MR. FOX’S SPEECH. 
329 
Arr. XXIX. 4 Letter from Barbadoes on Manumission, 8vo. 
‘THE expediency of provisions for li- 
beration from slavery, where slavery ex- 
ists, has been found in all ages. Manu- 
Mission operates as an incentive to good 
deeds: it is a mean by which fidelity 
may be recompensed, service rermuner- 
ated, industry indemnified, and affection 
acknowledged, The Hebrews, the Greeks, 
the Romans, had accordingly their seve- 
ral forms of redemption; the English 
have connived at the introduction of a 
form of manumission, by declaration to 
that effect before the Lord Mayor of 
London. Q 
This writer (page 16) disputes the 
validity of such London manumissions ; 
and maintains, that in the West Indies 
some dispensers of justice would attend 
to them, but that others would not. 
The uncertainty of the law is itself a 
sufficient grievance, to justify, or rather 
to call for parliamentary interference. 
It is obviously desirable, that some form 
of manumission should be devised, com- 
mon both to the islands and to the mother 
ccuntry, and capable of being legally 
executed in the presence or absence of 
the parties. f E 
We recommend to fix a specific and a 
narrow price, at which every negro 
should have a right to demand and ex, 
act his freedom. The receipt for that 
amount, from his master, would then at 
all times be a proper proof of manumisy 
sion. 
The Romans conducted a slave to the 
temple of the goddess Feronia, and there, 
put him on a worsted cap. This was 
their form of manumission, and hence 
the cap of liberty. It is more in the 
spirit of our legislation, to be less em- 
blematic, and more calculating. Sup. 
pose there be a stamp duty on manumisy 
sion, and the cap of liberty engraven on 
the die. 
Arr. XXX. Substance of the Speech of the Honourable C. J. Fox, in the House of Com, 
mons, May 24, 1803. 8vo. pp. 120. 
COULD the manner of Demosthenes 
be copied, says Hume, its success would 
be infallible over a modern assembly. 
it is rapid harmony, exactly adjusted to 
the sense; it is vehement reasoning, 
without any appearance of art ; it is dis- 
dain, anger, boldness, freedom, involved 
in a continual stream of argument. Of 
all human productions, the orations of 
Demosthenes present to us the models 
which approach the nearest to perfec- 
tion. 
. Two thousand years have elapsed 
since these speeches were pronounced at 
Athens, and the whole surface of the 
earth has as yet produced but one rival 
to Demosthenes. How fortunate the 
country which possesses, how blind the 
country, which possesses in vain so rare 
an evolution of human intellect. Mr. 
Fox is not inferior to his Greek model 
in the highest departments of art, in ex- 
_haustive argument, or in vehement, pa- 
thetic, soul-enkindling expression; he 
displays more humour; when he conde- 
_ scends to the ridiculous, and, at all times, 
2 greater command of critical allusion. 
Since the admirable speech on the Rus- 
sian armament, Mr. Fox has not perhaps 
executed a superior piece of oratory to 
the present, for comprehension of view, 
fot sagacity of inference, for patriotism 
of advice, and for the adaptation of its 
temper to itsaim. This statesman-phi- 
losopher, like the Olympian Jove, seems 
to look down, from his unclouded dwel- 
ling, on the mad strife of men with 
heartielt pity; his benevolent wisdom 
estimates already the mischievous result 
with prospective equity, and commis- 
sions Pallas to seize the warriors by the 
hair :—“ hearken in time, ye kings, or 
Nemesis, the goddess of retribution, will 
arrive to punish your heedlessness.” 
What has in fact irritated this country 
most of any thing against Bonaparte, is 
the arrogance, the contemptuous tone 
toward us, ascribed tohim, This charge 
is happily got rid of. 
«« The charges of arrogance, and of a su- 
pore assumed by the First Consul in his 
anguage towards this country, are further 
urged and supported on the testimony of his 
conversations with Lord Whitworth, towhich 
allusions had been so frequently made : those 
conversations are said to have been not only 
offensive in their tone, but in their substance. 
Mr. Fox could see no foundation for this 
species of charge in the long conversation 
with Lord Whitworth, on which so much 
stress had been Jaid, and some expressions of 
which had been so triumphantly quoted.— 
What was the report of those expressions, as 
given by Lord Whitworth himself? Does 
the First Consul say haughtily to him, «I 
will come and crash you——Je vous écraserai 2” 
Just the reverse. He tells ug plainly and dix 
