ON THE SPY-SYSTEM

——“The hour when I escap’d the wrangling crew,From Pyrrho’s maze, and Epicurus’ sty;”

——“The hour when I escap’d the wrangling crew,

From Pyrrho’s maze, and Epicurus’ sty;”

for I was never lost in the one, nor defiled in the other. My progress was of a different kind.’ And Mr. Southey then tells a story, not so good as the story of Whittington and his Cat, how he was prevented from setting off for America to set up the Pantisocracy scheme, and turned back, ‘from building castles in the air, and founding Christian Commonwealths,’ to turn Poet Laureate, and write in the Quarterly Review. The above extract is a fine specimen of character. Mr. Southey there thanks God that he is not, and was not,like other men. He was proof against the worst infection of his time. Poor Doctors Price and Priestley, who were Republicans like Mr. Southey, were religious, moral men; but they were Dissenters, and this excites as much contempt in Mr. Southey, as if they had been atheists and profligates. Others again, among Mr. Southey’s political compeers, were atheists and immoral; and for this, Mr. Southey expresses the same abhorrence of them, as if they had been Dissenters! He, indeed, contrives to make the defects of others so many perfections in himself; and by this mode of proceeding, abstracts himself into abeau idealof moral and politicalegotism—aSir Charles Grandison, calculated for the beginning of the nineteenth, and the latter end of the eighteenth century, upon the true infallible principles of intellectual coxcombry. It is well for Mr. Southey that he never was lost ‘in Pyrrho’s maze,’ for he never would have found his way out of it:—that his tastes were not a little more Epicurean, perhaps is not so well for him. There is a monachism of the understanding in Mr. Southey, which may be traced to the over-severity, the prudery of his moral habits. He unites somewhat of the fanaticism and bigotry of the cloister with its penances and privations. A decent mixture of the pleasurable and the sensual, might relieve the morbid acrimony of his temper, and a little more indulgence of his appetites might make him a little less tenacious of his opinions. It is his not sympathising with the enjoyments of others, that makes him feel such an antipathy to every difference of sentiment. We hope Mr. Southey, when he was in town, went to seeDon Giovanni, and heard him sing that fine song, ‘Women and wine are the sustainers and glory of life.’ We do not wish to see Mr. Southey quite aDon Giovanni, (that would be as great a change in his moral, as to see him Poet-laureate, is in his political character) but if he had fewer pretensions to virtue, he would, perhaps, be a better man,—‘to relish all as sharply, passioned as we!’ The author, in p. 21, informs Mr. W. Smith, that his early Poems, which contain all the political spirit, without the dramatic form, ofWat Tyler, are continually on sale, and that he has never attempted to withdraw them? Why does he not withdraw them, or why did he attempt to get an Injunction against poorWat? Some one who does not know Mr. Southey—has suggested as an answer,—By not withdrawing the Poems, he pockets the receipts; and by getting an Injunction againstWat Tyler, he would have done the same thing. In p. 23, Mr. Southey states, that he is ‘in the samerank in society’ as Mr. Smith, which we have yet to learn: and that he and Mr. Smith ‘were cast by nature in different moulds,’ which we think was lucky for the Member for Norwich. In p. 25, Mr. Southey rails at ‘the whole crew of ultra Whigs and Anarchists, from Messrs. Brougham and Clodius, down to Cobbett, Cethegus and Co.’; and in pages 26, 27, he compliments himself: ‘I ask you, Sir, in which of my writings I have appealed to the base and malignant feelings of mankind;—and I ask you, whether the present race of revolutionary writers appeal to any other? What man’s private character did I stab? Whom did I libel? Whom did I slander? Whom did I traduce?These miscreants live by calumny and sedition: they are libellers and liars by trade.’—After this,Sir Anthony Absolute’s‘Damn you, can’t you be cool, like me?’ willhardly pass for a joke! ‘For a man to know another well, were to know himself.’

But we must conclude, and shall do so, with some passages taken at a venture. ‘I did not fall into the error of those, who, having been the friends of France when they imagined that the cause of liberty was implicated in her success, transferred their attachment from the Republic to the military tyranny in which it ended, and regarded with complacency the progress of oppression, because France was the oppressor.’ What does Mr. Southey call that military establishment which is at present kept up in France to keep the Bourbons on the throne, and to keep down the French people? Mr. Southey has, it seems, transferred his attachment from the Republic, not to Bonaparte, but to the Bourbons.Theystand Mr. Southey instead of the Republic; they are the true ‘children and champions of Jacobinism’; the legitimate heirs and successors of the Revolution. We have never fallen into that error—into the error of preferring the monstrous claim of hereditary and perpetual despotism over whole nations, to a power raised to whatever height, (a gigantic, but glorious height) in repelling that monstrous claim; a claim set up in contempt of human nature and human liberty, and never quitted for a single instant; the unwearied, implacable, systematic prosecution of which claim, to force the doctrine of Divine Right on the French people, caused all the calamities of the Revolution, all the horrors of anarchy, and all the evils of military despotism, with loss of liberty and independence; and the restoring and hallowing of which claim, to hold mankind as slaves in perpetuity, Mr. Southey hails as the deliverance of mankind, and ‘a consummation devoutly to be wished.’ ‘O fool, fool, fool!’ He cannot go along with France when France becomes the oppressor; nor can he leave the Allies when they become the oppressors, when they return to the point from whence they set out in 1792. He could not accompany the march to Paris then, but he has run all the way by the side of it twice since, with his laurel wreath on his head, playing tricks and antics like a Jack-of-the Green. We explained this before. Mr. Southey was a revolutionary weathercock; he is become a court-fixture. ‘They (says he, meaning us[37]) had turned their faces towards the East in the morning, to worship the rising sun, and in the evening they were looking eastward still, obstinately affirming that still the sun was there. I, on the contrary, altered my position as the world went round.’ It is not always that a simile runs on all-fours; but this does. The sun, indeed, passes from the East tothe West, but it rises in the East again: yet Mr. Southey is still looking in the West—for his pension. The world has gone round a second time, but he has not altered his position—at the Treasury door. Does the sun of Liberty still rise over the towers of the Inquisition? Is its glow kindled at the funeral pile of massacred Protestants? Does its breath issue in vain from French dungeons, in which all those are confined who cannot forget that for twenty-five years they have been counted men, not slaves to LouisXVIII., under God and the Prince Regent? The doctrine of Divine Right has been restored, and Mr. Southey is still dreaming of military usurpation. The Inquisition has been re-established, and Mr. Southey still talks of the deliverance of Spain and Portugal. The war was renewed to put down Bonaparte as a military usurper, and not, as it was stated, to force the Bourbons as the legitimate Sovereigns, back upon the French nation; and yet the moment he was put down, the Bourbons were forced back upon the French people; (he was the only barrier between them and the delicious doctrine of Divine Right) and yet Mr. Southey says nothing of this monstrous outrage and insult on them, on us, on all mankind: his spirits are frozen up by this word ‘legitimacy,’ as fish are in a pond: and yet he does say something—for he dotes, and raves, and drivels about national monuments to commemorate the final triumph over national independence and human rights.

Mr. Southey next gives us his succedaneum to the doctrine of Legitimacy; and a precious piece of quackery it is:—

‘Slavery has long ceased to be tolerable in Europe: the remains of feudal oppression are disappearing even in those countries which have improved the least: nor can it be much longer endured, that the extremes of ignorance, wretchedness, and brutality, should exist in the very centre of civilized society. There can be no safety with a populace,half Luddite, half Lazzaroni. Let us not deceive ourselves. We are far from that state in which any thing resembling equality would be possible; but we are arrived at that state in whichthe extremes of inequalityare become intolerable.They are too dangerous, as well as too monstrous, to be borne much longer.Plans which would have led to the utmost horrors of insurrection, have been prevented by the government, and by the enactment of strong, but necessary laws. Let it not, however, be supposed that the disease is healed, because the ulcer may skin over. The remedies by which the body politic can be restored to health, must be slow in their operation. The condition of the populace, physical, moral, and intellectual, must be improved, or aJacquerie, aBellum Servile, sooner or later, will be the result.It is the people at this time who stand in need of reformation, not the government.’

We could not have said most of this better ourselves; and yet he adds—‘The Government must better the condition of the populace; and the first thing necessary is’—to do what—to suppress the liberty of the press, and make Mr. Southey the keeper. That is, the Government must put a stop to the press, in order that they may continue, with perfect impunity, all the other evils complained of, which Mr. Southey says are too dangerous, as well as too monstrous to be borne. Put down the liberty of the press, and leave it to Mr. Southey and the Quarterly Review to remove ‘the extremes of inequality, ignorance, wretchedness, and brutality, existing in the very centre of civilized society,’ and they will remain there long enough. Remove them, and what will become of Mr. Southey and the Quarterly Review? This modest gentleman and mild reformer, proposes to destroy at once the freedom of discussion, to prevent its ultimate loss; to make us free by first making us slaves; to put a gag in the mouths of the people instead of bread; to increase the comforts of the poor by laying on more taxes; to spread abroad the spirit of liberty and independence, by teaching the doctrines of Passive Obedience and Non-resistance; and to encourage the love of peace by crying up the benefits of war, and deprecating the loss of a war-establishment. The borough-mongers will not object to such a helpmate in the cause of reform. In the midst of all this desultory jargon, the author somehow scrapes acquaintance with Mr. Owen, and we find them disputing about the erection of a chapel of ease on a piece of waste ground. ‘To build upon any other foundation than religion, is building upon sand,’ says Mr. Southey, with a sort ofDo-me-goodair, as if in giving his advice he had performed an act of charity. We did not hear Mr. Owen’s answer, but we know that a nod is as good as a wink to that gentleman. Mr. Southey then talks of the Established Church, whom, as well as the Government, in his courtly way, he accuses of having for centuries ‘neglected its first and paramount duty,’ the bettering the condition of the people; of Saving Banks; of colonies of disbanded soldiers and sailors; of columns of Waterloo and Trafalgar; of diminishing the poor-rates, and improving the morals of the people, so that they may live without eating; of the glories of our war-expenditure, and of the necessity of keeping up the same expenditure in time of peace. ‘Never indeed,’ he exclaims, ‘was there a more senseless cry than that which is at this time raised for retrenchment in the public expenditure, as a means of alleviating the present distress.’ [This senseless cry, however, is either an echo of, or was echoed by, the Prince Regent in his Speech from the Throne. Is there no better understanding between Mr. Southey and the Prince Regent’sadvisers?]—‘That distress arises from a great and sudden diminution of employment, occasioned by many coinciding causes, the chief of which is, that the war-expenditure of from forty to fifty millions yearly, has ceased.’—[No, the chief is, that our war-expenses of from forty to fifty millions yearly and for ever, are continued, and that our war-monopoly of trade to pay them with has ceased.]—‘Men are out of employ’—[True.]... ‘the evil is, that too little is spent,’ [Because we have wasted too much.]—‘and as a remedy, we are exhorted to spend less.’ [‘Yes, to waste less, or to spend what we have left in things useful to ourselves, and not in Government gimcracks, whether of peace or war.’] Is it better, does Mr. Southey think, that ten poor men should keep ten pounds a-piece in their pockets, which they would of course spend in food, clothing, fuel, &c. for themselves and families, or that this hundred pounds, that is, ten pounds a-piece, should be paid out of the pockets of these ten poor men intaxes, which, added to Mr. Croker’s salary, would enable him to keep another horse, to pay for the feed, furniture, saddle, bridle, whip, and spurs? We ask Mr. Southey this question, and will put the issue of the whole argument upon the answer to it. The money would be spent equally in either case, say in agriculture, in raising corn for instance, wheat or oats: but the corn raised and paid for by it in the one instance would go into the belly of the poor man and his family: in the other, into the belly of Mr. Croker’s horse. Does that make no difference to Mr. Southey? Answer, Man of Humanity! Or, if Mr. Southey, the Man of Humanity, will not answer, let Mr. Malthus, the Man of God, answer for him! Again, what would go to pay for a new saddle for the Secretary of the Admiralty, would buy the poor man and his family so many pair of shoes in the year; or what would pay for a straw litter for his sleek gelding, would stuff a flock-bed for the poor man’s children! Does not Mr. Southey understand this question yet? We have given him a clue to the whole difference between productive and unproductive labour, between waste and economy, between taxes and no taxes, between a war-expenditure and what ought to be a peace-establishment, between money laid out and debts contracted in gunpowder, in cannon, in ships of war, in scattering death, and money laid out in paying for food, furniture, houses, the comforts, necessaries, and enjoyments of life. Let Mr. Southey take the problem and the solution with him to Italy, study it there amidst a population, half Lazzaroni, half Monks:[38]let him see his error, and return an honest man! But if he will not believe us, let him at leastbelieve himself. In the career of his triumph about our national monuments, he has fallen into one of the most memorable lapses of memory we ever met with. ‘In proportion,’ says he, ‘to their magnificence, also, will be the present benefit, as well as the future good; for they are not like the Egyptian pyramids, to be raised by bondsmen under rigorous taskmasters: the wealth which is taken from the people returns to them again, like vapours which are drawn imperceptibly from the earth, but distributed to it in refreshing dews[39]and fertilizing showers. What bounds could imagination set to the welfare and glory of this island, if a tenth part, or even a twentieth of what the war expenditure has been, were annually applied in improving and creating harbours, in bringing our roads to the best possible state, in colonizing upon our waste lands, in reclaiming fens and conquering tracks from the sea, in encouraging the liberal arts, in erecting churches, in building and endowing schools and colleges, and making war upon physical and moral evil with the whole artillery of wisdom and righteousness, with all the resources of science, and all the ardour of enlightened and enlarged benevolence!’

Well done, Mr. Southey. No man can argue better, when he argues against himself. What! one-twentieth part of this enormous waste of money laid out in war, which has sunk the nation into the lowest state of wretchedness, would, if wisely and beneficially laid out in works of peace, have raised the country to the pinnacle of prosperity and happiness! Mr. Southey in his raptures forgets his war-whoop, and is ready to exclaim withSancho Panza, when the exploits of knight-errantry are over, and he turns all his enthusiasm to a pastoral account, ‘Oh what delicate wooden spoons shall I carve! What crumbs and cream shall I devour!’ Mr. Southey goes on to state, among otheritems, that ‘Government should reform its prisons.’ But Lord Castlereagh, soon after the war-addition to Mr. Croker’s peace-salary, said that this was too expensive. In short, the author sums up all his hopes and views in the following sentences:—‘Government must reform the populace, the people must reform themselves.’ The interpretation of which is, The Government must prevent the lower classes from reading any thing; the middle classes should read nothing but the Quarterly Review. ‘This is the true Reform, and compared with this, all else is,flocci, nauci, nihili, pili.’

The last page of this performance is ‘as arrogant a piece of paper’ as was ever scribbled. We give it as it stands. ‘It will be said of him, (Mr. S.) that in an age of personality, he abstained from satire; and that during the course of his literary life, often as he was assailed, the only occasion on which he evercondescendedto reply, was, whena certain Mr. William Smith’—[What, was the only person worthy of Mr. Southey’s notice a very insignificant person?] ‘insulted him in Parliament with the appellation of Renegade. On that occasion, it will be said, that he vindicated himself,as it became him to do: [How so? Mr. Southey is only a literary man, and neither a commoner nor a peer of the realm] ‘and treated his calumniatorwith just and memorable severity. Whether it shall be added, that Mr. William Smith redeemed his own character, by coming forward with honest manliness, and acknowledging that he had spoken rashly and unjustly, concerns himself, but is not of the slightest importance to me.

Robert Southey.’

We do not think this conclusion is very like what Mr. Southey somewhere wishes the conclusion of his life to resemble—‘the high leaves upon the holly tree.’ Mr. Southey’s asperities do not wear off, as he grows older. We are always disposed to quarrel with ourselves for quarrelling with him, and yet we cannot help it, whenever we come in contact with his writings. We met him unexpectedly the other day in St. Giles’s, (it was odd we should meethimthere) were sorry we had passed him without speaking to an old friend, turned and looked after him for some time, as to a tale of other times—sighing, as we walked on,Alas poor Southey!‘We saw in him a painful hieroglyphic of humanity; a sad memento of departed independence; a striking instance of the rise and fall of patriot bards!’ In the humour we were in, we could have written a better epitaph, for him than he has done for himself. We went directly and bought his Letter to Mr. W. Smith, which appeared the same day as himself, and this at once put an end to our sentimentality.

Morning Chronicle,June 30, 1817.

Lord Castlereagh, in the debate some evenings ago, appeared in a new character, and mingled with his usual stock of political common places, some lively moral paradoxes, after a new French pattern. According to his Lordship’s comprehensive and liberal views, the liberty and independence of nations are best supported abroad by the point of the bayonet; and morality, religion, and social order, are best defended at home by spies and informers. It is a pretty system, and worthy of itself from first to last. The Noble Lord in the blue ribbon took the characters of Castles and Oliver under the protection of his blushing honours and elegant casuistry, and lamented that by the idle clamour raised against such characters,Gentlemenwere deterred from entering into the honourable, useful, and profitableprofession of Government Spies. Perhaps this piece of intellectual gallantry on the part of the Noble Lord, was not quite so disinterested as it at first appears. There might be something of fellow-feeling in it. The obloquy which lights on the underlings in such cases, sometimes glances indirectly on their principals and patrons; nor do they wipe it off by becoming their defenders. Lord Castlereagh may say withLingoin the play, who boasts ‘that he is not a scholar, but a master of scholars,’ that he is not a spy, but a creator of spies and informers—not a receiver, but a distributor of blood-money—not a travelling companion and scurvy accomplice in the forging and uttering of sham treasons and accommodation plots, but head of the town-firm established for that purpose—not the dupe or agent of the treason hatched by others, but chief mover and instigator of the grand plot for increasing the power of the Sovereign, by hazarding the safety of his person. Lord Castlereagh recommended the character of his accomplices, as spies and informers, to the respect and gratitude of the country and the House; he lamented the prejudice entertained against this species of patriotic service, as hinderinggentlemenfrom resorting to it as a liberal and honourable profession. One of these delicious protegés of ministerial gratitude, was, it seems, at one time a distributor of forged notes, and gained the reward promised by Act of Parliament, by hanging his accomplices. Could not his Lordship’s nice notions of honour relax a little farther, and recommend the legal traffic in bank notes and blood-money, as a new opening to honourable ambition and profitable industry? Castles’s wife was also the keeper of a house of ill fame. Could not his Lordship, with the hand of a master, have drawn a veil of delicacy over this slight stain in his character, and redeemed a profession, not without high example to justify it, from the vulgar obloquy that attends it? We are afraid his Lordship is but half an adept in these sort of lax paradoxes, and that Peachum, Jonathan Wild, and Count Fathom, are much honester teachers of that kind of transcendental morality than he. This kind of revolutionary jargon must have sounded oddly in the ears of some of his Lordship’s hearers. Mr. Wynne, who dreads all re-action so much, must have looked particularly argute at this innovation in the parliamentary theory of moral sentiments. What would the country gentlemen say to it? One would think Lord Lascelles’s hat, that broad brimmed monument of true old English respectability, must have cowered and doubled down in dog’s ears at the sound! What will the ardent and superannuated zeal of thatpreux Chevalier, the Editor ofThe Day and New Times, say to this stain upon the innate honour and purity of legitimacy, to this new proof that ‘the age of chivalry is gone for ever, and that of sophisters, economists, andcalculators, has succeeded!’ What will John Bull, who has been crammed these twenty-five years with the draff and husks of concrete prejudices, unsifted, unbolted, in their rawest state, say to the analytical distinctions, to the refinedpolice-morality of the Noble Lord? We might consider his harangue on the public services and private virtues of spies and informers, according to the utility-doctrine of modern philosophy, as forming an era in the history of English loyalty and Parliamentary pliability. What! Is it meant, after building up the present system of power and influence on the accumulated pile of our political prejudices, to extend and strengthen it, by undermining all our moral sentiments and national habits? Yet we are told, that there is no imputation on themoralcharacter of Oliver! We wonder Mr. Wilberforce did not suggest that hisreligiouscharacter also remained unimpeached, except, indeed, that he had been guilty of subornation of treason on the Sabbath-day. According to our present catechism of legitimacy, to be acat’s-pawis to be virtuous—is to be moral—is to be pious—is to be loyal—is to be a patriot—is to be what Castlesis, and Castlereaghapproves!—This subject naturally leads us into low company and low allusions. As, after Fielding’s Hero had finished his speech onhonourhis friend theCountpronounced him a Great Prig, so, after Lord Castlereagh’s speech of Monday evening, we can no longer refuse to consider him a Great Man, in the sense of the philosophical historian; that is to say, a man who has a very great regard for himself, and a very great contempt for the prejudices and feelings of the rest of mankind.

July 15, 1817.

The debate in the House of Commons on Mr. Brougham’s motion took a very spirited, and rather personal turn. We do not think Lord Castlereagh was quite successful in rebutting the principal charges brought against his foreign and domestic policy. With respect to Genoa, for instance, and the late arbitrary contributions levied on British merchants there, his Lordship seemed to say that he had but one object, and that in this respect his conduct had been uniformly consistent while abroad, namely, to protect legitimacy, and that the rights and property of British subjects were accordingly left to shift for themselves, as things beneath his notice. This answer will hardly satisfy most of our readers. He considered it an illiberal and injurious policy to attempt to force our exclusive commercial interests upon foreign nations. But is there no alternative in hisLordship’s mind between bullying and domineering over other nations, and tamely crouching under every species of insult or act of pillage they may wantonly exercise upon us? We have put down the colossal power of Bonaparte. Is every ‘petty tyrant’ who has succeeded him, to brave us with impunity, lest a word of remonstrance, a whisper of complaint, should rouse their vengeance? Are we not to mention their names, lest these new Gods of the earth, these modernDii Minores, should hear us! His Lordship also appears to despair of the restoration of peace in Spanish America. If he includes in the idea ofpeacethe quiet re-establishment of the tyranny of the old Government, we are happy to agree with him.

With respect to the changes which have taken place at home, his Lordship failed in making the necessity for them clear to our understandings. We cannot assent to the accuracy of his statements, or the soundness of his logic. He has suspended the laws of the country to save us from the danger of anarchy! We deny the danger, and deprecate the remedy. If ministers could afford to fan the flame of insurrection, toalarmthe country into a surrender of its liberties, we contend that a danger that could be thus tampered with, thus made a convenient pretence for seizing a power beyond the law to put it down, might have been put downwithout a power beyond the law. If a Government’s conspiring against itself were a sufficient ground for arming it with arbitrary power, no country could for a moment be safe against ministerial treachery and encroachment, against real despotism founded on pretended disaffection. Government would be in perpetual convulsions and affected hysterics, like a fine lady who wants to domineer over her credulous husband. We deny that disaffection existed, except that kind which arose from extreme distress. Hunger is not disloyalty. Nor can we admit that a Government’s having reduced a country to a state of unparalleled distress, and consequent desperation, is a reason for givingcarte-blancheto the Government, and putting the people under military execution. At this rate, the worse the Government, the more firmly it ought to be rooted: the greater the abuse of confidence, the more blind and unlimited the confidence ought to be: and any administration need only bring a nation to the brink of ruin, in order to have a right to plunge it into the depths of slavery. It is easy to keep the peace with the sword;—more flattering to the pride of power to crush resistance to oppression, than to remove the causes of it. To reduce a people to the alternative of rebellion or of arbitrary sway, does not require the talents of a great statesman. If Lord Castlereagh claims the merit of having reduced us to thatalternative, we shall not dispute it with him: whatever may be the result, we cannot thank him.

His Lordship might, however, have made good his retreat, with a decent orderly appearance, if he had not chosen to go out of his way to take up a Spy behind him on his new metaphysical charger, and to ride the high horse over all those, who are not the fast friends and staunch admirers of that profession, as traitors andno true men. Sir Francis Burdett, not relishing this assault of the master and man, pulled off the Squire, and rolling him in the mud, pelted him so unmercifully with Irish evidence and musty affidavits of his friends and relations, that his gallant patron, seeing the plight he was in, dismounted, and was condescending enough to acknowledge, that ‘cruelty was in every species detestable,’ and that ‘he lamented to think that there were miscreants in human nature capable of committing crime for the love of reward’; sentiments not new indeed, but new in his Lordship’s mouth. The country gentlemen must have felt relieved, and Lord Lascelles’s hat have recovered its primitive shape! The House of Commons is no dupe; Lord Castlereagh no driveller. Would he then seriously persuade them, that the Spy hanged his old friends and accomplices out of pure love to his country, and disinterested friendship to his Lordship? We would advise the noble Lord in the blue ribbon tocuthis parliamentary connexion with his police acquaintance at once. The thing cannot answer; it is against decorum. He might as well introduce his scavenger as a person of fashion at Carlton-House, as attempt to pass off hisSpyas a gentleman, and a man of honour, any where else! The gentlemen-ushers would turn up their noses at one of his Lordship’s necessary appendages, and the moral sense of the English nation turns with disgust from the other, when forced upon it as abeau morceauof morality, with thesauce picquantof ministerial panegyric! We were glad to find the former Secretary for Ireland reprobating the practice of flogging to extract evidence, as ‘a most wicked and unwarrantable piece of torture’; a confession which seemed to be extorted from his Lordship by the impression made by the reading of some of Mr. Finnerty’s affidavits, as they are called, though they are no more Mr. Finnerty’s affidavits, who procured them, than they are Mr. Bennet’s, who read them. Every thing relating to this subject is particularly interesting at this moment, when the same power is vested in the same hands in this country, that was wielded twenty years ago in Ireland—not indeed as a precedent to the English government, but as a warning to the English people. We give no opinion on the truth or falsehood of the allegations contained in the affidavits, but we do say, that the noble Secretary reasoned very badly on the subject. He saysthat Mr. Finnerty is not a very loyal man, that is, he is not very strongly attached to his Lordship’s person or government, and therefore neither Mr. Finnerty, nor any person taking an oath in an Irish court of justice, reflecting on his Lordship’s administration, is to be believed. Mr. Finnerty published an account of the proceedings on Orr’s trial, which was deemed a libel, and therefore the whole history of the Irish rebellion and of the year 1798 is a fable. Lord Castlereagh would not consent to quash his prosecution of Mr. Finnerty on this ground some years ago, because he would not shun inquiry, and yet the affidavits were not suffered to be read in court, and his lordship deprecates their production in parliament. He thinks it hard that he must be called on to prove a negative, when others swear positively to the affirmative. Accusation against his Lordship is to pass not for a proof of guilt but innocence, and his inability to refute the charge only calls for a greater degree of candid interpretation and implicit faith in his Lordship’s word. Insinuation only requires confidence to repel it—proof more confidence—conviction unlimited confidence. Whether the things ever happened or no, they are to be equally buried in eternal silence in Mr. Finnerty’s ‘disloyal breast’: not a tittle of evidence is to be suffered to escape from the budget of affidavits which he has got together by forbidden means. His Lordship’s Irish administration is to be inscrutable as another Providence, secret as another Inquisition; the English Parliament are to put the broad seal of their sanction upon it! It was certainly unlucky at this juncture of the debate, that Mr. W. Smith should have started up with the case of Mr. Judkin Fitzgerald, who (it seems, by his own account of his services, not from any affidavits against him) had been most active in inflicting this ‘cruel and unwarrantable species of torture,’ and was made a Baronet in consequence.

‘And struts Sir Judkin, an exceeding knave!’

The unconsciousness of the Irish government exceeds every thing. They are not only ‘innocent of the knowledge, till they applaud the deed,’ but ignorant of it, after they have applauded it. It is no wonder that the fixed air and volatile spirit of Mr. Canning’s wit frothed up at this indiscreet mention of Sir Judkin, and that he wished to ‘bury him quick,’ under the artificial flowers of his oratory.The dead tell no tales—of the dead or the living! Mr. Canning twitted Mr. W. Smith with attacking the dead, because ‘he had found that the absent could answer.’ Does this allude to the Laureate? If so, let Mr. Canning call for more flowers, and lay him by the side of Sir Judkin. This allusion to the answer toMr. W. Smith is, however, remarkably candid, as Mr. Southey declares in it that he never thought Mr. Canning worth an answer. He may now return the compliment in kind, by inscribing the next edition of his ‘Inscriptions’ to the author of the ‘Anti-Jacobin.’

‘O silly sheep, come ye to seek the lamb here of the wolf!’

July 17, 1817.

A writer in a Morning Paper, a few days ago, commented very wisely and wittily on the situation of the State Prisoners under the Suspension of the Habeas Corpus, as a warning to the people of England not to meddle in politics. He seemed infinitely amused with the inability of these poor devils ‘to get out,’ though he seemed to know no reason why they should be kept in. ‘One of these gentlemen must have a flute,forsooth!’ he exclaims with a very hysterical air, as if it was a good joke truly for a man to have a flute taken from him, and not to be able to get it back again.[40]Even Mr. Hiley Addington allows that Evans might have his flute again, if he did not use it. If this writer had himself been in the habit of blowing a great war-trumpet, and wished to make as much noise as ever with it in time of peace, he might not like to have it taken from him. He, however, consoles Mr. Evans for the loss of his flute, with the very old and original observation, ‘That the people bear the same relation to the Government, as the sheep to the shepherd, and that the sheep ought not to dictate to the shepherd, or remonstrate against what he does for their good.’ Now the sheep are not usually in the habit of dictating, or remonstrating on such occasions, except in that sort of language whichLawyer ScoutadvisesSheep-faceto imitate beforeJustice Mittimus, and to which this Professional Gentleman seems to wish the State Prisoners to resort in their intercourse with the Home Department. The fleecy fools, whom the writer holds up as models of wisdom and spirit to his countrymen, do, to be sure, make a terrible noise at a sheep-shearing, and a short struggle when they feelthe knife at their throats. But our allegorist, we suspect, would regard these as Jacobinical, or Ultra-Jacobinical symptoms. He would have the people stand still to be fleeced, and have their throats cut, whenever Government pleases. He has in his eye the sublimest example of self-devotion: ‘As a lamb, he was led to the slaughter: as a sheep before the shearers is dumb, so he opened not his mouth.’ We cannot understand the point of comparison in thissheep-bitingargument. If the people are really to be as silly, and as submissive as sheep, they will be worse treated. A flock of sheep pass their time very comfortably on Salisbury plain, biting the short sweet grass, or lying with ‘meek mouths ruminant,’ till they are fit to send to market: we have sometimes heard them fill the air with a troublous cry, as they pass down Oxford-street, to Smithfield, and the next morning it is all over with them. But Governments have not the same reasons for taking care of the people, ‘poor, poor dumb mouths,’ they do not ordinarily sell them or eat them. The comparison would be much nearer to beasts of burden, asses, or ‘camels in their war,’ who, as Shakspeare expresses it,—

——‘have their provenderOnly for bearing burthens, and sore blowsFor sinking under them.’

——‘have their provender

Only for bearing burthens, and sore blows

For sinking under them.’

However edifying and attractive these kind of examples of simplicity, patience, and good behaviour, taken from sheep, oxen, and asses, must be to the people, they are rather invidious, something worse than equivocal, as they relate to the designs and good-will of the Government towards them. This writer indeed commits himself very strangely on this subject, or, as the phrase is,lets the cat out of the bag, without intending it. In a broadside which he published against the author of the ‘Political Register,’ he says with infinitenaiveté:—‘Mr. Cobbett had been sentenced to two years’ imprisonment for a libel; and during the time that he was in Newgate, it was discovered that he had been secretly in treaty with Government to avoid the sentence passed upon him; and that he had proposed to certain of the Agents of Ministers, that if they would let him off, they might make what future use they pleased of him:he would entirely betray the cause of the people: he would either write or not write, orwrite against them, as he had once done before, just as Ministers thought proper. To this, however, it was replied, that “Cobbett had written on too many sides already to be worth a groat for the service of Government,” and he accordingly suffered his confinement.’

This passage is at least worth a groat: it lets us into the Editor’s real opinion of what it is that alone makes any writer ‘worth a groat for the service of Government,’ viz. his being able and willingentirely to betray the cause of the people; and, we should hope, may operate as an antidote to any future cant about sheep and shepherds!

The same consistent patriot and loyalist, the Sir Robert Filmer of the day, asked some time ago—‘Where is the madman that believes the doctrine of Divine Right? Where is the madman that asserts that doctrine?’ As no one else was found to do it, he himself, the other day, took up his own challenge, and affirmed, with a resolute air, that—‘LouisXVIII.had the same right to the throne of France, independently of his merits or conduct, that Mr. Coke, of Norfolk, had to his estate at Holkham.’ He did not say whether JamesII.had the same right to the throne of England, independently of his conduct or merits, that LouisXVIII.has to the throne of France: but the inference of course is that the people of France belong to LouisXVIII.just as the live stock on a farm belongs to the owner of it, or as the slaves in the West Indies belong to the owners of the plantation, and that mankind are neither more or less than a herd of slaves, the property of kings. This is at least as good a thing as the doctrine of divine right. We do not wonder that the writer, after this ‘delicious declaration,’ thought it proper to apologize to his court-readers for expressing his approbation of the abolition of the Slave Trade, as indirectly compromising those principles of legitimacy, which make one part of the species the property of another, and which we have seen so successfully established in Europe as the basis of liberty, humanity, and social order!

July 19, 1817.

The Opposition, it seems, with Mr. Brougham at their head, ‘attack all that is valuable in our institutions.’ So says Lord Castlereagh? and, to make the thing the more incredible, so saysThe Courier! They attack Sir Judkin Fitzgerald and the use of the torture; andthereforethey attack all that is valuable in our institutions. They attack the system of spies and informers; and therefore they attack all that is valuable in our institutions. They object to the moral characters of such men as Castles and Oliver; and therefore they attack all that is most respectable in the country. They consider Lord Sidmouth, who is ‘to acquaint us with the perfect spy o’ th’ time,’ as no conjurer, treat his circular letters anditinerant incendiaries with as little ceremony as respect; and therefore they are hostile to all that is venerable in our constituted authorities. They do not approve of the Suspension of the Habeas Corpus, of Standing Armies, and Rotten Boroughs; and therefore they would overturn all that is most valuable in the Constitution. They say that Lord Castlereagh was connected with the measures of the Irish government in the year 1798; and they are said to hold a language ‘grossly libellous.’ They say that they do not wish the same system to be introduced by his Lordship in this country; and their principles are denounced as ‘of a decidedly revolutionary character.’ They think of the present administration as Mr. Canning formerly thought of it, and they think of Mr. Canning as all the world think. Is that all? Oh no! They speak against the renewal of the Income Tax; and this, in the opinion of some persons, is attacking what is more valuable than all our other institutions put together! For our own parts, our political confession of faith on this subject is short: we neither consider Lord Castlereagh as the Constitution, norThe Courieras the Country.

But if, after all, and in spite of our teeth, we should be forced to acknowledge that Sir Judkin Fitzgerald and the use of the torture, that the system of spies and informers, that Lord Sidmouth’s sagacity, circulars, and travelling delegates, that arbitrary imprisonment and solitary confinement, the Suspension of the Habeas Corpus, Standing Armies, and Rotten Boroughs, Lord Castlereagh’s past measures or future designs, Mr. Canning’s love of liberty, and Mr. Vansittart’s hankerings after the Income Tax, are all that is leftvaluable in our institutions, or respectable in the country, then we must say, that the more effectually the Opposition ‘attack all that is valuable in such institutions,’ the more we shall thank them; and that the sooner we can get rid of all that is ‘most respectable’ in such a system, the less occasion we shall have to blush for the Country.

By S. T. Coleridge.

August 2, 1817.

‘The Monthly Magazine tells us that this country has occasioned the death of 5,800,000 persons in Calabria, Russia, Poland, Germany, France, Spain, and Portugal. This country, reader, England! our country, our great, our glorious, our beloved country, according tothis Magazine, has been the guilty cause of all this carnage!’—So saysMr. Southeyapudthe Quarterly Review, 1817. Thus sings Mr. Coleridge, in his ‘Fears in Solitude,’ 1798:—

‘We have offended, oh! my countrymen!We have offended very grievously,And been most tyrannous.——Thankless too for peace;(Peace long preserv’d by fleets and perilous seas)Secure from actual warfare, we have lov’dTo swell the war-whoop, passionate for war!Alas! for ages ignorant of allIts ghastlier workings (famine or blue plague,Battle, or siege, or flight through wintry snows),We, this whole people, have been clamorousFor war and bloodshed; animating sports,The which we pay for as a thing to talk of,Spectators and not combatants! No guessAnticipative of a wrong unfelt,No speculation on contingency.However dim and vague, too vague and dimTo yield a justifying cause; and forth(Stuff’d out with big preamble, holy names,And adjurations of the God in Heaven),We send our mandates for the certain deathOf thousands and ten thousands! Boys and girls,And women, that would groan to see a childPull off an insect’s leg, all read of war,The best amusement for our morning’s meal!The poor wretch, who has learnt his only prayersFor curses, who knows scarcely words enoughTo ask a blessing from his Heavenly Father,Becomes a fluent phraseman, absoluteAnd technical in victories and defeat,And all our dainty terms for fratricide;Terms which we trundle smoothly o’er our tongues,Like mere abstractions, empty sounds to whichWe join no feeling and attach no form!As if the soldier died without a wound;As if the fibres of this godlike frameWere gored without a pang; as if the wretchWho fell in battle, doing bloody deeds,Pass’d off to heaven, translated, and not killed;As though he had no wife to pine for him—No God to judge him! Therefore, evil daysAre coming on us, O my countrymen!And what if all-avenging Providence,Strong and retributive, should make us knowThe meaning of our words; force us to feelThe desolation and the agonyOf our fierce doings!I have told,O Britons! O my brethren! I have toldMost bitter truth, but without bitterness.Nor deem my zeal or factious or mistimed:For never can true courage dwell with them,Who playing tricks with conscience, dare not lookAt their own vices. We have been too longDupes of a deep delusion!—Others, meanwhile,Dote with a mad idolatry; and allWho will not fall before their images,And yield them worship, they are enemiesEven of their country!Such have I been deem’d.[41]—S. T. C.

‘We have offended, oh! my countrymen!

We have offended very grievously,

And been most tyrannous.

——Thankless too for peace;

(Peace long preserv’d by fleets and perilous seas)

Secure from actual warfare, we have lov’d

To swell the war-whoop, passionate for war!

Alas! for ages ignorant of all

Its ghastlier workings (famine or blue plague,

Battle, or siege, or flight through wintry snows),

We, this whole people, have been clamorous

For war and bloodshed; animating sports,

The which we pay for as a thing to talk of,

Spectators and not combatants! No guess

Anticipative of a wrong unfelt,

No speculation on contingency.

However dim and vague, too vague and dim

To yield a justifying cause; and forth

(Stuff’d out with big preamble, holy names,

And adjurations of the God in Heaven),

We send our mandates for the certain death

Of thousands and ten thousands! Boys and girls,

And women, that would groan to see a child

Pull off an insect’s leg, all read of war,

The best amusement for our morning’s meal!

The poor wretch, who has learnt his only prayers

For curses, who knows scarcely words enough

To ask a blessing from his Heavenly Father,

Becomes a fluent phraseman, absolute

And technical in victories and defeat,

And all our dainty terms for fratricide;

Terms which we trundle smoothly o’er our tongues,

Like mere abstractions, empty sounds to which

We join no feeling and attach no form!

As if the soldier died without a wound;

As if the fibres of this godlike frame

Were gored without a pang; as if the wretch

Who fell in battle, doing bloody deeds,

Pass’d off to heaven, translated, and not killed;

As though he had no wife to pine for him—

No God to judge him! Therefore, evil days

Are coming on us, O my countrymen!

And what if all-avenging Providence,

Strong and retributive, should make us know

The meaning of our words; force us to feel

The desolation and the agony

Of our fierce doings!

I have told,

O Britons! O my brethren! I have told

Most bitter truth, but without bitterness.

Nor deem my zeal or factious or mistimed:

For never can true courage dwell with them,

Who playing tricks with conscience, dare not look

At their own vices. We have been too long

Dupes of a deep delusion!—Others, meanwhile,

Dote with a mad idolatry; and all

Who will not fall before their images,

And yield them worship, they are enemies

Even of their country!

Such have I been deem’d.[41]—

S. T. C.

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