ory, or happening to forget just that one single passage, carries off the whole in two minutes, as completely as if one had been working one's whole life to get ready for the assault. And pray now tell me, how can it be worth one's best days, one's gayest hours, the very flower of one's life, all to be sacrificed to plodding over musty grammars and lexicons, merely to cut a figure just for about two minutes, once or twice in a year?

Cam. Indeed, Lionel, you appear to me a striking example of what a hard thing it is to learn to do well, after one has been accustomed to do evil. How volatile! how totally void of all stability! One minute you exhibit appearances of repentance and reformation, and the next minute, all fair prospects vanish. How I lament that you were so early exposed to a vicious world, before you had gained sufficient strength of mind to withstand bad examples?

Lion. Forbear, Camilla.

You hurt me too much. You excite those severe twinges of remorse, which, I am obliged to own, I have never been wholly free from, since I joined my merry companions, and began to learn the world. Notwithstanding my gaiety, and my apparent contentment, I confess there is something within, which constantly admonishes me of my errors, and makes me feel unhappy so that, if it were not for fashion's sake, I can truly say, I could wish I were in your recluse situation; here to remain, in my once pleasant abode, and never more mingle with the world.

Lav. Dear brother, I cannot leave you, without once more calling your attention to your parents, your family, and your friends. Think of their present situation. If you have no regard for your own character, your present or future happiness, I entreat you to have some pity for them. Let not the tyrant fashion bring you into abject slavery. Pardon me when I tell you, your pretended friends are your worst enemies. They have led you into a path which will carry you directly to inevitable ruin, unless you immediately forsake it. That knowledge of the world, of which you so vainly

boast, is infinitely worse than the ignorance which you so much despise. Believe me, my dear brother, it is a knowledge, which, by your own confession, never has produced you any happiness, nor will it ever; but will guide you to wretchedness and misery.

Lion. My dear sisters, I am convinced. Your words have pierced my very soul. I am now wretched, and I deserve to be so. I am determined from this moment to begin my reformation, and with the assistance of Heaven to complete it. Never more will I see my vile companions, who have enticed me to go such lengths in wickedness. What do I not owe to my amiable sisters for their friendly and seasonable advice! I will go directly to my father, and like the prodigal son, fall on my knees before him, beg his forgiveness, and put myself entirely under his direction and instruction; and, so long as I live, I never will offend him again.

Lav. May Heaven assist you in keeping your resolutions!

EXTRACT FROM A SPEECH IN CONGRESS; APRIL, 1796, ON THE SUBJECT OF THE TREATY WITH GREAT-BRITAIN..

If all thai the peace with the

any, against all these proofs which have been

Indians will be stable without the Western Posts, to them I will urge another reply. From arguments calculated to produce conviction, I will appeal directly to the hearts of those who hear me, and ask whether it is not already planted there? I resort especially to the convictions of the Western gentlemen, whether supposing no Posts and no Treaty, the settlers will remain in security? Can they take it upon them to say, that an Indian peace, under these circumstances, will prove firm? No, Sir, it will not be peace, but a sword; it will be no better than a lure to draw victims within the reach of the tomahawk.

On

If I

On this theme, my emotions are unutterable. could find words for them, if my powers bore any proportion to my zeal, I would swell my voice to such a note of remonstrance, it should reach every log-house beyond the mountains. I would say to the inhabitants, Wake from your false security. Your cruel dangers, your more cruel apprehensions are soon to be renewed. The wounds, yet unhealed, are to be torn open again. In the day time your path through the woods will be ambushed. The darkness of midnight will glitter with the blaze of your dwellings. You are a father; the blood of your sons shall fatten your cornfield. You are a mother; the war-whoop shall wake the sleep of the cradle.

On this subject you need not suspect any deception on your feelings. It is a spectacle of horror which cannot be overdrawn. If you have nature in your hearts, they will speak a language, compared with which, all I have said or can say, will be poor and frigid. Will it be whispered that the treaty has made me a new champion for the protection of the frontiers? It is known that my voice as well as vote have been uniformly given in conformity with the ideas I have expressed. Protection is the right of the frontiers; it is our duty to give it.

Who will accuse me of wandering out of the subject? Who will say that I exaggerate the tendencies of our measures? Will any, one answer by a sneer, that all this is idle preaching? Will any one deny that we are bound, and I would hope to good purpose, by the most solemn sanctions of duty for the vote we give? Are despots alone to be reproached for unfeeling indifference to the tears and blood of their subjects? Are republicans unresponsible? Have the principles on which you ground the reproach upon cabinets and kings no practical influence, no binding force? Are they merely themes of idle declamation, introduced to decorate the morality of a newspaper essay, or to furnish pretty topics of harangue from the windows of that State house?

I trust

I trust it is neither too presumptuous nor too late to ask, Can you put the dearest interest of society at risk, without guilt, and without remorse ?

By rejecting the posts, we light the savage fires; we bind the victims. This day we undertake to render account to the widows and orphans whom our decision will make, to the wretches that will be roasted at the stake, to our country, and I do not deem it too serious to say, to conscience, and to God. We are answerable; and if duty be any thing more than a word of imposture; if conscience be not a bugbear, we are preparing to make ourselves as wretched as our country. There is no mistake in this case; there can be none. Experience has already been the prophet of events, and the cries of our future victims have already reached The Western inhabitants are not a silent and uncomplaining sacrifice. The voice of humanity issues from the shade of the wilderness. It exclaims, that while one hand is held up to reject this treaty, the other grasps a tomahawk. It summons our imagina tion to the scenes that will open. It is no great effort of the imagination to conceive that events so near are already begun. I can fancy that I listen to the yells of savage vengeance and the shrieks of torture. ́Already they seem to sigh in the western wind; already they mingle with every echo from the mountains.

us.

Let me cheer the mind, weary, no doubt, and ready to despond on this prospect, by presenting another, which is yet in our power to realize. Is it possible for a real American to look at the prosperity of this country without some desire for its continuance, without some respect for the measures, which, many will say, produced, and all will confess, have preserved it? Will he not feel some dread that a change of system will reverse the scene? The well-grounded fears of our citi zens, in 1794, were removed by the treaty, but are not forgotten. Then they deemed war nearly inevitable; and would not this adjustment have been considered at that day as a happy escape from the calamity?

The

The great interest and the general desire of our people was to enjoy the advantages of neutrality. This instrument, however misrepresented, affords America that inestimable security. The causes of our disputes are either cut up by the roots, or referred to a new negociation, after the end of the European war. This was gaining every thing, because it confirmed our neutrality, by which our citizens are gaining every thing. This alone would justify the engagements of the government. For, when the fiery vapours of the war lowered in the skirts of our horizon, all our wishes were concentered in this one, that we might escape the desolation of the storm. This treaty, like a rainbow on the edge of the cloud, marked to our eyes the space where it was raging, and afforded at the same time the sure prognostic of fair weather. If we reject it, the vivid colours will grow pale; it will be a baleful meteor portending tempest and war.

Let us not hesitate then to agree to the appropriation to carry it into faithful execution. Thus we shall save the faith of our nation, secure its peace, and diffuse the spirit of confidence and enterprise that will augment its prosperity. The progress of wealth and improvement is wonderful, and, some will think, too rapid. The field for exertion is fruitful and vast; and if peace and good government should be preserved, the acquisitions of our citizens are not so pleasing as the proofs of their industry, as the instruments of their future sucThe rewards of exertion go to augment its power. Profit is every hour becoming capital. The vast crop of our neutrality is all seed wheat, and is sown again, 'to swell, almost beyond calculation, the future harvest of prosperity. And in this progress, what seems to be fiction is found to fall short of experience.

cess.