plenty, bread and meat much cheaper, and the burdens on society at large materially lessened.

Be it remembered too, that to reform long-established Institutions, is a difficult and delicate undertaking, requiring great judgment and sound discretion: else you may chance to mar far more than you mend: for repairing an ancient building, it happens at times, that, while you remove what is decayed, you weaken what is strong; and now and then a greater evil ensues, than that which you purpose to remedy; the safety of the whole is endangered, and real blessings are sacrificed for some fancied good.

Indeed it is to be feared, that not a few of those, who are clamouring so loudly for Reform are in reality under that term aiming at Revolution.-Some, from mistaken notions about rights and liberty;-some from a sheer love of change;-some from a reckless desire of mischief;—and others from a malignant jealousy of those above them, wishing to bring down all, however ruinous the result, to one and the same level.

REVOLUTION!!-Oh, my dear friends, do you not shudder at the very term? It would endanger our peace and security and comfort all that is esteemed, and venerable, and sacred amongst us, would be in jeopardy! It would let loose all the worst passions of our nature; and lead to plunder, and violence, and bloodshed, and civil war !

Mark, I pray you, the baneful effects of revolution! I will give you them upon unquestionable evidence, the evidence of one of our most violent reformers. "Having witnessed," he says, "the fatal effects of revolution; having seen piety give place to contempt of religion: universal confidence exchanged for universal distrust; having seen a country once the seat of peace and good neighbourhood, torn to pieces by faction, plunged by intriguing demagogues into never ceasing hatred and strife:-having seen a people once too fond of what they called liberty, to bear the sway of a mild sovereign, humbly bending their necks to the yoke, nay to the very foot, of a set of grovelling despots; having, in short, seen the crime of rebellion punished by the tormenting, degrading curse of republicanism, it is with astonishment and indignation, that I find any of those, who have the press at their command, endeavouring to bring down on my native country the very same species of calamity and disgrace. I feel therefore,” he adds, an irresistible desire to communicate to my countrymen the fruit of my expe

rience, to shew them the injurious and degrading consequences of DISCONTENT, DISLOYALTY, and INNOVATION: to convince them, that they are the freest as well as the happiest of the human race: and, above all, to warn them against the arts of ambitious and perfidious demagogues."

And who is this, that reads us such a wholesome lesson, so well suited to allay the ferment of the present times, and open the eyes of those, who are blinded by extravagant notions about liberty? Why, it is no other than the noted radical reformer, COBBETT, who has exchanged these sound and patriotic sentiments, with which he returned from America thirty years ago, for those of the very demagogues whom he so strongly reprobates!

The seeds of sedition are busily scattered by such men through the land, I mean those pernicious doctrines, which render the poor man discontented with his lot-teaching him to regard himself as oppressed and defrauded of his rights, and to repine at his richer neighbours, and prompting him to despise dominion, speaking evil of dignities, and take the law, the law of violence, into his own hands.

What a fearful responsibility lies at the door of these unfeeling and unprincipled agitators! to whose inflammatory speeches and writings in a great degree may be ascribed the lamentable outrages, that have of late disgraced our country; the tumults, the riots, the fires !-and to them will their poor misguided followers owe the imprisonment, banishment, and, death, which justice, painful as the duty is, is bound to inflict for the safety and security of the whole!

"It never would have entered into my head to set fire to the corn," cries one unhappy man, now sentenced to die for his offence, "had I not listened to "Cobbett's lectures."

Oh guard against such dangerous men, my dear friends, and listen not to their railing about abuses, and their ravings about liberty. They care not, in what trouble they involve you, if they can but effect their desperate purpose of producing confusion and disorder throughout the land.

My dear friends, what was ever the duty of real Christians, and true lovers of their country, is now peculiarly so; to beware of se dition, and tumult, and conspiracy ;-to "fear God and honour the King, and meddle not with them that are given to change."

"Grant, O merciful God! that those who have for a season been led astray, may, through thy grace, return to a right mind and a cheerful performance of duty; that others may forget and forgive, and that all animosities may cease, and unanimity and peace and good will prevail once more amongst us, through him who is the Prince of Peace!"..

Yes, I beseech you, as your minister and friend, to manifest meek and quiet tempers in your several stations, as good subjects of the country, in which you live, and as consistent members of the Church to which you belong. Be assured, where this holy and heavenly disposition is wanting, the heart is not renewed by grace, nor the life conformed to the image of the Lord Jesus Christ.

And now, my dear friends, will you not think me strangely inconsistent, if after all I have said against reformers, I proclaim myself a reformer too; if I tell you, you are hardly used, and sadly degraded; nay, if I urge you to rise instantly against your chief oppressor, who robs you of your best rights and liberties, and binds you with the most galling fetters!

That oppressor is SIN-Sin, the parent of misery both to mind and body, the prisoner of peace and happiness; the real cause of all the tears we shed, and the groans we utter,-sin, by which Satan makes us his abject bondslaves, and pays us its due but dreadful wages, death!

And do you ask, under what leader and with what weapons you may successfully cope with this dreadful foe? This too I will gladly tell you. Enlist yourselves as good soldiers under the Lord Jesus Christ! Fight beneath his banner-taking the shield of faith, and the helmet of salvation, and the sword of the Spirit, which is the word of God! Thus led, and thus armed, you shall come off more than conquerors, and obtain “that liberty wherewith Christ maketh his people free !”

Remember too, my dear friends, that sin is the real source of all the evils that we feel or fear as a nation! It is sin, which provokes God to withdraw his mercy from a people, and shut up his loving-kindness in displeasure. And have we not been long wearying God's patience and long-suffering with our iniquities? Are not his laws fearlessly violated? Is not his providence almost forgotten by us in the government of the world? Are we not

trusting to the arm of flesh, rather than to the arm of the Lord? Is not God's name commonly profaned, and "because of swearing has not our land cause to mourn ?"-The blessed Sabbaths, are they not professedly set aside by some, and grossly polluted by others? spent in week-day work, or in drinking and revelling, and reading Sunday newspapers, that grand device of Satan to unsanctify the Lord's day? and do not unchastity and licentiousness prevail? are not the bonds of wholesome discipline generally relaxed? does not a proud, presumptuous, self-willed spirit pervade the young, and do not children seem discharged from the duty and respect due to those, who gave them birth? Meanwhile, infidelity, no longer checked, spreads, with devilish assiduity, her subtle poison through the land, robs the sinner of his hope beyond the grave, and sets him here above the fear of God!

Can we wonder then, that the Lord should visit for these things? that he should have a controversy with us? and that, while witnessing "the shaking of other nations," we should have cause to tremble for our own? It is not the plots of the seditious, it is not the fires of the incendiary, nor the assaults of the profane, that constitute our principal danger. These are the effects, but not the cause! It is our guilt, and ungodliness, our forgetfulness of Jehovah that should fill us with dread and apprehension !

We are stricken then, but have we grieved? Do we consider the red, and who has appointed it? alas; it is one of the most fearful signs of the times, that so few lay it to heart, so few mourn for the sins of England. But if we refuse to hear the voice of Providence, speaking to us in the way of warning, may we not expect to hear another voice of tremendous import ? "Because I have called, and ye refused; I have stretched out my hand, and no man regarded; but ye have set at nought my counsel, and would none of my reproof; I also will laugh at your calamity; I will mock when your fear cometh, when your fear cometh as a desolation-and your destruction cometh as a whirlwind."

Do we presume, because the Lord has hitherto so marvellously protected us, that therefore our mountain shall stand fast for ever Oh fatal infatuation! Look back to the Jews! No nation could be more confident than they of their Divine Safeguard! and what was the consequence of their presumption? think of their captivity in Babylon-their bloody civil wars-the destruction of their temple and their city--and their dispersion into foreign lands!-Consider

-Reflect on these indisputable facts, my countrymen, and tremble for yourselves!

Do we allege, that other nations are still more corrupt? Be it so-but this does not lessen our guilt, nor abate God's righteous displeasure. Guilt is ever to be measured by the privileges enjoyed-And who so favoured as ourselves, in the enjoyment of civil liberty, in the exemption from foreign foes, and in the rich abundance of spiritual blessings? Here, even here, lies the ground of alarm! Woe to them, that are named the Chief of nations!" "You only have I known of all the families of the earth," saith the Lord, "therefore will I punish you for all your iniquities."

At present, (but how much longer, we know not) judgments and mercies combine to bring us back to the Lord; they call upon each of us to consider our ways, to forsake every forbidden path, and turn our feet to God's testimonies: they bid us humble ourselves under the mighty hand of God, confessing our individual sins at the foot of the cross, and mourning and sighing for the abominations, that pollute the land!

Oh that we may no longer shut our eyes to our real danger, and to the only effectual remedy! that we may discern the uplifted arm of the Almighty, and avert the stroke by timely national reformation! May the year, on which we are permitted to enter, be marked by a general spirit of repentance and supplication! May we indeed pray the prayer prescribed by our sovereign! May many, like Daniel, deplore our national guilt, and like Moses, stand in the gap-and like Jacob, wrestle for a blessing, on our country! Above all, may the great, never failing Intercessor, Jesus, undertake our cause, and obtain a further respite for us, "that we may be spared this year also,-in order that we may turn from our sins, and God from his fierce anger ;-and that still of England, it may be humbly and gratefully said, "Happy are the people, that are in such a case! yea, blessed are the people, who have the Lord for their God!" I remain, my dear friends,

Your affectionate minister and servant in Christ,

EDWARD WARD.