dollars which he denied having ever had; and when sued for it, defeated the farmer, because the debt did not appear in his (said Jones's) ledger. By way of consolation, he was told that a 'propensity to cheat and deceive pervades all classes, from the lowest mechanic up to nearly the first officer of government;' that knavery damns the north, and slavery the south.' Here, too, at the very fountain head of this free and humane government, white men sell their own yellow children in the way of business,' and free blacks of course follow the example. Indeed, moneygetting appears to be the life and soul of Washington; those families who keep chariots send them daily for hire as hackney coaches, either to whites or blacks.' 6 Our farmer had a contrast of what he calls, two natural characters,' exemplified in an old Scotchman, and an elegant and mighty fine' American lady. The former had bought some cloth which, on measuring at home, was found to contain several yards more than he had bargained and paid for; he brought it back to the tradesman. 'What!' exclaims the lady,' bring it back because it is over measure? well, I guess, I would not have done so!' In hearing and seeing such things, our honest English farmer can scarcely believe his eyes or his ears, and finds himself reluctantly compelled to give up certain notions which he had previously entertained respecting the character of the gallant and highminded people who inhabit the capital of America.' Nor were the reports he received of their character furnished only by disappointed emigrants. Doctor Thornton, of the Post Office, observed to him that this city, like that of ancient Rome, was peopled with thieves and assassins; and that during his residence in it, he had found more villains than he had seen in any other part of the world.' Washington holds out no encouragement for emigrants. I called,' says the farmer, on my townsfolk Jack Bellcare and his wife; both are disappointed. Jack left a comfortable home and dairy behind him, and now works bare-headed on the road, cursing the hot climate.' (p. 112.) Friend John Steed, from Wisbeach, was 'grievously disappointed; nearly broken in spirit and pocket, he finds charity cold and friends few or none.' Several stone-masons, willing and able to work, were unable to get employment at half a dollar a day, and to find themselves. English labourers and first-rate mechanics are seen working at the capital for the low price of half-a-dollar a day.' Very few English farmers succeed; the best of them scarcely hope for more than a bare subsisst ence, consisting chiefly of bacon and Indian corn, and villainous whiskey, without any of the little comforts they were accustomed to in England. "The states of New York and Pensylvania are best for VOL. XXIX. NO. LVIII. A A ، for an English farmer of any condition; but,' it is added, if he can by any honest means make both ends meet, he ought to stay at home. Mr. Elliott, a most respectable man, an astronomer and philosopher, was of the same opinion. The soil here,' he says, ، is unfit for man, and for an Englishman particularly; both barbarize and degenerate. The labouring poor here are far behind, and more miserable than the poor old peasantry of England.' A Doctor Dawes, who quitted his diploma for the plough, giving up a practice of £400 or £500 a year at Wisbeach in England, considers every body as unprincipled and having an eye on his money, which was nearly all gone: the doctor and his lady were sighing for their native land, but were ashamed of returning, 'seeming,' says the farmer, to stay here only to find fault with every thing. His host gave him the following sketch, somewhat different from that of the Washington librarian. ، Fools must not come, for Americans are nationally cold, jealous, suspicious, and knavish, have little or no sense of honour, believing every man a rogue, until they see the contrary; thinking imposition and extortion fair business, and all men fair game; kind, obliging conduct is lost upon them. A bold, saucy, independent manner towards them is necessary. They love nobody but themselves, and seem incapable of due respect for the feelings of others. They have nothing original; all that is good or new is done by foreigners, and by the British, and yet they boast eternally.'-p. 102. 6 In short all the emigrants, whether English, Scotch, or Irish, whether doing well or doing ill-all agreed that America was not the country for them, and that they looked forward to the time when they should be able to return. One exception, however, there was in the person of the Right Honourable T. Law,' (for our traveller is very tenacious of the dignity of his acquaintance,) brother of the late Lord Ellenborough. This gentleman accumulated (it is not said by what means) an immense fortune in India, where, by his own account, he was a most important personage. Why, Sir, I once, with Lord Cornwallis, governed India.'-Ego et Rex meus! I returned and saw my acquaintance sliding into commerce, brewers, manufacturers, and merchants, to be cheated.' To avoid being cheated himself he fled across the Atlantic. The reason, however, he gave to our farmer for going to America was, that he never knew how to say 66 my Lord, to any man.'-By how slender a thread is the happiness of some men suspended! —but we will let our farmer into a bit of a secret -this Indian Bahadur could not succeed in getting men to say 'My Lord,' to him! Then he was afraid that his friends and family would be ruined by the funds and become beggars'—' a situation,' situation,' he says, from which I fled'-kind and cautious! Now let us see how this gentleman has improved his_condition and his property in America. In the first place, Mr. Faux says, he has lost, by speculation in lands, two-thirds of the half-million sterling which he is stated to have carried over with him. Soon after his arrival, he married the niece of General Washington, and settled on her, at her uncle's urgent request, in case they parted, 15,000 dollars a year. Accordingly, as was obviously anticipated, at least on the part of the lady and her friends, she eloped, during his absence, with a young officer in the army. These were ominous speculations to begin with, and almost as mortifying, one would think, as to be obliged to say My Lord,' in England. But Mr. Law (like another profound speculator, with whom we shall presently fall in) is a philosopher, and bears, with the utmost fortitude, being cheated in America, talking, with the greatest composure, of having carried away from England one hundred thousand guineas in gold, and not being able to raise by any means one thousand in America.' There is something exquisitely ridiculous in the pompous dictatorial style, with which this great personage delivers himself. It appears, however, to have captivated our simple farmer, who listens with such a curious mixture of credulity and terror, that unless the reader can call to mind the scene between Sancho and the Brazen-head of Barcelona-though we wrong the Brazen-head by the comparison-we despair of doing justice to the picture. "What, Mr. Law, is likely to remedy the diseases of England?" "Sir! England is over-peopled. It is not wholly the fault of the government. A famine will be the remedy." "Could not the surplus population be translated to the colonies?" "No, Sir, a famine is the only remedy." "But, Sir, is not a famine calculated to plunge the country into a dreadful political convulsion and revolution?" "It is Sir; but the government is not blameable."-" Do you, Sir, think that no remedy but famine remains for England?" "No, Sir, no other. But, Sir, such confusion, and horror, and calamity will characterize the catastrophe as the world has not seen." "Do you think it will exceed the French revolution? Will the people of England be more bloody and heartless in such a struggle than the French ?" "The desperation, Sir, of their situation will make them so. Consider, Sir, the rage, anguish, and collision, of so many starving millions screwed up into a space not larger than our state of Virginia."-p. 447. It might be thought that our traveller had, by this time, supp'd full of horrors; but his host pursues him to his bed room,' where he indulges him with two hours' more conversation on the thrilling subject, the state of England, which he assures him, for the twentieth time, must fall in a few years. With such a debt, A A 2 sir, sir, and so many drones, and all the world rivalling and excluding her manufactures, it is impossible that she can long exist. A famine must certainly sweep away superfluous millions.'-p. 455. The farmer, we may be sure, slept not a wink that night. 6 To give his trembling victim a short respite, Mr. Law descends to lighter matters; and we are pleased to find that, in ethics, he fully agrees with the energetic' captain of the Ruthy, that, it is more convenient to steal than to buy. I knew Paley well, sir; he was a good man, but his philosophy is false. Utility is made its basis; but impulse and feeling furnish the best moral guides.'' But, Mr. Law, is not his philosophy in accordance with Christianity? Perhaps it is.' Our poor friend, though bewildered and alarmed at this syllogistic proof of the falsity of Christianity, is unwilling to give it up; and, pursuing his questions, ventures to ask, if Sir William Jones was not a Christian.' Why, sir, Lord Teignmouth has endeavoured to make him appear so; but he was a free-thinker, and unusually vain. We say nothing as to his vanity; but as to his being a free-thinker, or, in other words, an atheist, his whole life and writings give the lie to the assertion, which is wholly gratuitous on the part of Mr. Law -himself an avowed free-thinker, who affirms all churches to be evils, and all religion a matter of opinion.'-p. 459. 6 In a subsequent tête-à-tête, on finding our farmer had come to America, as the Negro said, to take walk and make book,' Mr. Law kindly condescended to write a few paragraphs for him, and also to instruct him how England' must fall in a few years,' and how the famine, which is to sweep away superfluous millions,' is to be brought about. 'It will be brought about, first, by a scarce year, and secondly, by the want of specie to pay for foreign grain; for specie only will do, when manufactures shall not be wanted in exchange for grain. Then the British people, instead of lying down and dying willingly like the Hindoos, a scene which I witnessed, (we wish he had added,“ and relieved,") will rise with an irresistible fury, sweeping all authorities before them. The convulsion will not last long, but it will be horrid.” “After such a storm will they dispense with monarchy, &c.?" "No, sir, I think not. King, lords, and commons, seem acceptable to the people. The church and the debt only will be annihilated. My friends and others in the funds see that this catastrophe is coming. They are therefore unhappy. I see they are eaten up by anxiety; I am happier than any of them."-p. 455. And who is the deity that shakes the breast of this good old Pythian, on his crazy tripod?—The infallible Cobbett. There is not a word in this insane drivelling which is not taken from his 'American 'American Register';*-to the study of which Mr. Law appears to have devoted himself, with an eagerness of belief that does equal credit to his head and his heart. The reader, who has observed the overweening opinion which this oracular gentleman entertains of himself, will not dislike, perhaps, to have a few specimens of his practical knowledge, as displayed in the management of his own affairs. He withdrew, as we have said, to America with half a million sterling in his pocket, gained, as he says, in India, where he daily saw the Hindoos dying of hunger by millions, as he long since prophesied the English would do. Now mark the result. He has a farm, Mr. Faux says, of about 250 acres, so stony and unfruitful that its cultivation is a serious expense, with a garden and orchard, of a few acres, equally poor the stock does not disgrace the farm. The steward (whose daughter, a little naked, dirty-legged, bare-footed girl,' acts as house-maid) showed him a cow and bull from England; 'they dislike,' he said, 'this climate: the cow gives but little milk, and pines for the sweet green pasture of her native land.' The house is something between an American farm-house and a mansion. The road up to it is planted with dying shrubs: it is rough, stony, and difficult, and the entrance gate (where might stand a lodge) is meaner than a hog-pen gate!" And here we have what Mr. Faux is taught to call the seat and plantation of the Right Honourable Thomas Law.'-p. 433. Hudibras, in the stocks, never exhibited more complacency in his misfortunes than this gentleman. But there is some difference in their topics of consolation: the Knight Cheer'd up himself with ends of verse, the Honourable gentleman comforts himself with dreams of his own infallibility: baffled and duped, as he has been in every transaction, he still believes that he is the only one, and that wisdom will die with him.' It is true,' he says, 'I have been unsuccessful in my speculations here, but my wants are few.† I was advised to invest my money in and about this city (Washington), which every one then deemed a good speculation-and it would have been so, but for the stupidity and blundering ignorance of this government.' 'You have not, I suppose, at any time, formed a part of this government? No, sir, I would see them at the devil * Should the reader wish to verify the truth of this assertion, we refer him (as Cob bett's American Register' is not easily met with in this country) to that most amusing of all compilations, The Book of Wonders.' This is an expression which Mr. Law is very fond of repeating. I live plain; but my wants are few.' We should somewhat ruffle his philosophy, perhaps, if we inquired why, with those few wants, he thought it necessary, in the first place, to amass fifty laes of rupees, and, in the second, to speculate on raising them to as many more! A A 3 first.' |