enow to contend with; and if he would uncover the head of the wily depredator, in order to show the vulpine species he belongs to, all, all must be refused insertion for another, but doubt-increasing reason, that they are the mere effusions of wit and politeness?" This sort of ridicule is truly becoming the man of genius and elegant deportment, whose wit is not more brilliant than ready. Only observe his inimitable address, when he finds that a kiln-dried story about rabbits, (which by the bye, for aught I know, as Mr. Cobbett, sometimes very shrewdly observes, may be a figure of his bwn imagination. Knowing well as I do, that he is a great economist of historical facts, and accuracies) when he finds his joke about rabbits suited only to amuse other animals, such like for their long ears, with a nonchaJance peculiarly graceful he winds it round, and makes it apply to the smallest creatures imaginable, so that the risible faculties shall not, upon any account escape being most delicately tickled. Most facetiously too, he quotes logical aphorisms in the Scottish dialect; although he has just as perfect an understanding of it, as a grey gander has of Italian music. And then his politeness.... the less that is said on this subject the better. But, in the name of candour, why have you, Mr. Cobbett, so grossly misrepresented my observations? Where have I made the smallest allusion to the increase of popula tion as you would have it, either in England or Scotland? It is surprising enough that, besides waste of paper, you should have giv en yourself the trouble of answering so acutely what never stood betwixt us as a matter of dispute. And, then, what I have said you twist and turn into a meaning my words do not by any means warrant. In short, to argue with you, is like trying to seize an eel by the tail; although it is at the same time a matter of little difficulty to hold you in another way; for, your rapacity gives to every one a sufficient opportunity. With regard to the Caledonian Canal, which one would suppose you must have, by this time, rummaged to the very bottom, I have only to say, that I am ready to prove your statement enormously incorrect. As soon as I have reason to expect that I am to be heard, I am also ready to point out to you a number of the innumerable grants made out of the Exchequer to the people of England; and far be it from me to do so, with the intent of reproaching them for these things. You state that the people of England have been insulted by the Scotch, but how, for my life, I cannot yet comprehend. However, I am ready to prove, that not only has money

been extracted from the public funds to build churches, but depositaries for gewgaw; porcupines, and water serpents; not only earth and stone, but fire and water have combined to draw liberally on the national purse, in favour of the people of Old England. Perhaps, Mr. Cobbett will reply, that these, like St. Pauls, were paid for by the people of England themselves. Mr. Cobbett, surely, will not deny, that the money is, in the first place, put down into a column titled the Disbursements of the Nation, which, in the course of a short but certain process, comes to be called the National Debt, and which at last is supported by the payment of interest, and redeemed, if ever tedeemed, (honourably, I mean,) by the people of England and Scotland together, without exemption or discrimination. But, what is the use of argument to such a harlequin reasoner as you are? I like to see fair jockeyship well enough, but you have stole a post upon me, and unless you start again, run fair, and keep the course, it is the last time you shall ever hear from, your humble servant-SAWNEY.- Peterhead, Oct. 31,

SIR; I have long held it as an opinion, that whatever may be the degree of pleasure or profit which writing for the public may yield to individuals, there is an inconsistency in themselves, a general perverseness of public disposition or defect of public understanding, which renders the labour of no public utility. Still, Sir, we had better, in my opinion, amuse ourselves with what would unite public good with private interest or amusement under more favourable circumstances, than with what has no such tendency in any state of private and public intelligence and virtue. Under this impression, and this impression only, I have frequently intruded myself upon your notice, on the subject of political economy; and under this impression and no other I now again take the liberty of arresting your attention on the subject of the controversy in which you are involved with the editor of the Whig, and others of tried consistency, ability, and sincerity, in the cause of affected justice and humanity, and in which I think, you are unfortunately involved, supposing union to be of any utility; because, when leaders do not agree, their followers are naturally divided and bewildered. Sit, you have asserted, with an apparent air of triumph that the editor of the Whig has not answered the arguments by which you have attempted

o establish the principle of power as the basis of our rights. The Jews, Sir, to this very day assert that the promised Messiah has not come, and for no other reason than because he did not make his appearance with that partiality towards themselves, with which their narrow love of power and dominion taught them to expect he was to descend among men. Just so, in my opinion, it is with you, Sir, you do not believe that your arguments are answered, because they have not been answered in the express terms, or on the exact principles on which your similar attachment to your own prejudices led you to expect they would be answered, and therefore like the Jews, you persist in your error, and reason as if your arguments were unanswerable. To me, Sir, they are far from being so; for they appear to me as resting themselves upon a confusion of ideas, as distinct from each other, as the shield is from the head it protects; namely, the basis on which our rights are founded and the means we have of defending them : -the first of which I assume to be fellow feeling, and the second power. But, before I proceed to the proof of this confusion, I shall offer a few remarks upon the arguments by which you confound the ideas. You charge the editor of the Whig with not having" taken time sufficiently to discriminate between the rights and liberties of individuals and the rights and liberties of nations." As nations are made up of individuals, and are, relatively considered, themselves individuals, I believe it is out of your power to shew that nations do possess or can possess any other rights or liberties, than the rights and liberties of the individuals of whom they are composed. If you cannot, all the conclusions which you have drawn from a distinction of rights to liberties fall of themselves to the ground. “In"dividuals" you say all consent to "surrender a part of their rights; to put "their natural rights into a common stock,

whence in well regulated states, each "draws an equal share and enjoys it on "conditions common to all. But it is

impossible that any such compact should exist among nations who have no com* mon stock of rights and liberties; who * have no common government; who have "no general head; who acknowledge no * sovereign, who appeal to no arbiter but the sword, and with whom conquest confers the best possible right of dominion." A most charming climax!!! No common stock, no common government, &c. &ce !!! But stop, Sir, as it would be sheer nonsease to dy that an have surrendered rights

which they have only invested in a common stock and drawn out again in equal shares, is not the conclusion irresistible, that individuals, and for the reason stated, nations, have not surrendered any right or liberty whatever that ever nature gave them? If it be, all the conclusions which you have drawn from the surrender of rights as well as those you infer from a distinction of them, are mere Will o'the Wisps engendered only in the vapours of minds whose disorder'd state reduces all principles to chaos. But granting for the sake of argument that individuals have surrendered a part of their natural rights, nations as individuals you admit have not, and even if they have, like the individuals of which they are formed, there is a part which you admit they have not surrendered, and what is this part, Sir, but a common stock, the common stock of equal rights to that portion of the four elements, or their productions, which we find necessary to promote that happiness which is cur being, end and aim; and which a God who is no respecter of persons, who only regards principles and actions, must have intended for man without any regard to the distinction of country, colour, or clime. If this be not the part of their natural rights which the human race have not surrendered, and if it be not a common stock, pray what is the common stock, and that part of their natural rights which they have not surrendered? If you cannot tell, and I venture to predict that you cannot, by what right do you assume the Dominion of the Seas, and therefore the privilege of putting your equals in right upon a short allowance of water? You have answer'd, by the right of conquest "which confers the best possible right to dominion." But with submission, Sir, I question if the strength of your prejudices in favour of one part of mankind, and, therefore, the force of your coolness towards the other, have permitted you to take time sufficiently to discriminate between the rights of conquest and the rights of nature. Na ture you will admit has given us as a right, the portion of the four elements above stated, and liberty to enjoy them, and when either is invaded, contrary to the laws of fellow feeling in the case, the same nature gives us a right not only to reconquer them, but to take as much more from the invader, as will make good the loss we have sustained by his invasion and expulsion. This being all that conquest can give us on the principles of moral justice, it necessarily follows; I. that conquest confers no right at all to dominion, because our right to the conquered dominion is given us by the rights of

nature before the conquest was made; and II. that to justify your dominion of the Seas, you must either shew that you had an original and exclusive right to that dominion, or that you acquired it in virtue of your right to renumerate yourself for the loss you have sustained by the invasion of others, of the Americans, for instance, of that part of the dominion to which you are entitled by the rights of nature. I believe, Sir, you are not prepared to shew any such things; on the contrary, such are my opinions of the good qualities of your heart and understanding, that there is nothing required to obtain from you a generous confession of your error, but that some one of my numberless superiors in the gift of discovering principles and art of applying them, should take up the subject upon those rights of nature which you do yourself admit have not been surrendered by your brethren of mankind in any capacity in which they can be considered as free agents. In hopes, then, that the subject will be so taken up by abler talents than mine, and that when it is so taken by them, you will, for the sake of your own consistency and to do as much as in you lies to restore peace to a butchered and distracted world, either give up the exclusive dominion of the Seas or place your right to maintain it upon some other basis than your "power to hold a mastery over all that "swims upon them,"-I will proceed to prove that your arguments as to the basis of right are founded upon confusion of ideas which ought not to be confounded when the establishment of such basis is the subject in question. Emblematic figures, Sir, have been invented to impress their subjects with greater force upon the mind; and one of them is represented blindfolded holding a sword in the right hand and a balance in the left; of what is this figure an emblem, Sir? Is it of policy standing upon the principle of self preservation slaughtering the Danes, burning and sacking their capital because it was a matter of fact or probability that they would join with the civilized world in settling the dispute, whether the Sea is or is not" the highway of nations," the common stock of all that can swim on it? No, Sir. Is it an emblem of power standing upon the principle of right, majestically insolent and. capricious, taking it upon herself to settle this dispute; to measure the world and weigh the air to the rest of mankind, just as her notions of self interest may direct? No, Sir, it is the emblem of a being or attribute who cannot distinguish friends from foes, brethren from countrymen, or countrymen from foreigners, in its distribution

of rights; and that being is Justice standing upon the most firm of all basis fellow feeling, indiscriminately dividing the Seas equally between all that can swim on them or in them, balancing the rights of man with the one hand, and holding power in the other, not as their basis or origin, but as their guardian and protecting shield. Look at this figure, Sir, and say, if you can, that I have charged you falsely with mistaking power for fellow feeling as the basis of right: look at this emblem, Sir, and shew us the principle, if you can, on which the dominion of the Seas can become the exclu sive right" of those who can hold a mastery "over all that swims on them." But, above all, look at it, Sir, and inform us, if yout are able, how your country is to retrieve her character for honour and magnanimity, and avoid the contempt and wretchedness which awaits her from an outraged and exasperated world, in consequence of her deliberate, malicious, and cold blooded murder and robbery of the Danes. Nay, Sir, for once do take your stand upon the basis of fellow feeling, and place yourself in the situation of these unfortunate victims of your country's power, and then say, if you dare, that such another transaction ever disgraced the annals either of the civilized or uncivilized world; that power can be admitted for a moment as the basis of right, but in minds harbouring darkness visible, despair and revenge, ghastly plotting the means of expelling from the human character that sympathy and attachment which alone uplifts man above the level of the most ferocious brute of the whole animal creation.-C. S. Nov. 14th 1807.

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SIR;- -In the Register of the 14th instant, your correspondent, Osgur of Leinster, ventures to suggest a doubt, that my conclusions are not quite certain as to the increase of taxes, depreciation of money, and sevenfold ruin which is to result from the liquidation of the National Debt by means of the Sinking Fund." His doubt is founded upon a notion, which, if it be truly just, is really new, that one million without any interest, mind ye, may discharge a debt of 600 millions, without either increasing its quantity or depreciating the value of the circulating capital. On the subject of the Sinking Fund, I have to

charge Osgur either with a neglect or design in dragging out my conclusions before your readers, and leaving behind the curtain those of Mr. Pitt and Lord H. Petty. Had Osgur a design in doing this? Was he sorry that I brought forward these eminent financiers in evidence against themselves? Has he an interest in the perpetuity of error on this subject? Is it truly a neglect? or, does he really want information, and think me the most likely to give it him? In this thought he shall not be disappointed as far as my humble abilities can be of service. But, as it would be losing the advantages of the best of evidences, in support of my conclusions, to keep out of sight, on any occasion, the picture which Mr. Pitt and Lord H. Petty drew of the Sinking Fund as far as their view of it went, I shall beg leave, again, to bring it forward, as stated under my signature in the Register of the Jyti. last September. "When the Sinking

Fund was established," says Lord H. Petty, "Mr. Pitt foresaw the inconvenien86 cy and mischief which might arise from "the extinguishing, at once, of a very large portion of the National Debt. If "the two Sinking Funds had been allowed

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to accumulate to their full extent, this mischief would have followed, that at one and the same time, an immense capital would be destroyed. In fact, by returning all their capital to the holders of stock, capital itself would cease to be of value, and the nation might be nearly "ruined, by that which at first sight might

"

appear to great advantage. However pa"radoxical it might sound, he considered "that the sudden extinction of the Na"tional Debt would be an evil amounting "almost to a national bankruptcy. It was "not merely that the stock-holders would

only find themselves materially distressed by having all their capital returned to "them at once, at a time when no employ"ment could be found for such an immense " capital, but all those who are employed "in trade would find the mischief of it. "Their fair and reasonable profits would be "destroyed, and all their advantages of no "avail, if such an immense capital were "all at once thrown upon the market, and

they were exposed to such competition "that would not allow them either to buy "ther goods at the same price, nor to enjoy the same profits; for the stock-hold

"would not only be a most serious injury "to the stock-holders, but to the trading "part of the community; and that it would

produce the greatest and most extensive "mischief and calamity." Unquestiona bly, they must be very ignorant, indeed, of the effects of competition and capital, who can doubt the extent of the mischief and calamity that must result from the competition of a capital of 600 millions, with a capital of only 100 millions; even admitting, to justify my conclusions, that Lord Sidmouth,, in taking the national income, or circulating capital, at 80 millions, undervalued it to the amount of 20 milions. This is the very best principle on which the subject can be placed. Talk to a nation of shopkeepers about competition and the consequent advanced price at which they are obliged to buy their goods, and the low profits at which they are compelled to sell them, and they will understand you; but go to principle and fact, and say that it is not the goods that advanced in price, but money that is depreciated in value, owing, as they well understand, with respect to goods, to the great influx of its quantity, and, it they do not laugh at your folly, they will be as wise as owls, or as civil as a Billingsgate in their reply. Money depreciated, jacobin? is not a shilling a shilling, and was it ever more? In name, Solomon, it was not, but in substance and use, it was; for the time has been when the pound weight of silver was only coined into 20s., but now there is 62s. taken out of it; and about a century ago it would buy you about four quartern loaves, but till lately, and for many years back, it could not furnish you with one, Now then, you that will set the Thames on fire, and let you, money has not only lost two-thirds of its intrinsic worth, since the reign of Edward I., but also three-fourths of its exchangeable value since that of William III., when a paper-money manufac tory was established to support the speculations of merchants, and to supply the demands of the National Debt and Sinking Fund. And you cannot deny it, but by proving that with an increasing population their means of subsistence have decreased in the proportion of three-fourths; and that you cannot prove, were you to set the Thames on fire a thousand times over. But to return. As Mr. Pitt rests the calamities of the Sinking Fund on its ability to dis charge the National Debt all at once, and, by so doing, leaving no time or opportunity to the stock-holders to employ their capital without serious injury to themselves, and "to the trading part of the community,"