of the body, when the whole decreases again to the tail; the tail takes a new direction; but it foon varies its new courfe: it blends again with the other parts; and the line is perpetually changing, above, below, upon every fide. In this defcription I have before me the idea of a dove; it agrees very well with most of the conditions of beauty. It is fmooth and downy; its parts are (to ufe that expreffion) melted into one another; you are reprefented with no fudden protuberance through the whole, and yet the whole is continually changing.- Ibid.

This act, therefore, has this diftinguifhed evil in it, that it is the first partial suspension of the Habeas Corpus that has been made. The precedent, which is always of very great importance, is now established. For the firft tine à diftinction is made among the people within this realm. Before this act, every man putting his foot on English ground, every ftranger owing only a local and temporary allegiance, even negro flaves, who had been fold in the colonies and under an act of parliament, became as free as every other man who breathed the fame air with them.Letter to the Sheriffs of Bristol.

BRISTOL (CHARACTER OF THE ELECTORS OF.) By the favour of my fellow-citizens, I am the reprefentative of an honeft, well ordered, virtuous city; of a people, who preferve more of the original English fimplicity, and purity of manners, than perhaps any other. You poffefs among you feveral men and magiftrates of large and cultivated understandings, fit for any employment in any fphere. I do, to the beft of my power, act fo as to make myself worthy of fo honourable a choice.-Ibid.

BOARD OF TRADE.

THERE is, Sir, another office, which was not long fince clofely connected with this of the Ame- . rican fecretary; but has been lately feparated from it for the very fame purpofe for which it had been conjoined; I mean the fole purpose of all the feparations and all conjunctions that have been lately made-a job. I speak, Sir, of the Board of Trade and Plantations. This board is a fort of temperate bed of influence; a fort of gently ripening hot-houfe, where eight members of parliament receive falaries of a thoufand a year, for a certain given time, in order to mature, at a proper feason, a claim to two thousand, granted for doing lefs, and on the credit of having toiled fo long in that inferior laborious department.— Decon. Reform.

BRITISH STATE.

THE British ftate is, without question, that which purfues the greatest variety of creeds, and is the leaft difpofed to facrifice any one of them to another, or to the whole. It aims at taking in the whole circle of human defires, and fecuring for them their fair enjoyment. Our Legiflature has been very clofely connected in its moft efficient part with individual feeling and with individual intereft. Perfonal liberty, the most lively of thefe feelings, and the most important of thefe interefts, which in other European countries has rather arifen from the fyftem of meafures, and the habitudes of life, than from the laws of the state, (in which it flourished more from neglect than attention) in England, has been a direct obje&• of Government.-Regicide Peace,

BANK PAPER.

AT prefent the state of their treasury (France) finks every day more and more in cafh, and fwells more

and more in fictitious reprefentation. When fo little within or without is now found but paper, the reprefentative not of opulence but of want, the creature not of credit but of power, they imagine that our flourishing ftate in England is owing to that bank paper, and not the bank paper to the flourishing condition of our commerce, to the folidity of our credit, and to the total exclufion of all idea of power from any part of the tranfaction. They forget that, in England, not one fhilling of paper-money of any defcription is received but of choice; that the whole has had its origin in cafh actually depofited; and that it is convertible, at pleafure, in an inftant, and without the fmalleft lofs, into cafh again. Our paper is of value in commerce, becaufe in law it is of none. It is powerful on 'Change, becaufe in Weftminsterhall it is not.--Reflect. on the Revolution in France.

BISHOPS AND CANONS.

WITH regard to the eftates poffeffed by bifhops and canons, and commendatory abbots, I cannot find out for what reafon fome landed eftates may not be held otherwife than by inheritance. Can any philofophic fpoiler undertake to demonftrate the pofitive or the comparative evil of having a certain, and that too a large portion of landed property, paffing in fucceffion through perfons whofe title to it is, always in theory, and often in fact, an eminent degree of piety, morals, and learning; a property which, by its deftination, in their turn, and on the fcore of merit, gives to the nobleft families renovation and fupport, to the lowest the means of dignity and elevation; a property, the tenure of which is the performance of fome duty, (whatever value you may chufe to fet upon that duty) and the character of whofe proprietors demands at leaft an exterior decorum and gravity of manners; who are to exercife a generous but temperate hofpitality; part of whofe

income they are to confider as a truft for charity; and who, even when they fail in their truft, when they flide from their character, and degenerate into a mere common fecular nobleman or gentleman, are in no respect worse than those who may fucceed them in their forfeited poffeffions? Is it better that eftates fhould be held by thofe who have no duty, than by those who have one?-by thofe whose character and destination point to virtues, than by thofe who have no rule and direction in the expenditure of their eftates but their own will and appetite? Nor are these estates held altogether in the character or with the evils fuppofed inherent in mortmain. They pass from hand to hand with a more rapid circulation than any other. No excefs is good; and therefore too great a proportion of landed property may be held officially for life; but it does not feem to me of material injury to any commonwealth, that there fhould exift fome eftates that have a chance of being acquired by other means than the previous acquifition of money,-Ibid.

BOARD OF WORKS.

THE Board of Works, which in the feven years preceding 1777, has coft towards 400,000l. and (if I recollect rightly) has not coft lefs in proportion from the beginning of the reign, is under the very fame defcription of all the other ill-contrived eftablishments, and calls for the very fame reform. We are to feek for the vifible figns of all this expence.For all this expence, we do not fee a building of the fize and importance of a pigeon-houfe. Buckinghamhoufe was reprised by a bargain with the public, for one hundred thoufand pounds; and the fmall house at Windfor has been, if I mistake not, undertaken fince that account was brought before us. The good works of that board of works are as carefully concealed as other good works ought to be; they are

perfectly invisible. But though it is the perfection of charity to be concealed, it is, Sir, the property and glory of magnificence to appear, and stand forward to the eye.-Oecon. Reform.

BISHOPRICS.

I know well enough that the bishoprics and cures, under kingly and feignoral patronage, as now they are in England, and as they have been lately in France, are fometimes acquired by unworthy methods.-Reflections on the Revolution in France.

BRITISH LIBERTY, AN ENTAILED INHERITANCE.

FROM Magna Charta to the Declaration of Rights, it has been the uniform policy of our conftitution_to claim and affift our liberties, as an entailed inheritance derived to us from our forefathers, and to be tranfmitted to our pofterity, as an eftate fpecially belonging to the people of this kingdom, without any reference whatever to any other more general or prior right. By this means our conftitution preferves an unity in fo great a diverfity of its parts. We have an inheritable crown; an inheritable peerage; and an houfe of commons and a people inheriting privileges, franchifcs, and liberties, from a long line of ancestors.

This policy appears to me to be the refult of profound reflection, or rather the happy effect of fol lowing nature, which is wifdom, without reflection, and above it. A fpirit of innovation is generally the refult of a selfish temper and confined views. People will not look forward to pofterity, who never look backward to their ancestors. Befides, the people of England well know, that the idea of inheritance furnifhes a fure principle of confervation, and a fure principle of tranfmiflion, without at all excluding a principle of improvement. It leaves acquifition free,