;

stationed over the chimney pieces of our thrifty housewives of the old yeomanry' school, and which, once touched, would bob up and down and round about for half an hour together. If it were not for the general appearance of this gentleman, and especially the three-cornered hat upon the wig, I should certainly have taken him for some member of the whig club, whose neck had fortunately slipped through a noose, and that the recollection of the unpleasant sensation, had occasioned that sympathetic, perpetual motion, which I have so often noticed and admired. I distinguish this action by the name of singularity, because, learned doctors, whom I have consulted upon the occasion, tell me, that no cutaneous, or paralytic affection, will occasion such an everlasting oscillation of the head. If, therefore, my surmise be just, that the person I allude to is actually a divine, and that he is distinguished by this singularity in the pulpit, his parishioners, I apprehend, must possess a great command of their muscles, as long as he remains in it. I could produce many other instances of singularity, but these will suffice to shew, that this quality is no recommendation of a man's character, much less of that of a diplomatic person, What the singularities are which adorn the character of lord Douglas, the Chronicle has not thought proper to inform its readers; but, it is clear, if they be at all similar to any of those which have been described above, that they could not fail to render his lordship an object of ridicule in a foreign court. It has been very generally whispered that these singularities did occasion some inconvenience, and report goes so far as to say, some loss to his lordship. However, the public will learn, with pleasure, that his lordship's tongue has not been excised, and that, after his travels of discovery over the wilds of Siberia, and the steppes of the vast Russian empire, he may, on his return to this country, choose the sphere of an orator, and be, in the dialect of the Chronicle, one of the best speakers in padiament." In that case it is to be hoped that he will leave his singularities in the country where they have afforded so much diversion; for though John Bull is so fond of humour that he will, with his wonted good nature, tolerate any species of drollery, yet he cannot endure any thing forced or unnatural.

With respect of the animadversions that were made upon Mr. Adair's appointment,' they were, in my opinion, conclusive; and I do not hesitate even now to repeat, the circumstance alleged against his appointment to fill diplomatic capacity, was sufficient to have disqualified him. But, it may be said, the present ministry retain him in his official employment, which fact is, alone, a sufficient proof that they are satisfied with him. To this I answer, that it is an argument only, and no proof. For aught I know, the present administration may be satisfied with him, or, from a motive of state complacency, they may judge it expedient to let him remain at the court of Vienna and the last motive seems to be the fact, for, according to the Morning Chronicle, he is continued solely at the particular request of that court. The cir cumstance has afforded to the Chronicle an opportunity for exultation; and, no doubt, it is a just ground of triumph, in which every honest Briton may participate. It is a very pleasing reflection, that we have a minister, though a member of the whig club, who has made himself respected abroad; and when we consider how this nation has been represented, for some years past, upon the continent, the distinguished approbation conferred upon the character of Mr. Adair, is truly consoling. But this agreeable circumstance, does not, in the least, invalidate our original ground of exception to that gentleman's appointment by Mr. Fox. The people had not forgotten the clandestine mission of Mr. Adair to Petersburg, for the treacherous design of counteracting the views of his majesty's government, and of giving to a factious leader a momentary advantage over his political adversary. The success of that pernicious stratagem, the civilized world feels at this day. It is notorious that Mr. Adair was the secret agent whom Mr. Fox employed upon that occasion; that he was commissioned too without the knowledge of the confidential associates of Mr. Fox, to betray and frustrate the policy of the British minister, than which, no act could more fully prove that the welfare of their country was a matter of subordinate consideration to them, when placed in competition with the defeat of a political rival. What honest man could reflect upon that base transaction, and dissemble his anxieties and his indignation at the nomination of Mr. Adair to the embassy at Vienna, the moment that Mr. Fox was invested with power? Did not their previous intrigue justify suspicion of their future conduct, especially when Mr. Fox did not disguise that the present was a war of wanton ag

gression on our part against France? We contemplated this appointment both retrospectively and prospectively; and, dreading the future from our experience of the past, we said that our country's interests might be committed. What I wrote upon that occasion, I glory in repeating here; and I challenge the Morning Chronicle to adduce the shadow of an argument against the propriety of my reasonings. The most glaring and indecent act of impropriety, I observed, the greatest affront to public opinion, next to the appointment of Alexander Davison to the treasurership of the ordnance, is the act of sending Mr. Robert Adair to the court of Vienna, in the character of minister plenipotentiary from this country. I call it an act of impropriety, because when we refer to Mr. Adair's previous diplomatic excursion to Petersburg, and reflect by whose authority, and with whose instructions he went thither, it is an high insult to the public spirit of the country, and an indignity to our sovereign. Is Britain descended so low in the comparison with foreign countries, that the person selected by our secretrary for foreign affairs, as the fittest to fill a most important, and, at this time, arduous situation, is a man whom Mr. Burke branded with the charge of having committed "an high-treasonable misdemeanor," and whom no one ever heard of, except under the names of Bobby Adair, the half letter writer, and the representative of Mr. Fox at the court of St. Petersburg? This last circumstance is a most weighty aggravation of the indignity cast upon this nation by the selection of this particular man; and that my readers may enter fully into this opinion, that they may see the nature and characters of the men who are managing our interests at home and abroad, that they may have a full-length portrait of this accomplished plenipo, this bantling of rank, weight, and talents, I request their attention to the following extract from Mr. Burke's "Observations on the conduct of the Minority," "The laws and constitution of the kingdom, entrust the sole and exclusive right of treating with foreign potentates to the king. This is an undisputed part of the legal prerogative of the crown. However, notwithstanding this, Mr. Fox, without the knowledge or participation of any one person in the House of Commons, with whom he was bound, by every party principle in matters of delicacy and importance, confidentially to com municate, thought proper to send Mr. Adair as his representative, and with his cypher, to St. Petersburg, there to frustrate the objects for which the minister from the crown was authorized to treat. He succeeded in this, his design, and did actually frustrate the king's minister in some of the objects of his negociation. This proceeding of Mr. Fox does not (as I conceive) amount to absolute high treason, Russia, though on bad terms, not having been then declaredly at war with this kingdom.But such a proceeding is, in law, not very remote from that offence; and is, undoubtedly, a most unconstitutional act, and a high-treasonable misdemeanor. The legitimate and sure mode of communication between this nation and foreign powers, is rendered uncertain, precarious, and treacherous, by being divided into two channels, one with the government, one with the head of a party, in opposition to that government; by which means the foreign powers can never be assured of the real authority or validity of any public transaction whatsoever. On the other hand, the advantage taken of the discontent which at that time prevailed in parliament, and in the nation, to give to an individual an influence directly against the government of his country, in a foreign court, has made a highway into England for the intrigues of foreign courts in our affairs. This is a sore.evil; an evil from which, before this time, England was more free than any other nation. Nothing can preserve us from that evil, which connects cabinet factions abroad with popular factions here, but the keeping sacred the crown, as the only channel of communication with every other nation."

These were the strong grounds which led reflecting persons to feel a just alarm at Mr. Adair's appointment, and to remonstrate against it as an act of gross effrontery on the part of Mr. Fox. In these exceptions, nothing personal was meant against

* See No. 27, of the 1st volume.

By the bye, I hear nothing more about the prosecution of this delinquent. I have been hitherto silent from a regard to justice. But if, upon inquiry, I should find that the long fingers of the law cannot, or will not, be outstretched to overtake him, I shall feel myself bound to resume my criticisms upon his adventures.

Mr. Adair, any further than as his agency at St. Petersburgh was implicated; but they were confined to the want of delicacy on the part of the employer. Of Mr. Adair's abilities, not one word was said; Of his diplomatic dexterity, no one doubted who recollected his exploits in Russia. The exceptions taken, therefore, were not against the personal character, but the political,-the party character of that gentleman. Divested of his former reputation, as a clandestine agent in an illicit and unpatriotic transaction, he might make a good foreign minister; but considered as a partizan, and the accredited agent of the state under the official patronage of his former employer, he certainly was a proper object of jealousy and animadversion. It does not, however, follow, because there was ground for this jealousy thon, that it should continue to exist now. The connection that was dreaded between himself and his patron, has ceased with the life of the latter; and furthermore, a new ministry, actuated by national principles, less tinctured with the doctrines of modern universal philanthropy, and unquestionably hostile to the ambition and aggrandizement of France, are entrusted with the management of affairs, and will take care that no former bias of the mind shall induce any agent of our government abroad, to act otherwise than as may be consonant with the honour, the dignity, and the interests of the empire. Time, which assuages the force of party attachments, and corrects the jaundiced intellectual vision of public characters, may also contribute to effect a great change in the mode of thinking of the person to whom we allude; and should he be retained, for any length of time, in the dignified situation which he now fills; it is extremely probable, that his thoughts will be inseparably bent upon his country's welfare, and that the Whig Club, the good old cause, the choice spirits, the Foxites, will be obliterated from his mind, and become as much the objects of his contempt, as they now are of every patriotic and ingenuous subject.

Of Mr. Erskine, the Morning Chronicle has not launched out in its usual tonę of eulogy, but has contented itself with republishing, in its columns, the favourable character given of that minister in the American papers. It is true, that gentleman's appointment was objected to, because he had married an American, and he was supposed to be not at all conversant with the duties of an ambassador. With respect of his marriage, I do not think that an objection of this sort would he tenable of delicate, in any case, where a personal interest in the welfare of the wife's country cannot be established. For which reason, the objection to Mr. Adair, upon the same principle, would have been irrelevant and gentlemanly, if his well-known connection with Mr. Fox, and that minister's steadfast predeliction for 'French politics, had not rendered almost every act of his public life an object of suspicion. Apart from this consideration, the objection would be unworthy of a liberal mind. It is not French wives, but FRENCH MISTRESSES whose obtrusive influence England may justly tremble at; and it matters not whether these infamous and abandoned prostitutes be screened beneath a princely, or any other, coat of arms; still we Britons must pay the wages of their prostitution, and hire them to make us the victims of their treachery. If these be impeached as the dreams of a gloomy' imagination, let the sceptic read the memoirs of the house of Stuart, by Dalrymple and Macpherson, or go to the opera, or to, and; and, &c.

"

Upon these grounds, it does not appear that the mere circumstance of Mr. Erskine having married an American lady, ought to be urged as a reason for excluding him from the exercise of diplomatic functions in the United States. But if to this fact be superadded the circumstance, as reported, that his family have invested a large fortune in the land and funds of America, a sufficient cause arises out of it, to question the propriety and decency of his appointment, because he must have a personal interest in the prosperity of that country, which, from innumerable causes, and some of which have recently occurred, may run counter to the immediate interests of his country. A man cannot serve God and Mammon; neither are we to expect in our times, the display of that patriotistn, which now sounds romantic, by which the national attachments of an individual preponderate over his regards to property. It is a trite adage, that personal feelings, duties, and patriotism, follow property; and therefore, some degree of caution ought to be observed in giving preferment to one, whose interests lay more, or as much, in a foreign as in his native country. These observations are here introduced merely in answer to the challenge contained in the

Chronicle, and by no means with any personal reference to Mr. Erskine. I do not think that he ought to be excepted against, because he was the son of a lord chan cellor of England; on the contrary, the circumstance is a recommendation; for the same reason that the appointment of Mr. Rose may be approved of, because he is the son of a gentleman of great political experience, of extensive commercial knowledge, and possessing a thorough insight into the best interests of his country. The proba bility therefore is, that the son, from his opportunities, must be duly instructed in those principles which he is sent to establish.

These are the reflections which have suggested themselves to my mind, upon the perusal of the article upon which I have animadverted, and which, from its spirit and tendency, seems to have been written rather with a view to lampoon the party whose cause it professes to support, that to expose the errors of their adversaries. In the present age, the minister who should select for a foreign ambassador, a man endowed with no other qualification than the mere retentive memory of all the musty treaties which human ambition, working upon human imbecility, has rendered obsolete, would deservedly merit the reproaches of his country. And the ambassador who should take upon himself to guide his conduct by the treaties of Westphalia, Ryswick, or Paris, would merit a dwelling in Bedlam. For the same reason, the appointment of any man to a diplomatic function, who should be more distinguished by his singularities than his prudence, would draw down ridicule both upon the minis→ ter and his country. Common sense is the only basis of any negociation which may now take place between this nation and other states; and that common sense points out, with intuitive demonstration, that no peace, no security, no independence, no respect, no power, can be maintained by this country, without reserving an absoJute maritime superiority in its own hands, to balance the inordinate growth of French power by land, and to hold a due equipoise of controul oyer neutral states, proportionate to the influence exerted by France. To these objects, the whole of our diplo macy should tend, and the men whose talents are best fitted to promote them, are the persons who ought to be preferred and employed.

GENERAL WHITELOCKE.

This most unfortunate commander is in London; and, for several days after his ar rival, it was stated, in most of the newspapers, that he had been put under an arrest, upon seventeen charges, which sir Samuel Achmuty had preferred against him. The intelligence excited universal satisfaction, as it was expected that the public would be made acquainted with the real causes of that disaster, which has reflected so much disgrace upon the British arms. At the same time that every one rejoiced in the measure upon this consideration, it was not forgotten that the general would thereby be afforded an opportunity of exonerating himself from the heavy reproaches cast upon his military character, in consequence of his defeat at Buenos Ayres. Many persons also were curious to ascertain the collateral circumstances which, no doubt, the general is prepared to adduce in his exculpation; and which he did not think it neces sary to include in his official dispatch, that produced the calamity over which the genius of our country mourns. For it appears to be utterly impossible that so fine an army could have been beaten by such a description of force as that opposed to it, without the intervention of some accidents, against which human wisdom, and the most consummate generalship could not provide. The public were, however, disappointed in these expectations, for general Whitelocke has not been arrested, nor has sir Samuel Achmuty brought any charge against him. It must not, nevertheless, be supposed that no investigation is intended to take place, or, to use a legal phrase, that the general himself will blink the question. His honour and reputation are so deeply implicated, that I am pursuaded he will voluntarily demand an inquiry into his conduct; for a man must have a heart as callous as a piece of adamant, if he can contentedly walk the streets while subjected to such contumelious and reproachful language, as that continually vented against general Whitelocke.

-Whether there be any defect in our articles of war; or whether such a case as that which befel our army at Buenos Ayres were never contemplated by our legislators, and, consequently, that no direct mode of proceeding can be instituted, I am not able to inform my readers. But of this I am certain, that as no difficulties stood in the way of the prosecution, and subsequent condemnation of a gallant admiral, for not

having given battle a second time to an enemy's squadron, one third superior in force to his own, and which he had beaten in the first engagement, with the capture of two of their ships, there can be no hesitation in averring, that ways and means may be devised to bring to the test of judicial examination, the whole of the proceedings which occasioned the surrender of our army at Buenos Ayres; more especially as the official dispatch of general Whitelocke contains not less than eight distinct charges of crimination against himself.

But it may be said, that when there is no accuser, there can be no trial; that no one belonging to the army under the command of general Whitelocke has yet stood forward to arraign his conduct; that a general ought not to be harassed with a vexatious prosecution for having been unfortunate, and that the government should not take cognizane of an event which was most probably the result of an error of judgment. These apologetic arguments, wretched and feeble as they are, might be advanced in at country where court influence is exerted to screen a favourite, but they are not calculated for the meridian of England, nor are they agreeable to the uniform practice of our government. If no inferiour officer can be found to instigate an inquiry, the undissembled and unanimous opinion of the public is sufficient to ground an accusation. General Whitelocke may be innocent, perhaps he may make out a good case, but, for God's sake, if he can say any thing for himself, let it come forth. For one, I feel no hesitation in accusing him, upon no other authority than his own details, of having committed blunders that would have disgraced a drill serjeant, and which, unless satisfactorily accounted for by circumstances at present unknown to the public, prove his utter ignorance of tactics, and his unfitness to be entrusted with the command of an army. In him, we have an instance of that want of culture of the military profession, as a science, which I have so often lamented in the course of this work. No man could better inspect a new-raised levy, or detect an irregularity in the manual exercise of a regiment; no man is better versed in the "mechanical rules and regulations for the formations, field-exercise, and movements, of his majesty's forces;" or in the science of adjusting a hat, a button, and such other important matters, wherein the merit of an officer entirely consists, according to the opinion of some persons concerning military talents. All these qualifications, however, are within the capacity of a tailor, or a dancing master; but they have no more to do with the science of war, the genius of a general, than the mechanical business of a printer has with the conceptions of the most luminous mind, whose ideas he arranges in types, rank and file, for the public. "In the military art," says that excellent tactician, general Lloyd, “as in poetry and eloquence, there are many who can trace the rules by which a poem, or an oration should be composed, and even compose, according to the exactest rules; but for want of that enthusiastic and divine fire, their productions are languid and insipid: so in our profession, many are to be found who know every precept of it by art; but, alas! when called upon to apply them, are immediately at a stand. They then recal their rules, and want to make every thing,-the rivers, woods, ravins, mountains, &c. &c. subservient to them; whereas their precepts should, on the contrary, be subject to these, which are the only rules, the only guide they ought to follow; whatever manœuvre is not formed on these, is absurd and ridiculous. These form the great book of war, and he who cannot read it, must ever be content with the title of a brave soldier, and Lever aspire to that of a great general."

and

This title of a brave soldier, no one feels disposed to deny to general Whitelocke, although, from extreme modesty, he has not favoured us, in his official dispatch, with any account where he was during the battle; and has left us to infer, that, like Caesar, at the battle of Alesia, idoneum locum nactus, quid quâque in parte geratur cognoscit, laborantibus submittit. It is observable, however, that the great Roman general is always very particular in mentioning not only where he stood, but where be moved. Thus, in this very action at Alesia, he tells us, that after having sent Labienus with six cohorts to the assistance of the part of his army, which was engaged, he himself went in person to the rest of the troops, exhorting them to bear up courageously under their present fatigue, and representing that the fruit of all their former victories depended upon the issue of that critical day and hour,-Ipse adit reliquors: cohortatur, ne labori succumbant: omnium superiorum dimicationum fruc tum in eo die atque hord docet consistere. Also we find, that when his troops were