throws the constitution off its poise; it creates a potential dictatorship in the ministry, who either do feel, or profess to feel themselves bound to consult the tranquillity of the state, or of particular parts of the kingdom, at the expense of the established forms and rules of law; counting upon what they are always sure to procure, indemnity by vote of Parliament.-What is there in the American republic comparable to this state of things?"

"The other topic upon which the surgeon has touched,—the animosity of the Americans against Great Britain, which her philosophers are to correct, in lapse of time, by improving our dispositions, is a favourite one with the travellers and reviewers, and is treated by them with the more emphasis, because it serves to promote their main object of raising aversion and distrust in the breasts of their countrymen. On this score, as well as every other, great injustice is done to the Americans. No small number of them are entitled to consider the imputation as a sort of ingratitude on the part of a Briton. I will venture to assert that in no nation, foreign to Great Britain, had she, until the second year of our last war, so many warm, firm friends, and blind admirers, as in the American. A great party, the Federalists, forming a decided majority in seven or eight states, numerous in most of the others, and having a full proportion of the desert, intelligence, and wealth of the country, were contradistinguished by their veneration for her character, and the deep, affectionate interest which they took in her prosperity. They exulted in her successes over France, even at the time when she was waging war upon their own firesides. This was not merely because they detested and dreaded the ascendency of the French military despotism, but because much of the old positive kindness and reverence towards her remained. She might have revived it entirely by a course of generosity and justice; by teaching her philosophers to attempt the improvement of our dispositions,' and her politicians to regulate their language and conduct, upon a different system from that which they have pursued."

The following close view of the contents of this volume, will show the order of arrangement, as well as the quality and great interest of the subjects.

SECTION I. of this work, treats of the political and mercantile jealousy of Great Britain. In this, the author shows the peculiar fate of the North American Colonies in being constantly defamed by the mother country;-her early jealousy and selfish alarms ;-her measures to prevent the growth of American manufactures, and the scheme for confining the settlements to the sea-coast;-her early panic about emigration, and attempts to repress it.

SECTION II. is upon the general character and merits of the Colonists. In this is displayed the English testimony in their favour; VOL. I.

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-the character of the first settlers in New-England-in Virginia -and the other provinces ;-their respectable rank in life,—their love of liberty and independence,-the excellence of their institutions, and their having no obligations to Britain, on this score ;the uniform endeavours of the mother country to destroy the Charters; that she disturbed, and in some instances, subverted, the system of religious freedom and equality established by the Colonists; their political intrepidity,-domestic morals and habits, religious spirit,-attention to the object of general education,-&c.

SECTION III. represents the difficulties surmounted by the Colonists-The conquest of the wilderness ;-the oppressive administration of Britain;-the absence of all external aid;-the struggle with the Indians and with the French in Canada. He retorts the accusations of England, as to the treatment of the Indians;—and represents her barbarous conduct towards the Acadians;-that the wars she made in America were exclusively her own, and not induced by the interest of the Colonies.

SECTION IV. treats of the military efforts and sufferings of the Colonies in the wars of Great Britain, between the years 1680 and 1763: Of the different expeditions from the Colonies against Canada, the hostilities with the Indians,-the expeditions against the Spaniards in Florida,-and the injustice of the mother country; -of the reduction of the fortress of Louisburgh by provincial troops, and ungrateful return of Britain;-of the war of 1756,the mismanagement and imbecility of the British Generals,-the achievements of the provincials,-the aspersions cast upon them, -and the insensibility of the mother country to any merit of theirs and he refers to British testimony, for the confirmation of these statements.

SECTION V. treats of the commercial obligations of Great Britain to the Colonies. In this are shown, the acknowledgments of her political writers;-the amount of the colonial trade at different epochs, its nature and productiveness;-the consumption of British manufactures by the Colonies, and good faith of American merchants ;-the disadvantages which the Colonies suffered by the rigour of the British monopoly ;-and the benefits subsequently reaped by Great Britain from her commercial intercourse with the United States.

SECTION VI. treats of the relative dispositions of Great Britain and America, from the peace of 1763. In this, Chalmers's and Robertson's representations of the designs of independence of the Colonies, are refuted,-and the original distrust and despotic aims of the mother country are shown;-he treats of the Stamp Act, and of its train of outrages and contumelies; and of the applause bestowed upon the resistance of the Colonies by Chatham and Campden;-of the ignorance, in the British councils, concerning

America, the false ideas entertained of the Colonies, and the overweening confidence of the British nation;-the ferocity of the hostilities waged by Britain,-her acrimony of feeling and expression, and her temper of mind at, and after, the conclusion of peace; the illusions in which she indulged :-he shows the contrast between her dispositions and those of the United States;the unremitted jealousy and envy of Britain, by evidences adduced, and the disappointment of her hopes.

SECTION VII. shows the hostilities of the British Reviews. [From this we purpose to make some extracts.] It shows the titles of the United States to the respect and good will of Great Britain ;— the animosity and arrogance of the British periodical writers ;the derision and obloquy of the Edinburgh Review,-instances of its inconsistency and malevolence,-of the different Articles, on Davis's Travels,-on the Transactions of the American Philosophical Society, on the Letters on Silesia by John Quincy Adams,

on the Life of Washington, by Chief Justice Marshall,-on Ashe's Travels-on the Columbiad of Barlow, &c. He exposes some of the contradictions abounding in this Review ;-and retorts upon Great Britain.

SECTION VIII. continues the same subject. It treats of the Quarterly Review; and shows its implacable enmity,-its unworthy proceedings,-false and absurd logic, invectives and misrepresentations ;--its Articles on American works,--on Inchiquin's View of the United States,--Lewis and Clarke's expedition,--Life of Fulton by Cadwallader D. Colden, Esq.;-he defends this work against the Review,-discusses the question of Steam Navigation,

and asserts Fulton's merits ;-introduces the controversy respecting the invention of the Quadrant, called Hadleys,-maintains the claims of Godfrey,—and adduces original evidence ;-he detects contradictions as to England in the Quarterly Review ;exposes the ribaldry of the British Critic; and of the London Critical Journal;--he examines and refutes several charges against the American Congress; and retorts upon the British Parliament.

SECTION IX., the last, treats of the existence of Negro Slavery in the United States, and of the British abolition of the Slave trade. It shows the accusations of the Edinburgh Review against us, on this subject ;--the share of England in the establishment of that evil; and the early denunciations of it by the Colonists;-their repeated attempts to arrest the introduction of negroes,--and the inflexibility of the British government;--the American abolition of the trade; and the measures of the State Legislatures and of Congress to effect it:-historical accounts of the British Slave trade, and developements of its extent and criminality ;--history of the British abolition of that trade, the interested and imperfect character of it,-and the selfish aims of the British government ;--the concession of the slave trade to Spain, Portugal and France,

-and its fatal consequences;-that British capital has been largely engaged in the illicit trade;-the negotiations at the Congress of Vienna,-the insidious propositions of Lord Castlereagh, and their miscarriage;-that the British West Indies have been adequately supplied with negroes since the British abolition ;-the character of the West India slavery, that it is in no degree mitigated: in the renewed negotiations with foreign powers, their well-founded distrust of the views of Great Britain in relation to the general abolition of the Slave trade, the developement of her views;— the frustration of her scheme of establishing a right of search in time of peace,-of her hypocrisy and imposture; the present state of the slave trade;-he vindicates the United States, as regards the existence of slavery within their bosom,-and shows what they have separately done in the way of abolition;-he defends the character and deportment of the American masters, against all the allegations of the British travellers, and shows the character and condition of the American negroes, free and enslaved; and the state of the British poor.

Mr. Walsh introduces his First Section, with this quotation from the Edinburgh Review, and the following excellent remarks: America is destined, at all events, to be a great and 'powerful nation. In less than a century, she must have a popu'lation of at least seventy or eighty millions. War cannot pre'vent, and it appears from experience, can scarcely retard this 'natural multiplication. All these people will speak English; 'and, according to the most probable conjecture, will live under 'free governments, whether republican or monarchical, and will be 'industrious, well educated, and civilized. Within no very great 'distance of time, therefore-within a period to which those who ' are now entering life may easily survive-America will be one of · the most powerful and important nations of the earth; and her 'friendship and commerce will be more valued, in all probability, 'than that of any European state.' Such were the speculations of the Edinburgh Review, in the year 1814. In looking forward to what this journal predicts-to the supremacy in power and character which the North Americans are destined to reach-there is something not only curious, but instructive, in the fact, that they have been and are more contemned and defamed, than any other people of whom history has kept a record. Compared with our fate in this respect, that of Boeotia among the ancients, severe as it was and sufficiently unjust, may be described as condign and lenient. It was not alone in their exemption from political and commercial dependence, that the colonies of Greece may be said to have been more fortunate than those of modern Europe. Neither enlightened Greece-nor even imperious Rome, or rapacious Carthage, whose colonial policy bore a nearer resemblance to the modern-made perpetual war upon the reputation of its emigrant

offspring. The parent state was sometimes exorbitant in its demands, and tyrannical in the exercise of its superior force; but the colony had not to contend with a system of universal detractionto serve as a mark for the arrogance, spleen, or jocularity of orators, poets, and reviewers.

"The wise man of Europe-homo sapiens Europa-not satisfied with sneering and railing at these distant settlements, conspired at one time, to decry nature herself in her operations on the new continent and the theories of Buffon, Raynal, and De Paw, so fashionable and authoritative during a certain period, though now so entirely exploded, are to be cited in illustration of the state of the European mind towards the Western World. The feature not the least remarkable, belonging to this case is, that the particular mother country which might have been expected to be most tender of the feelings and character of her colonies, out of a due regard to justice, gratitude, and her own interests, was, at times, the most scornful in her tone, and the loudest in the chorus of obloquy. GREAT BRITAIN continued to throw out sarcasms and reproaches against her North American kinsmen, after the continent of Europe had adopted the opposite style, and had even passed into an enthusiastic admiration. We may pardon vapouring, and invective, and affected derision, at the juncture when her authority was directly questioned, and her colossal power braved by the thirteen pigmy communities of provincials; and some allowance is to be made for the play of passions strongly excited during and immediately after the struggle by which she lost so valuable a portion of her empire: but the same course has been pursued without any abatement of virulence or exception of topics, towards these Independent United States; it has not been abandoned after a second war, and after a developement of character, resources, and destinies, which would seem sufficient to silence malice and subdue the most sturdy prejudice."

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From his Section VII.-upon the Hostilities of the British Reviews-we proposed to make copious extracts; though it may well conceived that we have already made quotations, too copiously, from Mr. Walsh's labours. We did not set out with the inten tion to furnish the usual article of review and dissertation upon this work, as they have some time since been ably given by the North American, but to furnish a reply to the long article from the Edinburgh Review, as copied in this Number, by an exhibit of that part of the work itself, which is made the object of so laboured an attack by the Scottish critic, and thus afford the means, most conclusively, to controvert him. The animadversions of Mr. Walsh, upon the writings he quotes in this section, are, too, such excellent criticism, that any commentary of ours could scarcely be pertinent.--The reader will perceive, from the preceding summary of contents, that this is a minor part,-not the most important,