iv

few which were written from this place, and by way of distinction, will give them to you under the title of the BRITISH SPY."

LITTLE credit, however, is to be given to this account. The letters are undoubtedly the production of an American, and it is supposed a citizen of Virginia. They are considered as such, where they first appeared, and have excited much newspaper controversy. The severity of his strictures on the Virginians is, perhaps, two unqualified. It is not with a wish to propagate his prejudices that they are republished, but for the sake of the ease and elegance of the composition, and many excellent strokes of nature, and sentiment which they contain. To render the satisfaction of perusing them more complete, I have ventured to explain the blanks, not from personal knowledge, but by observing how the references are understood, in southern papers,

to Mr.

དྷ་ > refer

THE letters are supposed to be addre. SHERIDAN. In the eighth page, the first blank ence to Captain MURRAY, and the second to Lord DUNMORE. In the fifty-ninth page, we are to understand Mr. EDMUND RANDOLPH, and in the sixty-second, Mr. MARSHALL, Chief Justice of the United States.

**** *****

**

*

BRITISH SPY.

LETTER I.

RICHMOND, SEPT. 1.

You complain my dear S*******,

that although I have been resident in Richmond upwards of six months, you have heard nothing of me since my arrival. The truth is, that have suspended writing until a more inti ate acquaintance with the people and their country, should furnish me with materials for a correspondence. Having now collected those materials, the apology ceases, and the correspondence begins. But first a word of myself.

I still continue to wear the mask, and most willingly exchange the attentions which would be paid to my rank, for the superior and exquisite pleasure of inspecting this country and this people, without attracting to myself a single eye of curiosity, or awakening a shade of suspicion. Under my assumed name, I gain an admittance, close enough to trace at leisure, every line of the American character; while the plainness or

B

rather humility of my appearance, my manners and conversation, puts no one on his guard, but enables me to take a portrait of nature, as it were, asleep and naked. Besides, there is something of innocent roguery in the masquerade which I am playing, that suits very well with the sportiveness of my temper. To sit and decoy the human heart from behind all its disguises-to watch the capricious evolutions of unrestrained nature, risking, curvetting and gambolling at her ease, with the curtain of ceremony drawn up to the very sky-O! it is delightful!

You are perhaps surprised at my speaking of the attentions which would be paid, in this country, to my rank. You will suppose then I have forgotten where I am; no such thing. I remember well enough that I am in Virginia that state which, of all the rest, plumes herself most highly on the democratick spirit of her principles. Her political principles are, indeed, democratick enough in all conscience. Rights and privileges, as regulated by the constitution of the state, belong in an equal degree to all the citizens; and Peter Pindar's remark is perfectly true of the people of this country, that " every blackguard scoundrel is a king." Nevertheless, there exists in Virginia a species of local rank, from which no country can, I presume, be entirely free. I mean that kind of rank which arises from the different degrees of

wealth and of intellectual refinement.-These must introduce a style of living and conversation, the former of which a poor man cannot attain, while an ignorant one would be incapable of enjoying the latter. It seems to me, that from these causes, wherever they may exist, circles of society, strongly discriminated, must inevitably result. And one of these causes exists in full force in Virginia, for, however, they may vaunt of equai liberty in church and state, they have but little to boast on the subject of equal property. Indeed there is no country, I believe, where property is more unequally distributed than in Virginia.-This inequality struck me with peculiar force, in riding through the lower countries on the Potowmack. Here and there a stately aristocratick palace, with all its appurtenances, strikes the view. While all around for many miles, no other buildings are to be seen, but the little smoky huts and log cabins of poor, laborious, ignorant tenants. And what is very ridiculous, these tenants, while they approach the great house, cap in hand, with all the fearful trembling submission of the lowest, feudal vassals, boast, in their court house yards, with obstreperous exultation, they live in a land of freemen, a land of equal liberty and equal rights. Whether this debasing sense of inferiority which I have mentioned, is but a remnant of the colonial character, or wheth

=

er it be that it is natural for poverty and impotence to look up with veneration to wealth and property and rank, I cannot decide. For my own part, however, I have ascribed it to the latter cause; and I have been in a great degree confirmed in the opinion, by observing the attentions which were paid, by the most genteel people here, to

son of Lord

-the

-was

You know the circumstances in which his lordship left Virginia; that so far from being popular, he carried with him the deepest execrations of these people. Even now his name is seldom mentioned here, but in connexion with terms of abhorrence or contempt. Aware of this, and believing it impossible that indebted to his father for all the parade of respect which was shewn to him, I sought in his own personal accomplishments a solution of the phenomenon. But I sought in vain. Without one solitary ray of native genius, without one adventitious beam of science, without any of those traits of soft benevolence which are so universally captivating, I found his mind dark and benighted, his manners bold, forward and assuming, and his whole character evidently inflated with the consideration that he was the son of a lord. His deportment was so evidently dictated by this consideration, and he regarded the Virginians so palpably in the humiliating light of infe rior plebeians, that I have often wondered how