new buildings are still continued; and that there has lately been such a general repairing and vamp◄ ing up of old houses, warehouses, &c. in all quarters. The superficial observer, who sees these speculative edifices, like "airy visions," rising all around him, perhaps does not perceive how often the inhabitants of some of the splendid new streets, even in the heart of the city, are compelled to shift from these to humbler dwellings. But fatally taken by external seeming, like the taudry trappings of a decayed courtezan, a silly credulity is still inclined to exclaim with a poet, who seldom dealt in fiction:

"Where has commerce such a mart,

"So rich, so throng'd, so drain'd, and so supply'd,
"As London? opulent, enlarg❜d, and still

Increasing London-Babylon of old,

"Not more the glory of the earth than she.”

COWPER.

Beyond all doubt the character of the middling and lower classes must change with a change of customs. May it not be said, that the pressure of taxes, and the weight of monopoly upon almost every article of consumption, have rather altered the once free open temper and the blunt manners of John Bull? William the Conqueror, by introducing the curfew, could only compel the people to eat their supper in the dark, or go to bed by day-light. William Pitt's war

taxes and his monoplists have abridged them both of food and light. William Pitt did not compel people to extinguish their fires at eight at night; but his window-tax darkened their houses by night and by day; and his measures generally led to the total prohibition of social intercourse, which was also the object of William the NorWilliam the Conqueror changed the English customs; William Pitt succeeded but too well in changing the English character. Under Wm. Pitt's system, the small farms and farmers,. as well as vast numbers of little tradesmen, have been nearly annihilated.

man.

William the Conqueror overrun the country with mercenaries; William Pitt has oppressed it with jobbers and speculators, who call themselves merchants, created out of a new system of trade and commerce; and he has impoverished the country by extending the monied interests, and narrowing that of useful agriculture. William the Conqueror, notwithstanding, left the monasteries and great houses in a capacity to bestow their customary alms of bread and beef; but, under William Pitt's trading system, the great houses and landholders in general sell their cattle, and carefully calculate the value of every beast from the horns to the hoof, and from the head to the tail! while too many, who are not graziers, instead of imitating any part of the hospitality of

their ancestors, convert even the produce of the dripping-pan to their own emolument. This new system has multiplied paupers, and changed a number of the characters of those, the sons of many respectable farmers, who have been compelled to become labourers upon the very same farms, which were held upon leases by their fathers and grandfathers.

Some persons look so high that they can see nothing beneath them: but it is a curious fact, that, till the French Protestants came into this country, in the reign of William and Mary, the offal, viz. the heads, feet, and intestinés, of cattle, were not eaten by the people of London, who then, most probably, fed their domestic animals with what they now eat themselves! It was the poor French Protestant refugees, many hundreds of whom took up their residence in Spital Fields, who first became customers to the London butchers for this sort of food, not for their dogs, but for their own tables. Still it was long, indeed, before this humiliating example was followed by Englishmen; which, however, has become general within the last twenty years. So that, till Mr. Pitt's administration was established, when horse-flesh was substituted in this city for dog's meat, it might have been said, that the English dogs lived better than their christian neighbours.. It is only since this period that the selling of

horse-flesh for this purpose has been erected into a new and extensive trade; horse-flesh fetching a price now equal to that of beef a few years ago!

In answer to statements like these, the advocates for corruption are always ready to urge, that the situation of the people in this country is, beyond all description, superior to the people of France! But why should an Englishman be told he is better fed than a Frenchman? Could this objection be invalidated, it might then be urged, that he is certainly superior to a Spaniard, an Italian, a Hottentot, &c. But why should the Englishman, at this time, be any thing less than what he has been under the best constitution in the world?

"For forms of government let fools contest,
"Whate'er is best administer'd, is best."

But every censure upon the abuse of commerce will, by shallow thinkers, be converted into an enmity against all commerce whatever! Still how is it, that something like the balance of property within a state should not be as necessary as the balance of power without it? Commerce too, which, like a great river, would be of excellent use while kept within bounds, must occasion dreadful ravages in overflowing its proper limits.

A commercial war, nearest in its affinities to a civil war, may become the most cruel and implacable of any; while a more laudable, or even a

chivalrous, principle of honour would disdain a contest for such objects. The point of honour, generally speaking, knows when to be satisfied. But it may be asked, whether a contest of insatiable avarice can terminate without the destruction either of the Montagues or the Capulets?

Mr. Pitt being the father of the present commercial system and its consequences, this may probably be numbered among the nation's misfortunes.

Mr. Pitt, it should be remembered, came into power in 1783, in consequence of his opposition to Mr. Fox's East India Bill, which, founded upon the principles of Mr. Pitt's noble father, struck at the root of oriental peculation and corruption. But, in 1784, when Mr. Pitt brought in his India Bill, in opposition to that of Mr. Fox, subjecting the Company to a Board of Controul, appointed by the Crown, was not the juggler thus intruded upon the country in the room of the enlightened statesman? Have not subsequent events, and that Company's affairs in general, proved this to a demonstration? Did not Mr. Fox's India Bill wisely propose taking the entire management of the territorial and commercial concerns of India into the hands of government? Then, as Mr. Montagu Burgoyne has observed in his late letter to the freeholders and inhabitants of Essex