How then can we appear before a father of such delicate sensibility? With what eyes shall we dare to look upon him, unless we carry back with us this son of his right hand, this staff of his old age, whom, alas! you have condemned to slavery? The good old man will expire in horrors dreadful to nature, as soon as he shall find that his son is not with us. Our enemies will insult over us under these misfortunes, and treat us as the most infamous of parricides. I must appear to the world, and to myself, as the perpetrator of that most horrid of crimes, the murder of a father; for it was I who most urgently pressed my father to yield. I engaged by the most solemn promises, and the most sacred pledges, to bring the child back. Me he intrusted with the sacred deposit, and of my hand he will require it. (Have pity, I beseech , on the deplorable condition of an old man, stripped of his last comfort; and whose misery will be aggravated by reflecting that he foresaw its approach, and yet wanted resolution to prevent it. If your just indignation must needs have a sacrifice, here I am ready, at the price of my liberty or of my life, to expiate this young man's guilt, and to purchase his release! Grant this request, not so much for the sake of the youth himself, as of his absent father, who never offended you, but who venerates your person and esteems your virtues. Suffer us not to plead in vain for a shelter under your right hand, to which we flee, as to an holy altar, consecrated as a refuge to the miserable. Pity an old man, who, during the whole course of a long life, has culti vated arts becoming a man of wisdom and probity, and who, on account of his amiable qualities, is almost adored by the inhabitants of Syria and Canaan, though he professes a religion, and follows a mode of living totally different from theirs. EXTRACT EXTRACT FROM THE PLEA OF THOMAS MUIR, Esq. AT HIS CELEBRATED TRIAL IN SCOTLand. GENTIEMEN Of the Jury, THIS HIS is now perhaps the last time that I shall address my country. I have explored the tenor of my past life. Nothing shall tear from me the record of my departed days. The enemies of reform have scrutinized, in a manner hitherto unexampled in Scotland, every action I may have performed, every word I may have uttered. Of crimes, most foul and horrible, have I been accused of attempting to rear the standard of civil war; to plunge this land in blood, and to cover it with desolation. At every step, as the evidence of the crown advanced, my innocency has brightened. So far from inflaming the minds of men to sedition and outrage, all the witnesses have concurred, that my only anxiety was, to impress upon them the necessity of peace, of good order, and of good morals. What then has been my crime? Not the lending to a relation a copy of Mr. Paine's Works; not the giving away to another a few numbers of an innocent and constitutional publication; but for having dared to be, according to the measure of my feeble abilities, a stren uous and active advocate for an equal representation of the PEOPLE, in the HOUSE OF THE PEOPLE; for having dared to attempt to accomplish a measure, by legal means, which was to diminish the weight of their taxes, and to put an end to the effusion of their blood. From my infancy to this moment, I have devoted myself to the cause of the PEOPLE. It is a good cause. It will ultimately prevail. It will finally triumph. Say then openly, in your verdict, if you do condemn me, which I presume you will not, that it is for my attachment to this cause alone, and not for those vain and wretched pretexts stated in the indictment, intended only to colour and disguise the real motives of my accusa tion. The time will come, when men must stand or fall by their actions; when all human pageantry shall cease when the hearts of all shall be laid open to view. If you regard your most important interests; if you wish that your consciences should whisper to you words of consolation, rather than speak to you in the terrible language of remorse, weigh well the verdict you are to pronounce. As for me, I am careless and indifferent to my fate. I can look danger, and I can look death in the face; for I am shielded by the consciousness of my own rectitude. I may be condemned to languish in the recesses of a dungeon. I may be doomed to ascend the scaffold. Nothing can deprive me of the recollection of the past; nothing can destroy my inward peace of mind, arising from the remembrance of having discharged my duty. T ON THE STARRY HEAVENS. O us who dwell on its surface, the earth is by far the most extensive orb that our eyes can any where behold. It is also clothed with verdure; distinguished by trees; and adorned with a variety of beautiful decorations. Whereas, to a spectator placed on one of the planets, it wears a uniform aspect; looks all luminous, and no larger than a spot. To beings who dwell at still greater distances, it entirely disappears. That which we call, alternately, the morning and evening star; as in one part of her orbit, she rides foremost in the procession of night; in the other, ushers in, and anticipates the dawn, is a planetary world; which, with the five others, that so wonderfully vary their mystic dance, are in themselves dark bodies. and shine only by reflection; have fields, and seas, and skies of their own; are furnished with all accommodations for or animal subsistence, and are supposed to be abodes of intellectual life. All which, together with this our earthly habitation, are dependant on that grand dispenser of divine munificence, the sun; receive their light from the distribution of his rays; deriye their comfort from his divine agency. The sun is the great axle of heaven, about which, the globe we inhabit, and other more spacious orbs, wheel their stated courses. The sun, though seemingly smaller than the dial it illuminates, is abundantly larger than this whole earth; on which so many lofty mountains rise, and such vast oceans roll. A line, extending through the centre of that resplendent orb, would measure more than eight hundred thousand miles. A girdle, formed to surround it, would require a length of millions. Were its solid contents to be estimated, the account would overpower our understand ing, and be almost beyond the power of language to éxpress. Are we startled at these reports of astronomy? Are we ready to cry out in a transport of surprise, How mighty is the Being, who kindled such a prodigious fire, and who keeps alive, from age to age, such an enormous mass of flame! Let us attend our philosophic guides, and we shall be brought acquainted with spec ulations more enlarged, and more amazing. This sun, with all attendant planets, is but a very little part of the grand machine of the universe. Every star, though in appearance no bigger than the diamond that glitters on a lady's ring, is really a mighty globe; like the sun in size, and in glory; no less spacious; no less luminous than the radiant source of our day. So that every star is not barely a world, but the centre of a magnificent system; has a retinue of worlds, irradiated by its beams, and revolving round its attractive influence. All which are lost to our sight in unmeasurable wilds of ether. That the stars appear like so many diminutive, and scarcely distinguishable points, is owing to their im mense mense and inconceivable distance. Such a distance, that a cannon ball, could it continue its impetuous flight, with unabating rapidity, would not reach the nearest of those twinkling luminaries for more than five hundred thousand years! Can any thing be more wonderful than these observations? Yes; there are truths far more stupendous; there are scenes far more extensive. As there is no end of the Almighty Maker's greatness, so no imagination can set limits to his creating hand. Could you soar beyond the moon, and pass through all the planetary choir; could you wing your way to the highest apparent star, and take your stand on one of those lofty pinnacles of heaven, you would there see other skies expanded; another sun, distributing his inexhaustible beams by day; other stars which gild the horrors of the alternate night; and other, perhaps, nobler systems, established in unknown profusion, through the boundless dimensions of space. Nor do the dominions of the. universal Sovereign terminate there. Even at the end of this vast tour, you would find yourself advanced no further than the suburbs of creation; arrived only at the frontiers of the great JEHOVAH's kingdom. PAPER, A POEM. OME wit of old; such wits of old there were, SOME wit of such wing, whose care, Whose hints show'd meaning, whose allusions, care, By one brave stroke, to mark all human kind, The thought was happy, pertinent, and true, Various |