The Poets have, from time immemorial, claimed a kind of
exclusive jurisdiction over the sin of avarice: but, unfortunately, minds
once steeled by this vice are not often sensible to the attacks of
ridicule; and I have never heard that any poet, from Plautus to Moliere,
has reformed a single miser. I am not, therefore, sorry that our
legislature has encroached on this branch of the poetical prerogative,
and only wish that the mild regimen of the Muses had been succeeded by
something less rigid than the prison or the guillotine. It is true,
that, in the present instance, it is not the ordinary and habitual
practice of avarice that has called forth the severity of the laws, but a
species so destructive and extensive in its consequences, that much may
be said in defence of any penalty short of death; and such is the general
distrust of the paper-money, that I really believe, had not some measure
of the kind been adopted, no article susceptible of monopoly would have
been left for consumption. There are, however, those who retort on the
government, and assert, that the origin of the evil is in the waste and
peculation of its agents, which also make the immense emission of paper
more necessary; and they are right in the fact, though not in their
deduction, for as the evil does exist whatever may be the cause, it is
certainly wise to endeavour to remedy it.
The position of Valenciennes, which is supposed to be on the eve of a
surrender--the progress of the insurgents in La Vendee--the discontents
in the South--and the charge of treachery against so many of the
Generals, and particularly Custine--all together seem to have agitated
the public extremely: yet it is rather the agitation of uncertainty than
that occasioned by any deep impression of hope or fear.
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