I have little doubt has suggested to all local authorities throughout the disturbed districts, the most safe and effectual plans for embodying with certainty, at the shortest notice, every species of power which may be at their disposal. To wedge the tiger's jaws in the very act of grasping, we must cast into them the cable with its choaking bait. To render innoxious the Boa of Radical Revolution, we must not only noose, but strangle it with the patent tie of new laws. Those laws will fall lamentably short of their intent, if not carried into instant, vigorous, and unopposable execution. Nothing would ripen audacity to a head more irresistibly than to betray to the rebel a fear of imposing the restraints expressly provided against him.

From all that has been said, it will plainly appear that nothing but timidity, or that more execrable spirit of degenerate selfishness which would desert its post, and carry away its arms in the hour of danger, can render our situation perilous. After the musters that loyalty has made from one end of the kingdom to the other, after the exertions that our national intelligence has put forth in unanimous opposition to the

doctrines of the disaffected, it is worse than pusillanimous to be afraid. The Constitution cannot ever be in jeopardy till the guides and guardians of public opinion abjure their allegiance to it, and break the covenant of their ancestry. Though atheism might shoot up like Jonas' gourd on the hot-bed of bigotry, on the wholesome soil of liberty and tolerance it can but linger in stunted dwarfishness to wither bough by bough. Til atheism become endemic amongst us, as in France on the eve of her age of blood, in the very nature of things we cannot be moved; and never can it become endemic here till the same causes be in operation as propagated it in France; till genius and wealth, in horrid combination, pledge themselves to the work of pollution, and succeed in contaminating not merely the off-scourings of society, but those who are wont to be its stay and its pride. This is but an unadorned picture of the process of prostitution that demoralized our sister empire, and till equal effects be produced amongst us, till we too be demoralized, we cannot incur those extraordinary penalties which expiated a nation's criminality in a deluge of blood,

That man must be little read in history, he must lack common sense, who would compare England in her present state, to France on the verge of her revolution. France was as gunpowder to the spark; England is as water to the flame. England, in fact, is the engine which has been working on the moral conflagration for twenty years. She has reduced it to smoulder, and if persevering in her exertions, will speedily and finally extinguish it. To conclude, I would earnestly recommend to the loyal unshaken confidence and strictest unanimity; and with a pitying smile for the timid, would blast the runagate and deserter of his country's cause with the searing lightning of his country's

curse.

JULIUS,

LETTER VII.

TO THE EDITOR OF THE OLD TIMES.

SIR,

December 24, 1819.

NOT to take pains to be honest is to be a rogue; compared with such a rogue the bold and barefaced robber is an honourable man. To exemplify my position, I am attracted towards your conduct as most strikingly in point; and subjoin it, as I found it, a practical and prosing commentary on the text above-cited. The popularity which you force us to consider imaginary, by the infinite pains you take to prove it real, even at your own interested valuation, will be no bar to my animadversions. The pilotless proselytes of Joanna Southcot may support your depravity, and the school of Jeremy Bentham add a cipher to your order-book; but what will this prove? That the dupes of delusion love delusion still; and that the closing of one of their emporiums of falsehood causes a diversion in favour of another.

The tripod of a gypsey-tent astounds bumpkin credulity; and your tripod dilates the jaws of its audience in the by-lanes of Cockneyism, and on the commons of Radical Reform. An exile from your former friends, you consult the numerical weathercock, and since it continues nearly in the same quarter, affect equal importance as the harlequin of a Radical idolatry, as when undetected masquerader to a reputable auditory. Take warning, sir, from the fate of the transatlantic resurrection-man. This apostate once wore a mask, and grovelling for gain, hung out the ensigns of loyalty over the altar of filthy lucre. He, sir, possesses talents far superior to your own, yet, by abuse, their fruits have become the offal on which sacrilege and treason now batten and bloat. The jackal of the degenerate Whigs, you skulk, nosing in advance, and unable to wind game, make false points, if but a mouse stir or a mole-hill tumble. Think not, that I shall become the copyist of your absurdities, by making this Letter the reflection of abuse without justification, and argument on assumption! still less, that in cudgelling you, I am espousing the cause of Party against Constitutional Opposition. No such Opposition disclaims you; it