have happened, which have brought desolation on town and country? Has not philosophy assumed all forms, and borrowed all languages, in order to make our monarchs comprehend that they ought incessantly to occupy themselves with the happiness of their subjects; that, in sacrificing the public welfare to the desires of some individuals, they did not even satisfy the avidity of their courtiers; that they exposed themselves to the risk of seeing extinguished in the hearts of their subjects that love which is so natural to the people under their dominion, and which was the firmest support of their throne? Were not the days of the author of Telema chus poisoned with exile, because he dared to trace, under the eyes of Louis XIV. the duties of a great king? Was not Racine overwhelmed with a load of disgrace, for having essayed to move the heart of the same prince to the misfortunes of his people?

Did not Voltaire, Montesquieu, Mably, Rousseau, in fine, all the philosophical and moral writers, use all their efforts to snatch Louis XV. from his scandalous indolence, and to sow in his frozen heart some seeds of virtue? What eulogies, even to exaggeration, have they not given to Henry IV. in order to excite the emulation of his descendants, and to cause him to be revived in the heirs of his throne? The wisest counsels have been disdained, the best intentions calumniated. Then the zeal of philosophy was irritated; she assumed the prophetic tone, and concluded with clearly announcing those events which now strike our eyes and astonish our minds. These truths appeared so improbable, that

scarcely any attention was paid to them. In proof of my assertion, I only quote the following passage from Emilius: "You trust to the existing order of society; without reflecting that this order is subject to inevitable revolutions. The great become little, the rich be. com: poor, the monarch becomes a subject. Are the strokes of fate so tocommon that you may expect to, be exempt from them? We approach the state of crisis and the age of revolution; who can answer to you for what you will then become?” To render this the more striking, the author adds in a note, "I consider it as impossible that the great monarchies of Europe can have long to last; all have shone, and every state which shines is near to its decline: I have more particular reasons for this maxim for my opinion; but it is not my business to mention them, and every one sees them too plainly."

66

King, prelates, nobles, finan ciers, was it possible more clearly to predict to you your present state? Happily for him who foretold your sudden fall, you only regarded him with contempt.

If the magistrates had not with inexorable insensibility rejected the maxims of the Peccarias, the Fi. langieris, and the Dupatys, and of all those who conjured them in the name of humanity to extend an equitable protection over innocence and wretchedness, would they not have found defenders in that national assembly which destroyed their power? The nobles, so jealous of their quit.rents, their corvées, their right of the chace, and all those claims of servitude which degrade the inhabitant of the counIi

try's

try, have they not leagued against a minister who would have been the protector of their properties? Far from voluntarily yielding to the voice of reason, and making slight sacrifices to the public interest, they have aggravated their vexations, and immolated men to the preservation of the r animals; yet, instead of reproaching their own injustice, and attributing to their pride and unfeeling sternness the vengeance of their former vassals, they impute it to philosophy. Ah! let her no longer be calum niated! she foresaw all our misfor. tunes, she braved and hazarded persecution to avert them: but her efforts have been fruitless! Princes have more heavily burthened their people instead of relieving them; the great have humbled instead of succouring them; pontiffs have scandalized instead of edifying them; magistrates have outraged instead of protecting them. The moment of their power arrived. Then they recollected nothing but the insults and sufferings which they had so long endured. If their vengeance has been terrible, it is not philosophy that has directed it; on the contrary, she has tried to alleviate its effects: but it has no more been in her power to stop the excesses at which she deeply groan. ed, than it was to realize the good which she proposed.

It is not during the flame of revolutions that the voice of sages has any empire over the human passions. What could the Roinan orators and philosophers do amidst the proscriptions of Sylla and the triumvirs? no more than the de Thous and l'Hospitals in the rage of the League. Could Fene.

lon, Montesquieu, Voltaire, and Rousseau himself, were they still living, by their discourses or writings put a stop to the sanguinary acts which tarnish our liberty and excite the lamentation of our legislators? Reduced to fruitless regrets, we should see them resemble the pilot, who, during the fury of a horrible tempest, contem. plates with stupefaction the vessel which he can no longer govern. Let a single philosopher, worthy of the name, be mentioned to me, who has excited the people to murder and conflagration; who has not recommended to them to be generoas in victory, to respect legitimate property, to spare imbecility, to condemn the guilty by the rules of justice alone!

Of the Causes of the Increase of Crimes. From Colquhoun's Treatise on the Police of the Metropolis.

IN developing the causes which have so multiplied and increased those various offences and public wrongs which are at present felt to press so hard upon society, it may be truly affirmed in the first instances, much is to be imputed to deficient and inapplicable laws, and to an ill regulated police.

Crimes of every description have their origin in the vicious and im. moral habits of the people ;—in the want of attention to the education of the inferior orders of society;and in the deficiency of the system which has been established for guarding the morals of this useful class of the community.

Innumerable temptations occur in a great capital where crimes are resorted

esorted to, in order to supply imainary wants and improper gratications, which are not known in esser societies and against which he laws have provided few applicable remedies in the way of prerention.

The improvident, and even the uxurious mode of living which prevails too generally among various classes of the lower ranks of the people in the metropolis, leads to much misery and to many crimes.

Accustomed from their carliest infancy to indulge themselves in eating many articles of expensive food in its season, and possessing little or no knowledge of that kind of frugality and care which enables well regulated families to make every thing to go as far as possible, by a diversified mode of cookery and good management :Assailed also by the numerous temptations held out by fraudulent lotteries, and places of public resort and amusement; and above all, by the habit of spending a great deal of valuable time as well as money unnecessarily in public. houses; and often allured by low gaming, to squander more than they can afford;-there is scarce an instance of accommodating the income to the expenditure, even in the best of times, with a considerable body of the lowest orders of the people inhabiting the capital: and hence a melancholy conclusion is drawn, warranted by a generally assumed fact, that above twenty. thousand individuals rise every morning in this great metropolis, without knowing how, or by what means they are to be supported during the passing day, or where they are to lodge on the succeeding night.

Poverty is no where to be found clothed in so great a degree with the garb and emblems of the extremest misery and wretchedness, as in London.

Develope the history of any given number of these miserable fellowmortals, and their distresses will be found, almost in every instance, to have been occasioned by extravagance, idleness, profligacy, and crimes:-and that their chief support is by thieving in a little way.

Allured and deceived by the facilities which the pawn-brokers and the old iron-shops hold out, in enabling the labouring people, when they marry, and first enter upon life in the metropolis, to raise money upon whatever can be of. fered as a pledge or for sale; the first step with too many, is generally to dispose of wearing apparel and household goods, which is frequently done upon the least pressure, rather than forego the usual gratification of a good dinner or a hot supper.-Embarrassments are speedily the consequence of this line of conduct, which is too often followed up by idleness and inactivity. The alehouse is resorted to as a desperate remedy, where the idle and dissolute will always find associates, who being unwil ling to labour, resort to crimes for the purpose of supplying an unnecessary extravagance.

It is truly melancholy to reflect upon the abject condition of that numerous class of profligate pa rents, who, with their children, are constantly to be found in the tap-rooms of public-houses, spending in two days as much of their earnings as would support them a week comfortably, in their own dwel

lings;-destroying their health;— wasting their time, and rearing up their children to be provitutes and thieves before they know that it is a crime.

So early as the reign of Queen Anne, this abandoned and mischievous race of men seem to hoye attracted the notice of the legislature in a very par ticular degree, for the act of the 9th of her majesty reciting "that divers lewd and dissolute persons live at great expences, having no visible estate, profe-sion, or calling, to maintain themselves; but sup. port these expences by gaming only; and enacts that any two jus. tices may cause to be brought before them, all persons within their li mits, whom they shall have just cause to suspect to have no visible estate, profession, or calling, to maintain themselves by, but who for the most part support themselves by gaming, and if such persons shall not make the contrary appear to such justices, they are to be bound to their good behaviour for a twelve month, and in default of sufficient security, to be committed to prison, until they can find the same, and if security shall be given, it will be forfeited on their playing or betting at any one time for more than the value of twenty shillings."

If in conformity to the spirit of this wise statute, sharpers of every denomination who support themselves by a variety of cheating and swindling practices, without having any visible means of support, were in like manner to be called upon to find security for good behaviour in all cases where they cannot shew they have the means of subsisting themselves honestly, the number of these pests of society,

under an active and zealous magi. stracy, would soon be diminished, if not totally annihilated.

By the 12th of George the Secord, "the games of Foo, Hazard, xc. are declared to be letteries, sb. jecting the portans who keep them to a peraity of two nur and pounds, and the who play, to if y pounds."-One witness is only ne cessary to prove the offence before ny justice of the peace, who forfeits ten pounds if he neglects to do his dury :—and by the 8th of George the First, "the keeper of a Faro table may be prosecuted for a lottery, where the penalty is five hundred pounds."

Such has been the anxiety of the legislature to suppress Faro tables and other games of chance, that the severest penalties have been inflicted, founded on the fullest impression of the pernicious consequences of such practices, and yet to the disgrace of the police of the metropolis, houses are opened un. der the sanction of high sounding names, where an indiscriminate mixture of all ranks are to be found, from the finished sharper to the raw inexperienced youth, and where all those evils exist in full force which it was the object of the legislature to remove.

When a species of gambling, ruinous to the morals and to the fortunes of the younger parts of the community who move in the middle and higher ranks of life, is suffered to be carried on in direct opposition to a positive statute, surely blame must attach some. where!

The idle vanity of being intro duced into what is supposed to be genteel society, where a fashion. able name announces an intention

of

f seeing company, has been prouctive of more domestic misery nd more real distress, poverty, and vretchedness to families in this great metropolis (who but for their olly might have been easy and comfortable), than many volumes could detail.

A mistaken sense of what constitutes human happiness, leads the mass of the people who have the means of moving, in any degree, above the middle ranks of life, into the fatal error of mingling in what is called genteel company, if that can be called such where Faro Tables and other games of hazard are introduced in private families. -Where the least recommendation (and sharpers spare no pains to obtain recommendations) admits all ranks who can exhibit a genteel exterior, and where the young and the inexperienced are initiated in every propensity tending to debase the human character, and taught to view with contempt every acquire ment connected with those duties which lead to domestic happiness, or to those objects of utility which can render either sex respectable in the world.

To the horde of sharpers at present upon the town, these places of rendezvous furnish a most productive harvest.

Many of this class, ruined perhaps themselves in early life in seminaries of the same description, to which they foolishly resorted, when vanity predominated over

prudence and discretion, have no alternative but to follow up the same mischievous trade, and to prey upon the ignorant, the inexperienced, and the unwary, until they too see the fatal delusion when it is too late.

When such abominable practices are encouraged and sanctioned by high-sounding names,-when sharpers and black-legs find an easy introduction into the houses of persons of fashion, who assemble in multitudes together for the purpose of playing at those most odious and detestable games of hazard, which the legislature has stigmatized with such marks of reprobation, it is time for the civil magistrate to step forward:and to feel, that in doing that duty which the laws of his country impose on him, he is perhaps saving hundreds of families from ruin and destruction, and preserving to the infants of thoughtless and deluded parents that property which is their birth-right: but which, for want of an energetic police in enforcing the laws made for the protection of this property, would otherwise have been lost, leaving nothing to console the mind but the sad reflection, that with the loss of fortune, those opportunities (in consequence of idle habits) were also lost of fitting the unfortunate sufferer for any reputable pursuit in life, by which an honest livelihood could be obtained.

POETRY.