may also be derived. But what advantage can we derive from colonies in which the population, under a cruel and grinding system of oppression, is rapidly wasting away? The planter, we must suppose, knows his own interest. If he chooses to wear his slave to death by exacting from him an exorbitant quantity of work, we must suppose that he gains more by the work than he loses by the death. But his capital is not the only capital which has been sunk in those countries. Who is to repay the English nation for the treasure which has been expended in governing and defending them? If we had made Jamaica what we have made Massachusetts, if we had raised up in Guiana a popu. lation like that of New York, we should indeed have been repaid. But of such a result under the present system there is no hope. It is not improbable that some who are now alive may see the last negro disappear from our Transatlantic possessions. After having squandered a sum, which, if judiciously employed, might have called into existence a great, rich, and enlightened people, which might have spread our arts, our laws, and our language from the banks of the Maragnon to the Mexican sea, we shall again leave our territories deserts as we found them, without one memorial to prove that a civilized man ever set foot on their shores. But we must absolutely conclude. This subject is far too extensive to be fully discussed at present; and we have another duty to perform. With the Major we began, and with the Major we mean to end. That he is a very respectable officer, and a very respectable man, we have no reason to doubt. But we do, with all seriousness and good-will assure him, that he has no vocation to be a philosopher. If he has set his heart on constructing theories, we are sorry for him; for we cannot flatter him with the faintest hope of success. A few undigested facts, and a few long words that mean nothing, are but a slender stock for so extensive a business. For a time he may play the politician among philosophers, and the philosopher among politicians. He may bewilder speculative men with the cant of office, and practical men with the cant of metaphysics. But at last he must find his level. He is very fit to be a collector of facts, a purveyor of details to those who know how to reason on them; but he is no more qualified to speculate on political science, than a bricklayer is to rival Palladio, or a nurseryman to con fute Linnæus. THE PRESENT ADMINISTRATION. (Edinburgh Review,) June, 1827. WE ought to apologize to our readers for prefixing to this article the name of such a publication. The two numbers which lie on our table contain nothing which could be endured, even at a dinner of the Pitt Club, unless, as the newspapers express it, the hilarity had been continued to a very late hour. We have met, we confess, with nobody who has ever seen them; and, should our account excite any curi osity respecting them, we fear that an application to the booksellers will already be too late. Some tidings of them may perhaps be obtained from the trunk-makers. In order to console our readers, however, under this disappointment, we will venture to assure them, that the only subject on which the reasonings of these Antijacobin Reviewers throw any light, is one in which we take very little interest - the state of their own understandings; and that the only feeling which their pathetic appeals have excited in us, is that of deep regret for our four shillings, which are gone and will return no more. It is not a very cleanly, or a very agreeable task, to rake up from the kennels of oblivion the remains of drowned abor.. tions, which have never opened their eyes on the day, or even been heard to whimper, but have been at once transferred from the filth in which they were littered, to the filth with which they are to rot. But unhappily we have no choice. Bad as this work is, it is quite as good as any which has appeared against the present administration. We bave looked everywhere, without being able to find any antagonist who can possibly be as much ashamed of defeat as we shall be of victory. • The New Antijacobin Review. - Nos. I. and II. 8vo. London, 1827. The manner in which the influence of the press has, at chis crisis, been exercised, is, indeed, very remarkable. All the talent has been on one side. With an unanimity which, as Lord Londonderry wisely supposes, can be ascribed only to a dexterous use of the secret-service money, the able and respectable journals of the metropolis have all supported the new government. It has been attacked, on the other hand, by writers who make every cause which they espouse despicable or odious, by one paper which owes all its notoriety to its reports of the slang uttered by drunken lads who are brought to Bow Street for breaking windows-- by another which barely contrives to subsist on intelligence from butlers, and advertisements from perfumers. With these are joined all the scribblers who rest their claim to orthodoxy and loyalty on the perfection to which they have carried the arts of ribaldry and slander. What part these gentlemen would take in the present contest, seemed at first doubtful. We feared, for a moment, that their servility might overpower their malignity, and that they would be even more inclined to flatter the powerful than to calumniate the innocent. It turns out that we were mistaken; and we are most thankful for it. They have been kind enough to spare us the discredit of their alliance. We know not how we should have borne to be of the same party with them. It is bad enough, God knows, to be of the same species. The writers of the book before us, who are also, we believe, the great majority of its readers, can scarcely be said to belong to this class. They rather resemble those snakes with which Indian jugglers perform so many curious tricks: The bags of venom are left, but the teeth are extracted. That they might omit nothing tending to make them ridicu lous, they have adopted a title on which no judicious writer would have ventured; and challenged comparison with one of the most ingenious and amusing volumes in our language. Whether they have assumed this name on the principle which influenced Mr. Shandy in christening his children, or from a whim similar to that which induced the proprietors of the most frightful Hottentot that ever lived, to give her the name of Venus, we shall not pretend to decide; but we would seriously advise them to consider, whether it is for their interest, that people should be reminded of the cele brated imitations of Darwin and Kotzebue, while they are ng such parodies on the Bible as the following:- "In days, a strange person shall appear in the land, and he cry to the people, Behold, I am possessed by the Deof Ultra-Liberalism; I have received the gift of inco ce; I am a political philosopher, and a professor of loxes." e would also, with great respect, ask the gentleman who ampooned Mr. Canning in such Drydenian couplets as "When he said if they would but let him in, her his performance gains much by being compared New Morality? and, indeed, whether such satire as this kely to make anybody laugh but himself, or to make ody wince but his publisher? it we must take leave of the New Antijacobin Review; we do so, hoping that we have secured the gratitude of nductors. We once heard a schoolboy relate, with evisatisfaction and pride, that he had been horsewhipped Duke : : we trust that our present condescension will be ghly appreciated. at it is not for the purpose of making a scarecrow of a ulous publication, that we address our readers at the ent important crisis. We are convinced, that the cause e present Ministers is the cause of liberty, the cause of ation, the cause of political science, the cause of the le, who are entitled to expect from their wisdom and libermany judicious reforms, - the cause of the aristocracy, unless those reforms be adopted, must inevitably be the ms of a violent and desolating revolution. We are coned, that the government of the country was never ined to men who more thoroughly understood its interest, were more sincerely disposed to promote it—to men in forming their arrangements, thought so much of they could do, and so little of what they could get. On other side, we see a party which, for ignorance, intemnce, and inconsistency, has no parallel in our annals, h, as an Opposition, we really think, is a scandal to the on, and, as a Ministry, would speedily be its ruin. Unthese circumstances, we think it our duty to give cur support to those with whose power are inseparably d up all the dearest interests of the community,—the reedom of worship, of discussion, and of trade, abroad, and our tranquillity at home. -our honour In undertaking the defence of the Ministers, we feel ourselves embarrassed by one difficulty: we are unable to comprehend distinctly of what they are accused. A statement of facts may be contradicted; but the gentlemen of the Opposition do not deal in statements. Reasonings may be refuted; but the gentlemen of the Opposition do not reason There is something impassive and elastic about their dulness, on which all the weapons of controversy are thrown away. It makes no resistance, and receives no impression. Το argue with it, is like stabbing the water, or cudgelling a woolpack. Buonaparte is said to have remarked, that the English soldiers at Waterloo did not know when they were beaten. The Duke of Wellington, equally fortunate in politics and in war, has the rare felicity of being supported a second time by a force of this description, men whose desperate hardihood in argument sets all assailants at defiance, who fight on, though borne down on every side by overwhelming proofs, rush enthusiastically into the mouth of an absurdity, or stake themselves with cool intrepidity on the horn of a dilemma. We doubt whether this unconquerable pertinacity be quite as honourable in debate as in battle; but we are sure, that it is a very difficult task for persons trained in the old school of logical tactics to contend with antagonists who possess such a quality. 66 י ! The species of argument in which the members of the Opposition appear chiefly to excel, is that of which the Marquis, in the Critique de l'Ecole des Femmes, showed himself "Tarte à la crêmeso great a master: morbleu, tarte à la crême!" "Hé bien, que veux tu dire, tarte à la crême?" Parbleu, tarte à la crême, chevalier!" "Mais encore?" "Tarte à la crême!" "Dî-nous un peu tes raisons." "Tarte à la crême ! "Mais il faut expliquer ta pensée, ce me semble." "Tarte à la crême, Madame." "Que trouvezvouz là à redire ?" "Moi, rien; - tarte à la crême!" With equal taste and judgment, the writers and speakers of the Opposition repeat their favourite phrases, "deserted principles," "unnatural coalition," "base love of office." They have not, we must allow, been unfortunate in their choice of a topic. The English are but too much accustomed to consider every public virtue as comprised in consistency |