THE

ORDEA L.

No. 6.] SATURDAY, FEBRUARY 11, 1809.

[Vol. 1.

POLITICKS.

Perhaps there never was a change so sudden and extraordinary as that which the misconduct of ministers has within a few years produced in this country. JUNIUS.

LETTER.-No. 3.

Το SIR,

IT is by no means remarkable that the people should feel greatly agitated in the discussion of political questions at this period, when distress has accumulated upon distress, until the load has wasted away both our patience and our strength: but it seems highly astonishing that there should be the least hesitation, in determining where to fix the blame. The guilt is evident; but the punishment is withheld. Perhaps the minds of men are unable to penetrate the secrets of preceding events, from their being overcome with the resistless sensations of present difficulty, and present distress. The numerous circumstances of disgrace, which have attended the administration of this government, for the last eight years, must excite all the aggravation of resentment, when they are considered together; they distract the attention by such singular features of deformity, that the whole groupe is an assemblage too disgusting to be portrayed, and too horrid to contemplate. Like a painter, distracted with a multitude of subjects, I am embarrassed in considering your life; the past events which checquered it, were vile enough it was thought, to have established the infamy of your fame; but they have been followed by circumstances so astonishingly bold as to set at defiance all former principles of judgment or conjecture. The veil of mystery, which formerly covered your proceedings, was difficult for the most perspicaVol. 1.

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cious glance to penetrate; but that which now bears the name of covering, like the flimsy gauze over a modern beauty, is calculated to discover rather than conceal. You act as if you intended, by daily increasing in the degree of your depravity, to elude the detection of former crimes. The contrast between the period of your retirement from office, and that of your inauguration, speaks a lesson on the value of your administration to the country, too powerful for illustration or commentary. The present difficulties you know too well, have been caused by yourself and not by the misconduct of foreign nations. The federalists foresaw your perfidy, and forewarned the people of their danger; but you and your adherents talked of economy, of forbearance, of reason and philosophy, and the people were completely deluded into an entanglement, which we fear is now to be cut asunder by war, since it cannot be unravelled by negociation.

The disclosures lately made from the cabinet afford the most inevitable conclusions as to their former views and expectations. An acknowledged suppression of important documents, the French minister's declaration of alliance, Bonaparte's commendation of the Embargo, are items in the sum of depravity; but other particulars remain. The characters of your favourites are now to be brought to the test; the secretary at war, and the commander in chief, we expect will be rigorously scrutinized. And we hope if any charges are preferred against the secretary of the treasury, he will be better able to refute them, than that once made of his connection in a conspiracy against a former administration.

In the conduct of some statesmen, we can often discover nothing but the strangest attempts to reconcile perfidy and virtue, ignorance and philosophy, right and wrong. Your prevarications, innuendoes and deceptions about the last Embargo bill, are complete illustrations of this idea. You invade the constitution in forming a bill, the provisions of which it is a virtue in the people to oppose; and then you complain of rebellion; you expected to coerce foreign nations by the first Embargo measure; you have tried it for a twelve month, and now, you coerce your constituents by a military force: you first talked of enforcing the fifth Embargo bill in its fullest extent, and now you speak of removing it on the fourth of March. Are we again to be insulted, and again to be duped? You told us some time ago, through the papers of your party, that the measure would

be soon repealed; and the next news we hear of it, is its most rigorous enforcement. We are not to be again cajoled; you have deceived us twice; we can readily discover yourviews; and, as in the case of the duke of Grafton, nature now makes you 'treacherous without art, and a hypocrite without deceiving. However variously we consider this last act, it is calculated to excite our astonishment as much as our hatred, and our contempt more than our resentment. Your invasions of the constitution have become so familiar to us of late, that the word is hardly recogniz ed as belonging to our political vocabulary, so universally is it exploded. You have not only violated some of its most essential provisions by your measures, but have proceeded to enforce them with your power. You have taught the people to judge what they have to expect from an administration continued on the principles you have espoused; it is time for them to inform your successor what he may expect from them as an equivalent. But I presume he is prepared to retreat from the dangers you have caused; he will not have the hardihood to continue a measure, which you now shrink in contemplating.

As if the tyranny necessary to the enforcement of this system were not of itself sufficiently distressing; our calamity is aggravated by the consideration of the weakness with which it has been conducted. We cannot discover through the whole time it has continued, any thing to satisfy us of even tolerable abilities in our rulers. On the contrary every thing has concurred to prove them as destitute of foresight and wisdom, as they are of virtue and integrity. You first made a bill called a general Embargo law, then you added another, and another, and another, until you have multiplied them to six; and still they are evaded. This weakness is exceeded only by the wickedness, by which it was prompted. Bonaparte's commendation, and the suppression of Mr. Canning's letter, are sufficient to authorise the suspicion that our cabinet have been influenced by an evident preference towards France, and a confirmed hatred to Great-Britain. If any other disclosures are to be made, we hope, for the happiness of this nation, that God will exercise his retribution in this world, and render a splendid villain as miserable here, as he has been happy; that all succeeding statesmen may take council from the infamy of your example, to beware of the consequences, before they adopt measures from af

fection or hatred to any foreign state. The charge of French influence formerly made, was not denied by the administration; and the adherents of the executive gloried in his dignified silence. Great-Britain's hostility, the wrongs she had done us, the injuries we had sustained from her, were the themes of your philippick you either commended France, or were silent res pecting her. But when the cry of secret influence was echoed though the country, you suddenly changed your tone, and Frame is now coupled with England in all the wrongs we have sustained. Whence is all this shifting? France is no more wrong now, than she was when you were silent; the clamours now vented against her are too violent to be sincere. Besides chis, we do not hear a word about going to war with her ; no, no, Great-Britain, is still the object against whom our restrictive energies are to be applied, though no apparent distinction is publickly made, between the injuries we have received from France and those which Great-Britain has inflicted.

This constructive treachery, however, was too humble a course to satisfy your present ambition; and you therefore are now the publickly acknowledged ally of the French nation. Had you only followed the dictates of your prudence, you would have remained perfidious in secret; but love of distinction has prevailed, and you are now the open enemy of your own nation. You aspire to the dignity of being detested, instead of the humble ambition of being despised. Go on, sir, increasing in vice until the period of your retirement from office, and your successor will then understand that the virtues for which he has been recommended by you to the office of President, can only render the possessor the object of universal execration and contempt. MARCUS BRUTUS.

THE FREEMAN'S JOURNAL.

We have to express our pleasure at an unsolicited notice from the editor of this paper; which, as it is couched in language the most poetical and obscure, we will endeavour to illustrate and explain. After informing his readers that the Ordeal has made its appearance in Boston, the editor of the Freeman's Journal proceeds to observe, that Mr. J. T. Buckingham is the publisher, who, he remarks, was the late ed

itor of The Polyanthos, a dazzling, glittering, gaudy, trembling, transient flower, that sparkled, was exhaled and went to oblivion.' To the unlearned reader, all this may at first view seem very pretty and very plain; but the author means to tell him, that the Polyanthos was a flower which not only glittered' but sparkled,' was not only 'transient,' but strange to tell, went to-where? why, oblivion; A flower which was not only 'glittering' but ‘dazzling,' not only dazzling' but ‘gaudy.' If the reader should be puzzled to discover the distinction between glitter and sparkle, between a thing which is transient and that which goes early to oblivion ; and between something gaudy and something dazzling; if he should not very readily comprehend how these qualities, could, in any stretch of applicability, refer very appropriately to a flower, he will be much more perplexed to find this very flower as such, edited by a certain gentleman; but being 'exhaled,' he could edite it no longer. Why the merits of the POLYANTHOS are mentioned at all in a notice of the ORDEAL, may perhaps excite surprise; but this sensation is powerless, when we observe the evident attempt of this writer, to confound the editor of this publication, and that of the Polyanthos, as one and the same person. After smelling thus long, at a dazzling, glittering, sparkling, gaudy, trembling, transient' flower, we do not wonder that the author was so bewildered with sweet savour, that the Ordeal should strike him very disagreeably at first view. Unsweet, unflowerlike Ordeal; how darest thou to strike so pure, untautological a writer? to strike him so disagreeably; and that too at the first view? You should at least have waited a reasonable time to get acquainted with a gentleman, before you behaved so rudely, and then perhaps he might then have shaken hands with you. Your very frontispiece annoys him, and indeed, nothing else seems to affect him much. It is,' says he, 'neither classical, ornamental, graceful nor even whimsical; it is perhaps, what the quizzing beaus and simpering misses of the fashionable circles, would call quizzical, and the best that can be said of it is, that it is in some measure emblematical of the nature and design of the work."

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This passage surely requires some illustration. First he quarrels with the frontispiece, because it is neither classical,' nor graceful,' 'ornamental;' because it is grotesque' and 'gross ;' because it may be called 'quizzical ;' and then to crown the whole, because it is ⚫ emblematical of the design of the work! Know, therefore, sapient reader, it is the design of the work with which this gentleman is so much exasperated; it is that which is thus gross and grotesque. frontispiece is emblematical of the design of the work ;' which, says this ingenious editor, is the best that can be said of it.' If the frontispiece is emblematical of the design, all we have to say is, that as far as we are concerned in it, we are certainly much obliged to the editor of the Freeman's Journal, for the praise he has lavished upon it;

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