another but for debts which he fuffered to be contracted, in hope of advantage to himself, and for bargains in which he proportioned his profit to his own opinion of the hazard; and there is no reaton, why one fhould punish the other, for a contract in which both concurred. "Many of the inhabitants of prifons may justly complain of harder treatment. He that once owes more than he can pay, is often obliged to bribe his creditor to patience, by encreafing his debt. Worfe and worfe commodities, at a higher and higher price, are forced upon him; he is impoverished by compulfive traffick, and at aft overwhelmed, in the common receptacles of mifery, by debts, which, without his own confent, were accumulated on his head. To the reliet of this diftrefs, no other objection can be made, but that by an eafy diffolution of debts, fraud will be left without punishment, and imprudence without awe, and that when infolvency shall be no longer punishable, credit will ceafe.

66

The motive to credit, is the hope of advantage. Commerce can never be at a ftop, while one man wants what another can fuppiy; and credit will never be denied, while it is likely to be repaid with profit. He that truits one whom he defigns to fue, is criminal by the act of truft; the ceffation of fuch infidious traffick is to be defired, and no reafon can be given why a change of the law should impair any other.

We fee nation trade with nation, where no payment can be compelled. Mutual convenience produces mutual confidence, and the merchants continue to fatisfy the demands of each other, though they have nothing to dread but the lofs of trade.

It is vain to continue an inflitution, which experience fhews to be ineffectual. We have now imprifoned one generation of debtors after another, but we do not find that their numbers leffen. We have now learned, that rashness and imprudence will not be deterred from taking credit; let us try whether fraud and avarice may be more easily restrained from giving it."

It is a minifterial writer, who reafons thus, in favour of a standing act of infolvency; for, as to occafional and partial ones, experience hath shewn that they tend only, like our bankrupt-laws, to ferve the fraudulent and injure the unfortunate, whether debtor or creditor.

ART. XI. A Difcourfe on the English Conflitution; extracted from a late eminent Il riter, and applicable to the prefent Times. 8vo. 1s. Robinson. In the preface to this difcourfe we are told it was written by a gentleman eminently skilled in the English law, who had fludied the conftitution with integrity of mind, and has reprefented it with very great ability. We with the prefacer had told us who this reprefezter or reprefentative of the English conftitution was or is, and where his reprefentation of it may be met with: for, as to the pamphlet before us, we find nothing in it but a miferable mifreprefentation of the nature of allegiance, and as weak an attempt to enforce the exploded doctrines of paffive cbedience and non-refiftance.

"In all governments, fays this writer, that ever were or can be, the fupreme power, wherever it is lodged, is and must be uncontroulable and irrefiftible, That is a truth included in the notion of autho

rity or power, for the one being granted, the other follows; as two and two are equal with four, becaufe, in the idea, they are one and the fame. Government refiftible is no government, and thofe, who fay the contrary, are to be talked with no more than fceptics in phrlofophy, who pretend to doubt every thing, even of their own effence, which that very doubting demonftrates. So that, in any fettled ftate, the fupreme power, whether it refides in one, a few, or many, may not be lawfully refifted, in any cafe whatfoever, by any coercive force."

Need we give any farther fpecimen of the principles of this eminent difcourfer on the British conftitution?

ART. XII. The Speech of his Grace the Duke of Manch fer, against the Bill, to prohibit all Intercourse with the Colonies, 4to. is. Keartley.

His Grace of Manchefter fays little that is quite new on this very interesting subject. Indeed the arguments for and against the bill in queftion are too obvious not to fuggeft themfelves, without a prompter, to the dulleft politician.-Of this patriotic Peer's oratory and mode of argumentation, however, as our readers will probably be pleafed to have a fpecimen, here it is.

"The bill is a bill of abfolute hoftility, a measure of anger, which is to prohibit all intercourfe with the inhabitants of the colonies, to feize the goods and properties of all, without diftinction, and involve the innocent and guilty in one common ruin. But there is another danger that will attend this plan. The army may, perhaps, think they have equal claim to equal encouragement, and what a fcene of confution that may lead to cannot come within defcription.

"My lords, this ftrange meafure never has been attempted in former commotions. Thirty years ago, when rebellion fhook this land; when our late fovereign had not a province, fcarce a town left in his obedience in the north part of this island—the intercourfe with Scotland ftill was left open; the ports were not shut up; trade was permitted. Should fuch a mifery ever revifit this country-should another rebellion break forth in the north of Britain, will not the foldier from this precedent, be inclined to call on you, ere he marche against the enemy, to engage to him the plunder of thofe he is to fight? May not the exigencies of the time, the neceffities of the ftate, force you to comply and to promife confifcation of the property of thofe he is employed to fubdue.

"My lords, I must further observe, that the provisions of this bill acts in direct oppofition to that great palladium of our liberty, the Bill of Rights. Our ancestors, well knowing the bad practices of former times, in their claim of rights at the revolution, wifely declared, that all grants of confifcations, previous to the conviction of the parties, are illegal and void. The bill confifcates not the property of individuals only, but of provinces and of nations. The mode of trial propofed for their property, is fuch, as cannot give them justice; nay, that trial is haftened on, under fevere penalties of delay. The prepatory examinations are to be finifhed within five

days,

days, monition iffued within three, the claims made within twenty; what probability can there be of fairly profecuting the claim, where the claimant is deemed an enemy, and the claim to be heard in an enemy's court. My lords, the nation is plunged deep in civil blood; but before we imbrue it further, permit me to put it to your lordships confciences, to the ferious confideration of that right reverend bench, who are placed amongst us, to moderate the great fervour of a lay lord's zeal, well to reflect, whether there now remains a justifiable caufe to profecute the war, a reason, a pretext, other than that of falfe national honour. I am not furprised that fome of the younger lords in this houfe, have been through mifreprefentation or misformation induced to join in thefe plans of violence, and thought the cause was virtue: Their high and noble fpirits fcorned to floop to the demand of American vaffals, for fuch they have been deemed. The fword must decide the conteft, for glory leads the way. My lords, I am not infenfible to the ardour that is still heroic. When in Curtius I follow the courfe of Alexander's conquefts, I feel a glowing wish to emulate the virtues which fhone at Arabela; when in the plains of Pharfalia, Cæfar gives the world a master, my mind is filled with the idea of the Victor; nay, my lords, when at Bender I behold Charles the Twelfth, with his little fuite, defying the power of the Ottoman empire, I cannot but feel interested in the fate of the Quixote hero. But, my lords, when the mind reflects that the glory of the conqueror is built on the wild waste of humanity; unlets justice draws the sword of War; heroifm like this muft ftrike horror to the foul.

POETRY.

ART. XIII. On Illicit Love. Written among the Ruins of Godfen Nunnery, near Oxford. By John Brand, A. B. of Lincoln Colugs, Oxford. 4to. Is. 6d. Saint, Newcastle-Wilkie, London.

As an apology for the publication of this little poem, which however, needed no apology, is prefixed the following advertisement. "Godftow is at prefent a ruin on the margin of the Ifis, at a fmall distance from Oxford. It was formerly a houfe of Nuns, famous perhaps on no account fo much as for having been the burial-place of Rofamond, daughter of Lord Clifford, the beautiful paramour of Henry the Second. This monarch is faid to have built a labyriarh at Woodstock to conceal her from his jealous queen, who, during his abfence, when he was called away by an unnatural rebellion ef his fons, at the fuppofed inftigation of their mother, found means t get access to her, and compelled her to fwallow poifon. Frequent walks in this delightful receis, facred to the moments of contemple tion, fuggelied the following thoughts, for the publication on which, let the alarming progrefs of lewdnefs, and confequently of liceat nefs of manners, which indeed threatens the dissolution of our fare, be accepted as an apology."

After fome general reflections on the principal circumstances of the well-known tale of fair Rofamond, and fome very good advice to t

yout

youth of both fexes, the author breaks into the following apostrophe
to Love; which we give as a fpecimen of his performance.
Hail holy flame! ætherial pure defire !
Enliv'ning man as erft Prometheus' fire!
All Nature kindles at thy burfting beam,
And lands with life and ocean's waters teem!
Thy ray on Greenland's icy mountains glows,
And keener burns 'mid Zembla's frozen fnows!
To Glory's heav'nly heights how doft thou lead,
The facred fource of ev'ry daring deed!
By thee the foldier's dauntlefs bofom's steel'd,
When danger braves him in th' embattled field;
Love points the falchion, speeds the scythed car,
And beauty's spoils repay the wounds of war!
For thee the statefiman plans his deep defign,
And by thy light the court's gay circles thine.
Thy pow'r e'en pall'd ambition's vot'ries prove,
And Care finds refpite in the arms of Love!
For thee the scholar fpends his midnight oil;
A purer paffion animates his toil

Than Fame-that, faint as Echo's fainteft breath,
Nor lives in life, nor can be heard in death:
Supremely bleft if lab`ring long he find
The laurel wreath with Lover's myrtle twin'd!
For thee the Sailor ev'ry ftorm outbraves,
And Lucy's fmile o'erpays the frowning waves.
At eve, flow plodding from the labour'd plain,
Mild Phillis' kifs revives her fainting Swain:
How high reward, when Toil his task foregoes,
To find on Beauty's bolom foft repofe !
Search then all life, each state, condition prove!
The pureft pleasure flows from virtuous Love.

ART. XIV. An Heroic Epistle to the Right Honourable the Lord Craven, on his delivering the following Sentence at the Country Meeting at Abingdon, on Tuesday November 7, 1775. "I will have it known

CHURCHILL.

there is Refpect due to a Lord." 4to. is. Wheble, "Room for my LORD! Virtue ftand by and bow." Ex nihilo nihil fit, was an adage among the school-men; but the philofophy of the schools has long been exploded, and now, nothing is more common than to fee many things made out of nothing; to fuch a pitch of poetical ingenuity have rifen the bards, or rather the bookfellers, of modern times!- -On the few words, quoted in the title and faid to have been spoken by a noble Lord, thus hath our induftrious verfifier raised a fuperftructure of above one hundred and twenty lines, all to as much purpose and just as much to the purpose as the declaration of a man of quality at a country-meeting; that is to no purpose at all. From the exordium, however, of this very heroic epistle, it appears that the author might be able to write tole rably well on a good subject, if he had one.

Too long have Britain's fons with proud disain
Survey'd the gay Patrician's titled train,

Their various merit fcann'd with eye fevere,
Nor learn'd to know the peafant from the peer:

3

At

At length the Gothic ignorance is o'er,

And vulgar brows fhall fcowl on LORDS no more;
Commons shall shrink at each ennobled nod,
And ev'ry lordling fhine a demigod :

By CRAVEN taught, the humbler herd fhall know,
How high the Peerage, and themselves how low.
Illuftrious Chief, your eloquence divine

Shall raife the whole right honourable line;
All fhall with joy your bright example view,
And love the tribe that bouits a fon like you;
While Liberty fhall lead you to her throne

With jocund hand, and claim you for her own.

The writer proceeds to reprehend, if we rightly understand him, this right honourable lordling, for fomething, which scarce any body knows, and for which probably nobody cares; fo that we poffibly gave him credit for more than he deserved, when we hinted he had made fomething out of nothing; as, on retrofpection, we muft frankly acknowledge Nos hæc noviffimus effe nibil.

ART. XV. Songs and Choruffes in the New Mufical Entertainment, called May-Day, or, the Little Gipfey. As performed at the Theatre Royal in Drury-Lane. The Mufic compofed by Dr. Arne. 8vo. 6d. Becket.

A little gipfey, indeed! to engage the attention and raise the expectations of two fuch compofers as Dr. A. and the manager, and, like a deceitful baggage, difappoint them. But, what covetous rogues! Did they think that, by barely croffing the wench's hand with a fix-pence, fhe was to make fortunes as readily as tell them. May-Day, it feems, was written chiefly with a view to introduce a young female finger to the town, whofe vocal powers are femewhat extraordinary; we are not, therefore, to look for much fenfe or poetry in this precipitated production; yet ex pede Herculem, from one fong, we may give a fhrewd guefs at the writer, whofe forte lies in ludicrous defcriptions of London.*

Witnel the Farmer's Return-The Earonet's defcription of the town in Ben T, &c.