And think that thou waft mine; and if I wept Em. What of him? I cannot tell thee; An honeft fhame, a virtuous pride forbids. Em. Guild. Then hear the worst, and arm thy foul to bear it. EMMELINA. (After a long pause.) 'Tis well-'tis very well-tis as it should be. Em. I will not fhame thy blood; and yet, my father, Guild. Long have I known thy love, I thought it mutual; Em. No more: No No flowers of rhetoric, no arts of speech Em. When cruel flight, or killing fcorn falls on them. Come wounded modefty, come flighted love, Come fcorn, come confcious worth, come black defpair! Guild. Em. But for thy fake, my dear, tond, injur'd father, Thou hast a brother; He fall affert thy cause. First strike me dead! No, in the wild distraction of my fpirit, [Kneels. Hear my fond pleading-fave me from that curfe; Thefe tender claims have yielded, I adjure thee Before the tragedy are printed a poetical prologue written by the fair Authorefs, and a humorous epilogue by Mr. Sheridan. ART. X. The Canadian Freeholder. Vol. II. Concluded. See Review for September last, p. 171; where the Title, at length, is recited; and which ought to be reperufed, to affift the recollection of our Readers. WE E have feen, in the courfe of this volume, that the general principles on which the king's legiflative authority over conquered countries is afferted by Lord Mansfield, are either destructive of the very purpofe they were produced to serve, or fall extremely fhort of the point they were intended to eftablish. When reafon fails, or is filent, recourse must next be had to authority, and to precedents. The testimony of hiftory is accordingly brought forward by Lord Mansfield, to fhew, that the Crown has, in numerous inftances, actually exercifed this fuppofed authority. His inftances are drawn from Ireland, Wales, Berwick upon Tweed, Gafcony, Calais, New York, Jamaica, Gibraltar, and Minorca. The exertion of a legislative power, and the exercise of a legislative right, are by no means fynonymous terms. Hiftory may atteft the one, buc but fomething more than hiftory ought to prove the other. At the fame time, it must be confefled, that the practice of paft ages is, in general, a fafe rule to guide the judgment of the prefent. It vouches the opinion of men who had access to more information than we can be poffeffed of; and though we do not take their word for the juftness of a conclufion, when the premises are as open to us as they were to them, yet we may reafonably fuppofe, that as they were placed nearer the fountain, they were acquainted with many facts, many evidences of the right, which are now funk in the stream of time, or have been washed away by the length of its courfe. Our Author owns, very candidly, that if the arguments from hiftory in favour of this legiflative authority of the Crown, are clear, and pofitive, and uniform,' they must have great weight; but he is of opinion, that in the prefent cafe, none can be alleged which poffefs thefe qualities, and that thofe mentioned by Lord Mansfield are entitled to very little regard. We fhall not pretend to follow him in this part of his fubject. It would carry us far beyond the limits of our plan. Such of our readers as are inclined to confult his very accurate hiftorical detail, will find themselves abundantly rewarded by much curious and valuable information. We fhall content ourselves with giving. the recapitulation of the principal heads of his argument, in the words of one of his dialogifts. With refpect to Ireland we obferved, that he argued, from King John's having, by his fole authority, introduced the laws of England into Ireland, that he therefore was the fole legiflator of it; which we agreed to be by no means a jult conclufion, there being a manifeft difference between a power in the conquering king to introduce, once for all, immediately after the conqueft, into the conquer ed country the laws of the conquering country, and the regular, permanent, legislative authority by which the laws of the conquered country may, at any time after, be changed at the pleasure of the legiflators, (whoever they are,) not only by introducing into it the Jaws of the conquering nation, but any other laws whatfoever, and this as often, and in as great a degree, as the legiflators fhall think fit. And we further obferved, that Lord Coke, in the paffage quoted from this report of Calvin's cafe, has exprefsly declared that the kings of England were not poffeffed of this permanent legislative authority over Iceland, not having a right to alter the laws of England, (when once introduced there by King John,) without confent of parliament; and that Lord Mansfield has adopted this opinion of Lord Coke, though it clashes with the conclufion which he laboured to draw from this cafe of Ireland in favour of the king's fole legislative power in the island of Grenada. And we further obferved that, for fome centuries paft, at leaft, the laws which have been made for the government of Ireland have been made either with the confent of the parliament of England, or with that of the parliament of Ireland. So that, upon the whole matter, Ireland appears to be a very unfit example, of the exercite of fuch a fole legislative authority in the 3 Crown Crown over a conquered country, as Lord Mansfield afferted to have belonged to it in the cafe of the island of Grenada before the publication of the royal proclamation of October, 1763. Thefe, I think, are the principal remarks we agreed upon concerning Ireland. With refpect to Wales, it appeared to us, that Lord Mansfield had mistaken two very material facts relating to it. For, in the first place, he afferted that that country had not been a fief of the crown of England before its complete reduction by King Edward the Ift, notwithstanding King Edward, in the famous Statutum Wallia, paffed immediately after the reduction of it, exprefsly declares that it had been fo, and notwithtanding a cloud of paffages in that venerable old hiflorian, Matthew Paris, (who lived in the reign of King Henry the IIld, King Edward's father) which prove, that it was in fuch a ftate of feudal fubjection to the crown of England throughout all the reign of King Henry the IIId, and for feveral reigns before. But, in oppofition to thefe decifive teftimonies, Lord Mansfield will have it that Wales had never been a fief of the crown of England before the reduction of it by King Edward, but was then, for the first time, reduced by his victorious arms, to be a dependent dominion of the crown of England; but that, for fome reafons of policy (which, however, Lord Mansfield does not ftate, nor even hint at) King Edward thought proper to declare it to have been in a state of feudal fubjection to the crown before his conqueft of it. And here we obferved, that Lord Mansfield reafoned inconclufively, even from his own affumed ftate of the fact. For, if Wales had not been a fief of the crown of England before King Edward's reduction of it, but had been (as Lord Mansfield fuppofes) an abfolutely independant state until that time, yet, if King Edward had, for any reafons of policy, thought fit to confider it (though falfely) as having been before in a state of feudal fubjeétion to the crown, fuch a plan of policy in King Edward would have rendered Wales an unfit example of the exercife of the power of a king of England over a conquered country; becaufe it must be fuppofed that King Edward would, in fuch a cafe, have exercised only fuch rights of goverument over it as were compatible with the political fituation in which he would have thought fit to place it, which would have been that of an ancient fief of the crown reduced into poffeffion, And we obferved alfo, that he had mifconceived another material fact relating to this country, with refpect to the power by which laws were made for the government of it after its reduction by King Edward. For he afferts, that King Edward made laws for it by his own fingle authority, notwithstanding it is exprefsly declared by that king himself, in the preamble of his famous Statutum Wallia, above-mentioned, that the laws he then eftablished for the government of it were made de confilio procerum regni noftri, or by the confent of his parliament. Thefe mistakes we obferved to have been made by Lord Mansfield in what he faid concerning thofe two great examples of Ireland and Wales; which are alfo of too great antiquity to have much weight in determining a queftion concerning the conftitution of the English government at this day. We then obferved that all the other inftances that were mentioned by him, except thofe of Gibraltar and Minorca, are of no import ance ance to the question. Thefe inftances were the town of Berwick upon Tweed, the dutchy of Guienne, or Gafcony, the town of Calais in France, the province of New-York in North America, and the island of Jamaica. All that he fays of Berwick upon Tweed is, that it was governed by a royal charter. But that circumftance is no proof that the king was the fole legiflator of it, any more than he is of the cities of York, Bristol, Exeter, and twenty other towns in England, which are governed alfo by royal charters. And even that charter of Berwick appears to have been confirmed by act of parliament in the reign of King James the First. As to the dutchy of Guienne, or Gafcony, and the town of Calais in France, they were not acquired by the kings of England by conquest, but by marriage and inheritance, and confequently can afford no example of the power of the Crown over conquered countries. And the province of New York in America is an unfit example for this purpose, because, though perhaps in truth it might be a mere conqueft made upon the Dutch in the year 1664, after they had been many years in quiet pofleflion of it, yet it was not fo confidered by King Charles the Second, who took it from them, but was claimed and feized upon by his order, as a part of the territory of the more ancient English colony of New England, into which, it was pretended, the Dutch had intruded themselves without the permiffion of the Crown. And, upon this ground of an already-exifting right to it in the crown of England, it was granted away by King Charles the Second to his brother, the Duke of York, before ever the fleet, which was fent to take poffeffion of it, had failed from England; and it was taken poffeffion of by Colonel Nicholls, as a part of the king's old dominions, before the king entered into the first Dutch war. As, therefore, it was not confidered by the Crown as a conquered country, the government established in it cannot be justly cited as an example of the authority of the Crown over conquered countries. And nearly the fame thing may be faid of the island of Jamaica; fince Lord Mansfield tells us, that he had found, upon inquiring into the history of it, that it had been almost intirely abandoned by the Spanish inhabitants of it foon after its conqueft by the arms of England in the year 1655, in the time of Cromwell's ufurpation, and that it was occupied only by English fettlers at, or foon after, the refloration of King Charles the Second in 1660; infomuch that it had been confidered ever fince that period as an English plantation, and not as a conquered country. For, if this be true (as I do not doubt it is,) it renders this island an unfit example of the exercife of the legislative authority of the Crown over conquered countries. I mean only, however, that it is not a direct example for this purpose: for indirectly, I acknowledge, both this island and the province of New-York may be used as arguments in favour of this authority, by reafoning as follows. "The power of the Crown over a conquered country must be at leaft as great as it is over a planted country, or colony. Therefore, ince the king of England exercised legiflative authority over the island of Jamaica for about twenty years, without the concurrence of either the English parliament or an |