cence. For if experience has shown us that increased expenditure during war, and a proportionately increasing prosperity have been naturally connected as cause and consequence; it is neither rash nor illogical to infer, that a liberal expenditure in peace upon national works would produce the same beneficial effect, without any of the accompanying evil. Money thus expended will flow like chyle into the veins of the state, and nourish and invigorate it. Build, therefore, our monuments for Trafalgar and Waterloo, and let no paltry considerations prevent them from being made worthy of the occasion, and of the country;.. of the men who have fought, conquered and died for us;.. of Nelson, of Wellington, and of Great Britain. Let them be such as may correspond in splendour with the actions to which they are consecrated, and vie, if possible, in duration, with the memory of those immortal events. They are for after-ages; the more magnificent they may be, the better will they manifest the national sense of great public services, and the more will they excite and foster that feeling in which great actions have their root. In proportion to their magnificence, also, will be the present benefit, as well as the future good; for they are not like the Egyptian pyramids, to be raised by bondsmen under rigorous taskmasters: the wealth which is taken from the people returns to them again, like vapours which are drawn imperceptibly from the earth, but distributed to it in refreshing dews and fertilizing showers. What bounds could imagination set to the welfare and glory of this island, if a tenth part, or even a twentieth of what the

war expenditure has been, were annually applied in improving and creating harbours, in bringing our roads to the best possible state, in colonizing upon our waste lands, in reclaiming fens and conquering tracts from the sea, in encouraging the liberal arts, in erecting churches, in building and endowing schools and colleges, and making war upon physical and moral evil with the whole artillery of wisdom and righteousness, with all the resources of science, and all the ardour of enlightened and enlarged benevolence?

It

It is likewise incumbent upon government to take heed lest in its solicitude for raising the necessary revenue, there should be too little regard for the means by which it is raised. should beware of imposing such duties as create a strong temptation to evade them. It should be careful that all its measures tend, as much as possible, to the improvement of the people, and especially careful that nothing be done which can tend in any way to corrupt them. It should reform its prisons; and apply some remedy to the worst grievance which exists, . . the enormous expenses, the chicanery, and the ruinous delays of the law.

Machiavelli says, that legislators ought to suppose all men to be naturally bad;..in no point has that sagacious statesman been more erroneous. Fitter it is, that governments should think well of mankind; for the better they think of them, the better they will find them, and the better they will make them. Government must reform the populace, the people must reform themselves. This is the true reform, and com

pared with this all else is flocci, nauci, nihili, pili.

Such, Sir, are in part the views of the man whom you have traduced. Had you perused his writings, you could not have mistaken them; and I am willing to believe that if you had done this, and formed an opinion for yourself, instead of retailing that of wretches who are at once the panders of malice and the pioneers of rebellion, you would neither have been so far forgetful of your parliamentary character, nor of the decencies between man and man, as so wantonly, so unjustly, and in such a place, to have attacked one who had given you no provocation.

Did you imagine that I should sit down quietly under the wrong, and treat your attack with the same silent contempt as I have done all the abuse and calumny with which, from one party or the other, Antijacobins or Jacobins, I have been assailed in daily, weekly, monthly, and quarterly publications, since the year 1796, when I first became known to the public? The place where you made the attack, and the manner of the attack, prevent this.

How far the writings of Mr. Southey may be found to deserve a favourable acceptance from after ages, time will decide; but a name, which, whether worthily or not, has been conspicuous in the literary history of its age, will certainly not perish. Some account of his life will always be prefixed to his works, and transferred to literary histories, and to the biographical dictionaries, not only of this, but of other countries. There it will be related, that he lived in the bosom of his

family, in absolute retirement; that in all his writings there breathed the same abhorrence of oppression and immorality, the same spirit of devotion, and the same ardent wishes for the melioration of mankind: and that the only charge which malice could bring against him was, that as he grew older, his opinions altered concerning the means by which that melioration was to be effected, and that as he learnt to understand the institutions of his country, he learnt to appreciate them rightly, to love, and to revere, and to defend them. It will be said of him, that in an age of personality, he abstained from satire; and that during the course of his literary life, often as he was assailed, the only occasion on which he ever condescended to reply, was, when a certain Mr. William Smith insulted him in Parliament with the appellation of renegade. On that occasion, it will be said, that he vindicated himself, as it became him to do, and treated his calumniator with just and memorable severity. Whether it shall be added, that Mr. William Smith redeemed his own character, by coming forward with honest manliness and acknowledging that he had spoken rashly and unjustly, concerns himself, but is not of the slightest importance to me.

ROBERT SOUTHEY.