lowed the beheading of Charles I. would ensue. When, therefore, queen Mary, wife of king William and daughter of the exiled king James, died, William remained king by no right of blood, but only by virtue of an act of parliament, which might be repealed by any change of the majority. In this perilous state of things, men's minds were agitated with the fears of a renewal of those bloody dissensions, which the contest for the crown, between the rival houses of York and Lancaster, had engendered and protracted for more than a century.

Ar length king William died, and also his rival king James; and Anne, another daughter of king James, succeeded to the crown, according to the act of parliament. The death of the duke of Gloucester, the only child of Anne, happened before the death of king William; and, as there was no hope of her having more children, men began to turn their eyes to her brother, the pretender, so called. He was an infant, when the bigotry of his father, king James, obliged him to take refuge in the court of Louis XIV. It seemed, therefore, to many lovers of their country, a needless and a merciless persecution of this young prince, to visit his father's follies on his innocent head, and to prefer the princess Sophia of Hanover, one of the most distant relations of the royal family, to the pretender, who, in right of blood, was heir to the British crown. Yet the whig party got the famous Act of Settlement passed in favour of the princess Sophia, by virtue of which king George III. now holds his power.

In these singular circumstances, it was not strange, that there was a secret intestine agitation of parties and opinions, throughout the whole of queen Anne's reign. She herself, no doubt, wished that her brother, the pretender, might succeed her, in preference to the house of Hanover, whom she deemed strangers. Nevertheless, as she held her crown in prejudice of her brother's right, by an act of parliament, and as the nation had an unconquerable dread of popery and arbitrary power, to which James and his son were supposed to be wedded, she was forced to conceal her inclination and intentions. This was the more necessary, as her whig ministry, men of vast abilities,

were possessed of unbounded popularity, and the victories of the duke of Marlborough threw a glory over her reign and nation.

Bur so inconstant is popularity, that the credit of the whigs began to decline, in the midst of successes and triumphs. The queen seized the moment to dismiss her ministers, of whom she was weary, and to introduce the tories in their stead.

THE new tory ministry affected great zeal for the prosecution of the war against France, though, in their hearts, they wished for peace, because the war supported the popularity of the whigs and the power of Marlborough, their leader, and because it was the interest of their party to have peace. Peace, on many accounts, was indispensable to them, especially, before France was reduced in her power, because they looked forward to the death of queen Anne, when they might need the powerful help of France to place the pretender on the throne.

THE duke of Marlborough had been continued in command; and such was his superiour talent, that he had every reason to expect to strip Louis XIV. of all his conquests, and to reduce him to a condition of weakness, which would for ever defeat the enormous project of aggrandizement, which had agitated Europe for fifty years, and which has lately overturned it from its foundation. So far the views of Marlborough and his former whig associates seem to be justified by the wisest policy and the truest patriotism. But the tories made a clamour about the expenses of the war; they preached economy, they affected to prefer the arts and the benefits of peace to the glitter of triumphs and to the delusive acquisitions of war; delusive, they said, for, while England gained nothing, her allies were aggrandizing themselves by conquests, which were won by English arms. The finest writers of almost any age joined the tory cause with their pens; and at length the new ministers dismissed the duke of Marlborough, and privately signed preliminary articles of peace with France. This dishonourable transaction was not long a secret. It produced jealousy and discord among the allies, as might be expected, - and at length a wretched peace, which somewhat humbled

France, but stripped her of little of the means, and of none of the disposition, at a more convenient season, to become the mistress of Europe. This she has at length effected.

THUS we see, that a party invested with power, when it has an interest distinct from the national interest, will be carried on by its hatred of its political enemies to sacrifice the publick cause to its own. Heaven forbid, that France should at last triumph over the United States by the operation of such a party interest in America.

LESSONS FROM HISTORY.

No. III.

GREAT BRITAIN, whose name and independence, whose king and people every jacobin thinks it a debt of gratitude to France to abhor, was once the sovereign of the territory now called the United States of America.

MR. Jefferson's wise, vigorous, and pacifick conduct has been so much puffed by his friends, it has become of importance, and will be of more and more, to scrutinize it. If Mr. Jefferson, now we are independent, has done less for our honour and safety than Great Britain did, when we were colonies; if he has done that little, later, and in a manner to make it rather worse than doing nothing at all, our respect for Mr. Jefferson's policy ought to decline, or his friends ought to look out for some other more solid props to support it.

It would seem strange, if, on inquiry, it should appear, that our tyrant and oppressor, as the democrats hold it orthodoxy to consider Great Britain; it would seem strange, that she should have acted with more spirit, promptness, and liberality in asserting our rights, than our government is now willing that we, independent states, should act for ourselves.

FACTS, which often spoil the work of party, facts will shew, that no sooner had the war for the succession of the daughter

of the emperour Charles VI. to the dominion of the house of Austria ended by the peace of Aix la Chapelle, in 1748, than France began to extend her forts on our frontiers from the St. Lawrence to the Mississippi. She pretended, that her colonies, Canada and Louisiana, extended to the Allegheny mountains, and included the Mississippi, the Ohio, the Monongahela, and other rivers, as well as the great lakes. France did not merely claim the territory-she proceeded to occupy it with military posts, and to expel the few English settlers that she found within her pretended limits.

DID the English king tell his parliament, that these aggressions sprung from the wantonness of subalterns, unauthorized by their government, and that he relied on the justice of his most christian majesty for redress? Did he send a humble embassy to Paris to beg for it? and, when it could not be had for begging, did he get an appropriation of two millions, and then spend fifteen to buy it? and, after finding that he had paid for it in vain, did he send to Paris two millions more for leave only to talk about buying it again? When Spain encroached upon us, when she stopped the navigation of the Mississippi in avowed violation of our solemn right by treaty, what did we leave undone, that baseness, crawling on its belly, like a reptile on the ground, could possibly do to prevail on the proud aggressor to forbear treading upon us? We asked his contempt, as if it was our interest, by obtaining it, to quiet his groundless fears of retaliation.

IN 1754, Great Britain reasoned and acted very differently. She might have said, these encroachments of France will make the factious colonists feel their dependence upon the mother country a little more than they do. The acts of La Galissoniere, the French governour of Canada, are not the acts of Louis XV. I may wink at these wrongs, and postpone my vengeance, till I have refreshed my wasted strength after the disastrous war that I have just terminated; an unpopular and, perhaps, impolitick war, which has increased the burdens of my people, and their impatience in bearing them. If par

liament had sitten with closed doors, the king might have talked

two languages, like Mr. Jefferson, war and peace.

GREAT BRITAIN said nothing of the sort. She looked at these aggressions, and she saw in the whole aspect of affairs, as in a looking-glass, blotches of dishonour, like leprosy in her face, if she should bear these wrongs with a tameness that she foresaw would multiply them. She did not hesitate-orders were immediately sent to all the governours to repel force by force; and major Washington, a name sacred to honour and patriotism, was sent out to repel the French on the Ohio. Nevertheless, though war was waged in America, it was not declared in Europe. To the spirit of Great Britain, so promptly and powerfully roused in our cause, we owe the expulsion of the French from Canada: an event which has saved us from a war with France to maintain our independence.

HERE, then, are two cases, their circumstances not unlike, the policy of Great Britain and Mr. Jefferson totally unlike. Compare them.

LESSONS FROM HISTORY.

N°. IV.

ROME was a republick from its very birth. It is true, for two hundred and forty four years it was subject to kings; but the spirit of liberty was never more lofty at any period of its long troubled life, than when Rome was governed by kings. They were in war, generals; in peace, only magistrates. For seven hundred years Rome remained a republick; and during every minute of that time the spirit of conquest excited and ruled every Roman breast.

FOR thirty years America has been a republick; and during every minute of those thirty years the only question has been, how could she make independence cheap, and not for one minute, how could liberty be made durable and glorious.

LIBERTY has rocked the cradle and suckled the infancy of both republicks. They are different; but why they are different,