6 CLINTON'S 



science to aid, by its faculties, the agitations of party, little can be ex- 

 pected from energies thus perverted and abused. The annals of our co- 

 lonial state present a continual controversy between the mincers ol* 

 the crown, and the representatives of the people. What did the gov- 

 ernor and judges care for a country where they were strangers ? where 

 their continuance was transient ; and to which they were attached by 

 no tie that reaches the human heart. Their offices emanated from ano- 

 ther country ; to that source they looked for patronage and support, to 

 that alone their views extended ; and having got, what Archimedes 

 wanted, another world on which to erect their engines they governed 

 this at pleasure. 



The colonial governors were, generally speaking, little entitled to re- 

 spect. They were delegated to this country not as men qualified to go- 

 vern, but as men whose wants drove them into exile ; not as men enti- 

 tled by merit to their high eminence, but as men who owed it to the 

 solicitations of powerful friends and to the influence of court in- 

 trigue. Thus circumstanced and thus characterized, is it wonderful to 

 find them sometimes patroling the city disguised in female dress ; at 

 other times assailing the representatives of the people with the most vi- 

 rulent abuse, and defrauding the province by the most despicable acts 

 of peculation ; and at all times despising knowledge and overlooking the 

 public prosperity ? Justice, however, requires that we should except 

 from this censure Hunter and Burnet. Hunter was a man of wit, a cor- 

 respondent of Swift, and a friend of Addison.(2) Burnet, the son of the 

 celebrated bishop ol Salisbury, was devoted to literature ; they were the 

 best governors that ever presided over the colony. 



The love of fame is the most active principle of our nature. To be 

 honoured when living, to be venerated when dead, is the parent 

 source of those writings which have illuminated,- of those actions 

 which have benefited and dazzled mankind. All that poetry has crea- 

 ted, that philosophy has discovered, that heroism has performed, may 

 be principally ascribed to this exalted passion. True it is, 



" When fame's loud trump hath blown its noblest blast, 

 Though long the sound, the echo sleeps at last ; 

 And glory, like the phoenix 'midst her fires, 

 Exhales her odours, blazes, and expires." 



LORD BYRON. 



Yet, as long as man is susceptible of sublime emotions, so long will 

 he commit himself to this master feeling of a noble nature. What 

 would have become of the sublime work of Milton, if he had written for 



