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the purity of his own motives, and with the benevolence of his own intentions, he does not appear to have considered whether the public mind was prepared for contemplating the truth which he wished to display, for falling in love with it, and for submitting to the guidance of its dictates. Had he asked himself this question, it might have abated his zeal, and the feebleness of hope might have restrained the eloquence of his declamation: for, though we will not say of the nation, in the language of the scripture, which the Major frequently quotes, "eyes have they but they see not, ears but they hear not, neither do they understand," yet we are of opinion that it is in a situation not the most propitious to candid and impartial discussion; and that the prominent subject of the pamphlet before us, a fair and full representation of the people,-though in itself highly interesting to the inhabitants of every county, does not in any county interest them as it was wont to do. When persons in the habits of comfortable enjoyment are alarmed with the apprehension of losing their property, it is difficult to excite an ardour for liberty; when men of rank and title fear degradation, they become insensible to the rights of the people; when the appeal is made to the sword, and it is dipped to the very hilt in blood, the wars of the press become a mere platitude; and when the community is convulsed by rage and every tu multuous passion, the modest and unintrusive voice of reason cannot make itself audible.

Under these disadvantages Major C. writes. Though the champion of the people, his argument may be deemed unpopular; and though he recommends a cheap defence of the nation,' he will probably receive no thanks from the Govern ment. The words REFORM, RIGHT OF ELECTION, LEGISLA TIVE REPRESENTATION, and POLITICAL LIBERTY, are now words of ill omen; and malignant violence has tortured the once honourable appellation of PATRIOT into a term of reproach. In such times, who can write on the side of Freedom and be enthusiastic enough to hope to make converts? It should seem that Major C. has this enthusiasm. While we lament its unpropitious appearance, we admire it, and wish it

success.

He offers his remarks and exhortations in the form of a speech intended to have been spoken to the High Sheriff and Freeholders of the county of Lincoln on the 6th of May 1796: but it is abundantly too long for a speech at a County Meeting, and is of a nature more calculated for the closet than for the hustings. It embraces a variety of topics, all connected with the subject of Parliamentary Reform, and tending to point out and demonstrate the necessity of Legislative Representations

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which he calls Political Christianity, or "glad tidings of great joy to all people."

The Major professes not to deal in calumnies, [he makes use, however, of some very hard words when speaking of Ministers, and particularly of Mr. Pitt,] but to lay down facts and then to reason on them. He states first that FORTY PEERS, by their own personal authority, return eighty-one Members to the Commons House of Parliament; and that no less than one hundred and fifty of its members owe their elections entirely to the interference of Peers.' His second fact or statement is that one hundred and fifty-four individuals return a decided majority of the House of Commons, i. e. they return three hundred and seven members, or a majority of fifty-six.' On the strength of these data, he calls on the freeholders of Lincoln to say, upon their honour, whether such an assembly ought to be called the Commons of Great Britain in Parliament assembled? Proceeding on this text, he describes the Government to be a faction of one hundred and fifty-four, under the guidance of a leader or dictator; and conceiving the real object of the present war to be the support of this government of 154, and to prevent a reform in parliament, he gives to it the new appellation of the Rotten Borough war. To the House of Commons, as it is at present constituted, he attributes our frequent wars and accumulated burdens, requiring a devouring taxation, which threatens to eat up every thing which human exertion can produce.' Nor is he only apprehensive that it must in the end destroy the liberties of the people, for he fears that it will also in a manner annihilate both King and Lords.

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The plain sober truth is, (says Major C.) you cannot, Gentlemen, support a government of Borough-holders, and Ministers who are their dependents, without speedily reducing yourselves to the mere gilded pageants of their power and pride, to flatter and fawn at their levees, and obsequiously to crouch before them, or contemptuously to be ordered to your country seats, there to ruminate in speechless meditation on the wretchedness of an enslaved nation, and the insignificance of that thing called a gentleman, when Freedom and Independence are no more

And can any Gentleman dream, that, by withholding himself from promoting the Reform of our Representation, he is consulting the safety of a King, and of a Nobility? If those elevated parties shall be blind to the chain of cause and effect, you, Gentlemen, who are neither too high nor too low in society for salutary reflection, nor

* This sort of banishment from Court was common under the French Monarchy. Under the Roman Emperors, a gentleman was frequently ordered to some petty island in the Mediterranean sea, to amuse himself with gathering cockle shells and sea weeds.'

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too dissipated for deriving from history solid instruction, may perhaps perceive a danger which is hidden from their eyes. If their optics can discover nothing to disquiet them but the troubled Charybdis of Popular Discontent; cannot you discern the Scylla of a gathering Usurpation, destined, if not timely crushed, to crush the throne of the Guelfs, and reduce our lofty Lords, aye, even the Lords of Boroughs themselves, into dancing puppets at the feet of a despotic master?

'Casar himself knew not the genius of the government of which he laid the foundations; much less was it known to his short-sighted abettors. The Roman empire grew out of a gradual and natural progression, from corruption to encroachment; from encroachment to usurpation; from usurpation to tyranny; and from tyranny to despotism: crushing, in the end, all those petty lords and tyrants (the Borough-holders of that day) who had assisted in its formation. We, in the second stage of the same progression, are rapidly advancing to the third.

• When an irresistible authority shall be solidly concentered in a Cabinet; when the regal functions, useless to a King who cannot exercise them in person, shall be turned against him by his treacherous servants; and when the power of the sword shall be paramount to every other power; will not the strife of British Triumvirs, supported by their respective adherents, and respective generals, then begin, unless the genius and fortune of one shall forbid competition? At all events, in such a state of things, must not one prevail? Will that one endure a throne and an enthroned family to stand in his way, or to disappoint his ambition?History and human nature say No!

Will that one, formed by the ascendency of talents, and a daring courage, to overpower and to govern, condescend to appear as the mere Minister of a Royal prisoner; and consent to dismiss the hope which inhabits the bosom of every Despot, that of transmitting to his own descendants the fruit of his crimes?

Surely, Gentlemen, whether we look to, America for what an injured and irritated British people did for the preservation of liberty, or to Rome for what was done by a demagogue, who corrupted the go. vernment, and passed the Rubicon in arms; or to any of those many examples of an overgrown, omnipotent Minister, usurping the throne of his Master; we shall not be able to discover any imaginable safety to Royalty and Nobility amongst ourselves, but in a return to the purity of that Constitution which calls them its own, and offers them the protection of its shadowing wings.

In the condition of the King and the Nobility of this country, we all know there is an inherent defect, which nothing but purity in the other branch of the government can in any degree cure. That defect is inheritance. No principle can be more self-evideat, than that wisdom, knowledge, and virtue, are not hereditary. No proposition can be more plain, than that a nation which admits of the hereditary principle, in giving it a whole senate of legislators and judges, and a King also, in whom is to reside a negative on all laws which can be proposed, as well as the power of administering the whole executive government, must be utterly insane, if it do not counterbalance such an immensity of hereditary power by some other power, in which wisdom,

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wisdom, knowledge, and virtue shall be inherent qualities. Such inherent wisdom, knowledge, and virtue, can only exist in a body of men chosen for those qualities by their fellow-citizens at large. Such inherent wisdom, knowledge, and virtue, will always be found, when such an assembly shall consist, like our House of Commons, of a large number; provided no hereditary poison, or other mischief, destroys election; and provided, also, the elective districts be tolerably equal, and so limited, that the comparative merits of men in each district be generally known, and the freedom of election secured by a few simple and obvious rules.

But if the hereditary branches of our legislature are to swallow up the elective, it must generate a despotism of the worst kind; that is, a complicated despotism hid under the forms belonging to free govern

ment.

• Such a disordered state of things with us might end in a perma nent slavery of the people; but in the present state of knowledge and habits of thinking, it were more likely to terminate in an explosion, fatal for ever to all hereditary claims, What Englishman, then, who is content with the existence of hereditary powers, so they will leave him a free man, and not pull down the Constitution; and who shudders at the thought of civil war; but must anxiously watch over the purity of the Representative part of our government! And what Englishman, wishing to be free, although ever so partial to hereditary powers in themselves, but must see the wisdom, and the rectitude, of restraining them from rushing upon their own destruction!'

The Major concludes this intended speech by moving the following Resolutions :

I. That the People of England are bound by their Loyalty to support a Government of King, Lords, and Commons.

II. That to the Commons exclusively belong all Right and Power of creating a Commons House of Parliament.

III. That if a decided Majority of the Seats in the House of Commons should ever become an Inheritance in the possession of the Peers, and absolutely at their disposal, the Constitution, notwithstanding the preservation of Forms, would be subverted.

IV. That it is particularly incumbent upon all Representatives of Counties, Cities, and large Towns, to resist all attempts of Peers to obtain and to secure to themselves the Power of appointing Members to sit in the House of Commons; as well as to prevent that Re. presentation, which ought to be enjoyed by the "whole body of the People," from falling into the hands of so few persons, even Commoners, as to endanger the Independence of that House.'

To this speech is subjoined a letter, which appeared in the Cambridge Intelligencer on the 10th and 17th of September, urging the system of arming the nation at large as constitutional, and as absolutely necessary in order effectually to frustrate an invasion of the kingdom, should the enemy attempt it in force. The Major thinks that the establishment of the French Republic must be fatal to most of the Governments of Eu

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rope: but he says that we need not fear a Revolution in consequence of this new order of things, as by merely acting up to the principles of our Constitution, we shall find ourselves in possession of a ROYAL, NOBLE, AND POPULAR REPUBLIC.'

How far this sort of consolation will tend to asswage the fears which the erection of a republican government in France

have occasioned, we leave our readers to determine. Moo-y.

ART. XI. An Historical Account of the City of Hereford. With some Remarks on the River Wye, and the natural and artificial Beauties contiguous to its Banks, from Brobery to Wilton. Embellished with elegant Views, Plans, &c. By John Price. 8vo. pp. 262. 6s. Boards. Faulder. 1796.

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HIS is an agreeable publication, and in our opinion contains every thing useful or entertaining, with respect to the place which it describes, though confined to the compass of a moderate octavo. The writer's good sense has induced him to adopt a hint given to him respecting his account of Leominster *, and has lopped off the superfluities of uninteresting charters, records, &c. preserving only in the appendix of the present volume some extracts of deeds relative to charitable foundations, and two or three lists, which may prove of real utility. He begins with some historical narrations concerning the city, castle, and vicinity, and then proceeds to a topographical account of the city, including a description of its trade, population, government, public buildings, &c. The bishopric, cathedral, and succession of bishops, furnish another considerable article; followed by an account of the other churches, the collegiate school, and charitable institutions antient and modern. A short notice of the eminent natives of the place, and of the Earls of Hereford, concludes the main subject of the volume: but the author has made a pleasing addition, in a kind of tour down the Wye for the space of ten or twelve miles above and below the city; in which he has briefly touched on all the striking scenes, and the principal habitations, not only contiguous to that river, but within a moderate distance on each side.

We shall copy part of the description of the cathedral:

Although this Cathedral Church has undergone considerable mutilations, yet it is at this time a very stately, though irregular struc ture, notwithstanding it has suffered very much lately by the fall of the west tower, which was esteemed a curious piece of ancient architecture. As this tower was very massy and well built, it would not probably have gone to ruins for many centuries, had it not been very *See Monthly Rev. for December, 1795.

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