Nothing is fo ftrong a tie of amity between nation and nation as correfpondence in laws, cuftoms, manners, and habits of life. They have more than the force of treaties in themselves. They are obligations written in the heart. They approximate men to men, without their knowledge, and fometimes against their intentions. The fecret, unfeen, but irrefragable bond of habitual intercourse, holds them together, even when their perverse and litigious nature sets them to equivocate, fcuffle, and fight about the terms of their written obligations.

As to war, if it be the means of wrong and violence, it is the fole means of justice amongst nations. Nothing can banish it from the world. They who fay otherwise, intending to impofe upon us, do not impose upon themselves. But it is one of the greatest objects of human wisdom to mitigate those evils which we cannot remove. The conformity and analogy of which I fpeak, incapable, like every thing elfe, of preferving perfect truft and tranquillity among men, has a ftrong tendency to facilitate accommodation, and to produce a generous oblivion of the rancour of their quarrels. With this fimilitude, peace is more of peace, and war is lefs of war. I will go further. There have been periods of time in which communities, apparently in peace with each other, have been more perfectly feparated than, in later times, many nations in Europe have been in the courfe of long and bloody wars. The caufe must be fought in the fimilitude in Europe of religion, laws, and manners. At bottom, thefe are all the fame. The writers on public law have often called this aggregate of nations a Commonwealth. They had reafon. It is virtually one great ftate having the fame bafis of general law; with fome diverfity of provincial customs and local establishments. The nations of Europe have had the very fame Christian religion, agreeing in the fundamental parts, varying a little in the ceremonies and in the fubordinate doctrines.-Regicide Peace.

NOVELTY.

SOME degree of novelty must be one of the ma→ terials in every inftrument which works upon the mind; and curiofity blends itself more or less with all our paffions.-Sublime and Beautiful.

NAMES.

GREAT names have great prevalence.from the New to the Old Whigs.

NAPLES. (See SICILY.)

Appeal

NAPLES has an old inveterate difpofition to Re, publicanism, and (however for fome time paft quiet) is as liable to explofion as its own Vefuvius. Memorial on the Affairs of France in 1791.

OECONOMY.

It is not a predilection to mean, fordid, home-bred cares, that will avert the Confequences of a falfe Eftimation of our Intereft, or prevent the fhameful Dilapidation into which a great Empire muft fall, by mean Reparations upon mighty Ruins.

I CONFESS I feel a degree of difguft, almoft leading to defpair, at the manner in which we are acting in the great exigencies of our country. There is now a bill in this house, appointing a rigid inqui fition into the minuteft detail of our offices at home. The collection of fixteen millions annually; a collection on which the public greatnefs, fafety, and credit have their reliance; the whole order of criminal jurifprudence, which holds together fociety itself, have at no time obliged us to call forth fuch powers; no, nor any thing like them. There is not a principle of the law and conftitution of this country that is not

fubverted to favour the execution of that project *. And for what is all this apparatus of buftle and terror? Is it because any thing fubftantial is expected from it? No. The ftir and buftle itself is the end propofed. The eye-fervants of a fhort-fighted mafter will employ themselves, not on what is most effential to his affairs, but on what his nearest to his ken. Great difficulties have given a juft value to economy; and our minifter of the day must be an economift, whatever it may coft us. But where is he to exert his talents? At home, to be fure; for where else can he obtain a profitable credit for their exertion? It is nothing to him, whether the object on which he works under our eye be promifing or not. If he does not obtain any public benefit, he may make regulations without end. Thofe are fure to pay in prefent expectation, whilft the effect is at a distance, and may be the concern of other times, and other men. On these principles he chooses to fuppofe (for he does not pretend more than to suppofe) a naked poffibility, that he fhall draw fome refource out of crumbs dropped from the trenchers of penury; that fomething fhall be laid in ftore from the fhort allowance of revenue officers, overloaded with duty, and famished for want of bread; by a reduction from officers who are at this very hour ready to batter the treasury with what breaks through ftone walls, for an increase of their appointments. From the marrowlefs bones of thefe skeleton eftablishments, by the use of every fort of cutting, and of every fort of fretting tool, he flatters himself that he may chip and rafp an empirical alimentary powder, to diet into fome fimilitude of health and fubftance the languifhing chimeras of fraudulent reformation.

Whilst he is thus employed according to his policy and to his tafte, he has not leifure to enquire into thofe abuses in India that are drawing off money by millions from the treafures of this country, which are exhaufting the vital juices from members of to

Appendix, No. 1.

ftate, where the public inanition is far more forely felt than in the local exchequer of England. Not content with winking at these abuses, whilft he attempts to fqueeze the laborious ill-paid drudges of English revenue, he lavishes in one act of corrupt prodigality, upon those who never ferved the public in any honeft occupation at all, an annual income equal to two thirds of the whole collection of the revenues of this kingdom.-Speech on the Nabob of Arcot's Debts.

1

ECONOMIST.

It is impoffible for a man to be an economift, who is not able to take a comparative view of his means, and of his expences, for the year which lies before him; it is impoffible for a man to be an œconomist, under whom various officers in their feveral departments may spend,-even just what they pleafe, and often with an emulation of expence, as contributing to the importance, if not profit, of their feveral departments.-Oecon. Reform.

OPPRESSION, AND OPPRESSED.

WHAT I have always thought of the matter is this-that the most poor, illiterate, and uninformed creatures upon earth, are judges of a practical oppreffion. It is a matter of feeling; and as fuch perfons generally have felt moft of it, and are not of an over-lively fenfibility, they are the beft judges of it. But for the real caufe, or the appropriate remedy, they ought never to be called into council about the one or the other. They ought to be totally fhut out; because their reafon is weak; because when once roused, their paffions are ungoverned; because they want information; because the fmallness of the property which individually they poffefs, renders them lefs attentive to the confequence of the meafures they adopt in affairs of moment.-Letter to Sir H. Langrifhe, M. P.

OPPRESSION, (EFFECTS OF.)

MEN irritated by oppreffion, and elevated by a triumph over it, are apt to abandon themselves to violent and extreme courfes.Ibid.

OPINION.

You can

BUT, fay fome, you force opinion. never extirpate opinion without extirpating a whole nation. Nay, by pursuing it, you only increase its partizans. Opinions are things out of human jurifdiction. I have formerly heard this from the mouths of great men, with more furprize than fatisfaction. They alledged as a proof of their doctrine, the wars of Charles the Fifth, and fome of his fucceffors, against the reformation.

If it

It is fo common, though fo unreasonable, it is hardly worth remarking, that no perfons purfue more fiercely with criminal procefs, and with every kind of coercion, the publication of opinions contrary to their own, than those do, who claim in this respect the most unbounded latitude to themfelves. were not for this inconfiftency, then war against opinions might be juftified as all others, more or lefs, according to the reafon of the cafe: for the cafe judged on by moral prudence, and not by any univerfal abftract principle of right, is to guide government in this delicate point.

As to the mere matter of extirpation of all kinds of opinions, whether right or wrong, without the extirpation of a people, it is a thing fo very common, that would be clouded and obfcured rather than illuftrated by examples. Every revolution in the predominant opinion made by the force of domestic legal government, by the force of any ufurpation, by the force of any conqueft, is a proof to the contrary; and there is no nation which has not experienced thofe changes. Inftances enough may be