Letters of Anna Seward. 
America, an officer introduced himself, 
commissioned from General, Washington 
fo call upon me, and to assure me, from 
the General kimself, that no circum- 
stance of his life had been so mortifying 
as to be censured in the Monody on 
André, as the pitiless author of his igno- 
minious fate; that he had laboured to 
seve him, that he requested my attention 
_to papers on the subject, which he had 
sent by this officer for my perusal. 
_ On examining them, I found they en- 
tirely acquitted the General. They 
filled me with contrition for the rash in- 
justice of my censure. With a copy of 
the proceedings of the court-martial that 
determined André’s condemnation, there 
was a copy of a letter from General 
Washington to General Clinton, offering 
to give up André in exchange for Arnold, 
who had fled to the British camp, ob- 
serving the reason there was to helieve 
that the apostate general had exposed 
that gallant English officer to unnecessary 
danger to facilitate his own escape: 
copy of another letter from General 
Washington to Major André, adjuring 
him to state to the commander in chief 
his unavoidable conviction of the selfish 
perfidy of Arnold, in suggesting that plan 
of disguise, which exposed André, if 
taken, to certain condemnation as a spy, 
when, if he had come openly in his regi- 
mentals, and under a flag of truce, to the 
then unsuspected American general, he 
would have been perfectly safe: copy of 
André’s high-souled answer, thanking 
Genera! Washington for the interest he 
took in his destiny; but, observing that, 
even under conviction of General Ar- 
nold’s inattention to his safety, he could 
not suggest to General Clinton any thing 
which might influence him to save his 
Tess important life by such an exchange. 
OPINION oF 1800. 
At first I bailed the revolution in 
France as a glorious attempt to procure 
for that country the blessings of a limited 
monarchy, but I soon saw, in the tyranny 
exerted towards its mild monareh, and 
in the interference of the neighbouring 
Nations, that the result would prove a 
fatal blow to rational liberty in Europe, 
and most of all, in this country; that it 
would, as you finely express it, place 
British freedom upon a narrow and 
‘wasting isthmus, between ana’ and 
despotism. Had this revolution hap- 
pened beneath the reign of a tyrant, it 
might have acted upon other kingdoms 
with a warning influence against tyranny. 
As it was, ous king and parliament, with 
657 
nine-tenths of the English people, ims 
pute it chiefly, and but that they choose 
to call in the aid of religious zeal to sup- 
port sanguinary measures, most opposite 
to the gospel precepts, they would, ex- 
clusively, impute the overthrow of mo- 
narchy in France to the concessions 
made by the king in favour of his subjects’ 
liberties. 
‘Hence every rational and religious 
plan for the reformation of abuses ig 
termed Jacobinism. Hence Mr. Pitt 
dared to say, in the senate, not a month 
ago, that to assert that the interests of 
the few ought to be subordinate to those 
of the many, was maintaining the vital 
principle ef Jacobinism, Hence, while 
he and his adherents justly represent our 
foes as crippled in their navy, their com~ 
merce ruined, and most of their military 
conquests wrested from their possession, 
they are absurd enough to declare that 
there can be no security for England ina 
peace with France; as if that ruin to us, 
which, under her monarchy, and in the 
plenitude of her power and greatness, she 
could not effect, she was likely to com- 
pass in the disordered and exhausted 
state in which she must long remain. 
France never kept peace with England 
when she thought it for her.interest te 
break it; neither did this country with 
her! What has ever been will ever be, 
whether the Gallic government be repubs 
lic, democratic, consular, or monarchical 3 
but each nation stands now more in need 
of a long peace than after any former 
war, and therefore, when made, it will 
probably be of proportionate duration, 
It is insulting nonsense to plead the 
vices of Buonaparte, or the instability of 
his power, as a reason for prolonging the 
miseries of war. His mortality might as 
rationally be pleaded. An opportunity 
was opened, by his late concessions, for 
obtaining a general pacification, and pro- 
bably upon good terms for England and 
her allies; and the present. debilitated 
state of France is the true security for its 
permanence; far greater than'could result 
from, the Bourbon family regaining that 
power which is now vested in the Crom- 
well of that country. 
COWPER. 
Cowper is the poetic son of Dr. Youngs 
More equal, more consistent, more judie 
cious, far less. uniformly sombre than bis 
parent,—but also much less frequently 
sublime, Darwin bas no parent amongst 
the English poets; he sprung in his de- 
clining years, with all the swength and 
fancy 
