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are avowedly pursued which equally endangers the right of the Subject, and the authority of the State, that every Law is consonant to the principle of the Constitution, which strictly goes to maintain both the one and the other inviolate. Such Laws must ever be considered as sanctioned by justice. If they have any thing in them beyond the ordinary mildness of our Constitution, it is because the occasion called them into action, against the desperate designs of those who were meditating its subversion. It is not sufficient to say, that these Laws were unknown to our Ancestors; and that they are therefore at variance with the Principles of our Constitution.-The answer is obvious; These times, and the crimes growing out of them, were equally unknown to our Forefathers. Their Laws were suitable to the period in which they lived, and grew out of their situation. So must it be with ours. No System of Laws can be invariable. In proportion as new crimes engender new dangers, they induce the necessity of fresh Laws, to counteract their influence upon the manners, opinions, and morals of Society. To say, therefore, that our Ancestors were strangers to such Laws, is not to prove that they are oppressive; it only goes to establish that they lived at a period when the Loyalty and good Sense of the People rendered them unnecessary. Let those who complain against the Laws, shew by their conduct that there is no occasion for them, and they will be done away. But, while every day produces some new outrage against the rights of individuals, and some fresh attack upon the authority of Government, they will continue to appear what they really are, a Security to the Public, and a Safeguard to the Constitution.

It is for the repeal of these Laws, and the substitution of opposite measures, that your Lordship contends. It is

VOL. I.

I

for

for the introduction of such a system of conciliation as would go in its effect, to shew the Country that Government felt it had either abused or overstrained its authority. Where are the proofs that a spirit of returning duty would be the happy result of such a policy?

Would your Lordship impress upon the Public Mind, that the Government of Ireland has blindly coerced the People, without endeavouring, by measures of lenity, to supersede the necessity of so doing? When his Majesty's Ministers came into possession of those materials from whence the proofs of this great Conspiracy to overthrow the Constitution, and deliver the Country into the hands of the Enemy, were deduced, what was their first act? To issue a mild Proclamation, endeavouring to recal the deluded within the pale of the Laws, by offering a full Pardon to all such as had taken the illegal Oath administered by these Societies, provided they came in within a limited period, acknowledged their error, entered into a Recognizance, and took the Oath of Allegiance to HIS MAJESTY. Here then was lenity. What was its effect? Your Lordship states (though I do not vouch for the accuracy of this statement), that (from the best information you have been able to collect) these Societies of United Irishmen have tripled their numbers since first the Report was published which exposed their traitorous designs. At that period they rated themselves at near one hundred thousand men. If an offer of Pardon has the operation of encreasing the number of the disaffected in the alarming proportion your Lordship states, what would be, the general consequence of a universal System of Concession, founded in the principle of admitting the measures of Government to have', been either erroneous or oppressive? Your Lordship's

own

own statement proves the necessity of the case for which we contend, and vindicates the conduct of Government, by shewing that those discontents have their origin in causes which they cannot controul, since the spirit of disaffection has thus increased, notwithstanding the earliest efforts on their part to subdue it, by the adoption of such lenient measures as your Lordship recommends.

CIVIS.

[We are obliged, for want of room, to defer the conclu→ sion of this Subject to our next Paper.]

WEEKLY EXAMINER.

LIES.

WE have a preparatory remark to make on this subject. Our plan of exposing the bad faith of the Jacobin Writers has already produced one beneficial effect.-It has not indeed, prevented them from LYING; and for the most authentic of all reasons

Naturam expellas furcâ tamen usque recurret ;

But it has compelled them to contradict, in some instances, those daring Falsehoods which were lately thrown out without shame, and left to work at large amongst the credulous and uninformed *.- If the ingenious Editors

* This has been the case with the story of Mr. Pirr and the Watchmaker, in the Morning Post of November 20th; and with the assertion respecting Mr. GEORGE MARKHAM, noticed in our No. II.

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hope to escape exposure by this subterfuge, they have failed; and we take the liberty of assuring them, that they always will fail-for as the Falsehoods in question, were known to be such at the time of their insertion, no insidious whimper of recantation shall prevent our dragging them forward to the contempt and indignation they merit.

"The late Negotiation broke off, by our Ministers insisting upon "the retention of Ceylon and the Cape."-Courier, Nov. 27.

This is so directly contradicted by the Papers relative to the Negotiation, laid before the House, and now we trust in the possession of every respectable Family in the Kingdom, that we should not have thought it worth noticing, had we not been aware of the Jacobinical design of giving it authenticity by incessant repetition.

It shall be our care to counteract these plans, by noticing every assertion of this nature as soon as it appears. We beg pardon of the generality of our Readers, for the tautology this will probably occasion: we know that as far as relates to them, it is unnecessary; but as our Paper was established chiefly for the purpose of developing the artifices of the Jacobin Writers, we shall not think our pains ill bestowed, if we can but preserve one man, however humble his station, from being ensnared by them.

"Speaking of the Documents relative to the Negotiation, which "have been laid before the English Parliament, the Redacteur asks "If it was not a derision to ask for a Contre Projet to a Projet in "blanks? Was it not in other words, a positive refusal to com"mence the Negotiation? •Courier, Nov. 27.

It

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It is impossible the Redacteur, even allowing him all the characteristic inaccuracy of a Frenchman, could so speak of the DOCUMENTS laid before the ENGLISH PARLIAMENT, because the blanks are there clearly and distinctly filled up.-No! he spoke from the false and garbled accounts with which the Directory have ventured to insult the People of France, and which, in the face of better information, their shameless and profligate retainers have laboured to accredit here.

We wish to make a short remark in this place.-The Reader who has looked over the different articles in our former Numbers, must have observed with what pernicious industry the Jacobin Papers toil to persuade us that the War is continued merely for the sake of retaining Ceylon and the Cape.-Yet in the Paragraph we have just quoted, and in hundreds more, we find them contending with equal energy, and indeed with equal truth, that the blanks were not filled up, and that consequently neither Ceylon nor the Cape were so much as mentioned !!! How is this? shall we say that Jacobinism is declining in this Country; and that these incoherent flashes of im potent frenzy are the unequivocal forerunners of its speedy dissolution?-Faxit D. Opt. Max.

MISREPRESENTATIONS.

(Continued from No. II. in answer to Statement of the Morn ing Chronicle, November 24.)

"FROM the account of the net produce of all the Permanent Taxes "in the year ending the 10th of October, 1797, now on the Table " of the House of Commons, it appears that the receipt of the "old Taxes amounts (besides fractions) to 13,340,6361. The "same Taxes produced (in 1792) 14,284,2951. The deficiency, "therefore, in consequence of the War, is 943,6591. The pro

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