406 WcUinglon Administration, Star-Chamber, £Oct. 



It is not our intention to discuss the merits or demerits, in themselves, 

 of the prosecutions now pending against the Morning Journal, and other 

 papers. We are no partisans. Our aim is principles, not insulated 

 facts, except so far as the latter exemplify the former. We see, in this 

 entire question, not the individuals, but the cause. We look at the 

 system ; and we infer from the means employed, the end that is sought. 

 We see, for example, one paper allowed to insinuate bi'oadly against the 

 king's brother, offences which if they were but whispered against a pri- 

 vate citizen, would justify him in striking his accuser dead on the spot. 

 We shovdd have but a poor opinion, indeed, of that man's innocence, 

 who knew such things were said of him, and did not blot the scoundrel 

 who said them, out of existence. And yet, nor prime minister, nor 

 lord chancellor, nor attorney-general, stand forth to drag the slan- 

 derer before the indignant tribunals of justice. Oh no ! Public duty is 

 one thing : private revenge another. We see, on the other hand, what 

 has the appearance of a public, reckless, and combined effort to intimi- 

 date another jiortion of the press, whose alleged crime is libel, but 

 whose real one, is a fearless assertion of those great principles in Church 

 and State, sealed with the blood of our ancestors, and the birth-right of 

 ourselves, which have been scattered to the winds by a policy we abhor, 

 in common with nine-tenths of the Protestant people of this realm. If 

 the country is with the Duke of Wellington, in his Catholic Ascendancy 

 Bill, what has he to fear from a handful of discontented writers who 

 condemn it ? If the country is not with him, what can he hope to gain 

 by abridging its right to be heard through the public press, when it 

 has humbled itself in vain, as a petitioner at the bar of both Houses of 

 Parliament } He mistakes his counti-ymen. He has studied in a bad 

 school. He may know and understand the utility of suppressing 

 military insubordination by military discipline. A drum-head court- 

 martial, in the field, may be the salvation of an army ; but dragooning 

 tactics in the cabinet and the legislature, smell too rankly of that thing 



called prerogative, whose haughty assumptions brought ! 



We are not the enemies of the Duke of Wellington. The suc- 

 cesses of his military career will be recorded in the annals of 

 his coimtry. But he is no Statesman. He has never had 

 the education to constitute him one. The very qualities that made 

 him a great general, unfit him for a great minister. He may be 

 tickled with the fulsome adulation of a few parasites, who extol his 

 firmness, his promptitude, his decision, and so fortli. But a minister 

 called to wield the destinies of a mighty empire like England, will only 

 commit blunder upon blunder, and plunge from one absurdityinto another, 

 if he substitutes energj , as it is called, for deliberation, knowledge, 

 caution, patient investigation of complicated interests, and a compre- 

 hensive view of all their artificial bearings. It is a fine shewy exploit, 

 to cut the gordian knots of a nation's welfare ; but woe to the nation 

 which is the subject of such a Drawcansir policy. Give us men who 

 know, or who may be supposed to know their business. We are no 

 believers in the doctrine of intuitive wisdom. It was well said, by a 

 philosopher of antiquity, that no man considers himself competent to 

 exercise the [meanest handicraft calling, without first learning it ; but 

 every man fancies he knows how to goveini. We should have been 

 .sorry to see Lord Liverpool, or the Blarquis of Londonderry, or INIr. 

 Canning, leaving Downing Street, to lead our armies to battle, instead 



