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Le cuties of 1 1A ISHL Labour to Mimself, and ac aut ge to be colNITY LI SUL VI DE CETACE? git to the day 1 freds. As I happened it be abroad at the time d jucoup va, and to fabro some if the sockets vi femented. Ava nature, that I suvus for a consideratur dem é sup di telling & iglapse DNS evocar is 4 o fired materaly mut the represents the i bad bar made in foreigen respecting him. Accordingly, I erat am rem from V rg, that if, as the Chronicle bated, the authe auro bac on his attention, mi

not convandy fed upon our foreign relations; it be tac not der stodied huma nature, and made the science of public law the foundation such knowledge; Lis travel over foreign countries bad merely consisted, to use kord Cortsterfield's 801Table words, in coming the role stones; and if he and extured the characters and menders of foreign courts in the cteria of women of fashion only, or in the cours entures of the a gassenti, Lis lordship would do better to remont at home, “for the honour of himself, and the advantage of the country." And, as to the other grou of recommendation, that Eis lordship would have been one of the best speakers to parliament, if he had chosen the the of a parlament-min, it was Lowered, us the best speaker i perlan ent might be one of the worst aegociators out of it; “ I think with Old flodge, that great tallers do the least ye see," and with mode grave old genteman, a great negociator is his day, who said, that discrets speech is more than aloquence; and to speak agreably to him with whom we dra, á more than to speak in good words, or in good order. *

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These, then, were the qualifications of lord Dinglas, as moorded in the Morn's Chronicle; and, from all the information that I can collect, the display of his abil has been equal to the expectations which might have been formed from such quá fications. I do not deny the merits of his lordship; on the contrary, I am willing acknowledge all, and more than what has been stated in the party paper; not unreasonable to require some proofs of these great talents having been properly “ plied. Hitherto we have seen none. Whence it may be inferred, that those who censured the late ministry for appointing his lordship to take a distinguished part a stage that was the most troubled and important which Europe had ever witnessed, do not deserve those reproaches which the writer in the Chronicle has so profusely vished upon them. But the zeal of this writer has furnished us with an irresisten weapon of offence against his own arguments. He admits, that lord Douglas is markable for certain singularities, but these, he philosophically tells us, have no inf ence upon the principles, or general character of the man. This is a novel doctrine, the absurdity of which will be best exposed by plain allusions. If it be granted that

*Lord Bacon. Nothing can be more entertaining than the ceremonious account which lord Bacon gives of the conference between the foreign embassadors and the ministers of Henry the seventh.-See his life of that prince. No one has written so well as lord Chesterfield upon the qualifications of a foreign minister; but by comp ring his letters with the essays of lord Bacon, the reader will find, that there is scarcely a new idea in lord Chesterfield relative to the rules of prudence, and of conduct public life.

none among us is without some particularities, it does not follow, that we are all remarkable for singularities; and I conceive, an odd fish should be the last upon earth" whom we ought to select to represent the nation abroad, where the rules of decorum prescribe, that the representive, without forgetting the dignity of his character or his duties, should conform, as much as possible, to the habits of the court to which he is sent; or, as lord Chesterfield expresses it, when at Rome, to do as Rome does. Much depends upon the exteriour qualities of a foreign minister; and, therefore, if he cannot divest himself of singularities, which, in defiance of the most splendid interiour endowments, must reuder him ridiculous in society, he ought not to be entrusted with a foreign mission. For when the representative of a country is looked upon with derision, when he is considered as a burlesque representation of the majesty of a state, the state itself incurs the risk of falling into contempt. If Algernon Sydney had followed the advice of Oliver Cromwell, when he was sent ambassador from the commonwealth to the king of Sweden, he would never have been able to have effected the purpose entrusted to his charge. In one of his official dispatches to Sidney, Oliver the saint instructs him, "in the midst of the most solemn and interesting part of a conference with the ministers whom he may have to deal with, to run into a corner, and have a little talk with the Lord, which he would find marvellously refreshing, and a great help to business." Sidney neglected the admonition, and, without being singular compelled the victorious Swede to raise the siege of Copenhagen.

There is a wide distinction between particularities and singularities, the former of which are not always observable; but the latter are invented for the express purpose. of observation. For instance, when I sit down in my study to prepare my review for the press, there are two requisites necessary, without which, my pen is sure to lag; these are, a favourite chair or tripod, and my snuff-box stationed close by the inkstand. Now these are particularities, frivolous in themselves, which no one was acquainted with until this day, and which I can, and do often dispense with, especially when I am from home. But, whenever I appear abroad, if, instead of dressing myself as other men do, I should rig my carcase with histrionick buskins, and display a tail as thick and as long as the tail of a kangaroo, it is most certain that I should be the laughing-stock of all my countrymen: and, if they should turn me into ridicule, what may not be expected from foreigners, at the sight of such an human baboon, exhibiting himself in their country? Suppose when general Andreossy went to St. James's, as the ambassador froin France, that he had appeared in a red cap, with his neck bare, à la guillotine, and in a pair of half boots, without stockings, as I have seen some of the mad-caps of the French legislature habited, what would the court have thought of such a singular animal?-Why both the collared gentry and the sanscullottes would have taken him for a devil, the representative of the great devil, notwithstanding that every one of them might have known that he was a man of irreproachable character, a profound mathematician, and the best writer in the world upon the subject of a canal. Again, it is possible, that one day or other, we may send to a foreign court, remarkable for etiquette, a minister of vast acquirements, and endowed also with a handsome leg and thigh. If it should happen, that this distinguished personage should prize himself more upon the symmetry of his leg, than upon the furniture of his upper works, and take it into his cranium to go to court in a smart pair of white leather breeches, and hussar boots, of the Bond-street cut, what consternation would such violation of the established rules of etiquette create, among circle of princes, princesses, counts, countesses, barons, and baronesses, every one of whom could trace their genealogy for centuries back; to Peleg, grandson of Salah, who was the grandson of Noah! Could we wonder that such an ambassador should ever after go by the name of P. LEG? Another case: Whenever I go to town, I am almost certain of meeting, at the west end of it, north of Oxford-street, a gentleman, who, from his dress, and the episcopal rotundity of his wig, I take to be a dignified clergyman. As he walks along, I have observed his head in constant motion, and in a direction different from that of his body. Every step he takes, the head, beginning at the chin, making a jerk upwards, describes the quadrant of a circle, not unlike the heads of the little Chinese mandarins, which were formerly

* See Milton's State Papers, and Hollis's life of Sidney,

stationed over the chimney pieces of our thrifty housewives of the ni vemant school, and which, once touched, would bob up and down and moanG KEMEJA LÉ an hour together. If it were not for the general appearance of the general and especially the three-cornered hat upon the wig, I should certainly here uker nun in some member of the whig club, whose neck had fortunately sipped rings a E and that the recollection of the unpleasant sensation, had occasioned the Feder perpetual motion, which I have so often noticed and admired. I ástarust de action by the name of singularity, because, learned doctors, whom I hure custhei upon the occasion, tell me, that no cutaneous, or paralytic affection, vil assie such an everlasting oscillation of the head. If, therefore, my sms * 1 the person I allude to is actually a divine, and that he is distinguished by his signLarity in the pulpit, his parishioners, I apprehend, must possess a great cummari of their muscles, as long as he remains in it. I could produce many other natmos of singularity, but these will suffice to shew, that this quality is no recommendnye of a man's character, much less of that of a diplomatic person. What de sorarties are which adorn the character of lord Douglas, the Chronicle kos out tog proper to inform its readers; but, it is clear, if they be at all similar to any ster have been described above, that they could not fail to render his lordship an eye ridicule in a foreign court. It has been very generally whispered that these sigurte ties did occasion some inconvenience, and report goes so far as to OT, some iss to his lordship. However, the public will learn, with pleasure, that his lordship's tongue has not been excised, and that, after his travels of discovery over the wast Siber, and the steppes of the vast Russian empire, he may, on his recoms to this country, choose the sphere of an orator, and be, in the dialect of the Chalde, "one of the best speakers in parliament." In that case it is to be hoped that he will leve his singularities in the country where they baye afforded so much diversice; for though John Bull is se fond of humour that he will, with his wonted good nature, toeste any species of drollery, yet he cannot endure any thing forced or

With respect of the animadversions that were made upon Mr. Adair's appointment, they were, in my opinion, conclusive; and I do not hesitate even now to repest, the circumstance alleged against his appointment to fill a diplomatic capacity, was sufficient to have disqualified him. But, it may be said, the present ministry retain him in his official employment, which fact is, alone, a sufficient proof that they are satisfied with him. To this I answer, that it is an argument only, and no proof. For aught I know, the present administration may be satisfied with him, or, from a motive of state complacency, they may judge it expedient to let him remain at the cort of Vienna: and the last motive seems to be the fact, for, according to the Morning Chronicle, he is continued solely at the particular request of that court. The cir cumstance has afforded to the Chronicle an opportunity for exultation; and, no doubt, it is a just ground of triumph, in which every honest Briton may participate. It is a very pleasing reflection, that we have a minister, though a member of the whig club, who has made himself respected abroad; and when we consider how this nation has been represented, for some years past, upon the continent, the distinguished approbation conferred upon the character of Mr. Adair, is truly consoling. But this agreeable circumstance, does not, in the least, invalidate our original ground of exception to that gentleman's appointment by Mr. Fox. The people had not forgotten the clandes tine mission of Mr. Adair to Petersburg, for the treacherous design of counteracting the views of his majesty's government, and of giving to a factious leader a momentary advantage over his political adversary. The success of that pernicious stratagem, the civilized world feels at this day. It is notorious that Mr. Adair was the secret agent whom Mr. Fox employed upon that occasion; that he was commissioned too without the knowledge of the confidential associates of Mr. Fox, to betray and frustrate the policy of the British minister, than which, no act could more fully prove that the welfare of their country was a matter of subordinate consideration to them, when placed in competition with the defeat of a political rival. What honest man could reflect upon that base transaction, and dissemble his anxieties and his indignation at the nomination of Mr. Adair to the embassy at Vienna, the moment that Mr. Fox was invested with power? Did not their previous intrigue justify suspicion of their future conduct, especially when Mr. Fox did not disguise that the present was a war of wanton ag

gression on our part against France? We contemplated this appointment both retrospectively and prospectively; and, dreading the future from our experience of the past, we said that our country's interests might be committed. What I wrote upon that occasion, I glory in repeating here; and I challenge the Morning Chronicle to adduce the shadow of an argument against the propriety of my reasonings. The most glaring and indecent act of impropriety, I observed, the greatest affront to public opinion, next to the appointment of Alexander Davison to the treasurership of the ordnance, is the act of sending Mr. Robert Adair to the court of Vienna, in the character of minister plenipotentiary from this country. I call it an act of impropriety, because when we refer to Mr. Adair's previous diplomatic excursion to Petersburg, and reflect by whose authority, and with whose instructions he went thither, it is an high insult to the public spirit of the country, and an indignity to our sovereign. Is Britain descended so low in the comparison with foreign countries, that the person selected by our secretrary for foreign affairs, as the fittest to fill a most important, and, at this time, arduous situation, is a man whom Mr. Burke branded with the charge of having committed" an high-treasonable misdemeanor," and whom no one ever heard of, except under the names of Bobby Adair, the half letter writer, and the representative of Mr. Fox at the court of St. Petersburg? This last circumstance is a most weighty aggravation of the indignity cast upon this nation by the selection of this particular man; and that my readers may enter fully into this opinion, that they may see the nature and characters of the men who are managing our interests at home and abroad, that they may have a full-length portrait of this accomplished plenipo, this bantling of rank, weight, and talents, I request their attention to the following extract from Mr. Burke's "Observations on the conduct of the Minority." "The laws and constitution of the kingdom, entrust the sole and exclusive right of treating with foreign potentates to the king. This is an undisputed part of the legal prerogative of the crown. However, notwithstanding this, Mr. Fox, without the knowledge or participation of any one person in the House of Commons, with whom he was bound, by every party principle in matters of delicacy and importance, confidentially to communicate, thought proper to send Mr. Adair as his representative, and with his cypher, to St. Petersburg, there to frustrate the objects for which the minister from the crown was authorized to treat. He succeeded in this, his design, and did actually frustrate the king's minister in some of the objects of his negociation. This proceeding of Mr. Fox does not (as I conceive) amount to absolute high treason, Russia, though on bad terms, not having been then declaredly at war with this kingdom.But such a proceeding is, in law, not very remote from that offence; and is, undoubtedly, a most unconstitutional act, and a high-treasonable misdemeanor. The legitimate and sure mode of communication between this nation and foreign powers, is rendered uncertain, precarious, and treacherous, by being divided into two channels, one with the government, one with the head of a party, in opposition to that government; by which means the foreign powers can never be assured of the real authority or validity of any public transaction whatsoever. On the other hand, the advantage taken of the discontent which at that time prevailed in parliament, and in the nation, to give to an individual an influence directly against the government of his country, in a foreign court, has made a highway into England for the intrigues of foreign courts in our affairs. This is a sore evil; an evil from which, before this time, England was more free than any other nation. Nothing can preserve us from that evil, which connects cabinet factions abroad with popular factions here, but the keeping sacred the crown, as the only channel of communication with every other

nation."

These were the strong grounds which led reflecting persons to feel a just alarm at Mr. Adair's appointment, and to remonstrate against it as an act of gross effrontery on the part of Mr. Fox. In these exceptions, nothing personal was meant against

*See No. 27, of the 1st volume.

By the bye, I hear nothing more about the prosecution of this delinquent. I have been hitherto silent from a regard to justice. But if, upon inquiry, I should find that the long fingers of the law cannot, or will not, be outstretched to overtake him, I shall feel myself bound to resume my criticisms upon his adventures.

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Mr. Adair, any further than as his agency at St. Petersburgh was implicated; but they were confined to the want of delicacy on the part of the employer. Of Mr. Adair's abilities, not one word was said; Of his diplomatic dexterity, no one doubted who recollected his exploits in Russia. The exceptions taken, therefore, were not against the personal character, but the political,-the party character of that gentleman. Divested of his former reputation, as a clandestine agent in an illicit and unpatriotic transaction, he might make a good foreign minister; but considered as a partizan, and the accredited agent of the state under the official patronage of his former employer, he certainly was a proper object of jealousy and animadversion. It does not, however, follow, because there was ground for this jealousy then, that it should continue to exist now. The connection that was dreaded between himself and his patron, has ceased with the life of the latter; and furthermore, a new ministry, actuated by national principles, less tinctured with the doctrines of modern universal philanthropy, and unquestionably hostile to the ambition and aggrandize. ment of France, are entrusted with the management of affairs, and will take care that no former bias of the mind shall induce any agent of our government abroad, to act otherwise than as may be consonant with the honour, the diguity, and the interests of the empire. Time, which assuages the force of party attachments, and corrects the jaundiced intellectual vision of public characters, may also contribute to effect a great change in the mode of thinking of the person to whom we allude; and should he be retained, for any length of time, in the dignified situation which he now fills; it is extremely probable, that his thoughts will be inseparably bent upon his country's welfare, and that the Whig Club, the good old cause, the choice spirits, the Foxites, will be obliterated from his mind, and become as much the objects of his contempt, as they now are of every patriotic and ingenuous subject.

Of Mr. Erskine, the Morning Chronicle has not launched out in its usual tone of eulogy, but has contented itself with republishing, in its columns, the favourable character given of that minister in the American papers. It is true, that gentleman's appointment was objected to, because he had married an American, and he was supposed to be not at all conversant with the duties of an ambassador. With respect of his marriage, I do not think that an objection of this sort would he tenable of delicate, in any case, where a personal interest in the welfare of the wife's country cannot be established. For which reason, the objection to Mr. Adair, upon the same principle, would have been irrelevant and gentlemanly, if his well-known connection with Mr. Fox, and that minister's steadfast predeliction for French politics, had not rendered almost every act of his public life an object of suspicion. Apart from this consideration, the objection would be unworthy of a liberal mind. It is not French wives, but FRENCH MISTRESSES whose obtrusive influence England may justly tremble at; and it matters not whether these infamous and abandoned prostitutes be screened beneath a princely, or any other, coat of arms; still we Britons must pay the wages of their prostitution, and hire them to make us the victims of their treachery. If these be impeached as the dreams of a gloomy' imagination, let the sceptic read the memoirs of the house of Stuart, by Dalrymple and Macpherson, or go to the opera, or to, and — and, &c.

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Upon these grounds, it does not appear that the mere circumstance of Mr. Erskine having married an American lady, ought to be urged as a reason for excluding him from the exercise of diplomatic functions in the United States. But if to this fact be superadded the circumstance, as reported, that his family have invested a large fortune in the land and funds of America, a sufficient cause arises out of it, to question the propriety and decency of his appointment, because he must have a personal interest in the prosperity of that country, which, from innumerable causes, and some of which have recently occurred, may run counter to the immediate interests of his country. A man cannot serve God and Mammon; neither are we to expect in our times, the display of that patriotisin, which now sounds romantic, by which the national attachments of an individual preponderate over his regards to property. It is atrite adage, that personal feelings, duties, and patriotism, follow property; and therefore, some degree of caution ought to be observed in giving preferment to one, whose interests lay more, or as much, in a foreign as in his native country. These observations are here introduced merely in answer to the challenge contained in the

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