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 with Sancho 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 other items, 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 ab

stained from satire: and that during the course of his literary life, often as he was assailed, the only occasion on which he ever condescended to reply, was, when a 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 calumniator with 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 meet him there) 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.

R

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, Gentlemen were deterred from entering into the honourable, useful, and profitable profession 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 with Lingo in 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 treasons 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 hindering gentlemen from 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 that preux Chevalier, the Editor of The 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, and calculators, 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 refined police-morality of the Noble Lord? We might consider his harangue on the public services and private virtues of spies and informers, according to the utilitydoctrine 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 influ

ence 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 the moral character of Oliver! We wonder Mr. Wilberforce did not suggest that his religious character also remained unimpeached, except, indeed, that he had been guilty of subornation of treason on the Sabbath-day. According to our present cate chism of legitimacy, to be a cat's-paw is to be virtuous is to be moral-is to be pious-is to be loyal-is to be a patriot-is to be what Castles is, and Castlereagh approves !-This subject naturally leads us into low company and low allusions. As, after Fielding's Hero had finished his speech on honour, his friend the Count pronounced 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