598 The Conversazione. [JunE, 
For, lo! Britannia by his side, 
All ghastly, faint, and wan, 
Thus in indignant accents cried, 
“ Oh, base to God and man ! 
“ How canst thou hope that balmy sleep 
Should close thy guilty eyes, 
When all Britannia’s sons must weep 
Her fall in thy sacrifice ? 
“« Long had she trusted to thine aid 
Against her bosom-foe, 
Depending on the vows you made 
To ward the fatal blow. 
“ Hence, she each traitor had supprest, 
Or boldly had defied ; 
Till, leaning on her guardian’s breast, 
His treacherous arm she spied.” 
The following lines, too, from “A Ballad in imitation of William and 
Margaret,” addressed to the Earl of Bath, would not be altogether with- 
out its application :— 
Bethink thee of thy broken trust, 
Thy vows to me unpaid ; 
Thy honour, humbled in the dust, 
Thy country’s weal betrayed. 
For this, may all my vengeance fall 
On thy devoted head! 
LiviInG, BE THOU THE SCORN OF ALL 5 
THE CURSE OF ALL, WHEN DEAD! 
Mr. A—n—l—y. You may depend upon it he would read these, or 
any thing ten times as strong, without wincing. When a man’s con- 
science is once seared, and his face well bronzed, when he has arrived 
at that point which enables him to set himself at defiance, he is not 
accessible to the “ paper pellets of the brain.” Take my word for it, how- 
ever, the events of the last two months have sown the seeds of a harvest 
which will be reaped in blood and misery to thousands. A whole nation 
is not suddenly wrought into an attitude of retributive justice upon its 
oppressors. But the feeling of injury is deep and general. Confidence 
in public men is destroyed. The people of England have now before 
their eyes, not insulated instances of shameless tergiversation, such as 
‘must happen, from time to time, as long as man is man; but the 
example of whole classes making a mockery of public honour, and private 
character, such as can never happen, except when the body politic has 
fallen into that state of disease which only a thorough purgation can 
cure. They are the plague spots—the blotches of the commonwealth, 
which, all history teaches us, bring on, sooner or later, the crisis that 
resolves the powers of the state into their original elements. I lament 
that the measure has been carried ; but I lament infinitely more, that it 
has been carried by such degenerate instruments. 
Sir George M. Being carried, however, and being now the law of the 
land, we are told, by high authority; it is our duty, as good and loyal 
subjects to obey. 
Mr. M——d. That doctrine, pushed to its legitimate consequences, 
