fuch characters, it would make them; it would hatch them by its peftiferous heat in the carcafe of mangled fociety. And think, oh think, whether the present regular administration of laws and protection of property (regular, I say, unless fo far as it has been made otherwise by the infidious artifices of your own Chieftains,) would be well exchanged for the bafe ftratagems, the infulting haughtinefs, the fawning adulation, and the brow-beating defpotifm of fuch mushroom mifcreants! ESSAY VII. June 16, 1796. IN my walks through this city I fometimes fall in with a clafs of men fo peculiarly diftinguifhed from all other perfons, that, I dare fay, many befides myself are in the habit of observing them. They appear occafionally in private companies, but they make a far more confpicuous figure at Clubs and public Societies. The traits by which they are known appear with equal prominence in their conversation and countenance. In their converfation they harp eternally on the fame ftring, the wickedness of Government, and the wrongs done to the people. In their H 2 their countenances they exhibit the most striking marks of discontent, irritability, and arrogance. If the gloom brightens at any time into a doubtful funfhine, it is when the French have gained a victory, when the English fleet has been driven back by contrary winds, or when Horne Tooke has entertained the mob at Westminster with a philippic against the Minifter. It cannot be doubted but that these men are fingularly unhappy, and, on this account, they might, at first view, seem objects of commiferation; but the indefatigable eagerness with which they labour to make others as wretched as themfelves, and to transfufe into the minds of all with whom they converfe that corroding venom which rankles in their own breaft, has in it fomething fo exquifitely infernal, fo like what we have been used to attribute to the arch-enemy of God and man, that the tendencies to pity muft in all well-disposed minds fpeedily give way to difguft and indignation. In what degree the perfons to whom I allude ftand related to the difembodied National Guards, or the difperfed Society of United Irishmen, I fhall not pretend to determine. One thing is plain, that they are actuated by the fame fpirit, and are in purfuit of the fame ends: they only only differ in adopting, perhaps through neceffity, more indirect and lefs alarming means. The war exifts; the object is unchanged; but the champions of this day hope to effect by fap what their predeceffors failed in accomplishing by form. The immediate purpose is too plain to be mistaken; they evidently with and hope to make the great body of the People fo completely dif fatisfied with the present order of things, that they shall at last rife in a mass, overturn the Government, and thus leave an open field for the introduction of any theoretic plan which the enterprizing genius of those who excite them now, and trust to be their leaders then, may happen to fuggeft. That the defigns of thefe men have failed hitherto, or may fail, finally, as to their full accomplishment, makes little difference in the amount of their merit or their guilt. If their purpose be virtuous, their intention fhould not be defrauded of its due praife, becaufe, from contingent circumftances, it has proved abortive: if it be criminal, they stand charged in the fight of God and man with the enormities they would have committed, and the miferies they would have occafioned, had Providence permitted their fchemes to be fuccefsful. I afk I afk then, (and I conceive it is a queftion which even the lefs guilty agitators of doubtful political points have not yet confidered as they ought,) whether any crime can be equal to the wilful, wanton endeavour to diffolve the regular order of a community? If murder, and pillage, and ruthless havock, and headlong devaftation, entail guilt on the immediate actors, they who cause these enormities, who determinately pull down the only barriers which reftrain them, who excite the paffions which muft produce them, and create the circumftances which leave fcope for them, they, I fay, are much more than accomplices; they must pass for principles in every crime that is committed, in every barbarity that is perpetrated. That law and government of fome kind are neceffary to the fafety of fociety, might be proved, if any one was mad enough to deny it, by lamentable demonftration. For when at any time these restraints have been fufpended, even by events which must have called forth pity where it was, and might almost have created it where it was not, by earthquakes, for inftance, or by conflagrations, the fpirit of violence and rapine has discovered itself immediately. The fenfe of this neceffity firft fuggefted the only only poffible remedy; and the establishment of law and government marked the epocha of man's rife from favageness to civilization, from brutal fiercenefs to the endearments of humanity. Then, and not till then, came the idea of fafety, and, with the idea of fafety, the attempt to be comfortable; then, and not before, the fanguinary howl foftened into the fong of peace; then fprung up the charities which bind man to man, the virtues which enrich our nature, the acquirements which adorn it, the domeftic and focial enjoyments which make life worth preferving. But would these indifpenfible requifites to human happiness furvive the burft of anarchy ? Would not the overbearing flood of uncurbed paffion, of unreftrained depravity, fweep them all away? And would not the poor difconfolate lover of order fee all that he held dear, the fruit of his induftry, the reward of his ingenuity, his domeftic comforts, his firefide delights, all carried off, hopelessly and remedilefsly carried off, by that refiftless torrent, which, while rifing above every mound of right, would be to all the purposes of vice as ductile as a rivulet? Gracious Heaven! And are there indeed men in the community who, loft to all the tender feelings of nature, would put thefe effentials of human |