land we are fo convinced of this, that there is no ruft of fuperftition, with which the accumulated abfurdity of the human mind might have cruited it over in the courfe of ages, that ninety-nine in an hundred of the people of England would not prefer to impiety. We fhall never be fuch fools as to call in an enemy to the fubftance of any fyftem to remove its corruptions, to fupply its defects, or to perfect its construction. If our religious tenets fhould ever want a further elucidation, we fhall not call on atheism to explain them. We fhall not light up our temple from that unhallowed fire. It will be illuminated with other lights. It will be perfumed with other incenfe, than the infectious ftuff which is imported by the fmugglers of adulterated metaphyfics. If our ecclefiaftical eftablishment fhould want a revifion, it is not avarice or rapacity, public or private, that we fhall employ for the audit, or receipt, or application of its confecrated revenue.Violently condemning neither the Greek nor the Armenian, nor, fince heats are fubfided, the Roman fyftem of religion, we prefer the Protestant; not because we think it has lefs of the Chriftian religion in it, but because, in our judgment, it has more. We are proteftants, not from indifference but from zeal.Reflections on the Revolution in France.

POPISH CLERGY.

A POPISH clergy, who are not reftrained by the moft auftere fubordination, will become a nuifance, a real public grievance of the heaviest kind, in any country that entertains them.-Letter to a Peer of Ireland on the Penal Laws.

PARSIMONY.

Mere Parfimony not Oeconomy.

MERE parfimony is not economy.

It is fepara.

ble in theory from it; and in fact it may, or it may

not, be a part of œconomy, according to circum. ftances. Expence, and great expence, may be an effential part in true œconomy. If parfimony were to be confidered as one of the kinds of that virtue, there is, however, another and an higher œconomy. Economy is a diftributive virtue, and confifts not in' faving, but in felection. Parfimony requires no providence, no fagacity, no powers of combination, no comparison, no judgment. Meer inftinct, and that not an instinct of the nobleft kind, may produce this falfe economy in perfection. The other œconomy has larger views. It demands a difcriminating judgment, and a firm fagacious mind. It fhuts one door to impudent importunity, only to open another, and a wider, to unprefuming merit. If none but meritorious fervice or real talent were to be rewarded, this nation has not wanted, and this nation will not want, the means of rewarding all the service it ever will receive, and encouraging all the merit it ever will produce. No state, fince the foundation of society, has been impoverished by that species of profufion.Letter to a Noble Lord.

PROFESSORS OF ARTIFICIAL LAW. (SEE LAW.)

THE profeffors of artificial law have always walked hand in hand with the profeffors of artificial theology. As their end, in confounding the reason of man, and abridging his natural freedom, is exactly the fame, they have adjufted the means to that end in a way entirely fimilar. The divine thunders out his anathemas with more noife and terror against the breach of one of his pofitive inftitutions, or the neglect of fome of his trivial forms, than against the neglect or breach of thofe duties and commandments of natural religion, which by thefe forms and inftitutions he pretends to enforce. The lawyer has his forms, and his pofitive inftitutions too, and he adheres to them

with a veneration altogether as religious. The worst caufe cannot be fo prejudicial to the litigant, as his advocate's or attorney's ignorance or neglect of these forms. A law-fuit is like an ill-managed difpute, in which the first object is foon out of fight, and the parties end upon a matter wholly foreign to that on which they began. In a law-fuit the question is, who has a right to a certain houfe or farm? And this queftion is daily determined, not upon the evidences of the right, but upon the obfervance or neglect of fome forms of words in ufe with the gentlemen of the robe, about which there is even amongst themfelves such a disagreement, that the most experienced veterans in the profeffion can never be pofitively affured that they are not mistaken.

You

Let us expoftulate with these learned fages, thefe priefts of the facred temple of juftice. Are we judges of our own property? By no means. then, who are initiated into the myfteries of the blindfold goddefs, inform me whether I have a right to eat the bread I have earned by the hazard of my life, or the sweat of my brow? The grave doctor answers me in the affirmative. The reverend ferjeant replies in the negative; the learned barrifter reafons upon one fide and upon the other, and concludes nothing. What fhall I do? An antagonist ftarts up and preffes me hard. I enter the field, and retain these three perfons to defend my caufe. My caufe, which two farmers from the plough could have decided in half an hour, takes the court twenty years. I am, however, at the end of my labour, and have, in reward for all my toil and vexation, a judgment in my favour. But hold-a fagacious commander, in the adverfary's army has found a flaw in the proceeding. My triumph is turned into mourning. I have ufed or inftead of and, or fome mistake, fmall in appearance, but dreadful in its confequences, and have the whole of my fuccefs quafhed in a writ of error. I remove my fuit; I fhift from court to

court; I fly from equity to law, and from law to equity; equal uncertainty attends me every where: and a miftake in which I had no fhare, decides at once upon my liberty and property, fending me from the court to a prifon, and adjudging my family to beggary and famine. I am innocent, gentlemen, of the darkness and uncertainty of your science. I never darkened it with abfurd and contradictory. notions, nor confounded it with chicane and fophiftry. You have excluded me from my having any fhare in the conduct of my own caufe; the fcience was too deep for me; I acknowledged it; but it was too deep even for yourselves; you have made the way fo intricate, that you are yourselves loft in it. You err, and you punish me for your errors.-Vin-, dication of Natural Society.

PRUSSIA AND THE EMPEROR.

Ir the two great leading Powers of Germany do not regard this danger*, (as apparently they do not) in the light in which it prefents itfelf fo naturally, it is because they are powers too great to have a social intereft. That fort of intereft belongs only to thofe, whose state of weakness or mediocrity is fuch, as to give them greater caufe of apprehenfion from what may destroy them, than of hope from any thing by which they may be aggrandized.

As long as thofe two Princes are at variance, fo long the liberties of Germany are fafe. But if ever they fhould fo far understand one another as to be perfuaded that they have a more direct and more certainly defined intereft in a proportioned mutual aggrandizement than in a reciprocal reduction, that is, if they come to think that they are more likely to be enriched by a divifion of spoil, than to be rendered fecure by keeping to the old policy of pre

French Revolution,

venting others from being spoiled by either of them, from that moment the liberties of Germany are no

more.

That a junction of two in fuch a scheme is neither impoffible nor improbable, is evident from the partition of Poland in 1773, which was effected by fuch a junction as made the interpofition of other nations to prevent it, not eafy. Their circumftances, at that time, hindered any other three ftates, or indeed any two, from taking measures in common to prevent it, though France was at that time an existing power, and had not yet learned to act upon a fyftem of politics of her own invention. The geographical pofition of Poland was a great obftacle to any movements of France in oppofition to this, at that time unparalleled league. To my certain knowledge, if Great Britain had, at that time, been willing to concur in preventing the execution of a project fo dangerous in the example, even exhaufted as France then was by the preceding war, and under a lazy and unenterprifing Prince, the would have at every rifque taken an active part in this bufinefs. But a languor with regard to fo remote an intereft, and the principles and paffions which were then ftrongly at work at home, were the caufes why Great Britain would not give France any encouragement in fuch an enterprize. At that time, however, and with regard to that object, in my opinion, Great Britain and France had a common interest.

But the pofition of Germany is not like that of Poland, with regard to France, either for good or for evil. If a conjunction between Pruffia and the Emperor fhould be formed for the purpofe of fecularifing and rendering hereditary the Ecclefiaftical Electorates and the Bishopric of Munfter, for fettling two of them on the children of the Emperor, and uniting Cologne and Munfter to the dominions of the King of Pruffia on the Rhine; or if any other project of mutual aggrandizement should be in prof