known to some one or another. If he is invited to a dinner he may be sure that some one of the servants is in the employ of the police, to give an account of the conversation that passes at table and this was so well known under the old regime, that at great tables nothing was more common than for the servants to withdraw immediately after a course had been set upon the table. Contrivances were made behind each chair for the plates and glasses that had been used, which were regularly taken away on removing the course. This fashion is beginning to be adopted in England, and with the system of Espionage it will become more general.

It is said, that the English excel more in improving what is put into their hands than in invention, and this seems likely to be the case with Espionage. For it does not appear that the French made any other use of their espions than to discover every thing that was taking place around them. They do not seem to have entrusted any other power to their agents. They had no idea of employing those wretches to go about the country to delude idle, ignorant, distressed, or disaffected persons, to exaggerate their grievances, real or supposed, and to stir them up to acts of outrage, insurrection or rebellion. But this comes evidently into the system of Espionage. By such a mean the superior in the office may wield his instrument with very great success. He may form any plot he pleases; may bring it out at any time that suits his purposes; may involve in it the names of the most meritorious persons in the state; may injure their characters and reputation, and obtain, at a very little expense, the merit of putting down a most dangerous rebellion.

The consequences of the system of Espionage being introduced into a country are these:All confidence between man and man is gradually undermined. Friendship cannot subsist; intrigue becomes the general employment. The mas ter fears his servant, for the servant is either, or is apprehended to be, a traitor. Government suspects and is suspected by every body. As Espionage takes place, all that social intercourse, for which England has been celebrated, vanishes. Adien to the freedom of the table, to the settling of the interest of the nation or the interests of a county. The men become idle, silly, frivolous; fit only to make a witty speech at a lady's toilette, but incapable of uttering a noble sentiment, or of harbouring within their breasts a generous feeling.

It must be some time before such a system can be established in England. Our manners and customs are very adverse to it. The name of a spy carries with it at present something odious and contemptible. Even they, who might be inclined

to use them, feel a horror at such a praetice. At the utmost they can be considered only as necessary evils, and it becomes us to pause before we allow this feeling to be annihilated. The necessary consequence of Espionage is the demoralization, to use another French term now becoming fashionable among us, of the governors and the governed. Bad as the spies were under the old French regime, it may justly be doubted, whether their guilt was half so great as that of their employers. Perhaps much of the evils of the French Revolution may be traced to this source; for the system prevailed, whatever party held the reins of government: and the espions under one party, with very great ease, transferred their services to the next that came into power; and we may safely predict, that, as long as the system continues, the French will be incapable of enjoying the blessings of legitimate governiment.

One evil arising out of the system of Espionage deserves to be noticed, as it is not likely to strike those who have happily lived unacquainted with this system, and government often suffers very considerably from it :-This is the handle it gives to private malice. It cannot be expected that charges will be very accurately examined when the accused is never to be confronted with his accuser, or, perhaps, never knows him. This happened once to an English gentleman, who, during the American war, was hurried from a town at a considerable distance from Paris, to the Bastille. There he remained six weeks;' but it is to be observed, that he was there treated with all the respect due to a gentleman, had a good apartment, a plentiful table, and excellent wine. The governor supplied him with books from his library, and he had nothing to complain of but the loss of his liberty. At that time, though the two countries were at war, there was that degree of intercourse between them which admitted of a full inquiry into the character of the gentleman. This was made in the course of about six weeks, and proved satisfactory. The gentleman was released, paid his compliments to the secretary of state, had full liberty to return to England or reside in France as he pleased, and was assured, that the state had only to regret that he had been put to so much inconvenience. The fact was, that an individual took this method of gratifying his malice on an unfounded cause of complaint; and, wherever this system prevails, many an innocent individual must suffer the pains of unnecessary confinement.

These observations have been suggested hy the melancholy circumstances in which this country has so unhappily been placed, and the discussions to which they have

given rise both in and ont of Parliament. It has been contended on the one hand, that the use of spies is improper; and, on the other, that whatever may be said of the morality of the practice, there was no government yet, which under certain circumstances, did not employ them. It is not necessary to enter into the arguments used by either party. If we allow that there are times when the use of spies may become expedient, this is a very different thing from Espionage being the allowed and general practice; much less does it justify spies not to discover an evil, but to excite persons to acts of sedition or trea

son.

There is a great difference between a government occasionally using a base instrument on an extraordinary emergency and making it their regular and settled practice. The question, and an awful question it is, What did the circumstances of the times really require?

The outrages in London that attended one of the meetings iu Spa-fields have given occasion for a trial for high treason, on whose fate depended that of several others. The Court of King's Bench was employed seven days in the investigation, and the foundation of the charge rested on the evidence of a man to whom no credit could be given. Such a scene of folly was scarcely ever exhibited in a court of jnstice, so that the verdict of acquittal was received with universal approbation. The Attorney-General in consequence with drew his charges against the other pri

soners.

A little before, the Attorney-General had been equally unsuccessful in two charges for libel, which were attended with some extraordinary circumstances. On the first charge a verdict was given of guilty, with the reserve, that if truth was a libel this was the case, and the verdict was taken by the judge of guilty, without seeing the jury and knowing whether they agreed in their verdict. On the second charge the accused was found not guilty. On the following day the judge, who tried these causes, gave an account of the whole proceeding in the Court of King's Bench, allowing that he did not see all the jury, and was not certain, in consequence, whether they agreed in the verdict. Of course the verdict of guilty was set aside, and the question is, whether the accused is to be brought to trial again for this offence. He defended himself in the most eloquent manner, justifying all he said in his publication, and maintaining that it was a political question in which the legal talents of the Attorney-General could be of no avail. The judge was asked, in the course of the first trial, whether truth was a libel, and he maintained, on authorities, that it was so; and this answer merits serious inves.

tigation. If we put it into plain language it must mean this, that the speaking of truth may deserve punishment. Now this is a bad doctrine to teach our children, for in general every good parent considers that the speaking of truth is a great setoff against that punishment, which the case really required. We may conceive a case where an individual may imagine himself very much aggrieved by the publication of a truth, through which he is highly disgraced. For example, suppose him to be a minister of state, and to have been guilty of employing the public money in trafficking for seats of Parliament, or suppose him to have received presents from foreign powers, by which the interests of the country have been deserted; is the person who declares these truths to be considered a proper object of punishment? What harm can arise to the state, if, when the facts are allowed, the declaration of these facts should be pronounced innocent? Whatever may be the maxim of the law courts, there is something so abhorrent to the general feelings of humanity in treating truth in this manner, that it can never be admitted to be punishable without some appropriate epithets of malice; and, perhaps, the old language is the best, that every libel, which means only a little book or writing, should be set out as false, scandalous and malicious.

The Habeas Corpus Act has been again suspended. The question has been discussed most fully, both in and out of Parliament. Several cities and counties have

petitioned against it. It is a melancholy thing, that such a deprivation of the rights of Englishmen should be deemed necessary by any party, and it is some satisfaction to think, that even the causes alleged for it by its warmest advocates, do not reach the great body of the people; and that the places where disturbances have arisen, are those where, from the stagnation of manufacturing employment, great distress has been occasioned and severely felt. Where also this distress has prevailed, there is ton much reason to apprehend, that it has been aggravated by ill-designing persons, and measures have been suggested to the people labouring under them, which would not otherwise have occurred to their minds. At the end of such a harassing war, and after an untoward season, difficulties were to be expected. Whether the wisest method has been taken to obviate them, time must discover; but, if Englishmen should once cease to esteem the Habeas Corpus Act as of little consequence, they must learn to bear the consequences of its absence. Commerce and manufactures will not flourish but on a soil where liberty exists; and it is to commerce and manufactures, that England is indebted for its past greatness.

A singular circumstance has occurred in consequence of the feelings of the House of Commons respecting the Habeas Corpus Act. Some justices in Berkshire were denied access to the state prisoners confined in their prison, and this gave rise to a correspondence between them and the ministers, and a subsequent discussion in the House of Commons, which thought it right to leave our fellow-subjects entirely at the mercy of the ministers. This did not satisfy Lord Folkstone, whose conduct upon this occasion is above all praise. As a magistrate for the county, he called the attention of his brother magistrates to this point, who exercised the authority vested in them with the greatest propriety. They considered that the jailor was their officer, but they excused his conduct on account of his ignorance in such a delicate subject, but they maintained their right of inspecting the whole of the prison whenever they thought proper. Thus Englishmen are not left entirely to the men who confine them in prison, and it must be satisfactory to every one that this is the law of England, for the history of other nations must convince us, that there is no degree of cruelty which has not been exercised by men in power, over those who are unfortunately or deservedly within their clutches. That Englishmen or Irishmen will be better than other men in the same situation, may be asserted in Parliament; but it is dangerous both for people in power and for the subject that the experiment should be tried

A trial in Scotland has also produced considerable sensation. Such tampering with a witness has seldom been displayed before the British public, and it will pro

bably lay a foundation for an inquiry before the legislature. The prosecutors were again foiled in their charge against a person for administering unlawful oaths.

The importance of matters at home renders us less attentive to circumstances abroad. By all accounts, the revolutionary party in the Brazils has been foiled, and a conspiracy to a great extent has been detected at Lisbon. An attempt to vindicate the liberty of the press is going forward at Paris, where a child was for a short time added to the Bourbon family Its death took place soon after its birth, but not till a priest had admitted it into the number of the faithful, and given it, according to his speech to the clergy of St. Dennys, where its remains were deposited, a right to a place in the angelical choir. But we must not be too severe in our strictures on this abuse of baptism, when even in our own body is found a writer to set up the strange notion of the propriety of infant sprinkling, as a Christian rite derived from the apostles. The true Christian will not, however, be led away by such strange fancies; he will consider what baptism really was, and that it could not be introduced till the parties were prepared to be disciples. Make disciples was the precept, the initiatory rite was a consequence; and how a disciple is to be made of a babe who cannot assent to any proposition, it is in vain for any learned Rabbinism to attempt to explain. We must not set the plain terms of a law aside to bring it within the pale of tradition. For had the tradition been well-grounded, and we believe that there is no foundation for it, this could no more justify the practice than it would justify Peter's error, who was by Paul so justly condemned.