just addressed by that officer to the Lord Provost, there is a great deal too much of all this This letter is, in my opinion, a clear and convincing performance, and cannot fail to do him great service in the eyes of the public; but I must say, there is throughout a considerable lack of modesty in the attitude he assumes; and that, defence being his sole legitimate object, he has dealt more blows and severer, than I conceive to have been justifiable, to say nothing of becoming. I have no fault to find with the statements which have been made on the contrary, I think it was absolutely necessary that they should be made; but I do think, they might have appeared in many shapes of less questionable propriety than that of a letter from Captain Brown to the Lord Provost a person accused (however unjustly), and acquitted (however properly), to one of the judges before whom he had been accused, and by whose sentence his acquittal had been pronounced.

I have no intention of entering at all into the particulars of Captain Brown's case; for I think no one can in conscience think himself entitled to avow any opinion concerning its merits, without having at least done Captain Brown the justice to read the full and elaborate statement of this letter a statement to which I suspect no one, any more than myself, can offer any considerable addition. But I trust you will pardon me for directing your attention very briefly to one or two circumstances which ought to be particularly had in mind by those who have allowed themselves to take up any portion of the popular prejudice against this officer-and have ventured in any shape to express their dissent from the judgment already pronounced concerning him by the only legal and competent Tribunal.

These are,

I. The great number of facts brought forward in the letter to the Lord Provost, which tend to shew that the persons most active in all the steps of procedure, anti-judicial and

post-judicial, against Captain Brown, have been acting under the influence of private feelings-that they have in short been acting in this matter as his enemies, not as the disinterested friends of the Public. If it could be completely established, that

these persons had been acting thus, it might, nevertheless, be thought very possible, that Captain Brown had been in the wrong; but undoubtedly, accusations resting principally on the authority of persons so acting, would be examined by the Public with a very peculiar degree of jealousy. I am sorry to say, that from the statement of facts given in the Captain's letter, there seems to be particular reason for suspecting that Mr Thomas Allan, (the only person mentioned as taking a lead in the proceedings against Brown, whose name is likely to carry the smallest authority along with it), has really suffered himself to be influenced by motives of this description; and most unquestionably, if the statements, so well calculated to convey this impression, be in any way incorrect, it is most imperative on Mr Allan to contradict them, not by anonymous paragraphs in a newspaper, but boldly and distinctly in his own person and name.

1. Captain Brown, in the first place, mentions, that the newspaper, of which Mr Allan is editor, (the Caledonian Mercury), began to animadvert with extraordinary severity on the management of the police of Edinburgh," after a complaint had been preferred against Mr Allan himself, by Captain Brown in the discharge of his official duty."

2. He asserts that fictitious anecdotes, tending to bring the establishment into disrepute, were, after this period, inserted in great numbers in this newspaper-and that a formal censure was passed on these newspaper-reports by the Sheriff of the county, and some other Magistrates. In proof of this, he recites various anecdotes, which your readers will examine; and in other Edinburgh newspapers we must all have seen many more tending strongly the same

court, which would undoubtedly appear to have been a private one, since Captain Brown himself who had the strongest of interests, and, as I should have thought, the strongest of claims to be present was never admitted to know any thing of its deliberations until he read the accounts of them thus complained of in the Caledonian Mercury.

Now, I have no hesitation in saying, that, so far as this goes, I conceive every impartial person must completely agree with Captain Brown in disapproving, and that most strongly, of the conduct of Mr Thomas Allan. If the court was a public court, then the public had a right to be there--and, above all, Captain Brown. If it was a private court, no one could have the smallest right to make public any part of its proceedings, unless with the approbation, and under the control, of the court itself. Most certainly, Mr Thomas Allan, when he-being one of a court, consisting, I shall suppose, of thirty persons-presumed to publish, in his newspaper, accounts of what passed in this court, unauthenticated by any reference to minutes, or any other formal record--he was instituting, in his own person, a most unwarrantable monopoly, and exemplifying, most egregiously, not the liberty, but the tyranny and despotism of the press. He availed himself of his vocation as the editor of a newspaper, to inflame the public mind against an unprotected individual; and the impartial part of the community may be inclined to doubt, whether the person, who had prepared and published such reports as have lately filled the columns of his paper, might not have done well to decline continuing to act in the capacity of a judge with regard to any investigation in which Captain Brown is concerned. I shall take liberty to believe, that such things are more worthy of the Scotsman than of Mr Thomas Allan; and that he, on reflection, must be inclined to repent of having, by his example, given any countenance to one of the most dangerous practices to which that basest of all the seditious prints has ever had recourse.

But, 4thly, Captain Brown goes on to state, that these paragraphs in the Caledonian Mercury were not only published in an irregular and culpable manner by Mr Allan-but that, in various instances, they betray the

strong leaning of the editor's own mind against Captain Brown. One instance he gives of this seems not unworthy of Mr Allan's attention. It appears that one of the charges made against the Captain was, that he had been implicated in a gross fraud, and that of a particularly mean charactera fraud by which a poor widow had suffered a pecuniary loss. It appears farther, that this charge was investigated by a committee, of which Mr Allan was a member, and that the report of that committee contained a most distinct and honourable acquittal of Captain Brown. Finally, it appears, that the same charge was in fact brought forward again by a Mr Stenhouse, a rhetorical baker, in a speech of his, reported by Mr Allan in the Caledonian Mercury. "That gentleman," says Captain Brown in his letter, (p. 116.) "in substance asserted, that a report by one of the committees would have established my privity, in some way and to some extent or other, to a fraud. It certainly was the duty of the editor of the Caledonian Mercury to report Mr Stenhouse's speech as it fell from his own lips: it happened, however, that the assertion I have just noticed was utterly disproved by the report itself, which report was signed and subscribed by Mr Allan. It is a very remarkable circumstance, that Mr Allan did not avail himself of the facilities he possessed, by stating in a separate paragraph how the fact truly stood; but that, with the means of contradiction in his power, he permitted the error of Mr Stenhouse's statement to go to the public uncontradicted.” Such are Captain Brown's own words: I doubt not you will agree with me in thinking, that, if they be founded in truth, Mr Allan is not the man who ought to have made himself particularly conspicuous, by casting the first stone against any one accused of negligence.

As for the statements contained in the Scotsman, it would be doing thein a great deal too much honour to notice them at so much length. It is only necessary to read Captain Brown's own letter in order to be convinced that the editor of that paper has all through this business been exercising himself in his old vocation-which may be described as that of drawing illogical inferences, from false facts, for wicked purposes.

weakness of Mr C. Wynne's voice, Lord Holland's stammer, and even in the very number, in which one of their hacks has had the insolence to abuse you for laughing at Hunt, Hazlitt, (the very author, by the way, of the base personalities just quoted,) and others of that loathsome knot? They have, (to say nothing of their affronts to some gentlemen supposed to be connected with you, displayed in the article under my consideration, and in the braying of the ass, who occupies their lion's head,) published the impertinencies of a Cockney Scribbler, who signs himself Elia, full of all kinds of personal, and often offensive allusions to every individual who had the misfortune of being educated at the same school with himself. I could point out many more such reprehensible passages, even in the three numbers in my possession, particularly in the articles of Hazlitt and Elia; but I think I have said sufficient, to expose the sincerity of their indignation against you for personal allusions. I shall not stop to defend you, as I could on almost every point of their accusation; but as for them,-why Sir, their hypocrisy in this respect, is too thick and palpable to deceive even the most foggyheaded native of Cockaigne.

I should most certainly never have noticed the article, but that I perceive a very sounding charge has been directed against you in it, on account of a letter of mine. The disinterested critic accuses you of attacking, in every number, "a most respectable professor of the University of Edinburgh;" viz. Professor Leslie. I believe the only serious charge against that " very celebrated" man, as he takes care to call himself in the Edinburgh Review, whenever he has or makes occasion to mention his name, came from me. There might have been some trifling allusions to him in sportive or satirical verses, but these could hardly be construed into very gross offences, and were besides in a great measure bottomed on my exposure of his ignorance. And as I do not think it fair, that you should be censured for a letter written by one of whom you know nothing, and concerning whom they cannot even have made a guess, I shall just say a few words with respect to my connec tion with Professor Leslie.

In a work of his, treating on Arithmetic, that "celebrated" man thought proper to go out of his way to revile, in a most dogmatic and insulting manner, the Hebrew Language. I asserted, that he did not know even a letter of the tongue he had the impudence to pretend to criticize, and I proved my assertion. I leave the decision of the question to any Hebraist, to any man of common sense in the land. I proved that he was actuated by a hostility to the language of revelation, simply because it was so; and I defy any one to refute me. This unfortunate Cockney, who is lamenting over my hard treatment of the Professor, of course cannot be supposed to know any thing about the matter in dispute; but what I am saying is not the less true on that account. As I am on the subject, I may remark, that I was, at first, a little surprised to find, that in the second edition of the philosophy of arithmetic, which was announced since I had pointed out Leslie's mistake, he had not retracted the unlucky note which convicted him of ignorance; but on inspection of the work, my wonder ceased, for I perceived that the new edition was nothing more than the old one with a fresh lying title-page, and a few additional leaves; in short, only a collusion between an honest bookseller, and a doubly honest professor, to impose on the public, and get rid of the remaining copies of an unsaleable work.

Here then is the vile offence against decency as committed by me. What reason have I to respect Mr Leslie? His Essay on Heat? The matter of that work is no great affair; and the manner is so bad, that even a brother reviewer pronounces it to be execrable and drossy." His Mathematics? There is not an original Mathematical fact of the smallest value in all his book, and his barbarous style, and vile arrangement, have done a great deal to obscure the merit of what h has purloined. I do not intend, for i would not be the proper place, to g into any detailed remarks on his ge metry; but every mathematician has laughed at his droll proof of the detrine of parallel lines, at his doctrne of ratios, at his failure in proving ais very first proposition, the foundation of his system, and a thousand oher such betises. Am I to bow to him

because he is an Edinburgh Reviewer? I question the inspiration of that worthy oracle ;-and as to the professor's own part in its lucubrations, why, his impudent puffings of himself, and ignorant sneerings at others, have of ten made me liken Leslie The Reviewer to some enormous overfed pet of the parrot species, stuck up at a garret-window-and occupied all day with saying, "" pretty poll-pretty poll," to itself; "Foul witch-foul witch," to every passer by. Look now, I beseech you, at his Article on the North-west passage!!!

What other claims to respect he possesses I know not, except his having made some neat second-rate che mical experiments, and invented some handy little instruments; but even if his claims were ten times as weighty, they should not have deterred me from speaking as I thought. A man who could go out of his path, in an inquiry on the nature of heat, to recommend an impious work, and, in a treatise on arithmetic, to cast an ignorant sarcasm on the language of the Bible, or to sneer at the "fancies" of one of the apostles, must ever be an object of suspicion to those who hold the Scriptures in honour, and impiety in detestation. We have no assurance that he may not digress as culpably hereafter; and if he does so, it is on ly fair to give him warning, that I shall take care to point it out.

With grief I have perceived that many

of the young men, who go from this country to Edinburgh to pursue their medical studies, come back with their religious principles perverted, and their reverence for holy things sneered away

it would be very unjust to accuse any individual, of this weighty charge —but the fact is undeniable. I rejoice, therefore, whenever it is in my power, even in the most trivial degree, to show that the lights of the famous Northern sect are not infallible; that under affected knowledge gross ignorance may lurk; and that considerable intolerance may sometimes be the characteristic feature of philosophic liberality. I rejoice also, but much more sincerely, to learn, that a better spirit is arising in your famous university; and, in spite of its levity, its humour, its follies, nay, even its trangressions, I think your Magazine has been instrumental in this good work.

So much for my share in the tirade against you. The error I exposed was trifling, but it marked a bad spirit, and therefore I noticed it. If Professor Leslie or his friends be offended, let them trace the origin of it to himself. As for my part, I shall never repent of having contributed to a work which is even suspected of being supported by such names as any of those given in the article to which I am now referring. I remain, sir, yours, &c.

OLINTHUS PETRE, D.D.

Trin. Coll. Dublin. Nov. 10, 1820.

THE proceedings of the last two months are worth recording, less from their peculiar circumstances, which are revolting to all honourable feeling, or from the personages in question, who are only to be looked on as degraded and despicable, than from the insight which they give into the disposition of the English Multitude.

The facts of the Queen's trial are sufficiently notorious; and, at all events, the subject is too repulsive for decency to detail. But the popular excitement the reprobate means, that were put in force for its productionthe gross partizanship to which the heads of Whiggism did not disdain to stoop and the power exemplified of forcing back the current of justice in its highest channel-these things are

important for our experience ;-they are "signs of the times."

The dealers in that commodity of vulgar minds-prediction after the event-have now discovered that the whole proceeding was absurd. But if it has passed away from popular habits to think of the honour of the sitter on the throne-in better times an object of proud solicitude-was there to be no cognizance of the foulest aspersions on the national honour? Was the laugh and scorn of all Europe to be passed over as a thing not worth inquiry? Was the moral name of England to be insulted by a perpetual reference to the free and unquestioned career of its first female, through what was universally alleged to be the most barefaced and debasing licentiousness?