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of the war was to make the people of Boston pay a duty of threepence per pound upon tea. The king of Prussia in his letters repeatedly affirms, that, when they began this contest, the parliament of England had certainly been bitten by a mad dog.

If idle writers would forbear to pester us with fulsome panegyrics on our present happy establishment, Ifhould remain silent; but when a nation, in the administration of whose government such abuses are tolerated, has the stupidity to hold itself up as a model of perfection to the world, it must expect the natural consequences. We look back without satisfaction, and forward without hope.

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The American war cost us an hundred and fifty millions sterling; and were not the fact incontestible, it would seem incredible that the most opulent empire in the universe could have supported such a blow. I suppose that of this sum at least fifty millions were never advanced*; and of the remainder, that another fifty mildions were, happily for mankind, expended in jobs, and bubbles of all kinds, and in bribes to the peers, the house of commons, and their constituents. This was a lefs execrable way of wasting the public money, than to have hired an additional twenty thousand German ruffians to mafsacre the farmers of Virgi nia and Pensylvania.

*. It is not wonderful that a paymaster of such unbounded prodigality as North, held out his post for so many years; or that other ministers discover so great a fondnets for war, and similar destructive and expensive undertakings; or that those who hope to profit by this extravagance should applaud them for it; but it is truly wonderful that men of sense fhould have continued so long even to applaud such measures.

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All my friend Tumbledown's predictions as to Botany Bay *, are fast approaching to their completion. A boat full of convicts has already escaped, as he foretold, and has landed at Batavia! The colony is starving, and the expences exceed even our "heaven" born minister's" talents for calculation.

I have this moment received the candid and judicious observations of your correspondent Alcibiades. His objections to my letters are few and slight; and, had they been more specific, it would not have been difficult to give them a satisfactory answer. He charges ine with indirect innuendoes; on the contrary, I have crowded together a profusion of facts, which neither Alcibiades, nor any body else can deny; and, instead of innuendoes, I have uniformly advanced accusations in the plainest stile consistent with decency. If these are ill founded, I shall be happy to learn, and proud to acknowledge my errors. But this point can only be gained by advancing one fact, or one argument, in close and logical opposition to another. He charges me with a design to depreciate the constitution of this country. I have censured particular acts of folly and corruption, and the individuals who committed them, but I have not said a single word about altering the constitution. In a future letter I may perhaps give a fuller detail of the abuses in parliament, but if Alcibiades imagines that I am a Jacobite, he has not read my letters with attention; or if he supposes that I wish to introduce a mob government, he does me the tmost injustice.

→ Vide vol. v. p. 135, &c.

He acknowledges that "the abuses which I point "out deserve the severest reprehension, and ought

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to be reprobated by every human being who has "the smallest pretensións to common sense." But if this be true, could it be expected that I was to write. in the stile of panegyric? The sentence in his letter which deserves most notice is what follows : 66 Un“less the minister has as fully the approbation of the 66 people at large, as of parliament, he must im-"mediately lose his seat."

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This is very strange language. Walpole kept his place for twenty years, though he was universally detested. Lord North led us into the American war in direct contradiction to a majority of the nation. The Russian armament is a solitary instance. This is exactly as if a person who had drawn a prize of ten thousand pounds in the lattery, were to expect: the same fortune for ever.

The first duty of a writer is to be consistent with › himself. On this account, I recommend the two following passages of your correspondent's letter to his serious perusal: "I think that you, Sir, are not quite "free from blame, for permitting them, (the strictures "of Thunderproof) to have accefs into your Bee." Agreed. But what follows?" Bleffed is the state "when the peacemaker can raise his voice without fear. Long then may such writers as Thunderproof be permitted to exert their talents. A FOOLISH PROCLAMATION may be disregarded, while” but my respect for “ legal establishments" forbids me-to quote farther.

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DETACHED OBSERVATIONS ON AMBITION..

For the Bee.

AMBITION is a pafsion at once so beneficial and de

structive to mankind, that I am astonished it has been sɔ much overlooked by a set of men who are not ashamed to thrust volumes of speculations into the world,. upon the origin and import of that single word idea.

When two of our affections or pafsions conspire in aiming both at the same end; or, when stimulated to a certain degree, are productive of one and the same effect, even although philosophers have distinguished them (and perhaps wisely) by different names, yet. in the human mind they are inseparably linked to-gether, and the idea of the one never fails to pro-duce that of the other; such is the case with powerand ambition. The one is (if I may use the exprefsion) of the same species with the other, or the same pafsion, in different stages or degrees. As a farther proof of this, if we attend carefully to the youthful mind, when it is rising to maturity, we will find the bud of ambition, with the stem of power, bursting forth at the same early period of life. In the throwing of a stone, the school-boy's ambition is roused to out-do his companions; and his power gratified to see an effect produced at a distance from himself. In their small diversions, too, ambition, with its concomitant, power, are easily discerned to be the leading objects. When. the ambitious youth, at the head of his little army, wants an enemy to cope with, the lower creation often feels his power; and upon them he exercises even

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acts of cruelty to force them to submifsion. If we look into the records of times that are past, every page presents us with a more fatal effect of ambition than. the former, nations groaning under the pressure of a powerful and a haughty prince, whose insatiable ambition craves daily for the blood of thousands of his innocent subjects; men raising themselves from the most servile ranks in society, wading through whole seas of blood, and that of their dearest relations ; nor stopping till they have even stabbed the sacred person of a king, and laid him low, at the foot of that throne from whence he has often distributed justice, with the exactest scrupulosity, among a happy, a nume rous, and a wealthy people. The human mind turns with detestation from scenes like these, as below the dignity of our species; and only loves to ruminate on the history of that man, who, in all his actions, sprinkled cool patience. Yet if we take a view of the benefit which society has reaped from ambition, we will perhaps be more anxious to cherish it within certain bounds. Of the many discoveries it has occasioned in the sciences; of the many geniuses which have burst forth and overtopped mankind, like the cedar in the forest, which, but for ambition, would have been confined to the humble sphere in which they were born, and their productions, with themselves, been buried in obscurity! Or view it in the field strengthening the nervous arm of war; or thundering from the rostrum, and weilding, at pleasure, a mad and unenlightened populace. But if man would tarn his attention inwards, and take a view of the operations of his own mind; there he would find in

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