But do not the declarations which our colonists have made, have not their proceedings destroyed all the promises and vows which Mr. Pownall has made in their name? For an answer to this, let us refer to their own gazettes, their letters, their avowed principles, and the minutes of their affemblies. Whoever looks into them may eafily perceive, that we inuft consult the cant dictionary for the meaning of their profeffions of fubordination, duty, loyalty, affection, and the like. Has not their mother-country been too long amufed with expreffions that contain the very reverfe meaning of their original fignifications ?

The next new matter to be found in this edition, is an examination of the rights and conftitutions of the colonies, particularly with regard to the queftion about taxing.

The diftinction between legiflation and taxation is a new queftion, and is only become important fince the mother-country, at the expence of above thirty millions of her own money, has removed the fear of the French from before the eyes of our colonists. To prove that there is no difference in their respective operations, and that taxation is a branch of legiflation, though legislation is none of taxation, we need only appeal to the statute of Geo. III. c. 12. which is quoted by Mr Pownall himfelf. All the doubts and difficulties he has raifed with regard to the impropriety and injuftice of the Americans being taxed by the British legislature, muft abfolutely vanish before facts. The principle laid down by the Americans of their not being represented in parliament, is ridiculous, and foreign to the fundamentals of our conftitution, which have no knowledge of any distinct power the commons have to impose taxes. Our author will perhaps be puzzled to find any one exercise of Great Britain's legislative fuperiority over the Americans, and carried into an act of parliament, that may not immediately or ultimately be refolved into a mode of taxation; and the very fame power that is able to difpute the mode, may oppose the principle.In fhort, we cannot help faying that he has totally mistaken the reasons why the mother-country has always thought herfelf entitled to tax her colonies :-altis radici bus hærent. -They are fixed in the fundamentals of government, which exifted long before a house of commons, in its prefent shape at leaft, had a being in England. Our limits will not permit us to enlarge upon this fubject, otherwise it would be easy to prove, that if England contains fix millions of people, above five millions and a half of them have no repre. fentative in parliament; that, when compared to the Americans, they are trebly taxed; and therefore they have three times more reafon to complain.

8

Among

Among the other additions to this edition, our author has inferted the copy of a fupplication exhibited to king Henry VI, by the inhabitants of the county palatine of Chester, in the year 1450; with the king's anfwer. One of the allegations of this petition is, "The most victorious king William the Conqueror, your most noble progenitor, gave the fame county to Hugh Loup his nephew, to hold as freely to him, and his heirs by his fword; as the fame king fhould hold all England by the crown.' Mr. Pownall feems to think that the fituation of the county palatine of Chester is fimilar to that of the Americans at present, and that they are entitled to the fame relief. We are afraid that there is no refemblance between the two cafes. The grant from William the Conqueror was, respecting the English laws, illegal and arbitrary, and therefore void of itself. Perhaps later grants may come under the fame predicament; but our author ought to obferve, that Hugh Loup and his followers owed no native allegiance to William the Conqueror. This is a hint which may be purfued to an inconvenient length, and therefore we fhall here difmifs it.

And here, fays Mr. Pownall, we may venture to affirm, that if the colonies were to be deemed without the realm, not parts or parcels of it, not annexed to the crown of England, though the demefnes of the king; and if the colonists by these means ceased to be fubjects of the realm, and the parliament had no right or jurifdiction to make laws about them; if the government of them refided in the king, only as their fovereign, dum rex ei præfit, ut caput iftius populi, non ut caput alterius populi, they were certainly a people fui juris-nam imperium quod in rege eft ut in capite, in populo manet ut in toto, cujus pars eft caput, having an undoubted claim, by the nature of their liberties, to a participation in legislature, had an undoubted right, when formed into a ftate of government, to have a reprefentative legislature eftablished, as part of their government; and therefore when fo formed, being a body politic in fact and name, they had within themselves, the king, or his deputy, being part, full power and authority, to all intents and purposes, both legislative and executive, for the government of all the people, whether ftrangers or inhabitants, within their jurifdiction, independent of all external direction or government, except what might conftitutionally be exercised by their fovereign lord the king, or his deputy, and except their fubordination, not allegiance, to the government of the realm of England (út alterius populi.)'

We have more than once expreffed our difapprobation and diflike of any application drawn from foreign hiftory, either ancient or modern, to the government or policy of England, the conftitution

conftitution of which is totally different from that of any other country. We are of opinion, that our author is peculiarly unhappy in the above quotation from Grotius. The latter fpeaks of the rights of an independent people, fuch as the Meffenians, whom the Lacedemonians objected against being admitted to fwear to the peace of Greece, because the walls of their city had been demolished. But this objection was over-ruled by the reft of the confederacy. Itaque cum ad pacem Grecia jurandam Lacedemonii negarent admittendos Meffenios, quod ejus urbis muri essent diruti, contra eos a communi fociorum res judicata eft. From this Grotius argues, that no local or governmental alteration can extinguish the natural rights of a people. Idem enim eft populus Romanus fub regibus, confulibus, imperatoribus. "Even (continues he) though the people should fall under an abfolute monarch, they will be the fame as when they were independent, while fuch monarch reigns over them as head of that people, not as head of another people." But how can all this apply to the present queftion? It was never dreamt, but that the English American colonies were English subjects, and therefore the king of England, as fuch, was their king.

But, fays a hot American, we are not English subjects, because we have no reprefentatives in parlia ment.But may parliament.not all the unreprefented fubjects in England put in the fame plea?

We are afraid our author is equally mistaken in his quotations from Livy, I will (fays he) produce two inftances, one in Italy, the other in Greece; Ceterum habitari tantum, tanquam urbem, Capuam, frequentarique placuit: corpus nullum civitatis nec fenatus, nec plebis concilium, nec magiftratus effe, fine concilio publico, fine imperio, multitudinem nullius rei inter fe fociam ad confenfum inhabilem fore." Such was the cenfure paffed by the Romans upon the Capuans for having joined their enemies; but the Capuans before that time had municipal privileges, as may be gathered from the words of the cenfure itself; and had Mr. Pownall transcribed the very next fentence, he might have seen that the Romans did no more than fufpend those privileges, fo far as to fend every year a governor to rule them. Præfectum ad jura reddenda ab Roma quotannis miffuros. This fentence is fo far from being, as he calls it, the vigour of policy, by which the Romans governed their provinces, that Livy more than once calls it the fupplicium Campanorum, eighty of their fenators being beheaded, and three hundred thrown into prison, The whole town muft have been levelled with the ground; but, fays the hiftorian, prefent conveniency got the better, presens utilitas vicit. In fhort, we cannot fee how this incident is in the

fmalleft

fmalleft degree applicable to the present state of our colonies, unless, like the Capuans, they were to rebel; and true policy, nay, common fenfe, would point out to the mother-country the fame mode of punishment.

The other inftance, fays our author, is as follows: After the Romans had entirely overcome Perfeus, and reduced all Macedonia, they restored it to its liberty; but to disarm that liberty of all power of revolt, they divide Macedon into four regions or provinces, not barely by boundary lines, and geographical distinctions, but by diffevering and feparating their interefts; divifa Macedonia, partium ufibus feparatis, et regionatim commerciis interruptis.'

What use can Mr. Pownall make of this paffage? The Romans pretended to restore the Macedonians to liberty, and their fenate decreed arrangements for preferving that liberty; but we humbly think he ought to have given us the whole of the fenate's decree, which must have been much more for the purpose, we will not fay of his fyftem, but of his reader's information. The fubftance of it was, that the former method of collecting taxes was entirely abolished in Macedonia, because, fays the decree, where-ever tax-gatherers are, there is an end of law and liberty. Macedonia was therefore divided into four quarters, a council was affigned to each, and half the tribute which they used to pay to their king was to be paid to the Roman people.- -In the name of common fenfe, what has all this to do in the dispute between us and our colonies ?

It would be very eafy, could we fpare room, to fhew how much our author has mifapplied his claffical reading in other inftances; but in the publication before us he has proved, that he poffeffes qualifications far more valuable to the public than those of scholarship or claffical learning. The propofal drawn up by him and Mr. Franklin for a paper currency, and the difquifitions on the ftate of the American trade, which, with other articles, are added to this edition, must be lasting monuments of his abilities as a colonial magistrate and financer.

T

XII. EN GRAVIN G.

St. JOHN Preaching in the Wilderness.

HERE must refult to a speculative mind great pleasure

from the contemplation of the imitative arts, but particularly from engraving, which may be said to stand in the fame relation to painting that typography does to writing; and, were it poffible that the world should be deprived of letters, fuch is the utility of prints, that from them we might have a perfect idea of the fituation of the feveral nations of the globe, the various inhabitants

I

;

bitants, their different habits, religious ceremonies, forms of building, manner of making war, delightful and romantic scenes of nature, the fhapes and figures of the infinite variety in the animal and vegetable fyftems; in fhort, not only a complete hiftory, but a true mirror of nature, prefenting us with images more perfect than words can defcribe, and in a character univerfally understood in which not only the things prefent are reflected, but the paft; making us contemporaries with Babylon in all its pride; with Rome in its infancy, in its fplendor, and in its prefent state; and feeming to infure them immortality in spite of the ravages and devastations of time; for we can ftill wander over the ruins of Athens, of Palmyra, of Balbec, and may trace a great city from its first rude state to the height of all human perfection, which has now no other existence than by means of this art. Yet while things thus pafs in review before us, we cannot avoid remarking the inftability of fublunary greatnefs, on seeing, in the fame inftant, the fame city in the utmost pomp and in ruins. The designs of Raphael, Angelo, Rubens, Van-Dyk, Salvator, the Pouffins, Lorrain, &c. by this art may be preferved to mankind; and we may poffefs them at an inconfiderable expence, compared with the value of paintings.

We have already attempted to give a character of fome of the engravings in the early part of the curious work, of which this print of St. John Preaching in the Wilderness is part; but, by reafon of the inadequate nature of language, and of the very general and diffusive meaning of the terms that can only be made ufe of to give any fort of idea of painting and engraving, we are confcious that we must have conveyed but a very imperfect notion of what, by the nature of these arts, are themselves intended to be their only real interpreters, as affording the most perfect delineation poffible of the thing reprefented: for inftance, the immediate view of this print of St. John, which is from a picture of the inimitable Salvator, in the poffeffion of the earl of Chesterfield, creates in the mind the moft fublime ideas, which is impoffible to be done by writing; for what the eye fees at once by the print, would take up a whole page to defcribe; and, by reason of the length, not produce half the effect that the fpontaneous view of the fcene in the print would have upon minds capable of fublime conceptions.

The wilderness Salvator has placed St. John in, appears to be the production of a mind warmed with enthusiasm ; and, tho' it is a fcene wild and uncultivated, yet it has a folemn grandeur about it that is only to be found in places formed by the rude hand of nature. It is a view of the interior part of a wilderness, on each fide of which are high mountains, from whence arise vaft trunks, and trees towering to the fķies; and the light be