GRAHAME'S HISTORY OF THE UNITED STATES.

To plan the history of thirteen independent provinces—different from each other in the time of their foundation, the objects and characters of their settlers, the interests which the nature of their soil, climate, and productions created, as well as in the public fortunes which attended their separate origin, rise, and progress—is not easy. For if the writer confine himself to giving a general and comprehensive account of all, the distinctive characters of each and the peculiar circumstances which portray it are likely to evaporate. On the other hand, if he draws out at too great length the events of provincial history, the general reader is overlaid by minute details, or wearied by unimportant affairs, in which he can feel no interest, from the want of local sympathies. Accident has relieved Mr. GRAHAME from the dilemma spoken of, as happily perhaps as art could have done it. Having written some years since the history of those British plantations in America which subsequently threw off their allegiance, and brought down his narrative to the Revolution of 1688, our author, when he undertook to carry on his account till the Declaration of Independence, contented himself with revising those volumes, and making some slight additions to close the separate history of each State with the closo of the seventeenth century, but commencing the new undertaking with the history of the United States. Hence, the earlier and more interesting narrative of each colony, its settlement, difficul- ties, and social formation, are separately told; but as it approaches its colonial maturity, the provincial merges in the general his- tory; which embraces three epochs. The first commences with the year 1700, and continues to the foundation of Georgia by the " strong benevolence "of OGLETHORPE; a period which is chiefly occupied with internal affairs. The second comes down to the peace of Paris in 1763; the French Colonial wars—that sufficed to train the future Generals of the Revolution, and virtually terminated with the conquest of Canada—forming the most striking event. The last epoch contains the growth of the dif- ferences between England and her Colonies; narrates the dis- turbances and military "affairs" that gradually passed into open War; and closes with the Declaration of Independence,—a lame and impotent conclusion, as it appears to us, for the author breaks off at the most interesting period of the whole action. It is as if a tragic poet were to stop short at the approach of the catas- trophe.

The execution of the work is very respectable. The author does not display the philosophical spirit of a great historian, nor has he the vigour and graphic powers of a good historical narrator ; but lie has produced a clear and readable account of a series of events which have a peculiar interest to Englishmen, not merely from the circumstance of our ancestral connexion, but because they are able to read us a lesson from our past Colonial policy, which may be of practical use for our future guidance. In the compilation of this history, it might have been better had Mr. GRAHAME drawn his materials more entirely from original autho- rities than from the authors who have used or quoted them ; anti many of his interwoven reflections might have been spared ; a greater variety and interest would have been imparted to his earlier books, too, had he descended a little from the formal historical style, and infused into his narrative some more pictu- resque accounts of the modes of life of the first colonists, as well as of their superstitious vagaries, and their fearful encounters with the Indians. To a certain extent, however, a part of these desiderata are supplied by the views of the population, laws, and manners of each State, which the author takes ere he closes its separate history.

Unless in the case of such extraordinary literary genius as can make old things new, a work which treats of well-known public events rarely affords much opportunity for quotation ; because the reader is familiar with the more striking subjects. The obstinate military pedantry of BRADOCK, which led to the disgracerul slaughter and defeat of his army—the death and victory of WOLFE on the heights of Abraham—the bloody battle of Bunkers Hill—and the formalities with which the day appointed for the operation of the Stamp Act to commence was observed—are too well known in their leading points to allow of much novelty being imparted to them. Our extracts must therefore be taken from themes of a much humbler kind, and may rather be con- sidered as samples of the author than his work.

EvES OF VIRGINIA.

Few women had as yet (1620) ventured to cross the Atlantic ; and the Eng- lish being restrained by the pride and rigidity of their character from that in- corporation with the native Americana which the French and Portuguese have found so conducive to their interests, and so accordant with the pliancy of their manners, were generally destitute of the comforts and connexions of married life. Men so situated could not regard Virginia as a permanent residence, and must have generally entertained the purpose of returning to their native actuary after amassing asexperlitiously as possible a competency uf wealth. Such views aim inconsistent with patient industry, and with those extended interests that produce or pport patriotism : and in conformity with the more liberal policy which the Company had now begun to pursue towards the colony, it WIN proposed to send out a hundred young women ef agreeable per- sons and resiwetable charactem, m wives for the settlers. Ninety were scot; and the speculation proved so profitable to the Company, that a repetition of it was suggested by the emptiness of their exchequer in the following- year, whon sixty more were collected and transported. They were immediately disposed of to the young planters, and produced Nuell an accession of happiness to the colony, that the second consignment fetched a larger profit than the first. The price of a wife was estimated first at a hundred and twenty, and afterwards at a hundred and fifty pounds of tobacco, which was then wild at three shillings per pound. The young women were not only bought with avidity, but re- ceived„with such fondness, and so comfortably established, that others were in-

vited to follow their example. •

This interesting branch of traffic appears to have subsisted for many years, during which its seeming indelicacy was qualified as far as possible by the nice attention that was paid to the ascertainment of the moral character of every woman aspiring to become a Virginian matrou. In the year lli;12, by an order of the Provineial Council, two young women who Lad been seduced (Lurie; their passage from England, were ordered to he sent back, as " unworthy to propagate the race of Virginians."

The expenseof founding a modern colony is well known by the most convincing of arguments. Here is

THE COST or FOUNDING VIRGINIA.

The fall of the Virginia Company had excited the less concern, and the ar- bitrary proceeding of the King the less odium in England, front the disappoint- ments and calamities with which the colonial plantation had been attended. Mote than a hundred and fifty thousand pounds were alreoly expended on this settlement, and upwards of nine thousand inhabitants had been sent to it from the Mother Country. Yet at the dissolution of the Company, the gross value of the annual imports from Vii ginia did not exceed twenty thousand pounds, and the population of the province was reduced to about eighteen hunched persons.

The work abounds with instances of official insolence on the part of aristocratical Governors and home Ministers ; but perhaps none of them ever put their contempt into more pithy phrase than the Attorney - General of the "glorious and immortal" agent of the Revolution.

Seymour, the English Attorney-General, haying received the Royal com- mands to prepare the charter of the College, which was to be accompanied with a grant of 20001., remonstrated against this liberality ; urging that the nation was engaged in an expensive war, that the money was wanted for better purposes, and that he did not see the slightest occasion for a college in Virginia. Blair (the commissary for the Bishop of London in Virginia) lepresented to him that its intention was to cline:de and qualify young men to be ministers of the gospel; and begged Mr. Attorney would consider that the people of Vir- ginia had souls to be saved as well as the people of England. " Soots! (said lie) damn your souls; make tobacco!"

Here is a reflection : the King of the Barricades and his Juste Milieu are European witnesses of its truth.

UTILITY OF THE rooa.

No man capable of just reflection has ever been the eye-witness of a revolu- tion accomplished by violence without being deeply sti lick with the influence of wealth in rendering its possessors chary of their lives. The poor, who have nothing but their lives, promptly and boldly risk them in defence of that con- sciousness of liberty which, like Nature's gift of air and light, is a blessing that cannot be supplied by any artificial good within their reach. No generous man ever saw a revolution begun in a civilized community and against a power- ful and established government, without feeling the inexpressible usefulness of the poor as the defenders of liberty. The utmost, in general, that the rich at frst do at such seasons, is to impel or promote the excitation of the poor, whose actual or apprehended violence affords to themselves in the sequel a safe pretence for avowed interposition, and an occasion of as.suming the completion of an en- terpi ise which they are more fitted to complete than to counmence. The popu- lar riot produced the civic guard at Boston.

The occasion which gave rise to the following apt remarks of FRANKLIN on hereditary legislators, was not greatly dissimilar to what the present age has recently been called upon to witness. Lord CHATHAM had introduced a 'Provisional Act for Settling the Troubles in America," in the preparation of which it was sup- posed he had been assisted by FRANKLIN. "When the measure was broached in the House of Peers, Lord Sandwich, one of the Ministers, assailed it with violent and disdainful abuse ; refused to believe it the genuine production of any British nobleman ; and, turning with a significant look to Franklin, who was present, declared it was doubtless the production of an American, and of one who was well known as the most bitter and mischievous enemy of Great Britain :r and in the end the bill was rejected, without being allowed to lie on the table. Those who remember the rejec- tion of certain late measures merely because it was supposed they were approved of by O'CONNELL, will admit that the present Peers are worthy of their progenitors. Let us hope that the present age will not allow their Lordships to lose Ireland as they helped to lose America.

FRANKLIN ON HEREDITA RI LEGISLATORS.

To hear its many of these hereditary legislators declaiming so vehemently against, not the adopting merely but even the consideration of a proposal so Important in its nature, and offered by a person of so weighty a character ; to bear them censuring his plan, not only for their own misunderstandings of what was in it, but for their imaginations of what was not in it, which they would not give themselves an opportunity of rectifying by a second reading ; to per- ceive the total ignorance of the subject in some, the prejudice andpassion of others, and the wilful perversion of plain truth in several of the Ministers; and upon the whole, to see It so ignominiously rejected by so great a majority, and so hastily, too, in breach of all decency and prudent regard to the character and dignity of their body, as a third part of the National Legislature, gave me an exceeding mean opinion of their abilities, and made their claim of sovereignty over three millions of virtuous, sensible people in America, seem the greatest of absindities, since they appeared to have scarce discretion, enough to govern a herd of swine. Hereddary legislators ! thought I. There would be more propriety, because less hazaid of mischief, in having (as in some university of Germany) hereditary professors of mathematics ! '

The true Necessitarian holds that even in the material world every thing nets with a certain definite object, and that whilst in the storm or the whirlwind

" All seems unlinked cantingmey and chance, No atom of this turbulence fulfils A vague and unneceskitated task,

Or acts but as it must and ought to act."

Were a philosopher of this sect to write the history of the United States, conceiving that independence was their destiny, and that all essential actions tended to this conclusion, he would not have much difficulty in making out a case without either altering or suppressing historical filets. To the scrutiny of the calm ob. server, looking back from the vantage-ground of two centuries, it would appear as if this result ‘ttere inevitable. In the Puritanico- Republican founders of the Northern States, he would see the germs of a people but il! prepared to look with undistinguishing reverence on royalty, or implicitly to receive the loyal doctrine that taxation without con,,ent is not tyranny. In the law—springing out of their constant cool! eta with the Indians—that every free man should possess a mu:ket and be enrolled in the militia, lt would discern the nucleus of an irregular army, unconquerable in the wild and woody country they would be called upon to act in, if once the population could be roused en moue. In the unjust monopoly of the commerce (Wale Colonies by the Mother Country, as soon as they had a commerce to yield a profit—in the lofty de- mands of Kings and Councils, offensively urged by aristocratic minions—he would see continual grcunds of irritation, and eon.

stautly operating grievances ; and discover from the urgent com- plaints and remonstrances of the Colonists—especially on the sub- ject of that boasted law the Navigation Act—that they were as conscious of the injustice of their treatment as they were indig- nant at it. From the contemptuous indifference to regal commands they sometimes displayed, and the dogged resistance they ofrered at others, with their -distinct perception of their constitutional and chartered rights and the arguments by which they maintained them, he would conjecture that had the consequence of the Co- lonies been greater and the internal or European difficulties of the English Sovereigns less, an outbreak might have taken place some years before it did. And lastly, in the narrow-minded obstinacy of GEORGE the Third, in the ignerant truckling and servility of his Miniziters, and in the imbecile half-measures which they adopted—too harsh if they wished to conciliate, too mild if they intended to conquer—he would recognize the fated and foolish implements by which Destiny finally wrought out her decrees. But a careful survey of their history will instruct us in a higher mcessity, and of a profitable kind. The statesman may learn from it the true rationale of Colonial Policy. He will see that, upon'the old system, bickering for years and forcible separation at last is the inevitable destiny of considerable colonies founded and ruled upon the modern plan. Nor does this fulfilment arise from accidents that may be avoided, but from elements of strife in constant operation. A governor frms the mother country can rawly have colonial experience to quicken his sympathies with the people he rules, whilst he will probably offend them through ignorance. The ministers of the parent state, pressed upon by business of a more home and intimate nature, and in reality of more present consequence, will be sure to overlook the early complaints of what appear at the time to be unimportant dependencies. On the other hand, the colonists are not fault- less: with the limited views of provincial persons, they are apt to exaggerate the worth of that which alone they know, and to make no allowance for difficulties of which they have had no experience ; they look oat for slights, and stand up for their dignity in the manner which CHESTERFIELD notes as

characteristic of a vulgar fellow, and they display an ignorant promptness to take offence at things trivial or indifferent. The con- clusion from all which is, that the ancient colonial policy is the true one ; and that we should be very strict and careful in planting

a colony, and very lenient afterwards,— allowing it to grow by itself, to govern itself, and to pay for itself; confining our inter- ference to its external arrangement, and exercising that as little as maybe. Nor is this, as superficial persons may fancy, to sacrifice the advantages of colonies. Their only utility is to serve as an outlet to the mother country—to take off both her surplus people and her surplus goods. A virtual independence is more favourable to emigration than the most complete subjection; and the parent state will always continue to be the chief supplier of the settle- ment as long as it imports at all. The colonists carry out with them, and transmit to their descendants, habits and tastes which no other country can know how to provide for ; and opinion Is added to the potent influences of use and comfort, unless it be shaken by anger. Till the quarrel gave rise to the self-denying ordinances in America, home-made was not genteel.