360 The Slate u/i/tc Empire : [Oct. 



public confidence, in what regard does he want them ? in what particu- 

 lars is he suspected ?" &c. That such a passac;e — the common inquiry 

 of not merely every public journal, but of every man who walks the 

 streets — should have been seized on for the " grasping ambition" of 

 prosecution determined on shewing its gentleness, love of equal law, and 

 respect for liberty of opinion, is at least as curious an evidence of 

 temper as of taste. But we shall leave its dissection to the knife of a 

 clever contemporary, which can be " suspected" of as little antipathy to 

 his Grace as of devotion to his honest opponents in Church and State. The 

 reason of the thing alone has wrung the contemptuous exposure from 

 them. The Star evening ncAvspaper thus develops the injury done to 

 the fame and fortunes of the Duke of Wellington : — 



" It is not easy to conceive an imputation more unsubstantial, or a libel 

 more inapprehensible : we will dispose of it sentence by sentence. ' If his 

 Grace now wants character and the public confidence, in what regard does he 

 want them ? in what particulars is he suspected ?' At least, it will not be 

 contended that these questions are impertinent, directed, as they are, at a 

 prime minister, whose very nomination was opposed equally to popular feel- 

 ing and constitutional precedent : but let us hear the answer. 



" Chiefly in these regards : ' He is suspected of indifference to the interests 

 of the Established Church.' ^Vhat, if he he suspected ? Suspicion does not 

 amount to charge. 



" ' He is suspected of wishing to govern in an imperious and engrosshig 

 spirit.' Yes, and very capital grounds for that same suspicion there may be 

 — but suspicion does not amoimt to cimrge. 



" ' Of wishing to be not merely the prime but the sole minister.' Yes, he is 

 suspected of all this— but still suspicion does not amount to charge. Besides, 

 can any thing be more preposterous — let alone tyrannical — than the attempt 

 to make it unlawful to suspect what a minister wishes ? To make our invo- 

 luntary mental operations a punishable crime ? But we must go on to the 

 gravamen of the passage. ' He is suspected too — and the suspicion is not 

 confined to a few, or to ill-informed persons — of wishing to perpetuate his power 

 by dangerous designs connected with the succession to the crown. Those are the 

 suspicions under which he laboius.' 



" Gad-a-mercy ! here is suspicion enough in all conscience ; but for the love 

 of all that is intelligible, let us examine it a little. In the first place, his Grace 

 the Duke of Wellington is suspected : come, now — that's a clear case ; but what 

 is he suspected of? Why, his Grace the Duke of AYellington is suspected of 

 wishing to prepetuate his power : a very natiual wish, in any minister ; but one, 

 we should imagine, peculiarly dominant in his ambitious and despotic mind. 

 Aye, but to perpetuate it by dangerous designs connected with the succession to 

 the crown. AYell ! he may be suspected of all that, and be really guilty of the 

 wish ; but to suffer the inconsequential operation of wishing is not harbouring 

 a design to overturn — is not aiming and plotting against — the succession. Nay, 

 nobody said even that he ('.id ' wish' that : it was only affirmed that he was 

 suspected of wishing. 



Really, this is too puerile : and on such galimnthias as the foregoing, grand 

 jurors can be found, who by their verdict would place the Press in jeopardy ! 

 They ought to have remembered, when they were impannelled to sit on this 

 imsiibstantial passage, that the kight of every Englishman to express his free 

 political opinion, is paramount to all consideration of individual annoyance, 

 which its exercise may incidentally entail : that it is the spirit of our Consti- 

 tution to tolerate the remote liability to private wrong, rather than weaken, by 

 rash and particular enactments, the uninfringible tenure, by which it secures 

 to the people that Palladium of their civil liberties : and, above all, that 

 when a minister prosecutes the Press, it is a prima facie proof of his disposi- 

 tion to undue power." 



