CXXVI. TAXES.

In this extract, the oppressive taxation of England (John Bull) is satirically described, and America (Jonathan) is warned against following the example.

ERMINE; the fur which judges wear.
COUCHANT; lying down.

LEVANT; here, sitting.

JOHN BULL can inform Jonathan what are the inevitable consequences of being too fond of Glory: TAXES! Taxes upon every article which enters into the mouth, or covers the back, or is placed under the foot; taxes upon everything which is pleasant to see, hear, feel, smell, or taste; taxes upon warmth, light, and locomotion; taxes on everything on earth, and the waters under the earth; on everything that comes from abroad, or is grown at home; taxes on the raw material; taxes on every fresh value that is added to it by the industry of man; taxes on the sauce which pampers man's appetite, and the drug that restores him to health; on the ermine which decorates the Judge, and the rope which hangs the criminal; on the poor man's salt, and the rich man's spice; on the brass nails of the coffin, and the ribbons of the bride; at bed or board, couchant or levant, we must pay.

The beardless

The school-boy whips his taxed top. youth manages his taxed horse, with a taxed bridle, on a taxed road. The dying Englishman, pouring his medicine, which has paid seven per cent., into a spoon that has paid fifteen per cent., flings himself back upon his chintz-bed, which has paid twenty-two per cent., makes his will on an eight-pound stamp, and expires in the arms of an apothecary, who has paid a license of a hundred pounds for the privilege of putting him to death. His whole property is then immediately taxed from two to ten per cent. Besides the probate, large fees are demanded for burying him in the chancel. His virtues are handed down to posterity on taxed marble; and he is then gathered to his fathers,-to be taxed no more.

In addition to all this, the habit of dealing with large sums will make the government avaricious and profuse. The system itself will infallibly generate the base vermin of spies and informers, and a still more pestilent race of political tools and retainers of the meanest and most odious description. The prodigious patronage which the collecting of this splendid revenue will throw into the hands of government will invest it with so vast an influence, and hold out such means and temptations to corruption, as all the virtue and public spirit, even of republicans, will be unable to resist. Every wise Jonathan should remember this! FROM SYDNEY SMITH.

CXXVII.-A POLITICAL CONVERSION.

AN important political personage, having suddenly changed his course with regard to an important measure, his conversion is exquisitely satirized by Webster, in the following extract.

PUBLIC men must certainly be allowed to change their opinions, and their associations, whenever they see fit. No one doubts this. Men may have grown wiser, they may have attained to better and more correct views of great public subjects. Nevertheless, it must be acknowledged, that what appears to be a sudden, as well as a great change, naturally produces a shock. I confess, for one, I was shocked, when the honorable gentleman, at the last session, espoused this bill of the administration. Sudden movements of the affections, whether personal or political, are a little out of nature.

Several years ago, some of the wits of England wrote a mock play, intended to ridicule the unnatural and false feeling, the sentimentality, of a certain German school of literature. In this play, two strangers are brought together at an inn. While they are warming themselves at the fire, and before their acquaintance is yet five minutes old, one springs up, and exclaims to the other, "A sudden thought strikes me! Let us swear an eternal friendship!" This affectionate offer was instantly accepted, and the friendship duly sworn, unchangeable and eternal!

Now,

how long this eternal friendship lasted, or in what manner it ended, those who wish to know, may learn by referring to the play. But it seems to me, that the honorable member has carried his political sentimentality a good deal higher than the flight of the German school. He appears to have fallen suddenly in love, not with strangers, but with opponents.

Here we all had been contending against the progress of executive power: The honorable member stood among us, not only as an associate, but as a leader. We thought we were making some headway. The people appeared to be coming to our support and our assistance. The country had been roused. Every successive election weakened the strength of the adversary, and increased our own. We were in this career of success, and only needed to hear the cheering voice of the honorable member,

"Once more unto the breach, dear friends, once more!" and we should have prostrated, forever, this anti-constitutional and anti-republican policy of the administration.

But instead of these encouraging and animating accents, behold in the very crisis of our affairs, on the very eve of victory, the honorable member cries out to the enemy, not to us, his allies, but to the enemy, "Halloo! a sudden thought strikes me! I abandon my allies! Now I think of it, they have always been my oppressors! I abandon them; and now let you and me swear an eternal friendship!"

Such a proposition, from such a quarter, was not likely to be long withstood. The other party was a little coy, but, upon the whole, nothing loth. After proper hesitation, and a little decorous blushing, it owned the soft impeachment, admitted an equal sudden sympathetic impulse on its own side; and, since few words are wanted, where hearts are already known, the honorable gentleman takes his place among his new friends, amid greetings and caresses, and is already enjoying the sweets of an eternal friendship. FROM WEBSTER.

CXXVIII. THE COALITION.

THE party to which Mr. Webster belonged, having been accused, in the political excitement and trickery of the day, of a dishonorable coalition with former antagonists, and this having been referred to in the senate, the following spirited reply was elicited.

แ

THE coalition ! The coalition! Ay, the murdered coalition!" The gentleman asks, if I were led or frightened into this debate by the specter of the coalition. "Was it the ghost of the murdered coalition," he exclaims, "which haunted the member from Massachusetts; and which, like the ghost of Banquo, would never down!" "The mur

dered coalition!"

This charge of a coalition, in reference to the late administration, is not original with the honorable member. It did not spring up in the senate. Whether as a fact, as an argument, or as an embellishment, it is all borrowed. He adopts it, indeed, from a very low origin, and a still lower present condition. It is one of the thousand calumnies with which the press teemed, during an excited political canvass.

It was a charge, of which there was not only no proof or probability, but which was in itself wholly impossible to be true. No man of common information ever believed a syllable of it. Yet it was of that class of falsehoods, which, by continued repetition, through all the organs of detraction and abuse, are capable of misleading those who are already far misled, and of further fanning passion already kindling into flame. Doubtless it served in its day, and in greater or less degree, the end designed by it.

Having done that, it has sunk into the general mass of stale and loathed calumnies. It is the very cast-off slough of a polluted and shameless press. Incapable of further mischief, it lies in the sewer, lifeless and despised. It is not now in the power of the honorable member to give it dignity and decency, by attempting to elevate it, and to introduce it into the senate. He can not change it from what it is, an object of general disgust and scorn. On the con

trary, the contact, if he choose to touch it, is more likely to drag him down, down, to the place where it lies itself. FROM WEBSTER.

CXXIX.-MR. DANE.

IN the course of my observations the other day, I paid a passing tribute of respect to a very worthy man, Mr. Dane, of Massachusetts. It so happened that he drew the ordinance of 1787, for the government of the Northwestern Territory. A man of so much ability, and so little pretense; of so great a capacity to do good, and so unmixed a disposition to do it for its own sake; a gentleman who had acted an important part, forty years ago, in a measure the influence of which is still deeply felt in the very matter which was the subject of debate, might, I thought, receive from me a commendatory recognition.

But the honorable member was inclined to be facetious on the subject. He was rather disposed to make it matter of ridicule, that I had introduced into the debate the name of one Nathan Danc, of whom he assures us he had never before heard. If the honorable member had never before heard of Mr. Dane, I am sorry for it. It shows him less acquainted with the public men of the country than I had supposed.

Let me tell him, however, that a sneer from him at the mention of the name of Mr. Dane is in bad taste. It may well be a high mark of ambition, either with the honorable gentleman or myself, to accomplish as much to make our names known to advantage, and remembered with gratitude, as Mr. Dane has accomplished. But the truth is, I suspect, that Mr. Dane lives a little too far north. He is of Massachusetts, and too near the north star to be reached by the honorable gentleman's telescope. If his sphere had happened to range south of Mason and Dixon's line, he might, probably, have come within the scope of his vision. FROM WEBSTER.