OR, VULCAN S PEAK. 201 ject of the institutions at all, but had been compelled to take them as they found them. Nor had the present in cumbents of office been placed in power by a vote of a majority, the original colonists having saved those who came later to the island all trouble in the premises. In these facts was an unceasing theme of declamation and complaint to be found. It was surprising how little the people really knew of the oppression under which they laboured, until this stranger came amongst them to en lighten their understandings. Nor was it less wonderful how many sources of wrong he exposed, that no one had ever dreamed of having an existence. Although there was not a tax of any sort laid in the colony, not a shilling ever collected in the way of import duties, he boldly pronounced the citizens of the islands to be the most overburthened people in Christendom ! The taxation of England was no thing to it, and he did not hesitate to proclaim a general bankruptcy as the consequence, unless some of his own expedients were resorted to, in order to arrest the evil. Our limits will not admit of a description of the process by which this person demonstrated that a people who literally contributed nothing at all, were overtaxed ; but any one who has paid attention to the opposing sides of a discussion on such a subject, can readily imagine how easily such an ap parent contradiction can be reconciled, and the proposition demonstrated. In the age of which we are writing, a majority of man kind fancied that a statement made in print was far more likely to be true than one made orally. Then he who stood up in his proper person and uttered his facts on the respon sibility of his personal character, was far less likely to gain credit than the anonymous scribbler, who recorded his lie on paper, though he made his record behind a screen, and half the, time as much without personal identity as he would be found to be without personal character, were he actually seen and recognised. In our time, the press has pretty effectually cured all observant persons at least of giving faith to a statement merely because it is in print, and has become so far alive to its own great inferiority as publicly to talk of conventions to purify itself, and other wise to do something to regain its credit ; but such was
