[ 70 ] [JAK. 



THE 1'HOSECUTION OF THE P11ES3. 



WITHIN the last week the vigour of the Attorney- General has been 



speech, and all the other st6ck-topics of the Holland and Grey school. 

 The " Liberty of the press, it is like the air we breathe, without it we 

 die," has, we dare say, been drunk by the Chancellor and the Attorney- 

 General, half a hundred times at the Synoposia of Whiggery ; and we 

 also dare say those friends of liberty would have lavished their loftiest 

 indignation upon the degenerate soul, who in those brilliant days could 

 have dreamed of any less lofty homage to the freedom of tongue and pen. 



But to this we merely advert ; for no language of ours shall irritate 

 two such mighty individuals; and, as we shall not be inclined to adopt 

 the modern fashion of swallowing our words, we shall save ourselves 

 from the temptation, by the due homage to the powerful minds ana 

 pure morality of all functionaries whatever. It is our opinion, and we 

 are happy to find it sanctioned by the leading personages of this free 

 and fortunate country, that pubh'c discussion is of all things the most 

 exclusive, and should never be degraded into the profane handling of 

 any man or men under five thousand pounds a-year, or the representa- 

 tion of a Borough. 



There are, undoubtedly, a multitude of topics on which public writers 

 might be useful, and to which they should confine themselves. Births, 

 deaths, and marriages, must interest a large portion of the community, 

 and by a little more ingenuity of expansion and dexterity of remark, 

 might be made to assist the public morals in a large degree ; and being 

 composed of facts, a rare distinction, might considerably supersede the 

 unprofitable labours of the parson on Sunday, and of the methodist 

 preacher on every other day of the week. The rising or setting of the 

 moon, the times of high tide at London Bridge, and the calculations of 

 the shortest and the longest day, are among the most essential kinds of 

 knowledge to three- fourths of the community. On these the news- 

 papers have been hitherto lamentably barren. The field is open, is as 

 wide as it is open, and the activity of the English mind would, in all 

 probability, make a very showy affair of it in time. Those subjects 

 have been culpably overlooked ; but if, as the philosopher said, " the 

 man who makes two blades of grass grow where but one grew before, 

 is a benefactor to society," what must be the services of the writer who 

 makes three paragraphs spring up to cover the nakedness of the soil, 

 that of old gave birth only to one ? 



But we have not yet exhausted the prospects of this proud and pal- 

 pable amelioration. Every editor of periodical publications, complains, 

 not of the dearth, but the superabundance of his poetic contributions. 

 On an average there must be from fifty to sixty thousand Rosinas, 

 Stellas, Lysymachuses, and Lysanders, undergoing the monthly morti- 

 fication of seeing their sonnets returned on their hands ; the very wings 

 of their immortality clipped at once ; the elixir of perpetual youth 

 dashed from their lips, and glory at all entrances quite shut out. The 

 newspapers, by a suitable distribution of their columns, might check 

 this whole tide of thwarted ambition : two or three of their pages would 

 give the happiest development of the fond feelings and fine sorrows of 

 the rising world of poetry ; and after the lapse of the next fifty years, 



