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 feel the 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 this sheep-biting argument. 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 reason 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 prøvender Only for bearing burthens, and sore blows 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 infinite naiveté :-" 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, or write 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 willing entirely 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" Louis XVIII. 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 James II. had the same right to the throne of England, independently of his conduct or merits, that Louis XVIII. has to the throne of France: but the inference of course is that the people of France belong to Louis XVIII. 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 nor 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 says The Courier! They attack Sir Judkin Fitzgerald and the use of the torture; and therefore they 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 and itinerant 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 1799; 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, nor The Courier as 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 left valuable 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. ENGLAND in 1798. 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 to this Magazine, has been the guilty cause of all this carnage!"-So says Mr. Southey apud the Quarterly Review, 1817. Thus sings Mr. Coleridge, in his “Fears in Solitude," 1798: "We have offended, oh! my countrymen! And been most tyrannous. Thankless too for peace; (Peace long preserv'd by fleets and perilous seas) Its ghastlier workings (famine or blue plague, No speculation on contingency, And all our dainty terms for fratricide; Terms which we trundle smoothly o'er our tongues, |