greatness are capable of divesting themselves of selfish considerations; they feel that they belong to the whole human race; and their views are directed to posterity alone. I was the friend of men who have been proscribed and immolated by delusion, and the hatred of jealous mediocrity. It is necessary that I should perish in my turn, because it is a rule with tyranny to sacrifice those whom it has grievously oppressed, and to annihilate the very witnesses of its misdeeds. I have this double claim to death from your hands, and I expect it. When innocence walks to the scaffold, at the command of error and perversity, every step she takes is an advance towards glory. May I be the last victim sacrificed to the furious spirit of party! I shall quit with joy this unfortunate earth which swallows up the friends of virtue, and drinks the blood of the just. Truth! friendship! my country! sacred objects, sentiments dear to my heart, accept my last sacrifice. My life was devoted and you will render my death easy and glorious. to you, Just heaven! enlighten this unfortunate people for whom I desired liberty.-Liberty!-It is for noble minds. It is not for weak beings who enter into a composition with guilt, and cover selfishness and cowardice with the name of prudence. It is not for corrupt wretches, who rise from the bed of debauchery, or from the mire of indigence, to feast their eyes on the blood that streams from the scaffold. It is the portion of a people who delight in humanity, practice justice, despise their flatterers, and respect the truth. While you are not such a people, Oh my fellow-citizens! you will talk in vain of liberty: instead of liberty you will have licentiousness, of which you will all fall victims in your turns; you will ask for bread, and dead bodies will be given you; and you will at last bow down your necks to the yoke. I have neither concealed my sentiments nor my opinions. I know that a Roman lady was sent to the scaffold for lamenting the death of her son. I know that in times of delusion and party rage, he who dares avow himself the friend of the proscribed, exposes himself to their fate. But I despise death; I never feared any thing but guilt, and I will not purchase life at the expense of a base subterfuge. Wo to the times! wo to the people among whom doing homage to disregarded truth can be attended with danger; and happy he who in such circumstances is bold enough to brave it! 15. ENTERPRISING SPIRIT OF NEW-ENGLAND.-Burke. As to the wealth, Mr. Speaker, which the colonies have drawn from the sea by their fisheries, you had all that matter fully opened at your bar. You surely thought those acquisitions of value; for they seemed even to excite your envy; and yet the spirit by which that enterprising employment has been exercised, ought rather, in my opinion, to have raised your esteem and admiration. And pray, sir, what in the world is equal to it?Pass by the other parts and look at the manner in which the people of New-England have of late carried on the whale fishery. Whilst we follow them amongst the tumbling mountains of ice and behold them penetrating into the deepest frozen recesses of Hudson's Bay, and Davis' Straits, whilst we are looking for them beneath the arctic circle, we hear that they have pierced into the opposite region of polar cold, that they are at the antipodes, and engaged under the frozen serpent of the south. Falkland Island, which seemed too remote and romantic an object for the grasp of national ambition, is but a stage and resting place in the progress of their victorious industry. Nor is the equinoctial heat more discouraging to them, than the accumulated winter of both the poles. We know that while some of them draw the line and strike the harpoon on the coast of Africa, others run the longitude and pursue their gigantic game along the coasts of Brazil. No sea but what is vexed by their fisheries. No climate that is not witness to their toils. Neither the perseverance of Holland, nor the activity of France, nor the dexterous and firm sagacity of English enterprise, ever carried this most perilous mode of hardy industry to the extent to which it has been pushed by this recent people; a people who are still, as it were, but in the gristle, and not yet hardened into the bone of manhood. When I contemplate these things; when I know that the colonies in general, owe little or nothing to any care of ours, and that they are not squeezed into this happy form by the constraints of a watchful and suspicious government, but that through a wise and salutary neglect, a generous nature has been suffered to take her own way to perfection; when I reflect upon these effects, when I see how profitable they have been to us, I feel all the pride of power sink, and all presumption in the wisdom of human contrivances melt, and die away within me. My rigor relents. I pardon something to the spirit of liberty. 16. LOVE OF COUNTRY.-Minto. Gentlemen,-We have but one question to resolve-shall we defend our country, or resign it? And first, I ask-What is that country ?-what is this golden prize for which we are to contend ?—a country, rich in all the blessings that are derived from a free and equal government ;— a government which seems to have grown and matured itself by the continued exercise of wisdom in the lawgivers, and virtue in the people, through a long series of ages; which has heen sanctioned by the applause, and even by the acknowledged envy of the whole world; but the excellence of which is yet better proved by the unceasing progress of the people in every species of prosperity and happiness;-a government which knows no distinction amongst us in the protection of the laws; which enables every man of every degree, alike to acquire the fair fruits of honesty, industry, of useful talents, of genius, and even of fortune; and, when acquired, secures alike to all the firm possession of their own; a government which, thus perfect in theory, has been administered through the whole at least of our generation, by the most virtuous, the most just, the most benevolent man in the nation. Such is the sovereign whom we are summoned to renounce: such the government which we are commanded, by an insolent stranger, to exchange for his foreign yoke. Let me ask once again, what is that country we would defend? It is that in which we have all drawn our first breath; which has reared us kindly to strength and manhood, which has been our mother and our tender nurse; it is that in which the ashes of our fathers are deposited; it has been our cradle, and it is the hallowed tomb of our ancestors. It is that in which we have contracted the most sacred engagements, the dearest relations of human life; here we have found the companions of our childhood, the friends of our youth, the gentle partners of our lives; here our memory points at every turn to some haunt of infancy, to the scene of some endearing hour, of some treasured recollection in maturer age; in fine, to some resistless motive of love and filial duty To sum up all in one word, it is our country! our dear native land! That monster never breathed, so far distorted from the forms of nature, whose bosom has not acknowledged that strongest instinct, that most universal passion, that most rational and virtuous affection of all those which God has implanted in the breasts of his creatures-the love of his country. 17. FUTURE PUNISHMENT.-Lamont. Future punishment is, of all evils, the most dreadful; and, therefore, of all evils, the most to be avoided. The calamities which mortals inherit, in their earthly tabernacle, are slight and transitory-soon fly off, and die for ever. But those woes which fester in the souls of bad men after death, are at once intolerable and interminable. Their exquisite acuteness can |