The Poetical Works of Thomas Moore :: :: University of Virginia Library

Νυν δ' απανθ' ωσπερ εξ αγορας εκπεπραται ταυτα: αντεισηκται δε αντι τουτων, υφ' ων απολωλε και νενοσηκεν η Ελλας. Ταυτα δ' εστι τι; ζηλος, ει τις ειληφε τι: γελως αν ομολογη: συγγνωμη τοις ελεγχομενοις: μισος, αν τουτοις τις επιτιμα: ταλλα παντα, οσα εκ του δωροδοκειν ηρτηται. Demosth. Philipp. iii.

Boast on, my friend—though stript of all beside,
Thy struggling nation still retains her pride :
That pride, which once in genuine glory woke
When Marlborough fought, and brilliant St. John spoke;
That pride which still, by time and shame unstung,
Outlives even Wh---tel---cke's sword and H*wk*sb'ry's tongue!
Boast on, my friend, while in this humbled isle
Where Honour mourns and Freedom fears to smile,

Where the bright light of England's fame is known
But by the shadow o'er our fortunes thrown;
Where, doom'd ourselves to nought but wrongs and slights ,
We hear you boast of Britain's glorious rights,
As wretched slaves, that under hatches lie,
Hear those on deck extol the sun and sky!
Boast on, while wandering through my native haunts,
I coldly listen to thy patriot vaunts;
And feel, though close our wedded countries twine,
More sorrow for my own than pride from thine.

Yet pause a moment—and if truths severe
Can find an inlet to that courtly ear,
Which hears no news but W---rd's gazetted lies,
And loves no politics in rhyme but Pye's,—
If aught can please thee but the good old saws
Of “Church and State,” and “William's matchless laws,”
And “Acts and Rights of glorious Eighty-eight,”—
Things, which though now a century out of date,
Still serve to ballast, with convenient words,
A few crank arguments for speeching lords ,—
Turn, while I tell how England's freedom found,
Where most she look'd for life, her deadliest wound;

How brave she struggled, while her foe was seen,
How faint since Influence lent that foe a screen;
How strong o'er James and Popery she prevail'd,
How weakly fell, when Whigs and gold assail'd.

While kings were poor, and all those schemes unknown
Which drain the people, to enrich the throne;
Ere yet a yielding Commons had supplied
Those chains of gold by which themselves are tied;

Then proud Prerogative, untaught to creep
With bribery's silent foot on Freedom's sleep,
Frankly avow'd his bold enslaving plan,
And claim'd a right from God to trample man!
But Luther's schism had too much rous'd mankind
For Hampden's truths to linger long behind;
Nor then, when king-like popes had fallen so low,
Could pope-like kings escape the levelling blow.
That ponderous sceptre (in whose place we bow
To the light talisman of influence now),
Too gross, too visible to work the spell
Which modern power performs, in fragments fell:
In fragments lay, till, patch'd and painted o'er
With fleurs-de-lys, it shone and scourged once more.

'Twas then, my friend, thy kneeling nation quaff'd
Long, long and deep, the churchman's opiate draught
Of passive, prone obedience—then took flight
All sense of man's true dignity and right;

And Britons slept so sluggish in their chain,
That Freedom's watch-voice call'd almost in vain.
Oh England! England! what a chance was thine,
When the last tyrant of that ill-starr'd line
Fled from his sullied crown, and left thee free
To found thy own eternal liberty!
How nobly high, in that propitious hour,
Might patriot hands have rais'd the triple tower

Of British freedom, on a rock divine
Which neither force could storm nor treachery mine!
But no—the luminous, the lofty plan,
Like mighty Babel, seem'd too bold for man;
The curse of jarring tongues again was given
To thwart a work which raised men nearer heaven.
While Tories marr'd what Whigs had scarce begun,
While Whigs undid what Whigs themselves had done ,

The hour was lost, and William, with a smile,
Saw Freedom weeping o'er the unfinish'd pile!

Hence all the ills you suffer,—hence remain
Such galling fragments of that feudal chain ,

Whose links, around you by the Norman flung,
Though loosed and broke so often, still have clung.
Hence sly Prerogative, like Jove of old,
Has turn'd his thunder into showers of gold,
Whose silent courtship wins securer joys,
Taints by degrees, and ruins without noise.

While parliaments, no more those sacred things
Which make and rule the destiny of kings,

Like loaded dice by ministers are thrown,
And each new set of sharpers cog their own.
Hence the rich oil, that from the Treasury steals,
Drips smooth o'er all the Constitution's wheels,
Giving the old machine such pliant play ,
That Court and Commons jog one joltless way,
While Wisdom trembles for the crazy car,
So gilt, so rotten, carrying fools so far;
And the duped people, hourly doom'd to pay
The sums that bribe their liberties away ,—

Like a young eagle, who has lent his plume
To fledge the shaft by which he meets his doom,—
See their own feathers pluck'd, to wing the dart
Which rank corruption destines for their heart!

But soft! methinks I hear thee proudly say,
“What! shall I listen to the impious lay,
“That dares, with Tory licence, to profane
“The bright bequests of William's glorious reign?
“Shall the great wisdom of our patriot sires,
“Whom H*wks*b---y quotes and savoury B---rch admires,
“Be slander'd thus? shall honest St---le agree
“With virtuous R*se to call us pure and free,
“Yet fail to prove it? Shall our patent pair
“Of wise state-poets waste their words in air,
“And P---e unheeded breathe his prosperous strain,
“And C*nn*ng take the people's sense in vain?”

The people!—ah, that Freedom's form should stay
Where Freedom's spirit long hath pass'd away!

That a false smile should play around the dead,
And flush the features when the soul hath fled!
When Rome had lost her virtue with her rights,
When her foul tyrant sat on Capreæ's heights
Amid his ruffian spies, and doom'd to death
Each noble name they blasted with their breath,—

Even then, (in mockery of that golden time,
When the Republic rose revered, sublime,
And her proud sons, diffused from zone to zone,
Gave kings to every nation but their own,)
Even then the senate and the tribunes stood,
Insulting marks, to show how high the flood
Of Freedom flow'd, in glory's by-gone day,
And how it ebb'd,—for ever ebb'd away!

Look but around—though yet a tyrant's sword
Nor haunts our sleep nor glitters o'er our board,
Though blood be better drawn, by modern quacks,
With Treasury leeches than with sword or axe;
Yet say, could even a prostrate tribune's power,
Or a mock senate, in Rome's servile hour,
Insult so much the claims, the rights of man,
As doth that fetter'd mob, that free divan,

Of noble tools and honourable knaves,
Of pension'd patriots and privileged slaves;—
That party-colour'd mass, which nought can warm
But rank corruption's heat—whose quicken'd swarm
Spread their light wings in Bribery's golden sky,
Buzz for a period, lay their eggs, and die;—
That greedy vampire, which from Freedom's tomb
Comes forth, with all the mimicry of bloom
Upon its lifeless cheek, and sucks and drains
A people's blood to feed its putrid veins!

Thou start'st, my friend, at picture drawn so dark—
“Is there no light?” thou ask'st—“no lingering spark
“Of ancient fire to warm us? Lives there none,
“To act a Marvell's part?” —alas! not one.
To place and power all public spirit tends,
In place and power all public spirit ends ;

Like hardy plants, that love the air and sky,
When out, 'twill thrive—but taken in, 'twill die!

Not bolder truths of sacred Freedom hung
From Sidney's pen or burn'd on Fox's tongue,
Than upstart Whigs produce each market-night,
While yet their conscience, as their purse, is light;
While debts at home excite their care for those
Which, dire to tell, their much-lov'd country owes,
And loud and upright, till their prize be known,
They thwart the King's supplies to raise their own.
But bees, on flowers alighting, cease their hum—
So, settling upon places, Whigs grow dumb.
And, though most base is he who, 'neath the shade
Of Freedom's ensign plies corruption's trade,
And makes the sacred flag he dares to show
His passport to the market of her foe,

Yet, yet, I own, so venerably dear
Are Freedom's grave old anthems to my ear,
That I enjoy them, though by traitors sung,
And reverence Scripture even from Satan's tongue.
Nay, when the constitution has expired,
I'll have such men, like Irish wakers, hired
To chant old “Habeas Corpus” by its side,
And ask, in purchas'd ditties, why it died?

See yon smooth lord, whom nature's plastic pains
Would seem to've fashion'd for those Eastern reigns
When eunuchs flourish'd, and such nerveless things
As men rejected were the chosen of kings ;—
Even he, forsooth, (oh fraud, of all the worst!)
Dared to assume the patriot's name at first—

Thus Pitt began, and thus begin his apes;
Thus devils, when first raised, take pleasing shapes
But oh, poor Ireland! if revenge be sweet
For centuries of wrong, for dark deceit
And withering insult—for the Union thrown
Into thy bitter cup , when that alone
Of slavery's draught was wanting —if for this
Revenge be sweet, thou hast that dæmon's bliss;

For, sure, 'tis more than hell's revenge to see
That England trusts the men who've ruin'd thee;—
That, in these awful days, when every hour
Creates some new or blasts some ancient power,
When proud Napoleon, like th' enchanted shield
Whose light compell'd each wondering foe to yield,

With baleful lustre blinds the brave and free,
And dazzles Europe into slavery,—
That, in this hour, when patriot zeal should guide,
When Mind should rule, and—Fox should not have died,
All that devoted England can oppose
To enemies made fiends and friends made foes,
Is the rank refuse, the despised remains
Of that unpitying power, whose whips and chains
Drove Ireland first to turn, with harlot glance,
Tow'rds other shores, and woo th' embrace of France;—
Those hack'd and tainted tools, so foully fit
For the grand artisan of mischief, P*tt,
So useless ever but in vile employ,
So weak to save, so vigorous to destroy—
Such are the men that guard thy threaten'd shore,
Oh England! sinking England! boast no more.

Angli suos ac sua omnia impense mirantur; cæteras nationes despectui habent. —Barclay (as quoted in one of Dryden's prefaces).

England began very early to feel the effects of cruelty towards her dependencies. “The severity of her government (says Macpherson) contributed more to deprive her of the continental dominions of the family of Plantagenet than the arms of France.” —See his History, vol. i.

“By the total reduction of the kingdom of Ireland in 1691 (says Burke), the ruin of the native Irish, and in a great measure, too, of the first races of the English, was completely accomplished. The new English interest was settled with as solid a stability as any thing in human affairs can look for. All the penal laws of that unparalleled code of oppression, which were made after the last event, were manifestly the effects of national hatred and scorn towards a conquered people, whom the victors delighted to trample upon, and were not at all afraid to provoke.” Yet this is the era to which the wise Common Council of Dublin refer us for “invaluable blessings,” &c.

It never seems to occur to those orators and addressers who round off so many sentences and paragraphs with the Bill of Rights, the Act of Settlement, &c., that most of the provisions which these Acts contained for the preservation of parliamentary independence have been long laid aside as romantic and troublesome. I never meet, I confess, with a politician who quotes seriously the Declaration of Rights, &c., to prove the actual existence of English liberty, that I do not think of that marquis, whom Montesquieu mentions , who set about looking for mines in the Pyrenees, on the strength of authorities which he had read in some ancient authors. The poor marquis toiled and searched in vain. He quoted his authorities to the last, but found no mines after all.

Liv. xxi. chap. 2.

The chief, perhaps the only advantage which has resulted from the system of influence, is that tranquil course of uninterrupted action which it has given to the administration of government. If kings must be paramount in the state (and their ministers for the time being always think so), the country is indebted to the Revolution for enabling them to become so quietly, and for removing skilfully the danger of those shocks and collisions which the alarming efforts of prerogative never failed to produce.

Instead of vain and disturbing efforts to establish that speculative balance of the constitution, which, perhaps, has never existed but in the pages of Montesquieu and De Lolme, a preponderance is now silently yielded to one of the three estates, which carries the other two almost insensibly, but still effectually, along with it; and even though the path may lead eventually to destruction, yet its specious and gilded smoothness almost atones for the danger; and, like Milton's bridge over Chaos, it may be said to lead,

“Smooth, easy, inoffensive, down to ------.”

The drivelling correspondence between James I. and his “dog Steenie” (the Duke of Buckingham), which we find among the Hardwicke Papers, sufficiently shows, if we wanted any such illustration, into what doting, idiotic brains the plan of arbitrary power may enter.

Tacitus has expressed his opinion, in a passage very frequently quoted, that such a distribution of power as the theory of the British constitution exhibits is merely a subject of bright speculation, “a system more easily praised than practised, and which, even could it happen to exist, would certainly not prove permanent;” and, in truth, a review of England's annals would dispose us to agree with the great historian's remark. For we find that at no period whatever has this balance of the three estates existed; that the nobles predominated till the policy of Henry VII., and his successor reduced their weight by breaking up the feudal system of property; that the power of the Crown became then supreme and absolute, till the bold encroachments of the Commons subverted the fabric altogether; that the alternate ascendency of prerogative and privilege distracted the period which followed the Restoration; and that, lastly, the Acts of 1688, by laying the foundation of an unbounded court-influence, have secured a preponderance to the Throne, which every succeeding year increases. So that the vaunted British constitution has never perhaps existed but in mere theory.

The monarchs of Great Britain can never be sufficiently grateful for that accommodating spirit which led the Revolutionary Whigs to give away the crown, without imposing any of those restraints or stipulations which other men might have taken advantage of so favourable a moment to enforce, and in the framing of which they had so good a model to follow as the limitations proposed by the Lords Essex and Halifax, in the debate upon the Exclusion Bill. They not only condescended, however, to accept of places, but took care that these dignities should be no impediment to their “voice potential” in affairs of legislation; and although an Act was after many years suffered to pass, which by one of its articles disqualified placemen from serving as members of the House of Commons, it was yet not allowed to interfere with the influence of the reigning monarch, nor with that of his successor Anne. The purifying clause, indeed, was not to take effect till after the decease of the latter sovereign, and she very considerately repealed it altogether. So that, as representation has continued ever since, if the king were simple enough to send to foreign courts ambassadors who were most of them in the pay of those courts, he would be just as honestly and faithfully represented as are his people. It would be endless to enumerate all the favours which were conferred upon William by those “apostate Whigs.” They complimented him with the first suspension of the Habeas Corpus Act which had been hazarded since the confirmation of that privilege; and this example of our Deliverer's reign has not been lost upon any of his successors. They promoted the establishment of a standing army, and circulated in its defence the celebrated “Balancing Letter,” in which it is insinuated that England, even then, in her boasted hour of regeneration, was arrived at such a pitch of faction and corruption, that nothing could keep her in order but a Whig ministry and a standing army. They refused, as long as they could, to shorten the duration of parliaments; and though, in the Declaration of Rights, the necessity of such a reform was acknowledged, they were able, by arts not unknown to modern ministers, to brand those as traitors and republicans who urged it. But the grand and distinguishing trait of their measures was the power they bestowed on the Crown of almost annihilating the freedom of elections,—of turning from its course, and ever defiling that great stream of Representation, which had, even in the most agitated periods, reflected some features of the people, but which, from thenceforth; became the Pactolus, the “aurifer amnis,” of the court, and served as a mirror of the national will and popular feeling no longer. We need but consult the writings of that time, to understand the astonishment then excited by measures, which the practice of a century has rendered not only familiar but necessary. See a pamphlet called “The Danger of mercenary Parliaments,” 1698; State Tracts, Will. III. vol. ii.; see also “Some Paradoxes presented as a New Year's Gift” (State Poems, vol. iii.).

See a pamphlet published in 1693, upon the King's refusing to sign the Triennial Bill, called “A Discourse between a Yeoman of Kent and a Knight of a Shire.”— “Hereupon (says the Yeoman) the gentleman grew angry, and said that I talked like a base commons-wealth man.”

The last great wound given to the feudal system was the Act of the 12th of Charles II., which abolished the tenure of knight's service in capite, and which Blackstone compares, for its salutary influence upon property, to the boasted provisions of Magna Charta itself. Yet even in this Act we see the effects of that counteracting spirit which has contrived to weaken every effort of the English nation towards liberty. The exclusion of copyholders from their share of elective rights was permitted to remain as a brand of feudal servitude, and as an obstacle to the rise of that strong counterbalance which an equal representation of property would oppose to the weight of the Crown. If the managers of the Revolution had been sincere in their wishes for reform, they would not only have taken this fetter off the rights of election, but would have renewed the mode adopted in Cromwell's time of increasing the number of knights of the shire, to the exclusion of those rotten insignificant boroughs, which have tainted the whole mass of the constitution. Lord Clarendon calls this measure of Cromwell's “an alteration fit to be more warrantable made, and in a better time.” It formed part of Mr. Pitt's plan in 1783; but Pitt's plan of reform was a kind of announced dramatic piece, about as likely to be ever acted as Mr. Sheridan's “Foresters.”

------ fore enim tutum iter et patens
Converso in pretium Deo.
Aurum per medios ire satellites, &c.
Horat.

It would be a task not uninstructive to trace the history of Prerogative from the date of its strength under the Tudor princes, when Henry VII. and his successors “taught the people (as Nathaniel Bacon says) to dance to the tune of Allegiance,” to the period of the Revolution, when the Throne, in its attacks upon liberty, began to exchange the noisy explosions of Prerogative for the silent and effectual air-gun of Influence. In following its course, too, since that memorable era, we shall find that, while the royal power has been abridged in branches where it might be made conducive to the interests of the people, it has been left in full and unshackled vigour against almost every point where the integrity of the constitution is vulnerable. For instance, the power of chartering boroughs, to whose capricious abuse in the hands of the Stuarts we are indebted for most of the present anomalies of representation, might, if suffered to remain, have in some degree atoned for its mischief, by restoring the old unchartered boroughs to their rights, and widening more equally the basis of the legislature. But, by the Act of Union with Scotland, this part of the prerogative was removed, lest Freedom should have a chance of being healed, even by the rust of the spear which had formerly wounded her. The dangerous power, however, of creating peers, which has been so often exercised for the government against the constitution, is still left in free and unqualified activity; notwithstanding the example of that celebrated Bill for the limitation of this ever-budding branch of prerogative, which was proposed in the reign of George I. under the peculiar sanction and recommendation of the Crown, but which the Whigs thought right to reject, with all that characteristic delicacy, which, in general, prevents them when enjoying the sweets of office themselves, from taking any uncourtly advantage of the Throne. It will be recollected, however, that the creation of the twelve peers by the Tories in Anne's reign (a measure which Swift, like a true party man, defends) gave these upright Whigs all possible alarm for their liberties.

With regard to the generous fit about his prerogative which seized so unroyally the good king George I., historians have hinted that the paroxysm originated far more in hatred to his son than in love to the constitution. This, of course, however, is a calumny: no loyal person, acquainted with the annals of the three Georges, could possibly suspect any one of those gracious monarchs either of ill-will to his heir, or indifference for the constitution.

Historic. and Politic. Discourse, &c. part ii. p. 114.

Coxe says that this Bill was projected by Sunderland.

“They drove so fast (says Welwood of the ministers of Charles I.), that it was no wonder that the wheels and chariot broke.” (Memoirs, p. 35.)—But this fatal accident, if we may judge from experience, is to be imputed far less to the folly and impetuosity of the drivers, than to the want of that suppling oil from the Treasury which has been found so necessary to make a government like that of England run smoothly. Had Charles been as well provided with this article as his successors have been since the happy Revolution, his Commons would never have merited from him the harsh appellation of “seditious vipers,” but would have been (as they now are, and I trust always will be) “dutiful Commons,” “loyal Commons,” &c. &c., and would have given him ship-money, or any other sort of money he might have fancied.

Among those auxiliaries which the Revolution of 1688 marshalled on the side of the Throne, the bugbear of Popery has not been the least convenient and serviceable. Those unskilful tyrants. Charles and James, instead of profiting by that useful subserviency which has always distinguished the ministers of our religious establishment, were so infatuated as to plan the ruin of this best bulwark of their power, and, moreover, connected their designs upon the Church so undisguisedly with their attacks upon the Constitution, that they identified in the minds of the people the interests of their religion and their liberties. During those times, therefore, “No Popery” was the watchword of freedom, and served to keep the public spirit awake against the invasions of bigotry and prerogative. The Revolution, however, by removing this object of jealousy, has produced a reliance on the orthodoxy of the Throne, of which the Throne has not failed to take advantage; and the cry of “No Popery” having thus lost its power of alarming the people against the inroads of the Crown, has served ever since the very different purpose of strengthening the Crown against the pretensions and struggles of the people. The danger of the Church from Papists and Pretenders was the chief pretext for the repeal of the Triennial Bill, for the adoption of a standing army, for the numerous suspensions of the Habeas Corpus Act, and, in short, for all those spirited infractions of the constitution by which the reigns of the last century were so eminently distinguished. We have seen very lately, too, how the Throne has been enabled, by the same scarecrow sort of alarm, to select its ministers from among men, whose servility is their only claim to elevation, and who are pledged (if such an alternative could arise) to take part with the scruples of the King against the salvation of the empire.

Somebody has said, “Quand tous les poëtes seraient noyés, ce ne serait pas grand dommage;” but I am aware that this is not fit language to be held at a time when our birth-day odes and state-papers are written by such pretty poets as Mr. P---e and Mr. C*nn*ng. All I wish is, that the latter gentleman would change places with his brother P---e, by which means we should have somewhat less prose in our odes, and certainly less poetry in our politics.

“It is a scandal (said Sir Charles Sedley in William's reign) that a government so sick at heart as ours is should look so well in the face;” and Edmund Burke has said, in the present reign, “When the people conceive that laws and tribunals, and even popular assemblies, are perverted from the ends of their institution, they find in these names of degenerated establishments only new motives to discontent. Those bodies which, when full of life and beauty, lay in their arms and were their joy and comfort, when dead and putrid become more loathsome from remembrance of former endearments.” —Thoughts on the present Discontents, 1770.

------ Tutor haberi
Principis, Augustâ Caprearum in rupe sedentis
Cum grege Chaldæo.

Juvenal. Sat. x. v. 92.

The senate still continued, during the reign of Tiberius, to manage all the business of the public; the money was then and long after coined by their authority, and every other public affair received their sanction.

We are told by Tacitus of a certain race of men, who made themselves particularly useful to the Roman emperors, and were therefore called “instrumenta regni,” or “court tools.” From this it appears, that my Lords M---, C---, &c. &c. are by no means things of modern invention.

There is something very touching in what Tacitus tells us of the hopes that revived in a few patriot bosoms, when the death of Augustus was near approaching, and the fond expectation with which they already began “bona libertatis incassum disserere.”

According to Ferguson, Cæsar's interference with the rights of election “made the subversion of the republic more felt than any of the former acts of his power.” —Roman Republic, book v. chap. i.

Andrew Marvell, the honest opposer of the court during the reign of Charles the Second, and the last member of parliament who, according to the ancient mode, took wages from his constituents. The Commons have, since then, much changed their pay-masters. —See the State Poems for some rude but spirited effusions of Andrew Marvell.

The following artless speech of Sir Francis Winnington, in the reign of Charles the Second, will amuse those who are fully aware of the perfection we have since attained in that system of government whose humble beginnings so much astonished the worthy baronet. “I did observe (says he) that all those who had pensions, and most of those who had offices, voted all of a side, as they were directed by some great officer, exactly as if their business in this House had been to preserve their pensions and offices, and not to make laws for the good of them who sent them here.”—He alludes to that parliament which was called, par excellence, the Pensionary Parliament.

According to Xenophon, the chief circumstance which recommended these creatures to the service of Eastern princes was the ignominious station they held in society, and the probability of their being, upon this account, more devoted to the will and caprice of a master, from whose notice alone they derived consideration, and in whose favour they might seek refuge from the general contempt of mankind.—Αδοξοι οντες οι ευνουχοι παρα τοις αλλοις ανθρωποις και δια τουτο δεσποτου επικουρου προσδεονται.—But I doubt whether even an Eastern prince would have chosen an entire administration upon this principle.

“And in the cup an Union shall be thrown.” Hamlet.

Among the many measures, which, since the Revolution, have contributed to increase the influence of the Throne, and to feed up this “Aaron's serpent” of the constitution to its present healthy and respectable magnitude, there have been few more nutritive than the Scotch and Irish Unions. Sir John Packer said, in a debate upon the former question, that “he would submit it to the House, whether men who had basely betrayed their trust, by giving up their independent constitution, were fit to be admitted into the English House of Commons.” But Sir John would have known, if he had not been out of place at the time, that the pliancy of such materials was not among the least of their recommendations. Indeed, the promoters of the Scotch Union were by no means disappointed in the leading object of their measure, for the triumphant majorities of the court-party in parliament may be dated from the admission of the 45 and the 16. Once or twice, upon the alteration of their law of treason and the imposition of the malt-tax (measures which were in direct violation of the Act of Union), these worthy North Britons arrayed themselves in opposition to the court; but finding this effort for their country unavailing, they prudently determined to think thenceforward of themselves, and few men have ever kept to a laudable resolution more firmly. The effect of Irish representation on the liberties of England will be no less perceptible and permanent.

------Ουδ' ογε Ταυρου
Λειπεται αντελλοντος

The infusion of such cheap and useful ingredients as my Lord L., Mr. D. B., &c. &c. into the legislature, cannot but act as a powerful alterative on the constitution, and clear it by degrees of all troublesome humours of honesty.

From Aratus (v. 715.) a poet who wrote upon astronomy, though, as Cicero assures us, he knew nothing whatever about the subject: just as the great Harvey wrote “De Generatione,” though he had as little to do with the matter as my Lord Viscount C.

The magician's shield in Ariosto:—

E tolto per vertù dello splendore
La libertate a loro.

Cant. 2.

We are told that Cæsar's code of morality was contained in the following lines of Euripides, which that great man frequently repeated:—

Ειπερ γαρ αδικειν χρη τυραννιδος περι
Καλλιστον αδικειν: τ'αλλα δ'ευσεβειν χπεων

This is also, as it appears, the moral code of Napoleon.

The following prophetic remarks occur in a letter written by Sir Robert Talbot, who attended the Duke of Bedford to Paris in 1762. Talking of states which have grown powerful in commerce, he says, “According to the nature and common course of things, there is a confederacy against them, and consequently in the same proportion as they increase in riches, they approach to destruction. The address of our King William, in making all Europe take the alarm at France, has brought that country before us near that inevitable period. We must necessarily have our turn, and Great Britain will attain it as soon as France shall have a declaimer with organs as proper for that political purpose as were those of our William the Third ------ Without doubt, my Lord, Great Britain must lower her flight. Europe will remind us of the balance of commerce, as she has reminded France of the balance of power. The address of our statesmen will immortalise them by contriving for us a descent which shall not be a fall, by making us rather resemble Holland than Carthage and Venice.” —Letters on the French Nation.