National Gazette

[Detached reflections from a correspondent]

1. A speculating spirit, if prevalent, is always dangerous in any country, and more particularly so when it infects the government itself. In that case the people and their interests are at the mercy of those whose situation and information enables them to take undue advantages of unsuspecting ignorance. It is in this view of things that in the charter of the bank of England there is an article, or clause, expressly prohibiting members of parliament from being national-bank-directors, but which seems to have been carefully omitted in a certain transcript on this side the water.

2. With some characters every matter relating to government must be rendered mysterious; as if on purpose to bewilder the enquirer, and the more he reads the more to perplex him. This is something like the glorious uncertainty of the law, which has been the support of thousands in all ages who must have turned to some less lucrative employments had the code of legislation been disgraced with plain expression! and the open simplicity of honesty and common sense.

3. Oracles in ancient times, being intended to deceive, were always uttered in dark language so as to require interpretation. With the same spirit, the glorious light of financial calculation, in modern times, is only imparted to a few, who tho' perhaps naturally short-sighted animals, yet thro' a glass (not seeing darkly) have been enabled by the effects of extended vision to fasten on the just dues of the army, on the little boon that was the property of the widow & the orphan of him that fell in the deserts of Saratoga, or perished in the inhospitable wastes of Carolina.—It is matter of comfort however, that these leeches will in due time fall off from the body that has long nourished them beyond their just proportion. At present, finding themselves detected and dragged into public view, it is no wonder they endeavour to alleviate the pangs of awakened conscience by publishing and disseminating scurrilous pamphlets, which the very mid-wife, that ushers them into existence is ashamed to own—pamphlets "scrawl'd in the eclipse, and stuff'd with curses dark" against the old and tried friends of this country ; but whom the grateful recollection of the people will support against calumny, imposture, and the envenomed resentment of disappointed ambition and grovelling avarice.

"The darts that envious dunces aim
Can never hurt an honest fame ;
If in yourself but smooth and round
They glance aside without a wound."