able district, confers a more despotic authority than any form of law has ever directly conferred. The landlord can, at pleasure, and with out the least regard to consistency or equity, deprive a tenant of his field and habitation, from which he obtains food and shelter, and banish him from haunts familiar, perhaps, to his infancy, and dear to his heart, To the ignorant and simple, this banishment is proportionally severe, and though apparently a mere exclusion from the precincts of a single estate, may in reality condemn the victim to despair or famine, by his inability to procure a subsistence by other means, or in other places, than that to which he has been accustomed. This power is particularly absolute and terrible, because more liable than other kinds of authority to abuse. Public opinion does not controul or restrain its exercise, since it is cloaked by the privilege allowed to every man of doing what he will with his own.

In addition to his power as a landlord, his wealth and influence gave him of course the power of naming the justice of the peace for this district. In this capacity he exercised the right of naming and commissioning all the subordinate officers of justice, of enforcing the payment of debts from one tenant to another, by the sale of the debtor's effects, or the imprisonment of his person, of punishing all offences less than capital, by hard labour and imprisonment, at his own discretion. By such direct and indirect means, you may easily imagine that no power could be more despotic than that of the lords of Cwithin the precincts of their own estate. The life, liberty, and property of their subjects were held, in fact, by no other tenure than their lord's pleasure, controuled by no other circumstance than that which is incident to every political tyranny, the chance of running into voluntary banishment.

All these privileges sir A. received in right of his wife, with a resolution not to impair them. The

VOL. III. NO. XVII.

improvements he projected were, indeed, of such a nature as to require an unlimited authority. Nobody can, in their own opinion, have too much power, and luckily, in this case, for those subjected to it, it was impossible for sir A-to possess too much, since its whole energies were directed to nothing but the happiness of others.

This unbounded authority only could enable him to do as much as he did: but this power alone would have been insufficient. Had not his designs been seconded by a very large revenue, his good purposes would have availed nothing.

had been

The rents of Centirely expended, by the ancient family, on the unmeaning luxury and barren ostentation of a London life. Sir A― appropriated the whole of them to his plans of improvement. His reformations immediately increased the income to eight thousand pounds, and all his improvements were of such a kind, as immediately, in some degree, `to augment this income.

When it is considered, that the greater part of these improvements required nothing more than welldirected labour on the spot, that ten thousand pounds a year will purchase all the industry and ingenuity of four hundred workmen, and that a sum much larger than this was annually employed in digging, planting, and building, for thirty years together, we shall not much wonder at the great effects that have been produced.

These improvements were generally, in themselves, though highly useful and magnificent, yet not of a costly nature. He built solid, lofty, and spacious edifices, full of the grandeur and grace of proportion and convenience, but the materials are produced upon the spot, and cost nothing but the labours of the quarry. A fine white free-stone, easily wrought, but acquiring great hardness and solidity in the air, every where abounded.

Sir A. was not more anxious to keep his own property and power

unimpaired, and to raise the condition of his tenants to a certain degree of opulence, than to keep them stationary. To have suffered any of them to raise himself considerably above his equals, would have been to mar the very foundation of his schemes. The accumulation of money and stock could not be easily prevented, but the whole landed property remaining in his own hands, it was optional whether to permit any other individual to obtain the rights of a landlord or not.

In consequence of this system, he was able to give what face he thought proper to the whole district. He regulated, at will, the situation of towns and villages, and gave what form his fancy preferred to dwellings and avenues. The old crazy town in a short time disappeared, and a new one rose in a different situation. A simple, elegant, homogeneous plan was contrived, which has rendered the future town the most beautiful in Europe.

The town received accessions of inhabitants faster than accommodations could be supplied them. Sir A limited the population to ten thousand, and was obliged to exert his utmost authority and steadiness in restraining the concourse of strangers. The number of houses amounted to a thousand, and the rental amounts, at present, at only twenty-five pounds from each house, to twenty-five thousand per annum. The scite of this town is a lofty and level space, forming pretty nearly a parallelogram, on the nor thern side of C bay. It is bounded by the sea-shore on the south, and sheltered on the north by some rising grounds. It is a little more than half a mile in length, and about fifteen hundred feet broad. There is no other situation equally extensive within the bounds of the estate, so favourable for a town as this. It is placed at the bottom of one of the safest harbours in the kingdom; safe not only from the fury of the elements, but from all external attacks. Formerly, as the village contained nothing worth pil

laging, the harbour was open and defenceless, but sir A thought it necessary to protect his city by a fortification. Except at the entrance of this harbour, the whole coast of C is formed by a rocky precipice, which bounds a shallow strand, on which the waves break in a tremendous surf. The harbour opens between two lofty points, one of which juts out towards the other, so as to allow a narrow passage to the waters of about four hundred feet wide. On this point a complete bastion was erected, with the permission of the government, at sir A's expence. He and his successors are, by patent, constables or keepers of this fort, which is garrisoned by thirty men, and supplied with artillery and ammunition, at his own expence.

In the heights above the town there is a very exuberant spring, called Holwell. It bursts in a very powerful torrent from the side of a rock, and forms a considerable rivulet, which falls into the harbour, at the upper end. From this well the town is supplied, in the greatest abundance, with the purest water. The soil is a dry firm gravel, overlaying a solid freestone rock.

The town consists of twelve rows of contiguous buildings. The length of each row or block is twenty-five hundred feet, its breadth fifty feet, and its height from seventy-five to a hundred feet. It is divided into five, six, and seven stories, from twelve to fifteen feet in height, and into separate dwellings from thirty to fifty feet in width.

Each row is separated from the ones adjacent by a street or avenue from seventy-five to a hundred feet broad. This space is divided into two footways and a middle way. The footways are paved with square stones, and are ten feet wide. The middle way has a double row of trees, and is composed of the native gravel, cemented together by mortar.

The plan, both internal and external, of these buildings is simple and uniform, and solid to a degree

congress fixes on a certain spot of ground, on the banks of the Potowmack, which it declares, by law, to be hereafter the perpetual metropolis of the United States. Virginia and Maryland transfer all their political jurisdiction over the environs of the new metropolis to the general government, this being a condition prescribed by the constitution.

As the residence of government will naturally, in time, generate a city, and as a previous plan will contribute somewhat to the symmetry and splendour of the future city, a plan is drawn, and the scite distinctly distributed into building lots and avenues. As the population of America is in a rapidly progressive state, as the new city is expected to advance, under such favourable auspices, with even greater rapidity than the other cities of the country, and the value of its ground and houses to advance in the same proportion, an inviting field is immediately opened for the schemes of those who seek wealth by speculation. Land, within the pomeria of the new city, is greedily purchased, and houses hastily erected, the buyers and builders expecting to be amply remunerated for their pains and expence, by the rapidly increas ing value of their property.

It is quickly discovered, however, that these hopes were too sanguine. The progress of the new city proves to be even less rapid than that of some settlements, which are supported by nothing but trade; that the stimulus, arising from the presence of the government, is an artificial and unnatural one, and far from supplying the place of those more ordinary agents, trade and commerce; that the necessary accommodations for the government must be raised and kept up at an unlooked for and enormous expence; and that, with all their efforts, a residence in the new city is incompatible either with comfort or health.

The golden dreams of the speculator consequently end in disap

pointment. His houses are untenanted and going to ruin, and his land either lies a dead burthen in his hands, or he disposes of it, if not at a less price than he gave, at least at a much less price than his fond imagination had anticipated. The present proprietor is obliged to moderate his views of profit, and to centre all his hopes in the continuance of the government where it is, for this, he knows, will operate to the creation of a town, slowly and gradually perhaps, but certainly, whereas the removal will make matters still worse than at present, and crush the city in its infancy.

It is by no means wonderful that those who have property, liable to be depreciated by a removal, should clamour very loudly against it; but it is very strange to me, I confess, that a removal should be reproached as a breach of public faith. In these simple and obvious facts, which appear to be the whole truth, what materials can be found for raising such a charge? what contract has the nation entered into with its citizens, on this head, by whch the future resolutions of its representatives are over-ruled or cramped?

Let it be admitted that some persons purchased land and built houses in the city or its neighbourhood, in the belief that the law, fixing the seat of government there, would never be repealed, a belief founded on the terms of this law, which declares this place to be the perpetual metropolis of the states: but why was that place originally chosen for the seat of government? Because it was thought, at that time, to be most eligible. Why was it made the perpetual seat? Because nobody could then forsee or imagine the circumstances which might hereafter render it ineligible. Why did the citizens rely on the perpetuity of this law, and buy and build on that persuasion? Precisely for the same reasons which influenced their representatives to make the law: a total ignorance, beforehand, of any inconveniences which might attend its execution. Nothing but

experience could possibly unfold these inconveniences, and therefore it was impossible for those who were obliged to judge and act without experience, to judge and act, otherwise than they did. This law is precisely like any other law which declares the obligations it creates to be perpetual. Such declarations either imply a manifest absurdity, that one set of representatives have really more constitutional powers than any future set, or they amount merely to this, that these obligations shall be annulled and abrogated by no power less than that by which they were imposed.

Every body knows that the early purchasers and improvers presumed not only on the ultmiate progress of the place to the grandeur of a large city, but on its rapid progress to this point. They purchased and built not properly on the first supposition, because few or none lay out their money for the benefit of their remote posterity, but on the latter supposition. In this they have been wholly disappointed; and they might, with the same propriety, consider the public faith as bound to build a city, and to fill their houses with tenants, in a certain limited time, as at a distant and indefinite period. They are not, however, guilty of this absurdity. They as cribe their losses hitherto to physical and inevitable evils. To these, and not, as yet, to any breach of public faith, their injury already incurred is to be traced. A removal can add but little to the positive evil. By preventing the growth of the place into a great metropolis, it will materially affect the value and condition of the earth, circumscribed within certain limits, in a distant age, but the evil to the present generation will be found, upon a careful examination, to be very inconsiderable.

I am far, however, from intending to depreciate the losses which a removal from Washington may occasion to individuals. I mean only to maintain, that, in repealing or continuing the present law, the le

gislature is not fettered by any obligation arising from their predecessors having pledged the public faith for the fulfilment of their views by future legislatures. Some of the occasions in which public faith is supposed to be engaged for the continuance of a law, arise when the nation borrows money of its citizens, and promises to repay it in a certain time, or charges itself with the payment of a certain annual interest upon the sum; and when certain individuals are told, that if they contribute money and build a bridge over a certain river, the state will not allow any other bridge to be built in their vicinity, and will permit them to levy toll for a fixed period on all that pass their bridge; in these and similar cases a contract is made between the state and its citizens, supposed to be binding on successive legislatures. But the law, fixing the seat of government at Washington, contains no contract, express or implied, with any of the citizens. The residence of congress is supposed to benefit the owners of real property, wherever that residence is placed, and their removal, by occasioning this property to sink to its former value, is supposed to be detrimental to the owners. Thus New York and Philadelphia were supposed to be successively benefited and injured by the arrival and departure of the general government. In the same way, though, perhaps, to a greater extent, the owners of real property in Washington have been benefited by the residence of congress among them, and may be injured by their departure. But these consequences are of the same nature in all the three cases. They are merely incidental, and the government is no more answerable for them to the inhabitants of Washington, than to those of New York and Philadelphia.

The residence of congress was declared to be temporary at New York and Philadelphia, and to be perpetual at Washington. The consequences of removal from Washington may therefore be more inju