ern all. If the excess of any passion be madness, the excess of them altogether is exorbitant and outrageous madness; and whoever can get it into his head that he has secret communications with the deity, must have all his passions at work together.The awe of a divine presence must strike him strongly with fear and reverence: The fancied indulgence and condescension shewn him, must raise the highest love, adoration and transports of joy: So visible a partiality of the deity to him beyond other men, must create pride and contempt towards others: Such a support and assistance must inspire the highest courage and resolution to overcome all opposition: Hatred and revenge to all who do not believe him will bring up the rear. At last the jumble of all these passions, with many more, will make an accomplished reformer of mankind.

You never knew a madman of any sort, who was not wiser than all mankind, and did not despise his whole race, who were not blessed with the same obliquity of head. Those in Bedlam think that they are all mad who are out of it; and the madmen out of Bedlam pity the madmen in it. The Virtuoso, or dealer in butterflies, who lays himself out in the science of blue and brown beetles, thinks all science but his own to be useless or trifling. The collectors of old books are of opinion, that learning, which is intended to improve and enlighten the understanding, is inseparable from dust, and dirt, and obscurity, or contemptible without them. The Pedant loads his heavy head with old words, and scorns all those who are not accomplished with the same lumber.

Now, all these madmen, and many more who might be added, are harmless enthusiasts; and their pride being part of their madness, is only a jest. But your holy enthusiast is often a mischievous madman, who out of pure zeal for God, destroys his creatures, and plagues, and harasses, and kills them for their good. The Saracens, a barbarous, poor, and desert nation, half naked, without arts, unskilled in war, and but half armed, animated by a mad Prophet, and a new religion, which made them all mad; overrun and conquered all Asia, most part of Africa, and a part of Europe. Such courage, fierceness, and mischief, did their enthusiasm inspire. It is amazing how much they suf fered, and what great things they did, without any capacity of doing them, but a religion which was strong in proportion as it wanted charity, probability, and common sense.

They saw rapturous visions in the air, of beautiful damsels richly attired, holding forth their arms, and calling to them for their embraces; and being animated by such powerful deities, no enterprize was too hard for them. They scarce ever departed from any siege, however inferiour to it in military arts or numbers. Their constant rule was to fight till they had subdued their enemies, either to their religion or to pay tribute. They had God and his great apostle on their side, and were obstinately determined to die, or to conquer; and therefore they always did conquer. And their success confirmed their delusion; for finding that they performed greater actions than any other race of mankind ever did, or could do, they believed themselves assisted by heaven; and so esteemed their madness to be inspiration. And then it was very natural to believe that they were the sole favourites of the Almighty, who interposed thus miraculously in their behalf; that they were employed to do this work that all the good things of this world were but just rewards of their obedience; and consequently that it was their duty to plunder, distress, kill, and destroy all who resisted the will of God, and denied to give to them their undoubted right.

Now what was able to withstand the inspired savages; who if they lived and conquered, had this world, or, which was better, if they were killed, had the next? They were sure either of empire or paradise; a paradise too, which gratified their carnal appetites. There is no dealing with an armed enthusiast: If you oppose real reason to his wild revelations, you are cursed; if you resist him, you are killed. It signifies nothing to tell him, that you cannot submit to the impulses of a spirit which you have not, and which you do not believe; and that when you have the same spirit you will be of the same mind: No, perhaps that very spirit has told him, that he must kill you for not having it, though you could no more have it, than you could be what you were not.

Don Quixote was a more reasonable madman: He never beat, nor famished, nor tortured the unbelieving Sancho, for having a cooler head than his own, and for not seeing the extraordinary miracles and visions which he himself saw. If a man see battles in the air, or armies rising out of the sea, am I to be persecuted because I cannot see them too, when they are not to be seen! Or ought not rather their distracted Seer to be shut up

in a dark room, where no doubt he will have the same sights, and be equally happy in his own imaginations? As there is no reasoning with an enthusiast, there is no way to be secure against him, but by keeping him from all power, with which he will be sure to play the devil in God's name. I would not hurt him for his ravings, but I would keep him from hurting me for not raving too.

All men who can get it into their heads, that they are to subdue others to their opinions, reasonings and speculations, are enthusiasts or impostors, madmen or knaves. Almighty God has given no other light to men to distinguish truth from falsehood, or imposture from revelation, but their reason; and in all the addresses which he himself makes to them, appeals to that reason. He has formed us in such a manner, as to be capable of no other kind of conviction; and consequently can expect no other from us: It must therefore be the last degree of impudence, folly and madness, in impotent, fallible and faithless men, to assume greater power over one another, than the Almighty exercises over us all.

The appointing judges in controversy, is like setting people at law about what they are both in possession of. A man can have no more than all he is contending for; and therefore I can compare the quarrelling of two men about their religion, to nothing else in nature, but to the battle between Prince Volscius and Prince Pretty man, in the Rehearsal, because they were not both in love with the same mistress. Cato's Letters.

POLITICAL.

THE PRESIDENT'S MESSAGE.

AS the conduct of Mr. Madison, in his determinations upon the liberal offers made by Great-Britain, has been eminently praise-worthy, he has of course been applauded by the federalists without any qualification of praise. It was natural that they should view with suspicion a man who had been so long intimately connected with Mr. Jefferson and his most pernicious policy; and until his subsequent transactions should have removed the first unfavourable impressions, it was natural that previous Vol. I.

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suspicions should remain undiminished. He now evinces an apparent determination to quit the course of policy which his predecessor had so unfortunately for the country adopted, and to act with sincerity, with fairness, without partiality, without hypocrisy. We soon shall see that his magnanimous conduct will excite torrents of abuse, from the party which first proposed him; the democrats will soon begin to discover flaws in his character and conduct. And before the administration of Mr. Madison is closed, we shall find him deserted by his partizans, and treated with as much coolness as the federalists expressed in regard to him previous to his election to the presidency. The federalists avow their opposition and the grounds of it; we should like to discover in the democratick papers any thing like an union or consistency of argument upon any point of political economy. They will espouse or renounce any particular person or cause without knowing why or wherefore. They will first begin to throw out hints against Mr. Madison, presently they will assume a tone of complaint, which will ultimately terminate in opposition and abuse. If he continues the system, of which he has so nobly laid the foundation, the federalists will continue to award him the meed of honour and of praise, and strenuously support his measures; but the moment he wavers from the direct path of policy which the interests of the nation promptly require him to follow, they will immediately withdraw to the other side, and think themselves doubly justified in their opposition.

In the message which the president has communicated to Congress we are presented with a state of our publick affairs, which, when contrasted with that at which they were left at the termination of the last session, may be considered peculiarly auspicious. The nation was then sinking in despair; Congress knew not how to act nor where to turn; the executive had boldly began an experiment on a whole people; the nerves and fibres were all laid open to the unfeeling touch of an ignorant practitioner, who equally disregarded the groans of the subject and the success of the operation: complaints, invective, distrust, and opposition were continually accumulating, and the country exhibited indications of a complete change in its political temper and character. The habits of the people, their property, and character were daily deteriorating, in consequence of a course of policy as ridiculous, impotent, and impracticable, as

it was dangerous, tyrannical, and destructive of social order. Foreign nations had openly disregarded our menaces and laughed at our folly; we had lost all the little respect which we had ever gained abroad. In short, the aspect of the country, in whatever light it could be considered, was more calamitously terrible, the ruin which seemed to be approaching was more overwhelming, than perhaps any other age of the world, or any country under such circumstances of previous prosperity, could exhibit. The effects of this Jeffersonian policy will cause him to be execrated to the end of time; and the last historian of A. merica will point to that administration, as the most stupid and ignorant, the most inconsistent with its avowed principles, the most tyrannical whilst it professed lenity, the most extravagant whilst it pretended to economy, the most cowardly whilst it bullied the world, that the country had ever seen. It will be viewed as a pestilential comet, a kind of meteor, of which

66 scarce such an one appears

Within the circuit of a thousand years."

As the eccentrick meteor has descended beneath the horizon, our terrours sink, and the prospect of fair weather and a serene sky begins to break upon us. Mr. Madison, we sincerely hope, will fulfil the expectations of his fellow-citizens: he has now as fair an opportunity as ever was presented to a ruler, of making himself beloved and his country happy. And we are free to say, that his message to Congress affords no indications of a contrary tendency in his character.

THE NEW TREATY.

THE principal points to be negociated in the new British. Treaty with this country will be relative to the protection of persons under the merchant flag, and the rule which it will be necessary to observe in order to break the continuity of a voyage from the colony to the mother country, of a belligerent. The following plan was formerly recommended to the English government.

Suppose the right of searching were strictly confined to national ships; that no seaman were liable to be impressed who could prove by unsuspicious documents, his having been out of England a certain num