accoutred with so much paltry gaudiness and affected finery? The coarsest manufacture that can be made of wool, dyed of a brick-dust colour, goes down with him, because it is in imitation of scarlet or crimson cloth; and to make him think himself as like his officer as it is possible, with little or no cost, instead of silver or gold lace, his hat is trimmed with white or yellow worsted, which in others would deserve bedlam; yet these fine allurements, and the noise made upon a calf-skin, have drawn in and been the destruction of more men in reality, than all the killing eyes and bewitching voices of women ever slew in jest. To day the swineherd puts on his red coat, and believes every body in earnest that calls him gentleman; and two days after, Serjeant Kite gives him a swinging rap with his cane, for holding his musket an inch higher than he should do When a man reflects on all this, and the usage they generally receive-their pay-and the care that is taken of them when they are not wanted, must he not wonder how wretches can be so silly as to be proud of being called gentlemen soldiers? Yet if they were not so called, no art, discipline, or money, would be capable of making them so brave as thousands of them are."

When all the base arts which custom is said to have rendered necessary are practised only to raise and support a regular army, perhaps they might, however reluctantly, be connived at by the watchful friend of freedom. But when the major part of the labouring poor, and all the yeomanry, are made gentlemen soldiers, merely to support a minister, it is time for every virtuous and independent mind to express, as well as feel, alarm.

It appears, from the above-cited passage of an author who had anatomized human nature, to find

out its most latent energies, that the spirit of pride is rendered, by artful statesmen, the chief means of supplying an army. But the spirit of pride is in fact the spirit of despotism; especially when it is that sort of pride which plumes itself on command, on external decoration, and the idle vanity of military parade.

When this pride takes place universally in a nation, there will remain little industry, and less independence. The grand object will be to rise above our neighbours in show and authority. All will bow to the man in power, in the hope of distinction. Men will no longer rely on their own laborious exertions; but the poor man will court, by the most obsequious submission, the favour of the esquire; the esquire cringe to the next lord, especially if he be a lord-lieutenant of the county; and the lord-lieutenant of the county, will fall prostrate before the first lord of the treasury; and the first lord of the treasury will idolize prerogative. Thus the military rage will trample on liberty; and despotism triumphant march through the land, with drums beating and colours flying.

SECTION XVIII.

Levity, Effeminacy, Ignorance, and Want of Principle in private Life, inimical to all public Virtue, and favourable to the Spirit of Despotism.

"THE Constitution of the British government" (says Bolingbroke)" supposes our kings may abuse their power, and our representatives betray their trust, and provides against both these contingencies. Here let us observe, that the same constitution is very far

from supposing the people will ever betray themselves; and yet this case is possible.

"A wise and brave people will neither be cozened nor bullied out of their liberty; but a wise and brave people may cease to be such; they may degenerate; they may sink into sloth and luxury; they may resign themselves to a treacherous conduct; or abet the enemies of the constitution, under a notion of supporting the friends of government; they may want the sense to discern their danger in time, or the courage to resist when it stares them in the face.

"The Tarquins were expelled, and Rome resumed her liberty; Cæsar was murdered, and all his race extinct; but Rome remained in bondage. Whence this difference? In the days of Tarquin, the people of Rome were not yet corrupted; in the days of Cæsar, they were most corrupt.

"A free people may be sometimes betrayed; but no people will betray themselves, and sacrifice their liberty, unless they fall into a state of universal corruption.

"As all government began, so all government must end by the people; tyrannical government, by their virtue and courage; and even free governments, by their vice and baseness. Our constitution indeed makes it impossible to destroy liberty by any sudden blast of popular fury, or by the treachery of the few; but if the many will concur with the few; if they will advisedly and deliberately suffer their liberty to be taken away by those on whom they delegate power to preserve it, this no constitution can prevent. God would not support even his own theocracy against the concurrent desire of the children of Israel; but gave them a king in his anger.

"How then should our human constitution of government support itself against so universal a change,

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as we here suppose, in the temper and character of the people. It cannot be. We may give ourselves a tyrant, if we please. But this can never happen, till the whole nation falls into a state of political reprobation. Then, and not till then, political damnation will be our lot."

So far a political writer, who strenuously supports the cause of liberty, and who has been, for that reason, lately depreciated. The words just now cited are worthy the serious consideration of every man who wishes to leave the inheritance of liberty, which he received from his forefathers, unimpaired to his posterity. We are jealous of charters, privileges, and laws, but not sufficiently aware of the danger which liberty incurs from degeneracy of manners. But what avail laws preventing constructive treason, and bills of rights ascertaining our liberties, without virtuous dispositions in the people?

A charter, as an advocate at the English bar expressed it, is but a piece of parchment with a bit of wax dangling to it, if men have lost that energy of mind which is necessary to preserve the rights it was intended to confer or secure. The trial by jury, the bulwark of liberty, as we have lately experienced it in very remarkable instances, will be but a tottering wall, when oaths have lost their sanctity, and when truth and justice are considered only as phantoms. What will avail a constitution, when every one is immersed in private concerns, private pleasures, and private interest, acknowledging no public care, no general concern, nothing out of the sphere of domestic or personal affairs, worthy of anxious regard?

I lately heard a sensible man affirm, in a tone of apparent despondency, that in England there was, at the time he spoke, no public. I thought the expression strong, and paused to consider it. I hope it

was the ebullition of sudden vexation at circumstances, which, when it was spoken, seemed to argue a general insensibility in the people to the blessings of a free country. It was uttered at a time when a zeal, real or pretended, for the ministers of government, seemed totally to overlook, in its mistaken ardour, the public welfare.

"There is no public," said the sagacious observer. I understood him to mean, that from an ambitious attachment to party, in some of the higher ranks; to self-interest, in some of the lower; to general dissipation, in all; the number of independent, liberally minded, and well-informed men, who zealously wished and sought the public good and the happiness of man, was too inconsiderable to effect any great and important purpose. Public virtue must arise from private. Great pretensions to it may be made by the profligate, but they will be found to originate in selfishness, in rancour, in envy, or some corrupt principle inconsistent with a virtuous character and benevolent conduct.

If there be such a defection from private and public virtue, what is to preserve a regard for the constitution, whenever ministerial influence shall so far prevail as to render it the personal interest of great majorities of powerful, because rich, men, to neglect it, or even to connive at infringements upon it? If the people fall into universal corruption, the words liberty and constitution will be considered by them as fit only to adorn a school-boy's declamation. In such a state there will be no more security for the tenant of a throne than of a cottage. A junto, that has no regard for either, and is solely actuated by the love of power, its distinctions and emoluments, may, by distributing distinctions and emoluments on many, and by raising the hopes and expectations of