having been effected without the concurrence of either the Nobles, or the Ecclesiastics, or the monied Classes, in any Country in which the influences of Property had ever been predominant, and where the interests of the Proprietors were interlinked! Examine the Revolution of the Belgic Provinces under Philip the second; the civil Wars of France in the preceding generation, the History of the American Revolution, or the yet more recent Events in Sweden and in Spain; and it will be scarcely possible not to perceive, that in England, from 1791 to the Peace of Amiens, there were neither tendencies to Confederacy nor actual Confederacies, against which the existing Laws had not provided both sufficient safeguards and an ample pun, ishment. But alas! the panic of Property had been struck in the first instance for Party purposes: and when it became general, its Propagators caught it themselves, and ended in believing their own Lie even as our Bulls in Borrowdale sometimes run mad with the echo of their own bellowing. The consequences were most injurious, Our attention was concentred to a Monster which could not survive the convulsions in which it had been brought forth, even the enlightened Burke himself too often talking and reasoning as if a perpetual and organized Anarchy had been a possible thing! Thus while we were warring against French Doctrines, we took little heed whether the means, by which we attempted to overthrow them, were not likely to aid and augment the far more formidable evil of French Ambition. Like Children we ran away from the yelping of a Cur, and took shelter at the heels of a vicious War Horse. The conduct of the aristocratic Party was equally unwise in private life and to individuals, especially to the young and inexperienced, who were surely to be forgiven for having had their imagination dazzled, and their enthusiasm kindled, by a Novelty so specious, that even an old and tried Statesman had pronounced it "a stupendous monument of human Wisdom and human Happiness." This was indeed a gross delusion, but assuredly for young men at least, a very venial one. To hope too boldly of Human Nature is a fault, which all good Men have an interest in forgiving. But instead of removing the Error in the only way, by which it could be or even ought to have been removed-namely, having first sympathized with the warm benevolence and the enthusi 159 asm for Liberty, which was at the bottom of it, to have then shewn the young Enthusiasts, that Liberty was not the only blessing of Society, and though desirable even for its own sake yet that it was chiefly valuable as the means of calling forth and securing other advantages and excellencies, the activities of Industry, the security of Life and Property, the peaceful energies of Genius and manifold Talent, the developement of the moral Virtues,. and the independence and dignity of the Nation itself in relation to foreign Powers: and that neither these nor Liberty itself could subsist in a country so various in its Soils, so long inhabited and so fully peopled, as Great Britain, without difference of Ranks, and without Laws which recognized and protected the privileges of each. But instead of thus winning them back from the snare, they too often drove them into it by angry contumelies, which being in contradiction with each other, could only excite contempt for those that uttered them. To prove the folly of the Opinions, they were represented as the crude fancies of unfledged Wit and School-boy Statesmen ; but when abhorrence was to be expressed, the self-same unfledged School-boys were invested with all the attri butes of brooding Conspiracy and hoary-headed Treason. Nay, a sentence of absolute Reprobation was passed on them; and the speculative Error of Jacobinism was equalized to the mysterious Sin in Scripture, which in smoe inexplicable manner excludes not only Mercy but even Repentance. It became the Watch-word of the Party, "ONCE A JACOBIN ALWAYS A JACOBIN." And wherefore t? might the individual say, (who in his Youth or earliest Manhood had been enamoured of a System, which for him had combined the austere beauty of Science, at once with all the light and colours of Imagination, and with all the warmth of wide religious Charity, and who overlooking its ideal Essence, had dreamt of actually building a Government on personal and natural Rights alone) And wherefore?" Is Jacobinism an absurdity, and The Passage which follows is taken from an Essay of my own, published many years ago, in a morning Newspaper (I hope the friendly Reader will forgive this little piece of vanity, which, however, I can assure him, respects my political Principles, not my literary Merits) which gave the first fair and philosophical statement and definition of Jacobinism and of Jacobin, as far as a Jacobin is not a mere word of abuse, or already expressed in Republican, Democrat, or Demagogue, have we no Understanding to detect it with? Is it productive of all misery and all horrors, and have we no natural Humanity to make us turn away with indignation and loathing from it? Uproar and confusion, insecurity of person and of property, the tyranny of Mobs or the domination of a soldiery; private houses changed to brothels, the ceremony of marriage but an initiation to harlotry, and marriage itself degraded to mere concubinage-these, the wiser Advocates of Aristocracy have said, and truly said, are the effects of Jacobinism! In private Life an insufferable licentiousness, and abroad an intolerable despotism? "Once a Jacobin, always a Jacobin"-O wherefore? Is it because the Creed which we have stated is dazzling at first sight to the young, the innocent, the disinterested, and to those, who judging of Men in general from their own uneorrupted hearts, judge erroneously, and expect unwisely? Is it, because it deceives the mind in its purest and most flexible period? Is it, because it is an Error, that every days experience aids to detect? An error against which all History is full of warning examples? Or is it because the experiment has been tried before our eyes and the error made palpable? From what source are we to derive this strange Phanomenon, that the Young and the Enthusiastic, who as our daily experience informs us, are deceived in their religious Antipathies, and grow wiser; in their Friendships, and grow wiser; in their modes of Pleasure, and grow wiser; should, if once deceived in a question of abstract Politics, cling to the Error for ever and ever? though in addition to the natural growth of judgement and information with increase of years, they live in the Age in which the tenets have been acted upon, and the consequences such that every good Man's heart sickens and his head turns giddy at the retrospect. PENRITH PRINTED AND PUBLISHED BY J. BROWN, AND SOLD BY No. 11, THURSDAY, OCTOBER 26, 1809. (Continued) I was never myself, at any period of my life, a Convert to the System. From my earliest Manhood, it was an axiom in Politics with me, that in every Country where Property prevailed, Property must be the grand basis of the Government; and that that Government was the best, in which the Power or political Influence of the Individual was in proportion to his property, provided that the free circulation of Property was not impeded by any positive Laws or Customs, nor the tendency of Wealth to accumu late in abiding Masses unduly encouraged. I perceived, that if the People at large were neither ignorant nor immoral, there could be no motive for a sudden and violent change of Government; and if they were, there could be no hope but of a change for the worse. The Temple of Despotism, like that of the Mexican God, would be rebuilt with human skulls, and more firmly, though in a different architecture. Thanks to the excellent Education which Į had received, my reason was too clear not to draw this "circle of Power" round me, and my spirit too honest to attempt to break through it. My feelings, however, and imagination did not remain unkindled in this general conflagration; and I confess I should be more inclined to be ashamed than proud of myself, if they had! I was a sharer in the general vortex, though my little World described the path of its Revolution in an orbit of its own. What I dared not expect from constitutions of Govern ment and whole Nations, I hoped from Religion and a small Company of chosen Individuals, and formed a plan, as harmless as it was extravagant, of trying the experiment of human Perfectability on the banks of the Susquehannah ; where our little Society, in its second Generation was to have combined the innocence of the patriarchal Age with the knowledge and genuine refinements of European culture: and where I dreamt that in the sober evening of my life, I should behold the Cottages of Independence in the undivided Dale of Industry, "And oft, soothed sadly by some dirgeful wind, Strange fancies! and as vain as strange! yet to the intense interest and impassioned zeal, which called forth and strained every faculty of my intellect for the organization and defence of this Scheme, I owe much of whatever I at present possess, my clearest insight into the nature of individual Man, and my most comprehensive views of his social relations, the true uses of Trade and Commerce, and how far the Wealth and relative Power of Nations promote or impede their true welfare and inherent strength. Nor were they less serviceable in securing myself, and perhaps some others, from the pitfalls of Sedition: and when we gradually alighted on the firm ground of common sense, from the gradually exhausted Balloon of youthful Enthusiasm, though the air-built Castles, which we had been pursuing, had vanished with all their pageantry of shifting forms and glowing colours, we were yet free from the stains and impurities which might have remained upon us, had we been travelling with the crowd of less imaginative malcontents, through the dark lanes and foul bye roads of ordinary Fanaticism. But Oh! there were thousands as young and as innocent as myself who, not like me, sheltered in the tranquil nook or inland cove of a particular Fancy, were driven along with the general current! Many there were, young Men of loftiest minds, yea the prime stuff out of which manly Wisdom and practicable Greatness is to be formed, who had appropriated their hopes and the ardour of their souls to Mankind at large, to the wide expanse of national Interests, which then seemed fermenting in the French Republic as in the main Outlet and chief Crater of the revolutionary Torrents; and who confidently believed, that these Torrents, like the Lavas of Vesuvius, were to subside into a soil of inexhaustible fertility on the circumjacent Lands, the old divisions and mouldering edifices of which they had covered or swept away-Enthusiasts of kindliest temperament, who to use the words of the Poet (having already borrowed the meaning and the metaphor) had approached "the shield Of human nature from the golden side, And would have fought even to the death to attest My honoured Friend has permitted me to give a value and relief to the present Essay, by a quotation from one of |