clever arrangements, nothing was done for the _security_ or the _advancement_ of the community. No new measures of _defence_; no better administration of _justice_; no advantageous _public works_, no apparatus of _education_, were originated; and, as for the _dignity of the sovereign_, that was a matter past hope. But by means of the treacherous sale of the nation’s property and of public offices, by bribes, by falsification of the public accounts, breaches of royal credit were for the present stopped, and the day of reckoning deferred. If the Duke of York could have foreseen from whom and at what time this reckoning would be demanded, he might have been less acute in his suggestions, and less bold in his advice; and both he and the King might have employed to less infamous purpose this day of solemn fast and deprecation of God’s judgments. But, however true might be Dr. Reede’s doctrine that the sins of government are the sins of the nation, it happened in this case, as in a multitude of others, that the accessaries to the crime offered the atonement, while the principals made sport of both crime and atonement. The false report about the late engagement had gained ground sufficiently to answer the temporary purposes of those who spread it. As Dr. Reede took his way homewards, bonfires gleamed reflected in the waters of the river, and exhibited to advantage the picturesque fronts of the wooden houses in the narrow streets, and sent trains of sparks up into the darkening sky, and illuminated the steeples that in a few more seasons were to fall into the surging mass of a more awful conflagration. On reaching the comfortable dwelling which he expected to be soon compelled to quit, he gave himself up, first to humiliation on account of the guilt against which he had in vain remonstrated, and then to addressing to the King a strong written appeal on behalf of the conscientious presbyterian clergy, who had, on the faith of the royal word, believed themselves safe from such temptations to violate their consciences as they were now suffering under.