can obtain loans in its necessity, that it will provide for in its prosperity? A great publick debt is, no doubt, a great evil; but the loss of liberty and independence is one infinitely greater. It is some alleviation of that evil, for any government (for all are prone enough to become corrupt) habitually to guide its measures and its counsels, by the experience, that its good faith is its good policy. It ought to make men better, to contemplate the example of a state, tried, and tempted by adversity, and groaning under the load of taxes, yet still faithful to its engagements, and enjoying an ample resource in the confidence of its creditors, by deserving their confidence and keeping their property sacred from violation. Such a state gives an illustrious lesson of morality to its subjects. It fulfils the great duty of all governments, which is to protect property. This is not all. It will seem, to some practical men, still more to the purpose, that such a state will have the control, in the extreme exigencies of the publick affairs, of the last shilling of private property. Such is the spectacle of the British government.

It is left to others to compute, how essential a part of the national wealth consists of property in the national debt, and how much poorer the nation would be by sponging it off. Such a measure would aggravate necessity; but we cannot conceive how it would supply means. As this violation of the publick faith would be the most tremendous, as also the most unequal and unfair tax, that ever was levied on a state, it is natural to suppose, the dread of it and the dread of the enemy would sanction other very strong measures to get at the wealth of the subjects by taxes, and that they would cheerfully acquiesce, at least, in their temporary adoption.

IT is, therefore, we confess, beyond our comprehension, how the stoppage of the interest of the publick debt, in other words the sponge, for such it would prove, could relieve the distresses of Great Britain, or supply the resources for the prosecution of the war. It might ensure an English revolution. The work of destruction may be begun by choice, but it never stops while there is any thing left to destroy. Its hostility

would be felt by the British government, and derided by that of France.

We know not how the British ministry can find money for their enormous charges; but, nevertheless, we believe they will find it, because it exists, and enough of it, in the hands of the opulent subjects of that monarchy.

We believe, too, they justly dread the terrible and incalculable evils of a bankruptcy, and that they will find means to avoid it. If a sense of common danger ever unites men, the British nation will be united; and if united and wisely governed, we hope they will prove unconquerable.

ADMITTING, then, that Great Britain will not be forced to submit to peace, which is to submit to the yoke of France, from the failure of her finances, it remains to inquire, how long and with what prospect of success she can pursue the war.

It does not appear, that she could not prosper in commerce and private wealth, if the war should last half a century; and to those who fear the war may last for ever, and therefore seem to think a bad peace ought to be chosen now, unless some definite time or some precise object could be proposed, as the end of the war, it is a sufficient answer to say, that war is a hard condition of national existence, but preferable to their subjugation by France. Base are Englishmen, unlike their ancestors, if they would not sooner toil for taxes to support the war, or bleed on a ship's deck, than sweat under the dominion of a French prefect. Perhaps we may wonder at their ideas; but Englishmen will dread ignominy more than taxes or wounds.

WHILE the British navy continues mistress of the seas, it is scarcely possible, that Buonaparte should execute his threat of an invasion., If, then, the English cannot make war on the land, nor the French on the sea, it would seem that military operations and military spirit must languish. There is reason to fear, that this state of defensive languor will engender discontent in England. But though the expenses might be diminished, if Britain should have no allies, and should fit out no expeditions, they would still be enormous. When the fashionable folly of the volunteer army shall be no longer in vogue,

an efficient and large regular army would enable Great Britain to strike her enemy in many vulnerable points. She ought to provide such an army, on which alone she could depend to expel the French, if they should ever land on the island. The distant colonies of France are vulnerable, and would yield to an attack. The employment of the forces would cherish the military spirit of her subjects; and conquests are among the best expedients to preserve harmony and union in the nation.

A SOLICITUDE about the ability of Great Britain to resist France, will be understood by some of the weak, and will be misrepresented by all the base and unprincipled, as implying a desire, that the United States, in respect to maritime rights and national dignity, should lie at the mercy of the mistress of the ocean. On the contrary; let every real American patriot insist, that our government should place the nation on its proper footing, as a naval power. With a million tons of merchant shipping, and a hundred thousand seamen, equally brave and expert, it is the fault of a poor-spirited administration, that we are insignificant and despised. It is their fault, that our harbours are blockaded, by three British ships, and that outrages are perpetrated within the waters that form part of our jurisdiction, such as no circumstances can justify. Can there exist a stronger proof, that our insignificance is to be ascribed to a bad administration, than this single fact: with the greatest merchant marine in the world, except one, and, of consequence, capable of being soon the second naval power, (in our own seas, the first,) we are utterly helpless: that, in the opinion even of our rulers themselves, our only mode of redress, when our commerce is obstructed, is TO DESTROY OUR COMMERCE!! We have the means for its protection, which our administration, unhappily, think it would prove more expensive to use, than its protection would be worth. They would provide against the violation of our territory by tribute, and of our commerce by non-importation.

WHILE, therefore, we explicitly disclaim all apology for the abuses of the British naval power; while we strongly reprobate the cowardice, or folly, or both, that leaves our country

defenceless, when it is injured, we must view it as an interesting inquiry, whether England can resist France; for, if she can not, it is certain we shall not.

WHAT Could France do, to annoy Great Britain? Nothing; but to create expense to her government. What could Great Britain do, to annoy France? Much; enough to make the distress of war reach her subjects; to cut off nearly all her maritime trade; and to spread want, discontent, and despair from the Baltick to the Adriatick.

THE Colonies of the enemies of Great Britain would shrivel, like plants and flowers on the Arabian desert, if they were no longer moistened by the rills of commerce. We may assist our conjectures of what Great Britain may do, by asking ourselves, what we should do, in such a case, if we possessed the British navy, and were contending, as she is, for liberty and life against France.

Library.

Of California.

NON-INTERCOURSE ACT.

First published in the Repertory, August, 1806.

OUR anti-commercial rulers seem to think, still, that the

non-intercourse act will bring Great Britain to terms. Sometime in December, the gun, which congress primed and loaded, must go off, unless John Bull, who is so notoriously afraid of a gun, shall, before the day fixed for his fate, turn from the errour of his ways, and by repentance obtain Mr. Jefferson's mercy.

No one will deny the great importance of this subject; or that the question in respect to our maritime rights, which we have decided so much off-hand, may possibly have two sides to it; that Great Britain contests our doctrine, and believes, or affects to believe, her admission of it would be fatal to her naval greatness and independence. When, therefore, she is so loath and so much afraid to yield the point, it seems as if her finally yielding must depend on her being still more afraid of our resentment, than of every other ill consequence.

THE matter will, of course, undergo examination in England, how much reason she has to be afraid of us; and if our resentment shall appear to be of two cvils the greatest, we, who lay national honour out of the account, are naturally enough ready to expect she will humble herself in the dust before Mr. Monroe, to avert our wrath, that "distant thunder," which the National Intelligencer so distinctly heard in December last.

BUT that typographical thunder, which was expected to shake the plates and porringers on the shelves at St. James's, has been muffled on this side of the Atlantick. Our publick will not break its nap on the apprehension of Mr. Wright's, or Mr. Gregg's, or Mr. Nicholson's breaking the peace with Great Britain. Nothing can exceed our apathy. Whether it be, that we are a stupid people, or that we feel to excess and to frenzy, as party men, so that, as patriots, we feel and fear