same time, by some late reforms in their infernal court of inquisition, how impossible it is to resist the course of Nature, and that the volition of man, impregnated with wisdom, will expand in proportion as that quality is influenced by the heat of invention and investigation, caused by the collision of thoughtful enlightened nations, and explode, like confined gunpowder, till it has reached the plenitude of its elasticity, intellectual existence, though compressed with worlds heaped on worlds of policy and superstition.

It is wise in all nations to watch this expansive tendency of the mind, and to move in a reform of superstition and politics parallel to its force; for all sudden and unequal operation of reform is dangerous innovation, inimical to the ultimate state of man's happiness, and would resemble the conduct of an imprudent nurse, who, to comply with the child's will, relinquishes the leadingstrings, and leaves it to wander in ignorance, to the brink of a precipice, where it would not fail to meet its destruction.

But it is at the same time very unwise to resist gradual reform, which promotes a tendency of the mind to expansion, as is the case at present in England, where the revenue of extensive conquests, and appointments of office have created an interest in the legislative body that preponderates against the interest of the country; and reform, undiscriminated from innovation, is dreaded, and the current is left to swell, till by accumulated force, it breaks down the dikes, and inundates and devastates all the land.

SWITZERLAND.

THIS Country contains a variety of associations or states, but their moral character has not shades sufficiently strong to require a separate and discriminating relation. That noble and only true principle of all government, that every citizen must consent to the establishment of laws, which he is obliged to obey, is, in appearance only, better known and practised here, than in any other part of the world.

The democratic states nearest perfection in this country, authorize the bumiliating destruction of sovereign towns and subject towns, and admit an anti-republican principle, which destroys, degrades and confounds all the states of this country under the general term, aristocracy.

The moral constitution of these people is formed of good intellects, and calm passions: the first have no great energy to surpass the boundaries of human institutions, nor the latter to urge man to an unhappy course of activity. They seem to be but a higher order of animals, and differ from the woolly inhabitants of the same mountains, only as the one bears, and the other shears the fleece from the back; or whence comes it, that a people laying in the lap, and hanging on the nurturing breast of its mother Nature, dares, like an ungrateful infant, revolt, and bite the benign nipple that gives it aliment.

This allegory I shall explain, by taking a view, not of the form, but the administration of the different governments. Policy, here demands no external efforts to maintain tranquillity at home, but stretches out its arm beyond the boundaries of its own country, to receive the infamous price of the lives of fellow-citizens, who are sent to ambitious empires, to be sacrificed to the demon of despotism and slavery.

Internal policy seems to have no other exercise but

the administration of the laws, the economy of which 18 so ill-contrived, that it seems rather to intend the sale than the impartial distribution of justice. This provokes the selfish appetite of these rustic citizens, and depraves the heart which would otherwise be secure by the absence of luxury, (that parent of all vice in great and powerful empires;) and explains and justifies the unfavorable allegory which I have chosen to represent-the whole of that country!

GERMANY.

I AM averse to that detail which minds fond of minutiæ may require, and I shall endeavour to comprehend under an identical character the various inhabitants, who, though they have many moral differences, yet agree in some general affections.

This agreement I discover in the universal tenacity to established order and custom; insomuch that if other nations had not inundated this land with novel ideas that have borne down their prejudices as violent torrents do trees, they would have remained in the barbarism of their Scythian ancestors to this present day.

The mind in several parts of this country seems to be emerging from its state of apathy, and several of their authors have caught the fire of foreign genius, which will enliven their torpidity, and bring them to mental animation. The despotism of governors and priests will no doubt labor to suppress its progress, which like every other opposition to truth, is as a feeble dike to oppose a torrent, which by checking the course, elevates and increases the body of water, till augmenting, it forces the feeble boundary, and spreads its inundations in proportion to the elevation of the opposing dike.

The locality of this country is inauspicious to its progress in moral and social perfection. It is the bulwark of Europe against eastern barbarism; and as it is a well-known truth, that in the same proportion as the individual gains liberty, the state loses its energy; the man of Nature is confounded in reducing this great theoretical truth to practice; as first an universal centre of action or morality must be established over the whole world.

The Germans, in proportion as they acquire from their neighbors, the light of wisdom (or in other words, that internal operation of the intellectual faculties, by which to become acquainted with ourselves,) should transmit it to the Turks by books and civil missions, which should be substituted for religious ones. I am convinced, that had nations taken one hundredth part of the pains to render mankind wise, which they have done to make them fools or madmen; the globe would be at this day a terrestrial paradise, and the fabulous golden age would have been realized at the epoch of 1790.

The eastern nations are better prepared to receive great natural and moral truths than the western. They have no errors to unlearn; they have no books to confute. I never proposed a moral truth to an Asiatic, who did not conceive my ideas, and form similar sentiments to myself; and declare, that he followed the absurd customs of his fellow citizens, from the value he placed on their esteem finding it necessary to his own happiness.

THE UNITED PROVINCES.

[NOW HOLLAND AND BELGIUM.]

THE Moral character of this nation is perfectly similar to the German, with the difference only, that the latter is passive, and the former active. Commerce, that arch-corruptor, assuming the name of comforter, has formed these people to display the concealed passions of the German character, tenacity of custom, called prejudice, and avarice, the intoxication of selfish love.

These people, whose avarice has robbed the sea of its domain, have spread abroad upon its surface, to establish colonies, whose detestable avarice has gained vigor from being transplanted, and is called forth into destructive action from circumstances of place and things. Their administration is so fraught with despotism, cruelty and avarice, that though the English colonies have, like them, usurped territories and domain, and hold them with a vicious sceptre; yet in a comparative view with the Batavians, they are guardian angels, as the latter are desolating devils. The English who rob the princes of the East of glory, riches and dominion, leave them as a consolation, dignity, luxury and liberty; but the Batavians, when they seize upon dominion, doom the possessor to endless punishment and slavery; and not satisfied with one victim, the usurped dominion, administered with infernal avarice and cruelty, gives the fate of a victim to every unhappy subject.

In the West Indies, the Batavians, involved in the guilt, common to nations, of converting the blood of their African fellow-creatures into sugar, coffee and tobacco, have the same infernal pre-eminence and avarice; and this passion weeps, whenever repose spreads the effusion of feeble joy over the cheek of the palpitating and succumbing African.