1829. ] Affairs in General. 531 
for at present vessels are generally forced to come to anchor for fear of 
running on them in the dark: and thus, time is lost, the storm is waited 
for, and the vessel sent to the bottom. 
Little Lord Hardwicke, anxious to vindicate that church to which 
his little soul has thought it convenient to offer the very little 
aid of his very little name, writes a newspaper letter, declaring that the 
old opinions on Rome’s giving no toleration to Protestants are unfounded ; 
because “ he and his family were not hindered from saying their prayers” 
in some obscure hovel of the city of the idolater. And this least of peers 
actually thinks that he has proved his point, when he gives a notice from 
a Cardinal Gonsalvi, saying, that he would know nothing formally about 
the meeting of the English Protestants. And this the little Lord actu- 
ally calls “ Toleration!” A pleasant legislator this, for Englishmen, or 
any men of sense on the face of the earth. This is connivance, 
and not a jot more. Cardinal Gonsalvi knew that there were houses in 
Rome where thieves as regularly congregated as cardinals in the con- 
clave. At those his majesty the pope connives, and travellers say that he 
does a little more. But there are in Rome tribes of individuals whose 
distinction is by no means an extraordinary degree of cruelty to their 
admirers, and those persons this Vicar of Heaven does not connive 
at, for those he tolerates. Those ladies have their quarter where they 
are authorized by the law to live, are publicly recognized in their sin- 
gular trade, pay a well-known tax for their privileges, like all other le- 
gitimate subjects for a legitimate commerce, and are among the ways 
and means of the state. Thisis toleration, meaning a recognition by the 
laws, rights in consequence, and an acknowledged position and protec- 
tion by the government. But has any Protestant congregation in Rome, 
or in the dominions of Spain, or the Italian kingdoms, or the Spanish colo- 
nies, any such toleration? And yet this little lord was Lord Lieutenant 
of Ireland ; into this little man’s hands were actually entrusted the in- 
terests of a great church, engaged in perpetual struggle with the idola- 
trous faith of the peasantry ; and with all his opportunities of discovering 
the difference between connivance and toleration, in the course of a time 
in which a rebellion of a half mad boy, with a pair of shamrock epau- 
lettes, and fifty of the rabble to carry pikes after him, was within a hair’s 
breadth of seizing upon the seat of government and setting the Irish 
metropolis in flames from one end to the other. Not that we suspect 
his little lordship of any toleration on the subject of setting the castle of 
Dublin in a blaze, or connivance as to his own being roasted-in the ge- 
neral auto da fé of the heretics. On the contrary, we give him credit 
for being very much astonished, as well as very much frightened ; for 
being as much surprised as ever man was, and for being as angry as 
a keen sense of personal hazard could have made any man. We re- 
member well the recriminatory correspondence of the Irish commander- 
in-chief, General Fox, with the little lord, and the discovery, like that 
of Peachum and Locket, that the less that was said on either side the 
better. “ Brother, brother, we are both in the wrong.” As for Ge- 
neral Fox, he was a brother of the great Coalition Rat, and, of course, 
good for nothing. And yet at these years, with his experience, that 
experience which a lying proverb has told us, teaches the imbecile 
when nothing else can teach them, we have this little old lord advo- 
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