gonist. Time, which lifts up the veil of political mystery, will inform us if the Doctor has taken that side of the question which may be as lucrative to himself as it is inimical to human happiness, and repugnant to enlightened policy.

Of Dr. Rennel's talents as a reasoner, we certainly have formed no very high opinion. Unless dogmatical assertion, and the practice (but too common among theological writers) of taking the thing to be proved, for part of the proof, can be considered as evidence of a logical understanding, the specimens of argument Dr. Rennel has afforded us are very insignificant. For putting obvious truths into vehement language; for expanding and adorning moral instruction; this gentleman certainly possesses considerable talents: and if he will moderate his insolence, steer clear of theological metaphysics, and consider rather those great laws of Christian practice, which must interest mankind through all ages, than the petty questions which are important to the Chancellor of the Exchequer for the time being, he may live beyond his own days, and become a star of the third or fourth magnitude in the English Church.

JOHN BOWLES. (E. REVIEW, 1802.)

Reflections at the Conclusion of the War: Being a Sequel to Reflections on the Political and Moral State of Society at the Close of the Eighteenth Century. The Third Edition, with Additions. By John Bowles, Esq.

IF this peace be, as Mr. Bowles asserts, the deathwarrant of the liberty and power of Great Britain, we will venture to assert, that it is also the death-warrant of Mr. Bowles's literary reputation; and that the people of this island, if they verify his predictions, and cease to read his books, whatever they may lose in political greatness, will evince no small improvement in critical acumen. There is a political as well as a bodily hypochondriasis; and there are empirics always on the watch to make their prey, either of the one or of the other. Dr. Solomon, Dr. Brodum, and Mr. Bowles, have all commanded their share of the public attention: but the two former gentlemen continue to flourish with undiminished splendour; while the patients of the latter are fast dwindling away, and his drugs falling into disuse and contempt.

The truth is, if Mr. Bowles had begun his literary career at a period when superior discrimination and profound thought, not vulgar violence and the eternal repetition of rabble-rousing words, were necessary to literary reputation, he would never have emerged from that obscurity to which he will soon return. The in

temperate passions of the public, not his own talents, have given him some temporary reputation; and now, when men hope and fear with less eagerness than they have been lately accustomed to do, Mr. Bowles will be

* It is impossible to conceive the mischievous power of the corrupt alarmists of those days, and the despotic manner in which they exercised their authority. They were fair objects for the Edinburgh Review.

compelled to descend from that moderate eminence, where no man of real genius would ever have condescended to remain.

The pamphlet is written in the genuine spirit of the Windham and Burke School; though Mr. Bowles cannot be called a servile copyist of either of these gentlemen, as he has rejected the logic of the one, and the eloquence of the other, and imitated them only in their headstrong violence, and exaggerated abuse. There are some men who continue to astonish and please the world, even in the support of a bad cause. They are mighty in their fallacies, and beautiful in their errors. Mr. Bowles sees only one half of the precedent; and thinks, in order to be famous, that he has nothing to do but to be in the wrong.

War, eternal war, till the wrongs of Europe are avenged, and the Bourbons restored, is the master-principle of Mr. Bowles's political opinions, and the object for which he declaims through the whole of the present pamphlet.

The first apprehensions which Mr. Bowles seems to entertain, are of the boundless ambition and perfidious character of the First Consul, and of that military despotism he has established, which is not only impelled by the love of conquest, but interested, for its own preservation, to desire the overthrow of other states. Yet the author informs us, immediately after, that the life of Buonaparte is exposed to more dangers than that of any other individual in Europe, who is not actually in the last stage of an incurable disease; and that his death, whenever it happens, must involve the dissolution of that machine of government, of which he must be considered not only as the sole director, but the main spring. Confusion of thought, we are told, is one of the truest indications of terror; and the panic of this alarmist is so very great, that he cannot listen to the consolation which he himself affords: for it appears, upon summing up these perils, that we are in the utmost danger of being destroyed by a despot, whose system of government, as dreadful as himself, cannot survive him, and who, in

all human probability, will be shot or hanged, before he can execute any one of his projects against us.

We have a good deal of flourishing, in the beginning of the pamphlet, about the effect of the moral sense upon the stability of governments: that is, as Mr. Bowles explains it, the power which all old governments derive from the opinion entertained by the people of the justice of their rights. If this sense of ancient right be (as is here confidently asserted) strong enough ultimately to restore the Bourbons, why are we to fight for that which will be done without any fighting at all? And, if it be strong enough to restore, why was it weak enough to render restoration necessary?

To notice every singular train of reasoning into which Mr. Bowles falls, is not possible; and, in the copious choice of evils, we shall, from feelings of mercy, take the least.

It must not be forgotten, he observes, that 'those rights of government, which, because they are ancient, are recognised by the moral sense as lawful, are the only ones which are compatible with civil liberty.' So that all questions of right and wrong, between the governors and the governed, are determinable by chronology alone. Every political institution is favourable to liberty, not according to its spirit, but in proportion to the antiquity of its date; and the slaves of Great Britain are groaning under the trial by jury, while the free men of Asia exult in the bold privilege transmitted to them by their fathers, of being trampled to death by elephants.

In the 8th page, Mr. Bowles thinks that France, if she remain without a king, will conquer all Europe: and, in the 19th page, that she will be an object of Divine vengeance till she takes one. In the same page, all the miseries of France are stated to be a judgment of heaven for their cruelty to the king; and, in the 33d page, they are discovered to proceed from the perfidy of the same king to this country in the American contest. So that certain misfortunes proceed from the maltreatment of a person, who had himself occasioned these identical misfortunes before he was maltreated; and while Providence

is compelling the French, by every species of affliction, to resume monarchical government, they are to acquire such extraordinary vigour, from not acting as Providence would wish, that they are to trample on every nation which co-operates with the Divine intention.

In the 60th page, Mr. Bowles explains what is meant by Jacobinism; and, as a concluding proof of the justice with which the character is drawn, triumphantly quotes the case of a certain R. Mountain, who was tried for damning all kings and all governments upon earth; for, adds R. Mountain, I am a Jacobin.' Nobody can more thoroughly detest and despise that restless spirit of political innovation, which, we suppose, is meant by the name of Jacobinism, than we ourselves do; but we were highly amused with this proof, ab ebriis sutoribus, of the prostration of Europe, the last hour of human felicity, the perdition of man, discovered in the crapulous eructations of a drunken cobbler.

This species of evidence might certainly have escaped a common observer: But this is not all; there are other proofs of treason and sedition, equally remote, sagacious, and profound. Many good subjects are not very much pleased with the idea of the Whig Club dining together; but Mr. Bowles has the merit of first calling the public attention to the alarming practice of singing after dinner at these political meetings. He speaks with a proper horror of tavern dinners,

- where conviviality is made a stimulus to disaffection— where wine serves only to inflame disloyalty—where toasts are converted into a vehicle of sedition-and where the powers of harmony are called forth in the cause of Discord by those hireling singers, who are equally ready to invoke the Divine favour on the head of their King, or to strain their venal throats in chanting the triumphs of his bitterest enemies.'

All complaint is futile, which is not followed up by appropriate remedies. If Parliament, or Catarrh, do not save us, Dignum and Sedgwick will quaver away the King, shake down the House of Lords, and warble us into all the horrors of republican government. When,

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