ADVICE TO THE DISAFFECTED.

"Who is here so base

That does not love his country?

If any, speak-for him have I offended."

THE better part of mankind is in general influenced by calm reasoning properly directed. If an appeal made in the language of friendship, and with the earnestness of parental solicitude, be unsuccessful in reclaiming vicious habits, or in soothing passions highly incensed, stormy declamation will be a fruitless and unsafe expedient. Those are tender wounds which deep-rooted prejudices have inflicted; and whether they proceed from a hypochondriacal affection, or a physical injury; whether they are old wounds that the mountebank has tampered with, or new ones which he pretends to heal, the necessity for gentle and emollient treatment is alike imperious.

But, metaphor apart:-We would desire to speak to those persons whom our title embraces-we mean the disaffected among the industrious mechanics and labourers of our vicinitywith the kindly feelings of a brother. We place ourselves at each and all of their fire-sides, and we compassionately unbosom our warmest sympathies.

Friends! though we differ widely from you in political sentiment; though we designate as delusions, what too many of you esteem as realities; though we can trace deceit in the faces and actions of those men whom you call patriots and philanthropists; though we daily see your hopes and vanities flattered, and the wilder propensities of your nature inflamed by wretches who use you as tools to climb to power, to patronage, and to affluence; still we have ever wept over your occasional sufferings, while we regretted that you viewed not their cause in the same light as ourselves.

But, before we go farther, be pleased to take a candid survey of the privileges of the country you are so disposed to find fault with, and so anxious, in many instances, to forsake and denounce. We desire not to recal any bitter sensations, or to impose upon your judgment by a deceitful appeal. But surely the land that gave us birth must be dear to us all: we have all a stake in its welfare, and an interest in its fame. You, however, have been told, that its trade would languish till its Jaws were revolutionized; that its wel

fare could only be promoted by the dissolution of its present Government; and that universal ruin would be the result, unless you and we who have little property in the State, shared as much power as those who have a great deal;-in one word, you were told, and we dare say you thought truly, that all in authority oppressed you, and all who had property robbed you! But you ought never to forget, that these base fictions were circulated in a season of great commercial calamity, when the state of trade was adduced to you as substantial proof, and when your private and family sufferings were brought home to you as unanswerable arguments. When such an unhallowed picture was exhibited, your privations were possibly too acute for you to observe its real colours. But they cannot be concealed from you now. A return to national prosperity has torn the veil which obscured them, and has laid open with the clearness of sunshine, the maliciousness and the worthlessness of the men who duped you, and flattered you, and despised you! Look dispassionately around you; is there in your vicinity or among your acquaintance, a man more despicable than his fellows-one whose morals are greatly questionable, whose manner of life has been long ambiguous, whose circumstances have been long desperate, whose irregularities have caused him to be shunned, one whom friendship and relationship have disowned? -Such an one, we unhesitatingly assert, was a leader of your political clubs, a speaker, a president, or a delegate, to your Union Societies. We do not say that all your proceedings at such meetings were dangerous to the stability of the commonwealth; but you will grant us that they were all improper. We don't say that half of the writings and speeches were treasonable; but you will concede to us they were at least seditious. Now, look at the country again: is there any thing in it so terribly repulsive to freemen's ears, or so detrimental and dangerous to a peaceful man's industry, as to require such an appalling remedy? Is every thing sacred to be demolished, merely, because you are sometimes distressed, and because disappointed hopes have rendered you peevish and discontented? In your secluded hours you cannot foster such a sentiment. The stingings of conscious injustice must forbid such cold hearted aspirations. It is not the

fault of the Government that you were born to the loom, that you are doomed to labour at it, and that your children are possibly to do the same. You are protected by the strong arm of a strong Government; and so long as you are peaceable you will be unmolested; and if you are industrious and virtuous, you will be respected. The constitutional authorities have imposed no burdens upon you that are not imposed upon every one else. And you may depend upon it, that, go where you will, burdens must be borne; you must labour and toil a part of every week of your life, more in youth, perhaps, and less in old age, but still you must contribute your pittance for the common benefit of society. Every man of every rank does this. To the wise and valuable institutions of this country, which you affect to deride, you owe much. Those very qualifications which of late made you useful to the orgies of se dition, you acquired, probably, in a parochial school; your arithmetic was perhaps the gift of a public charity; and the little smattering of knowledge you are master of, may have been received from the books of a free library. Would you, with a demon's rage, set a fire-brand to these inestimable blessings? and to gratify a little party spleen, would you prevent them from being transmitted to future generations? We cannot think you could. You must have a latent regard for these things, though momentary frenzy smothers the generous confession. Pause, good friends, we entreat you, before you commit the guardianship of such laws and institutions, to men without principle, without property, without talent, without consistency, without any thing, in fact, like love of country, or true genuine patriotism.

father's actions or his own; yet has he a part and lot in the liberties of our nation, and the laws throw a massive shield over him as well as over the proudest Peer in it. It is true his only possession is his industry; still that industry is a valuable estate, and he can transmit it to his sons, as free from mortgage and as strictly protected by the laws of entail, as the lands of his more opulent landlord. He is allowed to roam through all the walks of science, to the full stretch of his abilities, without restraint; he may bustle through the mazes of business free as the highest merchant in the kingdom; in short, he may do any thing, think any thing, say any thing, without interruption, provided he neither says, nor does, nor imagines injury, to his neighbour. No barrier intervenes to cramp his genius or to depreciate his merit, for, from the lowest paths of poverty and dependence there is an open channel to the most elevated ranks of life. He should recollect that Watt was once a simple mechanic, and Lord Collingwood a cabin boy! Besides, the poor man's conscience is as sacred to himself as that of the rich. It is shackled with no galling restrictions. He may pay his adorations to the God of Goodness in the splendid and imposing worship of the Popish ritual, in the more chastened devotions of the English Church, or in the cold and philosophic forms of Presbyterian sincerity, without being questioned, without being sneered at, without having given offence. "I speak," says the eloquent Curran, "in the spirit of British law, which makes liberty commensurate with, and inseparable from, the British soil; which proclaims even to the stranger and sojourner, the moment he sets his foot upon British earth, that the ground upon which he treads is holy. No matter in what language his doom may have been pronounced, no matter what complexion incompatible with freedom an Indian or an African sun may have burnt on him, no matter in what disastrous battle his liberty may have been cloven down, no matter with what solemnities he may have been devoted on the altar of slavery; the first moment he touches the sacred soil of Britain, the altar and the god sink together in the dust; his soul walks abroad in her own majesty; his body swells beyond the measure of the chains that burst around him, and he stands redeemed and regenerated!"

Take another look, we say again, of your native island. Are we not all free, and in the eye of equity and law are we not all equal? What have the rich, that the poor want, except their riches; and these riches may have been acquired by the same means as those at your disposal, namely, parsimony, enterprise, and it may be, a whole lifetime of sedentary toil! The poor man who earns by his ingenuity, by the hammer or the shuttle, sufficient to gratify the cravings of nature, may have no proud lineage to boast of; the archives of heraldry may contain no allusion to his name; the records of history may have disdained to print his