words, the mass of community neglect their frivate to attend to publick business.* In America they have wheel within wheel. State legislatures clashing with that of the United States: and although it may be urged, that " in the multitude of counsellors there is safety;" yet we know that the responsibility, which is the basis of freedom, is lessened by being divided. A large collection of individuals will be guilty, collectively, of actions which would brand each, individually, with ignominy, and ought to subject him to punish ment. 4th. The jealousy of republicans is likewise an impediment to good government, and the due regulation of society. They fear a Washington or a Hamilton; but, not sensible that fools are always, to the extent of their abilities, knaves, they will trust a Lyon, or a Jn. These are a few of the impediments, which, it appears to me, exist in a republican form of government. BUT I HOPE THEY WILL NOT PROVE FATAL.† There is much to be expected from the * The only remedy to this evil must be found in putting limits to the right of suffrage. † I am sensible that I shall be accused of being a person of anti-republican principles in consequence of the fore national character of Americans. They are not so fickle and precipitate as Frenchmen; and their actions are more the result of deliberation. It is not amiss, however, to state that such are the evils to which their government is liable, and that such difficulties do exist in America. But this is not the place to discuss the subject minutely. Perhaps in some future publication I may dwell more at large on these topicks. With regard to this little volume, I should not have hazarded its appearance; but having already commenced my career as an author, and passed the ordeal of British criticism much better than I had reason to apprehend, I was induced again to solicit the attention of the British publick. In some instances, in this work, to use an expression of Burns, I have "rhymed for fun." In going remarks. But, certainly it cannot be said, with propriety, that the pointing out the evils to which a system may be liable, is an evidence of hostility to such system. I am the more solicitous to explain myself on this subject, as I find that a jacobin English reviewer (see Aikin's Annual Register, vol. iii. p. 57) says that "Mr. Fessenden wants a king in America." But the truth is, that the foregoing observations are calculated to prevent the necessity of such an evil. It is time that the American people were convinced that subordination is the soul of freedom. That any attempt to found a government on any other basis will terminate in America as in France in a military despotism. others I have had an aim. My allusions and metaphors are mostly taken from objects which I saw in America around me. My nymphs and swains are not of Arcadian breed. They are not those intelligent personages, of simple manners and refined conduct, who exist only in the creative imagination of the poet. My Jonathans and my Tabithas are more like the Cloddipoles and Blouzelindas of Gay than the Damons and Daphnes of Pope; and I will not assert, that I have not, in some instances, caricatured the manners of the New England rusticks. Still, however, the peasantry of New England, as described in my poems, will be found to bear some semblance to what they are in real life; and I hope that the novelty of my descriptions will give them interest with the English reader. ORIGINAL POEMS. AN ODE.* YE sons of Columbia, unite in the cause And all Europe join France, *The above Ode was written, set to musick, and sung on a publick occasion in Rutland, Vermont, July 1798. At that time the armament, which afterwards sailed to Egypt, under Buonaparte, lay at Toulon its destination was not known in America, but many supposed that it was intended to waft the blessings of French liberty to the United States. B Designing our conquest and plunder; United and free For ever we'll be, And our cannon shall tell them in thunder, When Britain assail'd us, undaunted we stood, In terrour array'd, Our liberties bid us surrender, Our country they'd find With bayonets lin❜d, And Washington here to defend her, For foes to our freedom we'll ever defy Till the continent sinks, and the ocean is dry! Should Buonapart' come with his sans culotte band, And a new sort of freedom we don't understand, |