ment as proceeding from "an insidious motive of disparaging the Prince Regent." This they state in defiance of what they know to be the fact, that from the conclusion of the inquiry, down to the present hour, his Royal Highness has been uniform in his wishes for the Duke of York's restoration. His intention to restore him was no secret very soon after the passing of the Regency Bill.

TH

(Thursday, May 30, 1811.)

HE short debate on the petition introduced by Mr. Grattan from the Irish Brewers, praying that the duty on spirits might be restored to its former rate (i. e. from 2s. 6d. to 5s. and 8d. per gallon), has excited more thought in our minds, and awakened a deeper interest, than many discussions which have filled our columns. We must be blind indeed not to perceive the more than ordinary, and only not supreme, importance of the revenue at the present moment. A collision of vital interests must needs be a subject of grief and anxiety to every lover of his country; and sincerely do we hope that, in the present case, some means may be found to reconcile them. But where the health and the morals of a whole island, and with them both its industry and public tranquillity are at stake, the revenue cannot be said so much to make sacrifices, as to refrain from borrowing, for the present craving sums which must be repaid by subtraction,

at a most usurious interest, in a time, perhaps, of still greater necessity. It is well known how nearly allied to frenzy are the effects of spirituous liquors on men who have strong feelings and few ideas. The quantity of stimulus, which, taken by a man of education, surely as it will hasten the decay of all his powers, would yet, for the time, only call them into full energy—

"And only till unmechaniz'd by death,

Make the pipe vocal to the player's breath"

the same quantity renders an uneducated man, of undisciplined habits, a frantic wild beast. Nor do these effects cease with the temporary intoxication; but engender habits of restlessness, a proneness to turbulent feelings, even when the man is sober, in short, a general inflammability of temperament. Nor can it be denied, whatever may be its causes, that there exists a certain nationality of constitution, which occasions the poison of spirituous drinks to act with greater malignity in some countries than in others.

Apply these facts to the lower classes of the Irish, whom such indefatigable pains are taken to intoxicate with another poison, a malignant hatred to Great Britain, and a persuasion, that to the oppression and tyranny of the British government they are indebted for all the miseries they either feel or imagine; and that the hesitation to concede the eligibility to thirty-three great offices of state to the wealthy Catholics, by some marvellous circuit

of operations, strips the cottager, or rather hoveller, of every comfort, and keeps him half-fed, halfclothed, and half human! Apply these facts to those districts in our sister island, where a large majority of the inhabitants, with the third or fourth glass of whiskey, pruriunt in pugnam, itch for a riot; and, if there is no quarrel nigher at hand between the caravats or-we forget the name-the anti-caravats, begin to inquire after a rebellion ! Reflect, in short, on the passion and appetite of the lower Irish for spirits, the effects of these spirits on them, and on the mournfully large proportion which their numbers bear to those of the middle and higher classes-and then deduce the consequences of the poison being rendered so cheap, that a man may be mad-drunk for three pence! Much injury has arisen, as well as many errors, from the indiscriminate application of the maxim, "Things find their level."-Things may find their level; but the minds and bodies of men do not. Drunkenness will not wheel round again to sobriety; nor sloth to industry; nor will disorderly habits and turbulent inquietude sink down again into peaceableness and obedience to the laws.

STR

(Tuesday, June 4, 1811.)

IR WLLIAM BERESFORD'S account of the glorious battle of Albuera is very clear and distinct. It was one of the most brilliant events

of a war that has been richer in such events to this country than any war that has preceded it. There was nothing wanting to the glory of the day. It was not a repulse of an enemy attacking a strong position it was not a victory towards which the nature of the ground contributed as much as the valour of the troops defending it—it was a victory gained over an enemy who had every advantage of numbers, of cavalry, and of artillery-who had the power of choosing his point and moment of attack -who could bring that peculiar species of force, his cavalry, so formidable in a plain, into full and complete action-whose army was not composed of men speaking a different language, and belonging to different nations. An enemy could not have desired more favourable circumstances to try a contest with us. All these he had, and all were unavailing. Soult retired to tell the same tale as Massena, and to assure his master that the troops of France must yield the palm and place of honour to those of Great Britain. Let us dilate more upon these points. They will best prove to us the value of the victory, and the greatness of the glory it has achieved for us.

The exact number of the enemy cannot be known; but there is abundant reason to estimate it at nearly 30,000, including a prodigious superiority in that species of force which the nature of the ground and the circumstances of the battle made of more than usual importance and effect, in their most success

ful movements during the battle, in covering their retreat, and in diminishing their loss of men both before and after their repulse; we mean, their cavalry. In a word, they were vastly superior to the allied army, where without that specific superiority their defeat would have proved utter rout and destruction. But this is not all. On the part of Soult, an army blended into one spirit by similar discipline, and the long habit of fighting under French commanders-all equally as prompt and flexible in manœuvre and rapid change of position, as they were steady in making or receiving the appointed charge-all confident from familiarity with success in the open field, and the greater part actuated by the enthusiasm national in Frenchmen as long as it remains unsuppressed by defeat and reverse of fortune. And this army, so constituted, more than equal in mere numbers, and very greatly superior in the most effective part of them, was enabled to choose its own time, and its own point of attack, and in a country, "the whole face of which is everywhere passable for all arms." Add, too, that all the accidents of a battle, as of weather, of inequality of ground at particular moments, &c. were in its favour: so much so indeed, that to them we have to attribute the heavier part of our losses, and the enemy its most successful movements. Marshal Beresford's part, we see an army composed of three different nations, all indeed equally brave and zealous, and a third part of it at least as well

On