attempt to force our exclusive commercial interests upon foreign nations. But is there no alternative in his Lordship'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 modern Dii Minores, should hear us? His Lordship also appears to despair of the restoration of peace in Spanish America. If he includes in the idea of peace the 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, to alarm the 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 down without 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 Government's having reduced a country to a state of unparalleled distress, and consequent desperation, is a reason for giving carte

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blanche to the Government, and putting the people under mili tary 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 that alternative, 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 and no 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 to cut his 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 his Spy as 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 a beau morceau of morality, with the sauce picquant of 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 says that 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. Filmerty 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

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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. Iusinuation 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 i 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 to Mr. 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.* 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 which Lawyer Scout advices Sheep-face to imitate before Justice Mittimus, and to which this Professional Gentleman seems to wish the State Prisoners to resort in their

It is the making light of the distresses and complaints of our victims, because we have them in our power, that is the principle of all cruelty and tyranny. Our pride takes a pleasure in the sufferings our malice has inflicted; every aggravation of their case is a provocation to new injuries and insults; and their pretensions to justice or mercy become ridiculous in proportion to their hopelessness of redress. It was thus that Mother Brownrigg whipped her prentices to death; and in the same manner our facetious Editor would work himself up to apply the thumb-screw to any one who was unable to resist the application, with a few "forsooths," and other such "comfit-makers wives' oaths."