Secure the defences of this Sanctum Naturæ, and the empire of liberty will be safe, though frequent excursions are made upon the frontiers by its despoiling enemieserror, superstition and despotism.

Confine its fertilizing waters, that it may not devastate private reputation, and unite the virtuous to league with the vicious in rebellion against its sacred power; but let all men in office, the sovereign alone excepted, whose minister supplies his responsibility, be subject to its universal empire. Let vice see, when it dares sally forth from gaming tables and spunging houses, that power can afford no protection against public inquiry, and that if it has the audacity to receive public recompence, the nation will demand a strict scrutiny of the merit of its votaries, and if their characters will not stand this test, let them conceal themselves in that station of privacy, where the press has no jurisdiction; but which in the progress of human reason she will reclaim as the metropolitan part of her universal empire, which the prejudices and errors of mankind induce her at present to

contract.

The doctrine of libellism has been hitherte founded in error, and truth and falsehood have been confounded in its definition.

Libels, with respect to private persons, whether true or false, in the present unhappy state of civilization, are equally injurious to the individual, against whom they are directed; because as unknown or uninteresting to the public, the charge will not be investigated, and the stigma will remain. But the character of a magistrate interests the community, and the same press that criminates will furnish him with equal means of defence; and the public tribunal will be occupied in the trial, and acquit or condemn, with an unprejudiced verdict, in the examination of those opinions, which the religious duty of citizen calls upon every member of the community to give of public measures, in which his own safety is concerned; and of public men, as being worthy or unworthy to conduct those measures.

If this discrimination of public and private character is not attended to by a British Jury, the fountain of universal liberty and happiness will be dried up by the rubbish that power and personal interest have been lately accumulating to discharge into it with numberless prosecutions for libels, when the process and verdict have alarmed the friends of liberty, and given such encouragement to vice, that Newgate will in future furnish its share of candidates, to fill the sacred magisterial functions of the state. That epoch will not, however, begin with the life of the present sovereign, [George III.] whose character is marked by that austerity, probity and prudence, congenial to the British nation; and whose reign has been rendered happy, by studying the will of the people, and thereto sacrificing his own, and by making his greatest personal enemy his confidential minister, if the wisdom of the nation required it.

The press has a most powerful influence over society, being the means of universal mental intercourse for all mankind. As the pebble thrown into the lake, agitates the centre with violence, and undulates the water to the most distant shore; so, from its throne of liberty established in this island, the press directs its wonderful mirror, reflecting from the sun of truth the bright rays of wisdom, and dispels the dreadful mists of error, that fill the moral hemisphere with the darkness of ignorance, involving all the pestiferous vapors that infect and destroy the moral health and happiness of mankind.

It is this dire preponderance of passion over reason, that at this moment blasts and confounds in august personages and splendid characters of ability, the future hopes of an anticipating and reflecting people. There is so much levity, thoughtlessness and dissipation in the one, such an heterogenious mixture of vice and virtue, wisdom and folly in the others, contrasting with the solidity, prudence and virtue of the English nation; that in the many attempts they have made to save the constitution to vindicate the violated rights of subjects

to extinguish the torch of discord, by establishing a benevolent toleration;-the sanctity of these causes seems to have been contaminated by the impurity of their exotic characters; and the salvation proffered was spurned by a suspicious people. O wisdom! teach the sovereign and ministers of this isle, that the supreme and omnipotent power is the WILL of the PEOPLE, that the minister must be their confidential friend, and that their confidence is obtained only by the character uniting virtue and wisdom. This axiom contains all the doctrine for the education of kings; and the only effort of wisdom indispensably necessary is to be able to discover, through the false lights of a prostituted parliamentary majority, and the suborned addresses of boroughs and corporations, the general will of a wise and virtuous people, which is never equivocal, and demands but a small degree of penetration to discover. The prince who may have weakness and obstinacy enough to depend upon the shadow of forms, and the blasted doctrine of legal right for the support of his will, in opposition to that of the nation, would meet the fate that history records of such attempts, which holds out as the moral of its narative—

Kings have a right to do that only, which is right to be done.

The present progress of political and individual corruption is so great and rapid, that unless some virtuous character shall rise up to supplant the present leaders of an unpopular opposition, I predict that the liberty of this country will contract the cause of decline in the present century, and dissolve in the early part of the next. The implicit confidence of the people in the private virtue of a minister who has not the courage to reform the defects in the constitution, and the influence of the crown accumulating with an eastern empire, will be the cause thereof, and a vicious and unpopular opposition will cooperate with great efficacy.

I shall now take a view of the moral character of these islanders, which is the effect of their powerful and characteristic faculty of mind-Reason. This produces violent sensations of sympathy and unbounded benevolence; and such a hallowed and universal veneration for TRUTH, as justly gives them, notwithstanding their vices, individual and political, the first rank among the different species of mankind. This adoration for rectitude and veracity is so early inculcated into them, that a child seven years old exposes his person to a contest of blows, if charged with the injurious crime of falsehood. The tutor or parent holds up truth as an asylum for every kind of offence, and the candid confession of the fault is ever received as an atonement for guilt and a pledge of pardon. The jealousy of this honorable character, imbibed at so early an age, never quits him; and though he may forfeit all pretence to every other virtue, he is ever ready to sacrifice his life to support his character for veracity. When this is lost, the remorse of conscience bursts into paroxisms of despair; makes knaves or gamesters fight for honesty, traitors for patriotism, and liars for truth. Upon this virtue is founded all the moral happiness, cominercial opulence, and political strength and splendor of this nation, physically weak, and at the same time the most powerful upon the face of the globe. That this is the source of domestic and individual confidence, is testified by its internal commerce, in which even children are often sufficient agents in articles of common consumption and of some consequence. This individual confidence, its rays being collected into a focus by commercial associations, commands the commerce of the globe. It also rises into political union, and though this has broken the link by which it ought to be connected with the great body of the people, it still participates of that virtue by virtual communication, and forms such a colossal and moral strength, that it governs the rest of the world in the same manner that weak men govern powerful beasts, by the excellence and superiority of their moral force. This rectitude pervading all ranks

of people, and the homage they pay to this virtue, procure that spirit of subordination so necessary, and at the same time so peculiar to this country of liberty. Hence that order constituting domestic tranquillity, which causes the servant to submit to the will of a respected master; and the resignation of millions to the decrees of a venerable senate and virtuous sovereign. Hence that military discipline, which, though it equals not the German parade tactics; yet in important service and the moment of battle, unites the moral force of thousands by their respect and confidence in the character of the commanders, and bears down like a torrent upon the pearl-strung rank of paraded foes, whose union being purely tactical, has no strength to oppose the colossal force of moral union.

Among the various errors that have been regarded by prejudice, as too sanctified for investigation, and shut up from profane inquiry, the form of government, or mode of civil institution, by which mankind are held together in society, is the most obstinate as well as the most important.

At the degree of approximation, mankind are arrived in the progress of the mind towards universal truth, England stands alone, and has left all other nations at an infinite distance. The mind, in this island, with its capacity of thought, has taken a view of all the moral relations of Nature, and has formed a government perfect, as to the relative considerations of time, place and circumstances; and though it opposes all dangerous and sudden innovations which destroy, it encourages all grad ual changes which tend to improve; like a parent, who proportions liberty to the degree of wisdom his children. acquire; that when they become of age, they may not burst the rigid chains of parental restraint, and like an African slave intoxicated with liberty, use it to their own destruction.

Education is established to inculcate morality, and the liberty of the press to disseminate wisdom, and from these causes is produced a spirit of administration that