said, really believed himself a god. The vilest of the Cæsars demanded divine honours. Many instances are on record of wretched beings, with hardly any thing worthy of man about them, forgetting, in consequence of a little elevation above others, that they were mortals; behaving with the wickedness and cruelty of devils, and at the same time arrogating the power and dignity of the celestial nature. It is related of Hanno, the Carthaginian, that he taught starlings to say "Deus Hanno ;"* and that when a very large number had learned their lesson, he turned them loose into the woods, hoping that they would teach the wild birds on the trees to repeat the same words, and that thus the divinity of Hanno might be wafted into the remotest regions, and become the worship of the universe. Such conduct appears to resemble the ravings of the poor lunatic, who crowns himself, as he sits in his desolate cell, with a crown of straw, and imagines, while he sways a sceptre of the same materials, that he is an emperor. But in truth, the pride of despots, I mean those who have all the dispositions of despots, though they may not have the diadems, displays many of the symptoms of downright lunacy. lunacy. Pride is allowed by the physicians to have a powerful effect in turning the brain; and though it may not always fit the unhappy suf ferer for Bedlam, yet commonly renders him unfit for the offices of social life.

Shocking as madness is, it sometimes behaves in a manner which turns pity into laughter. Can any thing be more ridiculous, than the insolence of some persons, who having adopted high aristocratical notions, to correspond with their high birth, high titles, and high rank, declare that they know not what is meant by the people out of parliament; that

* Hanno is a God.

they do not acknowledge the political existence of the people, but on the benches of St. Stephen's chapel? Individuals of low degree they may know, and employ in their service, but they know nothing of the people, as millions of men, possessing rights or power. "The constitution" (say they) "knows nothing of the people considered as individuals." King, lords, and commons constitute the nation; but what is meant by the people they cannot divine. A mob they know, and would always have them dispersed by the military, as soon as two or three are gathered together; but the people, as a part of the constitution, they never could discover.

Mr. Burke, the great Coryphæus of aristocracy, says, "As a people can have no right to a corporate capacity without universal consent, so neither have they a right to hold exclusively any lands in the name and title of a corporation. On the scheme of the present rulers in our neighbouring country, regenerated as they are, they have no more right to the territory called France than I (Edmund Burke) have. Who are these insolent men, calling themselves the French nation, that would monopolize this fair domain of nature? Is it because they speak a certain jargon? Is it their mode of chattering? The crowd of men on the other side of the Channel, who have the impudence to call themselves a people, can never be the lawful exclusive possessors of the soil.” How truly laughable to hear an individual, Mr. Edmund Burke, taxing twenty-six millions of human creatures with impudence, for presuming to call themselves a people! I must smile at such absurdity, while I sincerely lament that this ingenious man has missed the opportunity of raising his family to the peerage, the grand object of so many years indefatigable labour, by a loss never to be repaired, and

in which every feeling heart must sympathize. Ambition, what art thou to the feelings of a father, exclaiming, like David, "O Absalom, my son, my son!" The great teacher death shows the vanity of all human aspirations after sublunary glory. He who loses a son in the prime of life and the career of honour, may learn to weep over the thousands, whose dearest relatives have been cut off by the sword of war, in consequence of doctrines which he maintained by a gaudy display of his eloquence, without foreseeing or regarding the calamities they had a tendency to produce.

The subtle writer goes on and observes, that "When the multitude" (from the context he means a majority of the people) are not under the habitual social discipline of the wiser, more expert, and more opulent, they can scarcely be said to be in civil society. ..When you separate the common sort of men from their proper chieftains, so as to form them into an adverse army, I no longer know that venerable object called the people, in such a disbanded race of deserters and vagabonds. For awhile they may be terrible indeed; but in such a manner as wild beasts are terrible. The mind owes to them no sort of submission. They are, as they have always been reputed, rebels. They may lawfully be fought with and brought under, whenever an advantage offers."

What gave rise to these elucidations he has told us a few pages before. "The factions now so busy amongst us, in order to divest men of all love of their country, and to remove from their minds all duty with regard to the state, endeavour to propagate an opinion that the people, in forming their commonwealth, have by no means parted with their power over it!" Horrendum dictu!

"Discuss any of their schemes-their answer isit is the act of the people, and that is sufficient!— The people are masters of the commonwealth; because in substance they are the commonwealth! The French revolution, say they, was the act of the majority of the people; and if the majority of any other people, the people of England for instance, wish to make the same change, they have the same right.Just the same, undoubtedly. That is, none at all.”

Such is the doctrine of this warm partisan of aristocratical distinction. But what say seven or eight millions of good people, who wish nothing, in their interference in politics, but to secure and extend their own happiness, and to make all others happy within the sphere of their influence? Let them say what they please, their remonstrance must not be heard. They are political non-entities; they are, as pride commonly calls inferiors in private life, nobody, or people whom nobody knows.

But now comes the tax-gatherer. These nonentities must find real tangible money to pay for the salaries of places, to pay pensions, and the interest of money advanced for the waging of wars, said to be in defence of law, order, and religion. It will not do to plead that they have no political existence. A very considerable part of their property, the produce of their labour, must be annually paid for the support of those who have the effrontery to say they are not visible, as a majority of individuals, in the eye of the constitution.

At a general election, would any candidate for a considerable city or county dare to advance such opinions respecting the insignificance, or rather nonexistence, of the people, as have been advanced by borough members, in their zeal for power and prerogative? The people would deny the doctrine

with a voice loud enough to silence the most obstreperous declaimer.

Mr. Burke will make no new converts to this opinion. The tory party had adopted it previously to the instruction of their sanguine advocate. It was always one of their principles. The people themselves will certainly reprobate ideas which lead to their political annihilation, in every respect, but in the privilege of contributing to the public revenue. But one cannot be surprised at any wild assertions of a man who writes under the impulse of passion. Anger, inflamed by mortified pride, seems to animate almost every sentence of his late invective. And what are we to think of the whiggism of one, who, in the commencement of the alarm concerning French principles, is said to have proposed to Mr. Fox to join together (these are the very words of the proposal) in "frowning down the doctrines of liberty."* The proposer must have no small opinion of himself, when he imagined that, assisted by one more, (though he were as great a man as Fox) he could frown down the doctrines of liberty. Jupiter shook Olympus with a nod; and Burke was to discountenance liberty, and annihilate the political existence of a people, with a frown.

Divisum imperium cum Jove Burkus habet.

I feel and

I revere the private virtues of the man. admire his excellence as a writer. I deplore the mistake which has led him to gratify the few in power, at the at the expense of millions of his fellow-creatures, who would have rejoiced in such an advocate against the influence of the despotic spirit. Imperial power has means enough to maintain itself. Genius

* See Mr. Wyvill s Letter to Mr, Pitt, page 108.