manners and morals :-"That the Americans have great and peculiar faults both in their manners and their morality, we take to be undeniable. They have the vices and the virtues that belong to their situation; and they will continue to have them until that situation is altered. Their manners, for the most part, are those of a scattered and migratory, but speculating people; and there will be no great amendment until the population becomes more dense, and more settled in its habits. When wealth comes to be more generally inherited than acquired, there will be more refinement, both in vice and manners: as the population becomes concentered, and the spirit of adventure is deprived of its objects, the sense of honor will imfrove, with the importance of character."--Who would suppose, from this description, that the people of America were any thing better than a horde of wandering and predatory Arabs? And who would suppose that this writer, from the proud and lofty tone with which he treats us, inhabited, himself, a country less perfect in its virtues than that Paradise which Gaudentio di Lucca has created amid the deserts of Africa? And yet this declaimer against migratory adventurers and speculators, this teacher of refinement and grace in manners, is himself a Scotchman!

or, at most, an Englishman and let him be of which of those nations he may, we have seen samples enough of his countrymen, here, ministers as well as speculators, to know that this critic would have displayed more understanding as well as justice by taking the tone of modesty than that of arrogance; and that a fair comparison of either of those countries with ours, would give him no ground of triumph, before an impartial tribunal, on the score either of morality or of manners. As to Scotland, I should be glad to know on what quarter of the world, where a penny can be turned, even by carrying a pack, she has not poured and is not daily pouring her "adventurers and speculators?" It may be very true, and according to Doctor Johnson's account of the matter, certainly is so, that in Scotland the spirit of adventure is deprived of its proper objects; but we are yet to learn that this deprivation has had the effect of "improving" either " the importance of character or the sense of honor." And as to England, I should be glad to learn what she is but, confessed-ly, a nation of speculators and adventurers? The man who becomes the aggressor in casting national reflections should take care that his own nation is invulnerable, at least in the particulars which he censures :-but to select the very points, in which his own nation is most offensive. as the topics of proud and wanton abuse against another,

and to call them " great and peculiar faults," is to subject himself to the charge of a want of good sense as well as good breeding, from which no elegance of style or poignancy of periods can save him.

The picture which this critic has drawn of our literature, although certainly aggravated to a caricature, has more resemblance of the truth." Now," says he "tho' we are certainly of opinion, that the second rate pamphleteers of that country, write incomparably better than Mr. Ashe-it is no doubt true, that America can produce nothing to bring her intellectual efforts into any sort of comparison with that (meaning, I suppose those) of Europe." I fancy that Mr. Hammond, Mr. Erskine and Mr. Rose, must have shrunk and shaken their heads, in token of dissent, when they read this period. The writer proceeds"Liberty and competition have as yet done nothing to stimulate literary genius in these republican states. They have never passed the limits of humble mediocrity, either in thought or expression."-Then follows a personality which I do not choose to repeat. He then proceeds—“In short, Federal America has done nothing, either to extend, diversify or embellish the sphere of human knowledge. Though all she has written, were obliterated from the records of learning, there would, if we except the works of Franklin"-(for the suppression of which en passant a corrupt attempt was made in England, to save, I suppose, the necessity of this exception,) be no positive diminution either of the useful or agreeable. The destruction of her whole literature," (always excepting, I suppose, those parts of Franklin's works, which escaped the meditated destruction,) "would not occasion so much regret as we feel for the loss of a few leaves from an ancient classic."

66

Then follows a paragraph which exhibits a most palpable and ludicrous struggle between the disengenuousness & conscience of the critic; between the complex and conflicting duties of lashing Mr. Ashe for lashing the Americans, and at the same time inflicting the lash on them himself; between those sweeping censures by which the critic was disposed to exterminate every thing like talents from this country, and the strong and glaring evidence of the reverse, which he dared not for his own sake directly to deny. Mark the labor and discord of the paragraph, and let the reader, when he has finished it, ask himself, what clear and definite opinion of America can be deduced from it. "But notwithstanding all this, we really cannot agree with Mr. Ashe, in thinking the Americans absolutely incapable or degenerate; and are ruther (reluctantly,

I suppose) inclined to think, that when their neighborhood thickens, and their opulence ceases to depend upon exertion, they will show something of the same talents to which it is a part of our duty to do justice to ourselves." At present, then, it seems we have shewn nothing of these talents; but let us see the residue of the paragraph, that we may learn what talents we have shewn. "And we are more inclined to adopt this favorable opinion, from considering that her history has already furnished occasions for the display of talents of a high order ; and that in the ordinary business of government, she displays no mean share of ability and eloquence."-Then it seems that talents for war and the ordinary business of government are no part of the talents to which it is the duty of those critics to do justice among themselves—in other words, are no part of the talents of their country; for since we have shewn talents of a high order for war; and some talents for the ordinary business of government; and yet have shewn nothing of those talents to which it is a part: (an oppressive part, no doubt,) of the duty of those modest gentlemen to do justice among themselves, it follows that talents for war and the ordinary business of government, are no part of their talents. A concession which, altho', at the present day, merely due to truth, would have done more credit to the critic, had it flowed spontaneously from his candor, instead of being wrung from his agonies and embarrassments.

But I should be glad to know what this gentleman means by the ordinary business of government, on which he has paid us the penurious and reluctant compliment in question? Does he mean by it, the exploit of the old continental congress, in guiding the bark of state through the revolutionary storm, amid all the rocks and shoals which surrounded them? Does he consider the formation of such a constitution as that of the United States, the ordinary business of government? Or does he consider it a part of this ordinary business, to preserve the peace and honor and prosperity of a nation, inviolate, under the present state of morals in the belligerent world?

This critic, however, very graciously and very sagely predicts, that whenever opulence ceases to depend on exertion, we shall shew something too, of the same talents to which it is a part of their duty to do justice among themselves. What kind of talents does he mean? Does he mean such talents as those which were displayed by Shakespeare, Milton, Dryden, Otway, &c.? If so; I would ask whether those were men, whose opulence had ceased to depend on exertion? Were they not, on the con

trary, men who lived by their talents, who wrote for their daily bread, and one of whom, actually, died for the want of it? Who are the professors, historiographers, politicians, lawyers, doctors and divines who have done the highest honor to British literature and British genius? Men, who in the beginning, at least, of their career, and as to many of them, during their brightest displays, were so far from opulence, as to depend on those very displays for their subsistence? What those talents are, then, to the display of which opulence is necessary, to which it is a part of those gentlemens' duty to do justice among themselves, and of which also they kindly prophecy that we shall shew something, when our opulence ceases to depend on exertion, it is not easy to devise; unless, indeed, they be those talents which their opulent aldermen display at a Lord Mayor's feast; or those talents which their wealth bribes into their service, and which are employed in flapping and amusing their fatuity, in feeding their spleen, in feasting their vices, and pampering their pride, individu al and national, at the expense of truth and justice and virtue? These, I would fain hope, are not the talents of which it is a part of those gentlemen's duty to do justice among themselves.

Instead, however, of exasperating myself and my readers still more, by dwelling on the rude and insolent strictures of this critic, it is the part of wisdom to turn them to our profit. Some one has said, that when his enemies reproached him, he considered with himself, first, whether he deserved their reproaches-if he did not, he considered them as having been intended for some one elsebut if he found that he did deserve them, he took care, by an immediate reformation to deserve them no longer, and thus he made his enemies, in spite of themselves, tributary to his advantage. Thus let us act towards this Reviewer of Mr. Ashe.

That our manners and our morality are equal to those of Great Britain, ought not to be enough—we need to have advanced a very little way in either to be able, to make that boast with truth. Our enquiry should be, have we no faults which care and exertion might prune away? Are there no graces and delicacies of action, which a lit-. tle culture might introduce? Are the sources of literature beyond our reach? Or is it not in our power to wipe away entirely the reproach which the British critic has in this respect thrown upon us?

To assist those enquiries and aid these exertions, are the objects with which this paper is begun. I shall fur

nish it from time to time, as occasions invite, and shall suspend and resume it, as my health and occupations may permit.

The task is full of peril, and you tread
On fire, with faithless ashes, overspread.

It is my custom, when I am meditating any step of importance, to hold a council of my children upon it, and after announcing the subject to them and giving them time for consideration, to take their opinions, seriatim (as the lawyers say) on the prudence and rectitude of the mea sure. By this course I give them a habit of circumspection, and at the same time, teach them, in the most practical and impressive form, the kinds of consideration which ought to influence and guide the conduct of a virtu ous character. For some months past my life has been so stagnant that I have had no occasion to call a board: the project of publishing this paper, however, at length afforded one; and some of the members being absent, I collected their opinions through the channel of the mail, before I had prepared the first number. A serious division eccurred among the members: the arguments for and against the publication were strenuously urged and as my boys have exposed, in a manner, at least, as luminous and entertaining as any that I could adopt, a subject which I am now desirous of laying before the reader, I will, without farther introduction, give their letters, as I received them: the first is from the youngest, Galen; who seems, on this occasion, to have changed professions with his brother, since he shews as much of the cold caution of a special pleader, as Alfred does of the happy rashness of a knight of the lancet.

***********, December 10, 1810. "I regret extremely, my dear Uncle, that I united witht my brother in pressing you to subscribe for the Edinburgh