little air in my library, I must pay him for that also. If I write on a table, I pay him a timber duty; if I find it necessary to cheer my soul by a cup of tea, or a cup of coffee, or a glass of wine, I must ask the king's permission to do so, which he will not grant me unless I give him a part, and a very large part, too, of the cash which I expect to receive for my book.

Well, I send my manuscript to the printer. Again I must come down with a sum in the way of duty for the paper on which the types are to display my thoughts. When the operation of printing is over, if I let my neighbours know that I have written a work which I wish them to buy, I must again offer a contribution to the king in the form of advertisement duty, and that, too, as often as I renew my gentle hints to the public. But these are very far from being the whole of the musts through which I am to go, while availing myself of my personal liberty in adding to the long catalogue of authors. I must present one copy of my work to the British Museum, a second to the library of Oxford, a third to that of Cambridge, four copies to the four Scotch Universities, an eighth copy to the Library of Sion College, London, a ninth to that of the Faculty of Advocates in Edinburgh, a tenth to that of Trinity College, Dublin, and an eleventh to that of King's Inns, in the same enlightened capital. Latterly the University of Aberdeen, I think it was, sold its birth-right in this respect for a mess of pottage, the Whig Government having bought from it its literary privileges, which they have transferred to the Royal Library of France. Now, if any of these institutions were too poor to purchase my work, they should, in fairness towards me, either do without it, or call for a subscription amongst their members or patrons which might enable them to buy it. But to tell me that I am at liberty to publish what books I may think fit to write, when I am compelled to pay for permission to do so at almost every step I take, and finally to make a present of eleven copies to such wealthy establishments as the Universities of Oxford, Cambridge, Scotland, and Dublin, and the Bibliotheque Royale of France, is one of the grossest of all impositions.

Finally, did I say? The infractions of my liberty by no means stop here. The critics, a most formidable race, are still in the background. In order to propitiate their good opinion, I am obliged to part with at least twenty-five copies more. Some are directly engaged in a contest with each other. Either they do not agree in politics, or they are rivals in trade. Should I by any untoward accident-the neglect of a messenger, or a delay of the binder-happen to send a copy to one before it has been received by the other, the latter inflicts upon me all the vengeance which he feels against his more fortunate antagonist. The newspaper editors generally add presented books to their office libraries, without noticing them either in an adverse or favourable style. As to the weekly, monthly, and quarterly critics, they cut up my work without mercy, if I send it; and if I do not, they will buy it in order to punish 'me for my apparent contempt of their authority. Talk of liberty, indeed! I am sure that I know not what it is, or where it is to be found, unless you call that liberty which permits the state, the public institutions, and the critics to plunder a literary man of all remuneration for his labour, and even to impose upon him frequently a severe loss for exercising that

freedom of opinion, which the constitution and the laws tell him he possesses in the most unqualified terms.

After the Reform Bill passed, I had a fancy to become a member of Parliament. I addressed the electors of one of the new boroughs, with a view to attain, by means of their most sweet voices, the object of my ambition. I had the tact to incorporate in my speech several flourishing periods about the injury which was done to personal liberty by the assessed taxes; I spoke of the liberty of the press, the liberty of the negro, liberty of worship, magna charta, the major charta, no corn laws, no church, no army! The welkin rang with tumultuous applause -I was elected almost by acclamation. There is a party in the House called the Ultra Whig, which is just not Radical. The principles of this party, as I thought, coincided with mine exactly, and so I became a member of it. I attended the dinners of its leaders, their committees, and even their coteries. For a while I sailed with them right before the wind, as I accepted all their propositions, and voted for all their amendments. By and by I spoke a little in the House, was well received, and grew somewhat confident in my own resources. There was a question about the Pension List. My friends were resolved on abolishing it altogether. I looked over the list, and when I found that a great majority of the pensioners were females, receiving from fifty to a hundred or two hundred pounds a-year, I could not for the life of me think of turning those poor gentlewomen adrift. If they received these small incomes, it was to me a sufficient proof that they were in want of such assistance; and as I have from my youth upwards loved the fair, and honoured them for those virtues which they possess in much greater abundance, and practise with infinitely more sincerity than we do, I declared decidedly against a resolution which was intended to be proposed with a view of sweeping off the whole train at once.

I soon found myself on the edge of a volcano. Cold looks, stinted salutations in the House; and out of it, no consultations, no invitations to dinner, committee or coterie; no more very confidential" lettersinformed me that I had broken with the Ultra Whigs. All this seemed to me very odd. I conceived that I had joined a party who made a peculiar boast of accelerating the march of liberty, and now I discovered that none but the leaders were actually to enjoy it.

The matter did not end here. After the lapse of a few posts, I received a long string of resolutions from my constituents, to all of which they hoped I should give my cordial assent. The first of these was for the abolition of all pensions without any distinction-I read no further. I put the whole series at once into the fire, determined never to vote for any measures of the kind. What! was I a member of a free deliberative assembly, and not entitled to exercise my liberty, by forming and expressing my own judgment on all questions whatever? Nothing of the sort. My polite and evasive letter in reply was answered by another, in which I was required either to pledge myself to the resolutions or to resign my seat. I went straight to the Treasury, and requested an appointment as steward of the Chiltern Hundreds, which the lords of that department gave me with no small delight. I left Parliament-the free and imperial Parliament of Great Britain and Ireland! as it is called, where I found very speedily that I could not sit, unless I chose doubly to sur

render every particle of my liberty, first to my constituents, who wished to bind me hand and foot by pledges; and secondly, to a political party, who were desirous of using my vote solely as an instrument for the advancement of their own purposes. Here is a specimen of practical liberty for you-and that, too, under the regime of reform!

My ideas of liberty,-always rather perplexed in this country,-were never more vague and unsettled than while I was a legislative automaton. The Whigs, as long as they were out of office, declaimed constantly about the grievances of Ireland. The first measure which they proposed, when in office, to a Reformed Parliament, was to suspend the constitution altogether in that ill-starred country. Mr. O'Connell declared, very naturally, that such a law would destroy the liberty of Ireland;-Lord Althorp assured the House that his plan was the only method for preserving it! The ship-owners complained that the freetrade system was tending rapidly to their destruction;-Mr. Poulett Thomson demonstrated that, in consequence of that system, they were better off than ever! The manufacturers assured the House that they were reduced to a state of slavery by the corn-laws, which made bread so dear, that they laboured twelve or fourteen hours to earn it, and had no time to read the newspapers. The agriculturists talked not of their liberty, for that, they said, was long gone by: they were reduced to a state of complete villeinage, in consequence of their corn being a great deal too cheap. The House voted, by a majority, against the malt-tax, considering that the liberty of the subject was promoted by enabling him to drink a pot instead of a pint of beer;-the Ministers brought a majority to rescind that vote, stating that otherwise they must destroy the liberty of the subject by imposing a tax upon property! The tradesmen of London remonstrated against the assessed taxes; and, when remonstrance failed of its effect, some absolutely refused to pay them, because they were a gross infraction of liberty. The Secretary for the Home Department sent the Sheriff to compel them to pay, proclaiming, through the usual organs, that, unless those taxes were collected, there was an end to the liberty of the country. The Diffusion Society imagines liberty to be synonimous with cheap books;-the booksellers maintain that the said Society, now a Corporation, is itself the very emblem of despotism. The poor declare that their liberties are gone, unless the rates be increased;-the housekeeper asserts that his freedom is no more if they be. The omnibus proprietors cry out that they would not give a farthing for reform, if they are to be prevented from running races perpetually between Paddington and the Bank-between Piccadilly and St. Paul's. The shopkeepers shout that before reform was, they were; and that it is a tyrannical innovation upon the constitution to have their business knocked up and their elderly customers knocked down by those frightful machines!-What, I again and again ask, is liberty? Is it to be found in England?

I go to Spain. I find two political parties-the friends of the Queen, and those of Don Carlos-fighting against each other, in the name of liberty! I mingle with the muleteers and the peasantry. I behold them in the sunshine and the shade, always good-humoured, living temperately on their snow-white bread, their cool and fragrant wine, and their delicious fruits. They go to mass-they sing to the guitar-they dance

the fandango-they crowd to the bull-fight-just as if no civil war were going on in the country. They never see the police; they hardly know that a government exists, so little do they feel of its operation. They have no poor-rate-no' assessed taxes-no eight hundred millions of national debt-no rates for watching, and lighting, and paving,-none of the evils, in short, to which we-happy beings in this land of liberty! -are exposed. Yet I am told, when I come home, that the Spaniards are in a state of the most abject ignorance and slavery. For their skill in algebra and mathematics I will not answer; but I will say, that, for all the purposes of practical liberty, they are a much more enlightened people than we are. They have the cheap freedom of common sense, for which we have exchanged the bungling, imperfect, and excessively expensive machinery of freedom by law, to which the patriarchal rule of Austria would be infinitely preferable.

I go to France. The Duke de Fitzjames assures me that the liberty of his country departed from the soil with Henry V., to whom alone he will ever swear allegiance. M. Guizot and the King desire me to laugh at the Duke; for that they, by their juste milieu system, (which means giving way to no party, and subjugating all,) have placed the freedom of the French upon an immovable basis. Louis Philippe repeats the famous scene which he had with the deputation that was headed by M. Lafitte, and triumphs in the victory which he obtained on that occasion, and which, he says, has ever since made him a free man !

But when I look up at the Tuilleries, and ask him what has become of the lilies, the ancient arms of his family, he shakes his head, as much as to say, that his sovereignty is limited by the sovereignty of the people, to which it must yield whenever the two powers come into conflict. If I walk to the rue Jacob, I find there a society actively at work for restoring the lost liberty not only of France, but of all the world. The first article of faith to which, however, they ask me to subscribe, is one which declares that they are the only judges of what liberty is, and that they have received a mission to propagate it from the ghost of Robespierre! I had once a notion-I think it was that madman Burke who put it into my head-that this same Robespierre was the most notorious tyrant flung up on the surface of the stormy times of the French revolution. To propagate liberty in the name of Robespierre seemed to me, therefore, the most unintelligible mode of interpreting the word that I had yet lighted upon in all my expeditions for the discovery of the true magnetic pole of freedom.

Liberty, thought I at length, flies westward, as commerce does; so I shall cross the Atlantic, and see if it is to be found in the United States. I prepared myself for my travels by reading the life of the President Adams, once the pride of the Federalists, and the friend of Washington; but I found that he was scarcely seated in the chair of the chief magistrate when he began to doubt of his re-election. The popular party turned against him, and against his especial auxiliary the Honourable Timothy Pickering, his Secretary of State. Timothy, one fine morningit was in the month of May-was not a little surprised by receiving from the President the following laconic note:

"Sir,-As I perceive a necessity of introducing a change in the administration of the office of state, I think it proper to make this com

munication to the present Secretary of State, that he may have an opportunity of resigning if he chooses. I should wish the day on which his resignation is to take place to be named by himself. I wish for an answer to this letter on or before Monday morning, because the nomination of a successor must be sent to the Senate as soon as they sit. "With esteem, I am, Sir,

"Your most obedient and humble servant,
"JOHN ADAMS."

Doubtless, said I to myself, if Timothy does not choose to resign, he need not; he will not be compelled to give up his office without some charge of incompetency or inattention, in such a country as the United States of America the very cradle of freedom! Timothy accordingly replies thus:

"After deliberately reflecting on the overture you have been pleased to make to me, I do not feel it my duty to resign.' The rejoinder of the President was sent within an hour after in these

terms:

"Sir,-Divers causes and considerations, essential to the administration of the government, in my judgment, requiring a change in the department of state, you are hereby discharged from any further service as Secretary "JOHN ADAMS,

of State.

"President of the United States."

Certainly a more despotic mode than this of dismissing a public functionary, who had held his office for five years without reproach, could not have been adopted in any monarchical state whatever. The Antifederalists threatened to turn out Adams, and in order to propitiate their favour he turned out Pickering. In the end, Adams failed of his object, and was himself dismissed by the people, no principle of liberty being recognized by any party to any of these transactions, and no motive, in fact, existing to justify the dismissal of Timothy save the intrigues of John, and none to call for the rejection of John save the caprice of the people. These facts staggered my notions of republican freedom.

But when I went to Philadelphia, and found the white man every where turning up his nose at the black, and that I deeply, though most unintentionally, insulted a relative of my own, by asking him to take a glass of wine with myself and a person who happened to be next me at the table d'hôte-the said person having been unfortunate enough (as I afterwards perceived) to retain on his skin the fiftieth part of a shade of the hated negro hue, I gave up my pursuit after an explanation of liberty in America. The name was there, but the thing was neither there, nor any where else, that I could ever discover.