using it as a cover to his cool and premeditated revenge?

Though justice, even towards such a man, ought to be tempered with mercy; and, though real charity ought to induce us to forgive him, as we pray to be forgiven; yet, I presume, from no consideration whatsoever, ought we to condescend to regard his character, tranquillity and happiness, as more precious than the character, tranquillity and happiness of ourselves, and our country. It is, however, precisely this degree of condescension, which he, after all the proofs of his malignity towards them, has the modesty to exact at the hands of the British nation! This nation, whom he had so laboured to injure and defame, seized on a certain traitorous correspondence, which was eminently calculated to expose the impious principles and destructive projects of their internal and external enemies. Interest, duty, even self-preservation, called on them to publish this correspondence to the world; but this forcible call they were totally to disregard, because the Intercepted Letters happened to be addressed to him!!!-To the authenticity of the letters he has not a word to oppose the only objectionable circumstance, is, they were calculated to render him obnoxious, and, on that account alone, he has the assurance to insinuate, that they ought to have been suppressed! The British nation (for I persist in looking upon government and people as one) were not only to wink at detected treason, but were to become traitors to themselves, their posterity, and their God; and all this, rather than run the mighty risk of rendering him obnoxious; Him! who for these twenty years past, has even sacrificed his interest, his peace, and his reputation, to the pleasure of injuring, insulting, and reviling them; and who, to this very hour, and at this distance, pursues them with all the craft of a sectary joined to the hatred and malice of a fiend!

So

1

So much for the Doctor's complaint. I shall now examine the "circumstances," which he seems to think ought to prevent the Intercepted Letter from rendering him obnoxious here.

The first of these circumstances relate to Stone. "He was," says Priestley, "a member of my con"gregation at Hackney, and a zealous friend af "the American and French Revolution, WHICH 66 SUFFICIENTLY ACCOUNTS FOR HIS CORRES66 PONDING WITH ME."

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Granted, Doctor. I not only allow, that Stone's being a member of your congregation sufficiently accounts for his holding a traiterous correspondence with you; but I also allow, that it accounts in the most satisfactory manner for his becoming a traitor. This circumstance" must convince the few who yet doubt on the subject, that your conventicle at Hackney was a most convenient and successful school for treason; but how it can possibly tend to remove the suspicion of your being a spy or a traitor, or both, I cannot conceive. It is the duty of teachers to walk according to precepts which they give to others; and, it cannot be believed, that such a conscientious man as you have forsaken the path, though rugged and dark, in which you conducted your flock, and through which Citizen Stone has arrived at the nethermost hell of Democracy.

But, besides Stone's being one of the Doctor's congregation, he was a zealous friend of the American and French revolutions; and this is, it seems, another circumstance, which accounts for his corresponding with the Doctor.-Poor, silly reason! Reader, do you not know hundreds and thousands of persons, who, like yourself, are enemies to the French revolution; Yes, and yet I dare engage, that that circumstance never led you into a correspondence with any one of them. Indeed, this ex

cuse

cuse is so very puerile and absurd, that I should have thought it unworthy of notice, had I not thought it necessary to remark on it in another point of view.

The circumstance was not intended as an excuse for the correspondence. It was dragged in as one of those little baits for popularity, which are in constant use amongst all the renegadoes from Great Britain and Ireland; a base method of paying their court to the people of America, and one to which every man, who has a drop of true blood in his heart, scorns to have recourse. In stating this circumstance, the Doctor indirectly reminds the Americans of his own merits as one of those who secretly aided their cause during the contest between them and the mother country; which, while it proves him to have been unfaithful to his native country, will not, I assure him, serve as a set-off to his correspondence with Stone. If the public papers and the arts of land-jobbers have invited traitors to the country, the people have, on their arrival, uniformly treated them with every mark of abhorrence; and it is a well-known truth, that, of the vast horde who have fled hither since the beginning of the French revolution, not one has met with confidence or encouragement*.

*Reynolds, the seditious United Irishman, who was obliged to fly from Ireland to save his neck, now stands prosecuted for a libel on the American Secretary of State. Go where he will, still he must be a malecontent. He is, however, now reduced so low, that no one will associate with him, except he be of the very dregs of the mob. He called himself Doctor for some time; but the title has been laid aside, as of no use. This wretch, in his passage to America, guillotined the king in effigy.

Archibald Hamilton Rowan makes spruce beer, and drives it about for sale in a wheelbarrow. He lives in the borough of Wilmington.

VOL. IX.

S

Daniel

I shall stop here to make an observation, the subject of which has, I dare say, often occurred to the Doctor on his pillow, and which ought to be very well attended to by the whole of the British nation and that is, that all the revolutionists, while they are endeavouring to excite the people of Great Britain and Ireland to revolt against the government, profess great fidelity to their country and loyalty to their king. They pretend to have nothing in view but "the good, the honour, the per"manent glory of the Empire." They propose "to amend and not destroy;" to make the people truly happy, and "His Gracious Majesty truly great." With cant like this Priestley played his part during the American war. Never did he tell the people, that he wished to see thirteen flourishing colonies lopped off from the king's dominions; but now, behold, he not only acknowledges that he wished

Daniel Isaac Eaton, of hog's-wash memory, was quite bold on his first arrival. He advertised pamphlets for sale by " Daniel Isaac Eaton, six times tried for sedition;" but the Alien law soon made him withdraw both his advertisement and himself from the notice of the public. He some time ago lived in a Jog-hut over Schuylkill, where he cohabited with an Indian squaw. The proprietor of the hut, finding what gentry he had got for tenants, turned them out bag and baggage. I happened to be going out on a shooting party, when the miscreant and his yellowed hided frow were coming into Camp-town, trapsing through the dirt. "And is that," thought I," the "PRINTER TO HIS MAJESTY, THE PEOPLE !"-He has brought his begs to a fine market!

Citizen Lee first attempted a magazine, then a book, and then he tried what could be got by travelling; and he is, at last, comfortably lodged in New-York jail.

Poor Merry (whom, however, I do not class with such villains as the above), died about three months ago, just as he was about to finish a treatise on the justice of the Agrarian system. He was never noticed in America; he pined away in obscurity., The people here have, thank Heaven, no taste for the Della Cruscan poetry or politics.

to

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to see this, but he boasts of those wishes, and calls upon the Americans to reward him and his associates for the prayers, and various other assistance which they lent them during their struggle for independence! So Reynolds and the United Irishmen: their modest desires extended no further than Catholic Emancipation and Parliamentary Reform. You cannot dip into their proceedings without meeting with a solemn declaration of their having no design to change the form or nature of the government," and a solemn protestation of their "affection for the person of his Gracious Majesty "and his illustrious family." But, what is their language on this side of the sea? Having gathered together their branded and scattered crew, the first thing they require of each, is, to declare that "His Gracious Majesty" is a tyrant; that Ireland ought to shake off his yoke, and become an independent republic; and in this they swear to do all in their power to assist her! Just such, too, are the views of the IVbig Club and Corresponding Society. Their stalking-horse is Reform, but their real object is the overthrow of the monarchy; a scramble for power and riches: and this intention, should they succeed, they will boast of with as unblushing a front as Lauderdale's friend, Brissot, and his gang, after they had made the exciting of the insurrection of the 10th of August one of the crimes for which they put their Sovereign to death, boasted of having excited the insurrection themselves! This is one of the blackest deeds in the annals of republican France; but, let the people of Great Britain be assured, that, instead of abhorrence, it has served to awaken emulation in the minds of the degraded and desperate faction, who have still the hypocrisy to bellow for Reform.

From this digression I return to the Doctor's explanation, and to the unconcern with which he dis