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conspire to produce it; but whatever those errors may be, one point is clear that they are all to be found in the laws. Without wandering from my subject, I may be permitted to observe, that the chief mistake lies in the faulty police of our villages. Many magistrates are misled by an ill-judged zeal, to suppose that the perfection of municipal government consists in the subjection of the people; they imagine that the great object of subordination is accomplished, if the inhabitants tremble at the voice of Justice, and no one ventures to move, or even to breathe, at the very sound of her name. Hence any mob, any noise, or disturbance, is termed a riot or a tumult; and every little dispute or scuffle becomes the subject of a criminal proceeding, involving in its consequences examinations and arrests, imprisonments and fines, with all the train of legal persecutions and vexations. Under such an oppressive police, the people grow dispirited and disheartened; and sacrificing their inclinations to their security, they abjure diversions, which, though public and innocent, are replete with embarrasments, and have recourse to solitude and inaction, dull and painful indeed to their feelings, but at least unmolested by law, and unattended with danger.

"The same system has occasioned numberless regulations of police, not only injurious to the libertics, but prejudicial to the welfare and prosperity of the villages, yet not less harshly or less rigorously en

forced on that account. There are some places where music and ringing of bells*, others where balls marriage suppers are prohitre In one village the inhabitants ma retire to their houses at the cere in another they must not appear : the streets without a light; the must not loiter about the corners, stop in the porches; and in a'l the are-subject to similar restraints a privations.

The rage for governing, some cases perhaps the avarice. the magistrates has extended to most miserable hamlets, regulation which would hardly be necessary all the confusion of a metropolis the wretched husbandman who ta watered the carth with the sweat r his brow, and slept on the grou throughout the week, cannot a Saturday night bawl at his will in t streets of his village, or chaunti ballad at the door of his sweethear

"Even the province in which! live (Asturias), remarkable for t natural cheerfulness and innocent manners of its inhabitants, is exempt from the hardship of simi regulations. Indeed the disconte which they produce, and which I have frequently witnessed, has seggested many of these reflections the subject. The dispersion of population fortunately prevents that municipal police, which has beet contrived for regular villages and towns; the cottagers assemble for their diversions at a sort of a wake, called Romerias, or Pilgrimage. And there it is that the regulation of the police pursue and molest them. Sticks, which are used mort

There is a custom in Spanish villages of parading the streets on holiday nights with the bells taken from the mules and wethers. The rude kind of music the produce is called cencerrada.

on account of the inequality of the country, than as a precaution for self defence, are prohibited in these wakes. Men dances are forbidden; those of women must close early in the evening; and the wakes themselves, the sole diversion of these innocent and laborious villagers, must break up at the hour of evening prayer. How can they reconcile themselves with any cheerfulness to such vexatious interference? It may indeed be said they bear it all." Yes, it is true, they do hear it all; but they bear it with an ill will; and who is blind to the consequences of long and reluctant submission? The state of freedom is a state of peace and cheerfulness; a state of subjection is a state of uneasiness and discontent. The former then is permanent and durable, the latter unstable and changeable.

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"All, therefore, is not accomplished when the people are quiet; they should also be contented; and it is only a heart devoid of feeling, or a head unacquainted with the principles of government, that can harbour a notion of securing the first of these objects without obtain ing the second. They who disregard it, either do not see the necessary connexion between liberty and prosperity; or, if they see it, they neglect it. The error in either case is equally mischievous. For surely this connexion deserves the attention of every just and mild government. A free and cheerful people are always active and laborious; and an active and laborious people are always attentive to morals, and observant of the laws. The greater their enjoyments, the more they love the government under which they live, the better they obey

it, and the more cheerfully and wil lingly do they contribute to its maintenance and support. The greater their enjoyments, the more they have to lose; and the more therefore they fear any disturbance, and the more they respect the au thorities intended to repress it. Such a people feel more anxiety to enrich themselves, because they must be conscious that the increase of their pleasures will keep pace with the improvement of their fortunes. In a word, they strive more ardently to better their condition, because they are certain of enjoying the fruits of their exertion If such then be one of the chief objects of a good government, why is it so disregarded among us? Even public prosperity, as it is called, if it be any thing but the aggregate of individual happiness, depends upon the attainment of the object in question? for the power and strength of a state do not consist entirely in multitudes or riches, but in the moral character of its inhabitants. In point of act, can any nation be strong whose subjects are weak, corrupt, harsh, unfeeling, and strangers to all sentiments of public spirit and patriotism? On the other hand, a people who meet often, and in security, in public, for the purposes of diversion, must neccssarily become an united and affectionate people; they can feel what a common interest is, and are consequently less likely to sacri. fice it to their own personal views and individual advantage. They have a higher spirit, because they are freer; a consciousness of which improves their notions of rectitude, and exalts their sentiments of honour and courage. Every individual respects his own class in such a society, because he respects himself; 4 A4

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and he respects that of others, as the best mode of ensuring respect for his own. If once the people respect the government, and the subordination established by law, they re. gulate their conduct by it, they grow attached to the institutions of their country, and defend them with spirit; because in so doing, they are convinced that they are defending themselves. So clear is it that freedom and cheerfulness are greater enemies of disorder than subjection and melancholy.

Let me not, however, be sus pected of considering a magistracy or police, appointed to preserve the public peace, as in itself either use Jess or oppressive. On the contrary, it is my firm persuasion, that without such an institution, without its unremitting vigilance, neither tranquillity nor subordination can be preserved. I am well aware that license hovers on the very confines of liberty, and that some restraint must be devised to keep-in those who would pass the limits. This is indeed the most delicate point in civil jurisprudence; and it is this, that so many injudicious magistrates mistake, by confounding vigilance with oppression. Hence, at every festival, at every public diversion, or harmless amusement, they obtrude upon the people the insignia of magistracy and power. To judge by appearances, one should suppose tha their aim was to build their authority on the fears of the subject, and to purchase their own convenience at the expence of the freedom and pleasure of the public. every other view, such precautions are idle. For the people never divert themselves without complete exemption from restraint in their diversions. Freedom is scared away

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by watchmen and patroles, constables and soldiers; and at the sight of staves and bayonets, harmless and timorous mirth takes the alarm, and disappears. This is surely not the method of accomplishing the pur poses for which magistracy was established; whose vigilance, if I may be permitted so awful a comparison, should resemble that of the Supreme Being, should be perpetual and certain, but invisible; should be acknowledged by every body, but seen by nobody; should watch license, in order to repress it, and liberty, in order to protect it. In one word, it should operate as a restraint on the bad, as a shield and protection to the good. The awful insignia of justice are otherwise the mere symbols of oppression and ty ranny`; and the police, in d rect opposition to the views of its institution, only vexes and molests the persons whom it is bound to shelter, comfort, and protect.

"Such are my ideas upon popular diversions. There is neither pro. vince nor district, town nor village, but has particular usages in its a musements, practised either habitnally, or at particular periods of the year; various exercises of strength, for instance, or feats of agility: balls too, and junketings, walks, holidays, disguises, maskings, and mummeries. Whatever their diversions may be, if they are public they must be innocent. It is the duty then of the good magistrate to protect the people in these simple pastimes, to lay out and keepin order the places destined for them, to remove all obstacles, and to leave the inhabitants at full liberty to abandon themselves to their boister ous merriment, their rude but harmless effusions of joy. If he appear sometimes

sometimes among them, it should be to encourage, not to intimidate them; it should be like a father, gratified at the mirth of his children; not like a tyrant, envious of the gaiety of bis slaves.

"In short, to return to our former remark, the people do not call upon the government to divert them, but merely to permit them to divert themselves,"

Memoirs of the Life of Colonel Hutchinson, Gecernor of Notting ham Castle and Town, Representative of the County of Nottingham in the long Parliament, and of the town of Nottingham in the first Parliament of Charles II. &c. with original Anecdotes of many of the most distinguished of his Contemporaries, and a summary Review of Publie Affairs: written by his Widow Lucy, Daughter of Sir Allen Apsley, Lieutenant of the Tower, &c. Now first published from the original Manuscript by the Rev. Julius Hutchinson, &c. &c. To which is prefixed the Life of Mrs. Hutchinson, written by Herself, A Fragment.

This is really a curious work, as will be seen from the title-page. It is the history of a puritan in the time of Cromwell, written by his wife in a stile that does high honour to her age, and which has remained unpublished till the present period.

The following account of the MSS. is given by the editor.

The Memoirs of the Life of Col. Hutchinson had been seen by many persons, as well as the editor, in the possession of the late Thomas Hutchinson, esq. of Owthorpe, in Not. tinghamshire, and of Hatfield Woodhall, in Hertfordshire; and he had been frequently solicited to permit

them to be published, particularly by the late Mrs. Catharine Maccaulay, but had uniformly refused. This gentleman dying without issue, the editor, his nephew, inherited some part of his estates which were left unsold, including his mansionhouse of Hatfield Woodhall. In the library he found the following books, written by Mrs. Lucy Hutchinson. 1st. The Life of Col. Hutchinson. 2d. A book without a been a kind of diary made use of title, but which appears to have when she came to write the life of col. Hutchinson. 3d. A Fragment, giving an account of the early part of her own life. This book clearly appears to have been Mrs. Hutchincontains, besides the story of her son's first essay at composition, and life and family, several short copies of verses, some finished, some unfinished, many of which are above mediocrity. And, 4th. Two Books jects; in which, although the fancy treating entirely of religious submay be rather too much indulged, ascendancy, and sentiments of exaltthe judgment still maintains the ed piety, liberality and benevolence are delivered in terms apposite, dignified, and perspicuous.

These works had all been read, and marked in several places with his initials, by Julius Hutchinson, esq. of Owthorpe, the father of the late Thomas Hutchinson, esq. just mentioned, and son of Charles Hutchinson, esq. of Owthorpe, only son of sir Thomas Hutchinson by his second wife, the lady Catharine Stanhope. Lady Catharine Hutchinson lived to the age of 102, and is reported to have retained her faculties to the end of her life. Some remarks made by the abovementioned Julius Hutchinson, are declared by him to have been communicated

municated by his grand-mother lady Catharine; and as this lady dwelt in splendor at Nottingham, and had ample means of information; as there is only one instance wherein the veracity of the biographer is at all called in question, and even in this, it does not appear to the editor, and probably may not to the reader, that there was sufficient ground for objection; the opposition and the acquiescence of her grandson and herself scem alike to confirm the authenticity and faithfulness of the narrative.

There will be found annexed a pedigree of the family of Hutchin son, taken from a very handsome emblazoned genealogy in the posses, sion of the editor, originally traced by Henry St. George, king of arms, and continued and embellished by Thomas Brand, esq. his majesty's writer and embellisher of letters to the eastern princess, anno 1712.

This pedigree shews that col. Hutchinson left four sons, of which the youngest only, John, left issue two sons; and there is a tradition in the family, that these two last descendants of col. Hutchinson emi grated, the one to the West Indies or America, the other to Russia; the latter is said to have gone out with the command of a ship of war given by queen Anne to the czar Peter, and to have been lost at sea. One of the female descendants of the former the editor once met with by accident at Portsmouth, and she spoke with great warmth of the veneration in which his descendants in the new world held the memory of their ancestor col. Hutchinson. Of the daughters little more is known than that Mrs. Hutchinson, addressing one of her books of devotion to her daughter Mrs. Orgill, ascertains that one of them was mar.

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ried to a gentleman of that name.

The family of Mr. George Hutchinson likewise became extinct in the second generation.

sir

Charles Hutchinson, only son of

Thomas Hutchinson by lady Catharine Stanhope, married one of the daughters and coheiresses of sit Francis Boteler, of Hatfield Wood. hall, Herts; which family being zealous royalists, and he solicitons to gain their favour, (which he did so effectually, as in the end to obtain nearly their whole inheri tance.) it is probable that he give small encouragement or assistance to the elder branch of the family whe they suffered for their republican sentiments; on the contrary, it s certain that he purchased of Mrs. Hutchinson and her son, after the death of col. Hutchinson, their estate at Owthorpe, which, joined to what his father had given him, and what he obtained by his marri age, raised him to more opulence than his father had ever possessed; and he seems not to have fallen short of him in popularity, for he represented the town of Notting. ham in parliament from the year 1690, (being the first general election after the accession of king Wil. liam,) till his death.

His son Julius returned into that line of conduct and connections which was most natural for one of his descent, for he married Betty Norton, descended by the father's side from the patriotic family of that name in Hampshire, and by the mother's from the Fiennes's. He seems to have bestowed a very rational and well-deserved attention upon the writings of Mrs. Hutchin son, and there is a tradition in the family, that although he had many children of his own, he treated with kindness and liberality the last descendants

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