abuse, which however merited, we do no not think it is our duty to bestow, after the fashion of a numer ous herd of political writers of the present day, whose aim is to lead a way from considerations of our domestic politics, and of the amelioration of which the constitution of these countries is so susceptible. We conceive that our con-titution contains the printiple of renovation, when it is animated by the vital energy of a people conscious of their rights, and as we consider that it has been gradually improving through preceding centures, we cannot but cherish the hope that if the people are true to themselves, and are not duped by those, who are interested in the perpetuating of abuses, our political situation will be further amended.

The line we have hitherto adopted, we are determined to pursue, so long as we are supported by the public suffrage in our favour. We have manfully and honestly laid before the public our unbiassed sentiments on subjects connected with the general weal, and are determined to continue the same course, so long as we find that our opinions meet the concurrence of a respectable number of our readers. We shall then persevere in the arduous task of public duty, which we undertook on principle, undi-mayed, and supported by a conscious sense of the purity of our motives, and we never will submit to follow the impulse of misguided and interested zeal, blind to the public good, nor catch at popularity by $criticing our principles. We can be silent: but we never will act or appear to act contrary to our convictions. We call on our readers to judge of our labours. It is their bu-iness to inanifest by unequivocal proofs, how far we are entitled to their support. It is ours to perform our task, nothing extenuating, or setting down aught in malice.”

To those who fervently declaim, or fearfully whisper, or to those who are content to ruminate nutterable things" against the politics of the Belfast Magazine, let us declare, that its crimes, its faults, or its follies rest not with us. Will it avert indignation or in sinuation, when we acknowledge, honestly, and conscientionsly, that these olitics are not curs ? They are all

borrowed. True indeed it is, that use has been made of the authorita tive personal pronoun "we," but les this be understood to imply that we merely adopt, and do not originate; that we speak not as having authority, but as following authority. Lay the blame where it ought to lye. Fall foul upon that John Locke who was himself expelled from the Colege of Oxford in the reign of James the 28. and whose publications are in great danger of sharing the same fate at the present day. Abuse and vilify that Sir William Jones who was expatriated, or honourably banished to India on account of politics displayed in his dialogue between a gentleman and a farmer, illustrative of the rights of men and Britons. Let not that arch tory the Dean of St. Patrick's escape, who, for offences of the same nature, was transported to Ireland, and there confined, during his natural and political life. It is from these men we have learned, that, as the abuse of power is inseparable from its use, the ground, and basis of every just and free government is a general council of ablest men, chosen by the whole people, to consult of public affairs, from time to time, for the common good, chosen fairly, and frequently renewed. Even the toryism of Dr. Swift appears to lean more to liberty than the whiggism of the present day, when but 15 voted with Burdett for taking the state of the representation of the people into consideration on a future day: 15 mem bers out of 600! "As to Parliaments,' said that great man in Ireland, adored the wisdom of that gothic institution which made them annual, and I was confident our liberties could never be placed on a firm foundation until that antient law was restored to us. For who sees not that while such assemblies are permitted to have a long duration, there groweth up a commerce of corruption between the ministry and the deputies, wherein they both find their accounts to the manifest danger of liberty, which traffic would neither answer the design, nor expense, il Parliament met once a year."

I

But really the effects of the French revolution on the public mind, have' been similar to those experienced by

an individual, in consequence of a violent fever. The chain of memory is broken. The earliest, the strongest, the sweetest associations of our grow ing manhood are burst asunder. All pleasing recollections, all natural affiuities with our once beloved principles of freedom are (we hope only for a time) obliterated. There is a sort of confused recollection of the year 1782, and we find it difficult to remember such a place as Dungannon. One spectre occupies the whole mind, and the visionary, fear is so exaited by irritability, that it acts with the force of real sensation. Save us from the foul Fiend save us from Bonaparte!

It is our sincere wish to do what we can, in our little sphere, to recall the public mind to itseif, and free it from that panic perturbation, which at present, clouds its powers, suspends its nobler principles of action, and turns into malignant acrimony, and mean abuse, the generous hostility worthy of men. We feel ourselves drawn by the heart-strings to the genuine principles of civil and religious liberty, too young to forget to what glorious height the Irish people were exalted in the year 1782, and too old to pay homage to the arbitrary claims of either civil or ecclesiastical domination. "Libera veritas" we should wish to be made the motto of our publication, and the ruling maxim of our lives. We too are orange men, but not of the modern tribe who adopt that appellation, and who appear to be bred in the school of the furious and fanatical James, rather than of the mild and magnanimous William. We are such Orangemen as good William must have approved, hearty enemies to arbitrary power in any person, any party, or any religious persuasion, and convinced that this country, in particular, will hever attain to its proper level of industry, and its just rank in the empire, and estimation in the world, until our countrymen be raised to a perfect equality of political right and station; until toleration or the enjoyment of rights by sufferance and ut pleasure, be expunged from the vocabulary of the constitution; and unul fellow citizens wil cease (in the spirit of the times, and of the men

in such times, who raised the bodies of the hostile party, many years after their interment, on which they might wreak a vain vengeance) until, we say, fellow citizens will cease to flaunt, in the face of day, the colours of party discord, under the connivance of administration, and to hold up, in annual procession, the mangled memory of their unfortunate and uphappy countrymen. We wish to judge of men not by the colour, but the core-not by their creed but by their conduct.

"On the People, says Sir William Jones, depend the welfare, the security, and the permanency of every legal government, in the people must reside all substantial power, and to the people must all those in whose ability and knowledge we sometimes wisely, often imprudently confide, be always accountable for the due exercise of that power with which they are, for a time, entrusted." Now in this word, the Constitution, says the same learned judge, are included the original and fundamental law of the kingdom from whence all power is derived, and by which it is circumscribed, all legislative and executive authority, all those municipal provisions which are generally called law, and lastly, the customs, manners, and habits of the people.

The habit of the British character had heen gradually created by those constitutional laws which illustrate the grand eras of British history; and in the spirit that flowed from such laws, it was once said from the bench, that Magna Charta was a sort of fellow that would not brook any sovereign power. "The Constitution," said Henry Flood, "is a system of civil and political government, the fundamental privileges of which are certain immemorial usages, whose antiquity, if other proofs were wanting, speaks their superior wisdom, and certain memorable precedents, which the just and virtuous struggles of our ancestors, recognized by successive generations, point out how they ought to act under simdar circumstances."

But though it be true, that in an eminent degree, the constitution of a people is the parent of their opinions, and that the manners are founded on the model of the laws, still there is a mutual and reciprocal action; for it is

the manners, customs and habits of the people, which preserve the vitality of the constitution, and re ist its decay and putrefaction. When these manners and habits change, where is constitution to be found, but in the page of history? Whatever may be the fashion of the day, the cloud that floats across the firmament of truth, we declare we can neither understand, nor feel a loyalty which is independent, or extrinsic to the constitution. We are loyal to our king in the constitution, and circumscribed by it, but the loyalty which appears the boast of the day, attaches itself rather to the personal than the official character of the sove. reign. There is a description of men, who have pushed their fortunes, dur. ing the present reign, and arrived at the most eminent stations, by this sort of personal loyalty, and by a dexterous adaptation of all their powers and faculties, great and little, not to the customs, manners, and habits of the people, but to the favourite prejudices and pre-conceived impressions of an individual. In most periods of our history there have been such wise, or wly men, whose great study seems to have been the personal character of the sovereign, by which only they squared their professed opinions and principles of action. "The perso nal character of queen Anne," says Bolingbroke, "made her change the ministry, having quarrelled with the Duchess of Marlborough, who treated her ill, and this gave the cause to peace." "My principal dependence," says the same St. John, speaking of auother monarch advanced in life," was on his personal character. My hopes sunk as he declined, and died, when he expired."

The unremitting activity and influence of men thus fortuitously lifted into station, assisted, as they have been by the peculiar circumstances of the times, have, we think, operated a very considerable change in the customs, manners and habits of the people. National character has gotten a new turn. Loyalty, which ought to embrace with equal warmth the whole constitution, is converged upon the monarch. There is something rather abstract and general in the notion of constitution, not perfectly calculated for general and popular'impression, and more for the

reflecting few, than the common mass; and this has assisted the aforesaid party, powerful in their influence, although precarious in their tenure, in raising the people, always alive to sensible impressions, into ebullitions of loyalty, rather tending to a desuetude and dislike of the old British ideas of government. Every thing has been done, not merely to reconcile the people, a common-sensical, commercial people, to war, but to persuade them that their existence, and that of their constitution depends absolutely, and irreversibly on the fortunate event of the present contest.

Quousque tandem? After so many years of hostility we did indulge a hope that the fuel for war must have been nearly expended; and that Europe, not so much from the will of man, as from the necessity of things, must at length experience the return of periodical peace. But war is not an extinct volcano. Even when its more violent eruptions cease, and a horrid stillness prevails in place of the tumultuous war of conflicting elements, even then, vindictive passions, like subterraneous fires, are collecting materials for a fresh explosion. What remains for the lovers of their country and their kind? Little else than to console themselves with the reflection, that in the evils of the moral as of the natural world, there are advantages derived, which, in a great degree, counterbalance their occasional deyastations. Thus, in the region bordering on a volcano, on viewing the uncommon strength of vegetation, the unrivalled beatity of scenery, the elysian sotines of the air, and genial climate, we are n, turally led to contemplate the beneficial effects of fire, mitigated by time, and to bless that providence under whose influence the same element becomes productive of terror and delight.

In a prospective view of this sort, we should wish to consider war in its re mote as well as in its immediate consequences, benchcial as well as injurious to the interests of mankind. We would not indeed go so far as the author of a placid and pious poem, named the Sabbath, who soon after set about, and advertised an epic poem on the Siege of Copenhagen, the most disgraceful co currence that ever stained the mor history of Great Britain, and in its event,