The last Letter of Vetus begins with an allusion to the events which have lately taken place in Holland. He then proceeds—‘What final effect this popular movement by the Dutch may have upon the future interests and prosperity of England is a question to be discussed with deliberate caution—with extreme solicitude—and with the chance, I trust, the distant chance, of its conducting us to no very gratifying conclusion!’ There is something in this passage truly characteristic, and well worthy of our notice. Vetus is, it seems, already jealous of the Dutch. The subtle venom of his officious zeal is instantly put in motion by the prospect of their national independence and commercial prosperity; and his pen is, no doubt, prepared, on the slightest provocation of circumstances, to convert them from an ally to be saved, into a rival and an enemy to be crushed. He, however, waives for the present the solemn discussion, till he can find some farther grounds to confirm him in his extreme solicitude and mysterious apprehensions. The perverse readiness of Vetus to pick a quarrel out of everything, or out of nothing, is exactly described in Spenser’s Allegory of _Furor_ and _Occasion_, which if we thought him ‘made of penetrable stuff,’ we would recommend to his perusal. The introductory comment on the Revolution in Holland is a clue to the whole of our author’s political system, which we shall here endeavour to explain. He looks askance with ‘leer malign’ on the remotest prospect of good to other nations. Every addition to the general stock of liberty or happiness, is to him so much taken from our own. He sees nothing gratifying in that prosperity or independence, which is shared (or any part of it) with foreign nations. He trembles with needless apprehension at the advantages in store for them, which he anticipates only to prevent, and is indifferent to our own welfare, interests, honour—except as they result from the privations, distress, and degradation of the rest of the world. Hatred, suspicion, and contempt for other nations are the first and last principles of the love which ‘an upright Englishman’ bears to his country. To prevent their enjoying a moment’s repose, or indulging even in a dream of future comfort, he would involve his own country in incessant distraction and wretchedness, and risk its final ruin on the cast of a die!—Vetus professes, with some reason, not to be enamoured of quotation: but he may, perhaps, allow us to refer to an author, who, though not so deep read in Vattel and the writings of the jurists, had just and penetrating views of human nature. ‘Think, there’s livers out of England. What’s England in the world’s map? In a great pool a swan’s nest.’ Now this ‘swan’s nest’ is indeed to us more than all the world besides—to cherish, to protect, to love, and honour it. But if we expect it to be so to the rest of the world—if we do not allow them to cultivate their own affections, to improve their own advantages,