As national improvement is the professed object of your publica tion, and as your past exertions have given such a striking proof of your earnest and Jaudable desire to promote it, it becomes the pleasing duty of every friend to assist you, with such materials, as may contribute to the stock of general information, so essential to further this end; and, as every true lover of his country will view, with admiration, such traits in the national character, as raise it above its neighbours, and make it the theme of conversation amongst foreigners,, he will naturally feel a pride in giving publicity to them, and holding them up to general notice. Amongst the various traits of character that mark our countrymen, there is none more brilliantly conspicuous, than their philanthropy. The benevolent institutions are so numerous, the convenience and elegance of many of them are proofs of the liberality of their several founders, as the donations and subscriptions, by which they are at present supported, are evidences, however defective, of the wisdom of their conductors, of the generosity and intention of the individuals, who contribute to them.

They cannot be too generally known; and it is to be lamented, that the publicity of many very valuable, and highly beneficial institutions, is confined to their immediate neighbourhood; or, if they are known, through the medium of directories, they are so vaguely described, that the reader knows little more of them, than their name and situation. But, this is not sufficient for general utility: persons wish to be informed of many little particulars relative to their regulations, admission of candidates, subscriptions, forms of donation and bequests, &c.: a work of this description is much wanted; and the rich and the poor, as well as the institutions themselves, would quickly find the benefit of it. To the rich, it presents a choice of objects, for the exercise of their charity: to the poor, such an asylum for declining years, as may be most suitable to their situations: to the institutions themselves, it gives that general publicity, which is so necessary to their prosperity, and to the discontented.

In selecting your publication as a medium, I do not think I shall be disappointed in my object, as the general approbation bestowed on it is a sufficient proof of its increasing popularity; and the general information it promises to afford, renders it more eligible than any at present extant. In pursuing the subject of charitable institutions, it is my intention, to embrace the public hospitals, benevolent establishments, founded by individuals and companies, alms houses, charity schools, and scientific institu tions, not only in the metropolis, but all over the kingdom.

This, I trust, will prove of general benefit, and should the plan meet your approbation, by devoting a portion of your columns to it weekly, you will oblige your constant reader, AMICUS.

London: Printed by J. C. KELLY, 32, Houndsditch.

For Messrs, MERLE & SHADGETT, 54, Coleman Street, near the Bank of England, to whom all communications are to be addressed.

Indication of evil intentions in certain Writers---Concluding observations respecting them and the People.

We hope our Readers will recollect that, in the first and second of the three articles, of which the present is the conclusion, (and which have not been written as essays upon parliamentary reform, a subject, however, which we shall soon consider for its own sake,) we grounded our suspicions of the integrity of certain Writers, in our observation of the incongruity between their means and their end, if, as they would have it believed, their end is simply Reform: for then the means would be simply the co-operation of those classes and persons in the kingdom, who are qualified by station, fortune, talents, and character, to effectuate it: but, that same end being supposed, (which we are far from believing to be the real end,) these means are, in their addresses, either neglected entirely, or rarely, and then slightly, and often contemptuously noticed, and never insisted upon as indispensable, but always as subordinate to other means from which they are only just not excluded. We shewed a method of easy practice, by which the right means might be made operative to the right end; and that, nevertheless, other means were preferred for the attainment of an end said to be right, that is simply Reform; but which have, as it were, an antipathy to it, just for this very reason, that

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it is simply Reform. The present article continues to shew that these preferred means comprehend precisely those classes and persons who are not in any of the above-mentioned senses, or in any admis← sible sense, qualified to promote the reform pretended, but that they are exactly qualified for the subversion and ruin of that which it is pretended to reform: and we shall conclude, as may be expected from such premises, with a few observations which we think will leave little doubt upon our sober-minded readers respecting the true character of these writers.

Their writings shew sufficiently the little importance they attribute to any people but the multitude. These Gentlemen, in their perpetual skirmishes about a bush, which it is not yet quite time to enter, salute, with an air of sang froid all this multitude; and therefore now and then have a word or two indiscriminately for the better sort: but it is the multitude, in its limited sense, after which their heart yearneth: it is this multitude whose simplicity is to be cozened and cajoled, whose innocence is to be seduced, and whose energies are to be applied to--What? Surely, as these gentlemen say, to Reform! This their patriotic object therefore, is rightly prepared, not by impressing upon the great mass of the people the true and unavoidable incapacity of their actual condition, for any beneficial exercise of popular counsel or authority beyond the precincts of their villages, parishes, or market towns; not the true and unavoidable consequences of their ignorance in matters of state and politics; not the expediency of surmounting, or at least of remedying, that ignorance, so far as it is of any importance to them that it should be remedied, before they think themselves qualified to judge, and proceed to rebuke their superiors, remonstrate with their lawful rulers, and accuse their Prince and his ministers of maladministration, malversation, misrule, and treasonous designs against them ;---not any of those regular, but now exploded, forms of good doctrine, which persuades, still more forcibly than it can coerce, a moral people---but by the prevalent maxims of the summary method and process which prescribes a self-evident rule, to measure at once their condition and their duty---that the ministers purposing to hang, draw, quarter and stew the people, liberty and all, and, (like old Gaffer Grey beard,) to swallow them all up; they have nothing left for it but to turn butchers themselves, change the victims, anticipate the Pelopian Feast, and as soon as they become Gods in their turn, collect the limbs they have scattered, and make a new people to be ruled by themselves.

These writers know, as well as we do who complain of thein as being the very worst subjects in the kingdom, because they exercise their facultice, whatever they may be, in an uninterrupted course of arti

ficial and wanton experiments upon the liberty which is cherished by the laws and customs of their country; in order to ascertain, as a preliminary caution before they proceed in their meditated treasons, how far they may possibly calculate in any adverse circumstances which may bring them before legal tribunals, upon subterfuges, evasions, distinctions, misapplications, distorted precedents, impudent asseverations, over-nice scruples, omissions, mistakes, ignorances, timidity, and even jealousy of the very liberty which they outrage: we repeat, these writers know as well as we do who complain of them, that their course is to be checked only by the rude arm of that lawful and necessary power in all governments, which is confided to a few for the safety and happiness of the many; for (that we may not yet borrow a phrase from the secret axioms of despotic administration, that "princes become tyrants from policy, when subjects become rebels from principle,") we will remark that an executive power, wherever it is placed, is bound, and must be taken to be bound, in the spirit of any original contract which can be supposed or conceived, to preserve the lawful liberty which can be enjoyed without danger to the public security, and to subdue, at any rate, the turbulent and traiterous spirits, by which the vicious passions of any party are stimulated to excesses subversive of it. The difficulty, (well appreciated by these men,) the difficulty in this country, of the exercise of the executive power upon such an occasion, is in its nature; being executive of known laws only, which are enacted by another authority, over which it has little defined controul; which other is also a representative authority resulting from the agreement of again different parties, in the state. But if the duty of preserving lawful liberty is any where in the state, in the same place is the duty of arming the executive power with the means necessary to preserve it: and if existing laws are experimentally known to be inefficient, those must be enacted which will be effective. If Parliament, even in its present condition, has not vigor and true patriotism enough to check the torrent of licentious feeling which has how so long been suffered to extend its ravages all around, we see no alternative but Revolution or Military government. We hope that at all events the former may be avoided, because it involves permanent evil, together with temporary afflictions. If we should live to experience the latter, which God forbid, we shall charge all these turbulent spirits of evil with the guilt of having produced it. We charge them beforehand with the knowledge of the tendency of their proceedings and writings to one of these horrible extremes; and if they should mistake the road, and be surprised by the sudden apparition of of the other, their countrymen will do well to remember that they owe

the loss of their liberties, or the chains in which they may enjoy any which remain, to the demagogues whom they are now allowing to counsel them, and to their own folly in encouraging them. The sigus. of these times are awfully conspicuous---one should think that those who run might read them. It is not that the sagacity of these writers is deceived, it is that their low-bred ambition disguises the peril of their own ways, the turpitude of decoying their countrymen, and the infamy of betraying those whom they have decoyed. If they had a spark of the spirit to which they make such arrogant pretensions, they would practise, as well as they know, the duty of cbcying the laws in spirit and in truth: those laws which have left ample room for the exercise of the privileges of free speech and writing without violating the decencies of civilized life, or indulging in frantic sallies against the most venerable and most valuable of our public institutions. They would scorn to tamper with the loyalty, in order to betray the innocence of that multitude whom they are unceasingly invoking; and blush at the very thought of arming the hands of those simple and ignorant men with fire and sword, whom they know that any event will sacrifice by thousands, and that no event can render much happier than they were in that loyalty which they had imbibed with their earliest prejudices, that innocence which their simple habits had preserved in almost its original purity, and that ignorance which excluded only subjects beyond their comprehension, or beside their wants. Yet still it is the same cry of people! people! people! "The Rights of Man in one hand, and the sword in the other: this is the way that the rights of men should be asserted and protected when they are assailed or obscured by tyranny." We know it, Sirs, and from the same worthy authority, that "it requires an hundred fools to feed one. knave of common magnitude," (though how many more to feed a Black Dwarf we have not yet seen in account.) "When will knaves see that they are the worst of fools-fools of their own making, for purposes. that must, in their success, ensure them the detestation of mankind; and, in their failure, render them equal objects of hatred, contempt, and ridicule; even if the due punishment of their crimes should not overtake them in the sentence of offended law and outraged justice!"* The people, thank heaven, are numerous enough; and we wish they were altogether wise enough to see and to be convinced, as every body else seems now to be, that your whole generation is a generation of-vipers.

The sense in which the people is appealed to, is only disguised when less is pretended than the exertion of their physical force as a multitude. If this wants any evidence, it must at length appear evidently

* Wooler.