on Monday, wenches on Tuesday, gambles on Wednesday, hunts again on Thursday, talks scandal of his neighbour on Friday, plays at cards and dice on Saturday, and swears, gets drunk, and gluttonizes every day; we have a clerk who snores through the service, and a congregation who assemble for no other purpose than to shew their finery, ogle at each other, and make assignations.

Our church-warden is two ells round the waist from vestry dinners, our overseer of the poor expert only in bribing paupers to swear another parish.

Talk to me no more of London vices! of London peculations! shew me a true picture of the country, which is pregnant with as much deformity as any metropolis in Europe. I have seen no such doings in my journey; I have met with cyprians, it is true, but they are not more bold than our country girls; I see no great difference in their amatory advances; and as for apprentice-boys, why, they are no match for our own.

Mr. Meteor, understanding that it is your intention to castigate vice, I have troubled you with the above few hints, for the purpose of directing your lash against the very seminary of immorality.

The clergy, I do not mean to brand the cloth with general censure, but I mean to point out to you, that were they, (some of them) more scrupulous in the performance of their duty, and their deportment, much of the grievances of which we complain, would exist in but a very trifling degree, and would droop under discountenance. But little attention is paid to provincial morals, yet in the metropolis it is the general remark, an innocent country girl! who, by the bye, perhaps, has left behind her a couple of children; a poor simple country lad! who probably has been obliged to run away from the parish officers.

Turning part of your attention to these matters, Sir, may probably be judicious, and will oblige

Your humble servant,

FRANCIS ARABLE.

POLITICAL JOURNAL.

THERE is nothing more difficult to preserve against the assaults of prejudice and the caprice of popular opinion, than the tone of impartiality becoming a public writer. Causes are so minutely judged by their effects, and effects so variously ascribed to causes, that it is difficult to trace their connection from out the inundancy of selfish reasoning and the blind zeal of party advocates.

We are seldom left at liberty to draw our own conclusions, to form our own estimate of events, which, when they are handed over to us, are so deformed by sinister verbosity that their true form can scarcely ever be recognized. We are never expected to be cool and deliberate in our view, the better to be just; dispassion is rated down apathy, and truth venality. The man who joins not in the loud yell and outcry against the common enemy, brands him not with every epithet of ignominy, and every charge of incapacity is set down as inimical to his government and a partizan of the tyrant, as though it were criminal to perforate the mists of political intemperance, and look the times fairly in the face.

Political exigences require, and are supplied by expedients which virtuous philosophy must deprecate. The administrators of the public affairs must be allowed a versatility of opinion of men, as emanating from events which good policy may require; but something more is expected of those journalists who seek to direct the public voice, and found their claims to attention upon a presumed qualification for argument, founded upon a minute and correct knowledge of passing events, and the human machines connected with them.

From them is expected a calm and deliberate mixture of the passing times, collected by dispassionate observation; from them is expected reflections urged by the same temperance, aided by a sound judgment. If they fail in these essentials, of what value are their opinions, what VOL. I. No. 1.

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dependance can be placed in their accounts; reason was never assisted yet by violence, or a good cause by virulence. Who ever heard of reflective intemperance? who ever saw the passionate man, although aided by a Stentor's lungs, and full of the vocabulary of gross epithets, who ever saw him surrounded by a convinced auditory ? Would not some stay to be amused by his violence? while others, stunned by his declamation, would be anxious to retreat. He weakens the cause he attempts to advocate. Heated by animosity, he renders more conspicuous the flaws he attempts to conceal; and, impotent by ungovernable rage, he arms his antagonist in proportion as himself becomes weak.

Such is the state of the diurnal press; such the writers, who, with great self-confidence, attempt to direct the public voice-to stimulate the public prejudice; but this is not the worst feature in their mental composition.

The want of temper, while it is a certain sign of critical incapacity, demands some apology, as being a human infirmity. It is merit to govern impetuosity—to correct the exuberance of an honest and indignant feeling. He is a much brighter ornament of society who can command himself than he who can command others. Thus he may be pitied, but is certainly undeserving of reproach, who cannot sway his natural warmth, and temper his reason.

But what shall we say of that man, who, with his eyes open, throws over his shoulders the hired cloak of prejudice-who for a fee perverts his judgment, and misleads his reader ;-who takes up any cause for the wages of the day, and prepares to deform any side of the question it may suit his own or his employer's convenience to undertake? what would honest indignation say to such a man? Yet such men now throng round the daily news. offices, pandarizing to party pique, and founding and supporting party prejudice.

We repeat, nothing is more difficult to preserve, against the assaults of prejudice and the caprice of popu

lar opinion, than the tone of impartiality becoming a public writer. But these are the militant beings who have created, in a measure, and increased, its difficulties; for they have sounded the tocsin in so loud a note, they have phalanxed the press with so much venality, tha honest stricture has got to combat with suspicion as well as the ordinary impediments of the day; and the writer is fearful of being branded with the ignominious charge of alienation from the Constitution, with being an enemy to the constituted authority, and a friend to disorder and revolt.

Few minds are strong enough to bear up against and rebut the charge; and those who dare advocate the light of truth, and speak dispassionately of our government at home and the governments opposed to us abroad, write with a sneaking fear and inanimate pen, and half acknowledge with alarm what they half deny.

Dispassion and candor among our diurnalists is hardly known: it has long ceased to be a recommendation. The writers, themselves divide into two classes; the one, thick and thin defenders of the ministry of the day; the other inveterate oppositionists, determined to cede nothing, to admit nothing as deserving of praise in the men opposed to them. Thus the Morning Chronicle and its satellites condemn every measure of administration without distinction, determining that the men in power are the most imbecile set of ministers that ever disgraced a nation's helm; while, on the contrary, the Morning Post and its tributaries boldly declare they are the only men who can save the nation, extols them as the deliverers of Europe, and decks them with the laurels earned by a Wellington in the Peninsula.

To deviate from both of these classes, and to grant merit with the parsimonious hand of justice to all parties in season, is to incur the penalties which we have shoulders broad enough to receive, and which our incli nation strongly prompts us to bare them to. We have

not sworn with the Mayor of Garratt to oppose the Ministers, right or wrong; but tenacious of ceding too much to their labours, we will not incur the censure of sparing them also, when imbecility points them for castigation.

There is a third class sprung up of late, seeking to fetter the judgment with the comprehensive and alluring cry of patriotism, composed of insanes, and men destitute. of principle. The former are to be pitied, the latter not much to be feared; for as all poisons have their known antidotes, and schemes their clue to detection, so these men expose too soon, the firebrand they would hurl, and shed a light upon the train pointing to explosion. But the real injuries they have done has hitherto been confined to the more enlightened laborers in the literary vineyard; to men, who, with a better train of reflection and sounder principles, have entered their protest against measures subversive of the Constitution and injurious to the public liberty. Their reflections have been deteriorated by analogy with the frenzied declamations of the literary squibs forming the third class, and their patriotism questioned.

Let us not be confounded with those wild-fires. Our political journal shall be founded on the steady basis of impartiality, and our attempt shall be to expose the fal lacies of those who under any cloak seek to deceive or to deform.

With these preliminary observations, our limits will hardly allow us this month room to enter upon an enlarged view of any political question. We have not, as indiffe rent observers, noticed the successful advance of the allies in the North of Europe, the retrograde steps of the French Emperor; nor have we been slow in our calculation of the consequences resulting from an invasion of the French territory by our brave countrymen in the South; but, for the present, we must content ourselves with promising au interesting article on these important subjects in