LETTER XXIV.

MY LORD,

IT is now universally felt that "this nation, with the "best capacities for grandeur and happiness of any on "the face of the earth;" (p. 21,) and furnished as she richly is with political sinews, latent energies, and innate courage, yet labours under some morbid affection by which her health is undermined and her strength paralysed. At home she is feverish, restless, and splenetic; abroad, she moves not in her wonted majesty, with vigour and authority. Her constitution impaired, a bad habit of the body politic has ensued: tumours have appeared, and quack plaisters have been applied; many call for more such quackery; while other babblers say, give us a new ministry; but mix it up so as to include the ability of all parties? Would to heaven we could see an end to folly and to faction? What! a mixed ministry, a hotch-potch of contraries! Honour and dishonour, patriotism and perfidy to be mixed together in the same cabinet! Whether in such a proposal there be more contempt of public feeling and opinion, more political depravity, or more want of sense, let others decide.

When a state is descending with rapidity from the heights of freedom, power, and glory, the drag-chain of a parliamentary opposition is rightly applied; but when attempting to recover the lost elevation, to reclimb the steep ascent, to regain by painful effort the mountain's top, what man in his right mind would then clap on the drag-chain of a cabinet opposition? What honest man would then clog the political wheels with anti-constitutional doctrines, apostacy, and treachery? What man of sense will give his voice for a mixed ministry, in which he cannot know whether the good or the evil shall preponderate? What man who respects

the constitution, desires to see again in power those who, during Mr. Pitt's most unconstitutional career, and his highest flights of despotism, were his colleagues and not reluctant coadjutors? Do such men again aspire to high offices in the state? Let them inform the people of their new claims to confidence, before they receive a popular suffrage in their favour! For past wrongs the people are easily appeased, when they have good grounds for expecting better treatment in future.

But the very idea of benefit from a good ministry, while the people have no representation in parliament, is folly and madness; for leave the commons house of parliament and the public purse in the hands of the faction behind the throne, and the faction of the boroughs, not a ministry of arch-angels could, under such circumstances, save the state, unless indeed there sat on the throne, an intelligent and determined reformer. But although, had we an honest minister, as well as an honest reforming king, they alone (because sure of the people,) would soon compel the factions to swallow the pill of reformation; it will not at present become the good sense of the people, to contend exclusively for that, which without an accompaniment of more potency than itself, can do them no good. I do not mean, my Lord, to discourage the idea of contending for a change of ministry: far from it: quite the contrary; that no man more than myself desires such a change, my book in every page bears witness; but then I desire we may not shew ourselves contemptibly ignorant, nor do our work by halves. A constitutional ministry, and a constitutional representation, are both necessary to us: we cannot dispense with either: but if we get the mis nistry, it cannot, unassisted by the people, get us the representation; whereas, if we get the representation, we are sure it will get us the ministry: besides, which of the two is most important we see also in this, that constitutional representation is only another phrase for national liberty; whereas, there is no such relationship between liberty and the best of ministries. These appear to me sound reasons why the people ought strenuously to contend for both objects at once; and THE

MORE SO, AS BY SO DOING EITHER OF THEM, INDIVI DUALLY CONSIDERED, WILL BE SOONER OBTAINED.

It ought not, methinks, to recommend this factious, or at best foolish cant, against combining our efforts for a new ministry, with efforts for the still greater good, that it is precisely the cant which unfortunately. prevailed against more manly reasoning in 1784, when the voice of the people raised to power the pledged champion of the cause, that very minister who first betrayed, and has since unceasingly laboured to enslave them.

On the nation's own conduct, in the meetings of the people at this crisis, will doubtless depend the treatment it will receive. The people, guided by the CONSTITUTION, will know how to respect, and how to be respected. To be attended to, they must pay attention to the situation of their country; and they must not be contented with thinking as others think, but they must follow good examples and act as others act; they must petition; they must address, for the petitioners and addressers can be numbered, but the mere thinkers, the dumb and inactive hopers cannot. In reasoning with any branch of the legislature on grievances that are felt, on rights that cannot be denied, and on the sacred and paramount duties of justice, in language at once temperate and respectful, dignified and firm, they have nothing to fear, but every thing to expect; nothing to lose, but every thing to gain. Tyranny, whether facLious or ministerial, is a coward and a bully. A divided and supine nation it insolently tramples on; but union and energy fill it with terror and dismay. Surely then every wise and good man will promote such meetings, and assist in such proceedings!

On the nations' own conduct, I repeat it, will wholly depend the treatment it will receive. Its grievances will be continued or redressed, as its conduct shall be weak or wise, supine or energetic. If it like not slavery it must crumble to dust the instruments of arbitrary power. If it relish not beggary and oppression, it must scatter to the winds the very elements of despotism and this can only be done through the medium of a constitutional representation; and such a repre

sentation can only be had, through the medium of constitutional meetings of the people in their towns, cities, and counties, from one end of the kingdom to the other.

But there are your mole-eyed politicians,by whose optic powers great objects are immeasurable, and who can contemplate but one small one at a time; these politicians say, let us contend for the constitutional ministry first; let us have them in power, and then from their wisdom and their purity, every thing may be hoped. Yes, to be sure, their wisdom and their purity, would be mighty recommendations to the factions, who are in possession of the citadel of the state! Let me tell these under-ground gentlemen, who seem to think their enemies see no farther than themselves, that even such wisdom as would have kept America at the side of England, and placed them together in peace and glory, at the head of the civilized world, in the eye of groveling faction seemed foolishness; and such wisdom as would have warded off from the French revolution, its misfortunes and its crimes, and out of its fermentation, have extracted a balm to have healed the bruises of Europe, by the swinish taste of those grovellers, was rejected as gall and wormwood; and as for purity, send it if you please to the stews and the brothels, to preach repentance: among the woe-worn victims of an amiable passion, it may find converts; but the iron heart of avarice is stealed against relentings: in the seared conscience of the political prostitute, the purity of constitutional principle has no power of exciting a virtuous feeling; not even can the electricity of heavenly eloquence, rouse to one generous vibration the callous nerve of base servility! What! have we no recollection? Has any whig minister, during the last five and forty years who retained his principles, preserved his place? Have virtue and purity raised any man to power, unless to be duped and betrayed?

Those childish imaginations with which it is in vain to reason, we must catch if we can with parables and similitudes. Were a man of war's hull worm-eaten to a honey-comb, and the ingushing of the waters only prevented by a fraudful plaistering of pitch, and by

keeping the ship in smooth water, would you enable that ship to circumnavigate the globe, encountering the fury of elements and the onset of enemies, by giving her a new set of officers without a repaired bottom? Or, had a sound ship fallen into the hands of pirates, to what end send her your best pilots? Would the pilots controul the crew, or the crew controul the pilots? And unless they themselves became pirates like the rest, would they not be again set on shore, or put in irons, or cast overboard?-No, no: We must cease the folly of sitting down with folded arms, and praying to Jupiter to get our cart out of the mire; but every man put his shoulder to the wheel, or pull before, or push behind; and then we shall succeed."

Too long has the body of the English nation been criminally passive, as to the hands in which the government of their country shall be placed. Too long has this much injured nation resembled a fertile plain, the subject of perpetual contest between Tartar tribes: Too long have alternate factions dealt out among them. selves and partizans, the offices and the wealth of the state, as the successful Tartars divide the fruits, and luxuriant pasturage for which they draw the sword. It is time the nation, taught by its sufferings, became more rational, and exerted a better spirit, than thus to be preyed upon. Tis time it taught the proud sons of misused wealth, tis not a weight of rotten boroughs, but of solid personal and constitutional virtues, must be put into the scale of their pretensions, if their object be power; and that seats of legislation for England are to be obtained, not by the merits of polished stones in park walls, of painted posts in a meadow, or of toftsteads at the bottom of the sea, but by knowledge, diligence in public business, and patriot virtue.

More than forty years long have we miserably wandered in the wilderness of faction and oppression, and if we mean to enter the promised land of the constitution, and to possess it, shall our Joshua, and a few captains alone go to the battle, to be given into the hands of the enemy? Nay; let the PEOPLE pass with them over Jardun, and then shall faint the hearts of these Canaanites, these sacrificers of their own posterity to Man