Dan. You are quite right; for it certainly must hurt an author of delicate feelings to see the liberties they take.

Sir F. No! quite the contrary; their abuse is, in fact, the best panegyric-I like it of all things. An author's reputation is only in danger from their support.

Sneer. Why that 's true-and that attack, now, on you the other day

Sir F. What? where?

Dan. Ay, you mean in a paper of Thursday: it was completely ill-natured, to be sure.

Sir F. O, so much the better. Ha! ha! ha! I would n't have it otherwise.

Dan. Certainly it is only to be laughed at, for

Sir F. You do n't happen to recollect what the fellow said, do you?

Sneer. Pray, Dangle,-Sir Fretful seems a little anxious

Sir F. Ono!-anxious,-not I,-not the least-I-But one may as well hear, you know.

Dan. Sneer, do you recollect? Make out something.

[Aside. Sneer. I will. [To Dangle.] Yes, yes, 1 remember perfectly.

Sir F. Well, and pray now-not that it signifies—what might the gentleman say?

Sneer. Why, he roundly asserts that you have not the slightest invention or original genius whatever; though you are the greatest traducer of all other authors living. Sir F. Ha! ha! ha!-very good!

Sneer. That as to comedy, you have not one idea of your own, he believes, even in your common-place book, where stray jokes and pilfered witticisms are kept with as much method as the ledger of the lost and stolen office. Sir F. Ha! ha! ha!-very pleasant!

Sneer. Nay, that you are so unlucky as not to have the skill even to steal with taste: but that you glean from the refuse of obscure volumes, where more judicious plagiarists have been before you; so that the body of your work is a composition of dregs and sediments, like a bad tavern's worst wine.

Sir F. Ha! ha!

ment stares through the fantastic incumbrance of its fine language, like a clown in one of the new uniforms!

Sir F. Ha! ha!

Sneer. That your occasional tropes and flowers suit the general coarseness of your style, as tambour sprigs would a ground of linsey-woolsey; while your imitations of Shakspeare resemble the mimicry of Falstaff's page, and are about as near the standard of the original.

Sir F. Ha!

Sneer. In short, that even the fine passages you steal are of no service to you; for the poverty of your own language prevents their assimilating; so that they lie on the surface like lumps of marl on a barren moor, encumbering what it is not in their power to fertilize !

Sir F. (after great agitation)-Now another person would be vexed at this.

Sneer. Oh! but I wouldn't have told you, only to divert you.

Sir F. I know it-I am diverted.-Ha! ha! ha!— not the least invention !-Ha! ha! ha! very good!—very good!

Sneer. Yes-no genius! Ha! ha! ha!

Dan. A severe rogue! Ha! ha! ha! But you are quite right, Sir Fretful, never to read such nonsense.

Sir F. To be sure-for if there is anything to praise, it is a foolish vanity to be gratified at it; and if it is abuse, why one is always sure to hear of it from one rascally goodnatured friend or another!

MR BURKE'S OPINION RELATIVE TO THe right of

ENGLAND TO TAX AMERICA.

But, ltr. Efpeaker, we have

a

right to lay c

Amer.

OH! inestimable right! Oh! wonderful, transcendent right, the assertion of which has cost this country thirteen provinces, six islands, one hundred thousand lives, and seventy millions of money! Oh! invaluable right! for the sake of which we have sacrificed our rank among nations, our importance abroad, and our happiness at home! Oh! right! more dear to us than our existence, which has already cost us so much, and which seems likely to cost us our all.

Infatuated man! (fixing his eye on the minister,) mis

erable and undone country! not to know that the claim of right, without the power of enforcing it, is nugatory and idle. We have a right to tax America, the noble lord tells us; therefore we ought to tax America. This is the profound logic which comprises the whole chain of his reasoning. Not inferior to this was the wisdom of him who resolved to shear the wolf. What! shear a wolf! Have you considered the resistance, the difficulty, the danger of the attempt? No, says the madman, I have considered nothing but the right. Man has a right of dominion over the beasts of the forest; and therefore I will shear the wolf. How wonderful that a nation could be thus deluded.

But the noble lord deals in cheats and delusions. They are the daily traffic of his invention; and he will continue to play off his cheats on this House, so long as he thinks them necessary to his purpose, and so long as he has money enough at command to bribe gentlemen to pretend that they believe him. But a black and bitter day of reckoning will surely come; and whenever that day come, I trust I shall be able, by a parliamentary impeachment, to bring upon the heads of the authors of our calamities, the punishment they deserve.

AMERICAN COLONISTS DEFENDED.

A LATE writer in the London Quarterly Review, has permitted himself to say, that the original establishment of the United States, and that of the colony of Botany Bay, were pretty nearly modelled on the same plan. The meaning of this slanderous insinuation, is, that the United States were settled by deported convicts, in like manner as New South Wales has been settled by felons, whose punishment by death has been commuted into transportation. It is doubtless true, that at one period, the English govern

England herself, before the practice of transportation began, and even now; inasmuch as a large portion of her convicts are held to labour, within her own bosom. In one sense, indeed, we might doubt whether the allegation were more of a reproach or a compliment. During the time that the colonization of America was going on the most rapidly, the best citizens of England, (if it be any part of good citizenship to resist oppression,) were immured in her prisons of state, or lying at the mercy of the law.

Such were the convicts by which America was settled. Men convicted of fearing God more than they feared man; of sacrificing property, ease, and all the comforts of life, to a sense of duty, and the dictates of conscience :-men convicted of pure lives, brave hearts, and simple manners. The enterprize was led by Raleigh, the chivalrous convict, who unfortunately believed that his royal master had the heart of a man, and would not let a sentence of death, which had slumbered for sixteen years, revive and take effect, after so long an interval of employment and favour. But nullum tempus occurrit regi.

The felons who followed next, were the heroic and long suffering church of Robinson, at Leyden,-Carver, Brewster, Bradford, and their pious associates, convicted of worshipping God according to the dictates of their consciences, and of giving up all,-country, property, and the tombs of their fathers, that they might do so unmolested. Not content with having driven the Puritans from her soil, England next enacted, or put in force, the oppressive laws, which colonized Maryland with Catholics, and Pennsylvania with Quakers. Nor was it long before the American plantations were recruited by the Germans, convicted of inhabiting the Palatinate, when the merciless armies of Louis XIV. were turned into that devoted region; and by the Huguenots, convicted of holding what they deemed the simple truth of Christianity, when it pleased the mistress of Louis XIV. to be very zealous for the Catholic faith. These were followed, in the next age, by the Highlanders, convicted of loyalty to their hereditary prince, on the plains of Culloden; and the Irish, convicted of supporting the rights of their country, against an oppressive external power. Such are the convicts by whom America was settled.

IN the unceasing march of things, which calls forward the successive generations of men to perform their part on the stage of life, we at length are summoned to appear. Our fathers have passed their hour of visitation;-how worthily, let the growth and prosperity of our happy land, and the security of our firesides, attest. Or, if this appeal be too weak to move us, let the eloquent silence of yonder venerated heights,-let the column, which is there rising in simple majesty, recall their venerated forms, as they toiled, in the hasty trenches, through the dreary watches. of that night of expectation, heaving up the sods, where they lay in peace and in honour, ere the following sun had set.

The turn has come to us. The trial of adversity was theirs the trial of prosperity is ours. Let us meet it as men who know their duty, and prize their blessings. Our position is the most enviable, the most responsible, which men can fill. If this generation does its duty, the cause of constitutional freedom is safe. If we fail,-if we failnot only do we defraud our children of the inheritance which we received from our fathers, but we blast the hopes of the friends of liberty throughout our continent, throughout Europe, throughout the world, to the end of time.

History is not without her examples of hard-fought fields, where the banner of liberty has floated triumphantly on the wildest storm of battle. She is without her examples of a people, by whom the dear-bought treasure has been wisely employed and safely handed down. The eyes of the world are turned for that example to us. It is related by an ancient historian, of that Brutus who slew Cæsar, that he threw himself on his sword, after the disastrous battle of Philippi, with the bitter exclamation, that he had followed virtue as a substance, but found it a name. It is not too much to say, that there are at this moment, noble spirits in the elder world, who are anxiously watching the march of our institutions, to learn whether liberty, as they