1829.] and Lihertti of the Press. 407 



of his Grace ; and we are equally sorry, and for precisely the same 

 reason, to see liis Grace in Downing Street. The laurels of Waterloo, 

 and the Peninsula, have already withered in the uncongenial atmo- 

 sphere of the Treasury. 



A writer, whose sentiments we have already quoted, (Fletcher of 

 Saltoun, and we wish we had a few Andrew Fletchers among us now,) 

 says, " It is the utmost height of liuman prudence, to see and embrace 

 every favourable opportunity ; and if a word spoken in season does 

 for the most part, produce wonderful effects, of what consequence and 

 advantage must it be to a nation in deliberations of the highest moment • 

 in occasions, when past, for ever irretrievable, to enter into the rio-ht 

 path, and take hold of the golden opportunity, which makes the niost 

 arduous things easy, and without which, the most inconsiderable may 

 put a stop to all our affairs }" It is this " word sjjoken in season," this 

 " golden opportunity," that we would earnestly press upon his Grace 

 the Duke of Wellington. It is now easy for liim to do what he ought. 

 Omitting to do so, he may find a sudden " stop put to all his affairs." 

 The English nation are not yet reduced to the condition of having 

 nothing remaining but the outward appearance and carcase, as we may 

 call it, of their ancient constitution. The spirit and soul are not yet 

 fled. Jealousy for pubhc liberty is not yet vanished. Let him renounce 

 his own ill-advised prosecution for libel. Let him, for once, exercise 

 wisely, that sovereign, dictatorial authority, which his flatterers ascribe 

 to him as a virtue, that firmness and decision, so childishly vaunted by 

 them, and command that all the other state prosecutions be abandoned 

 — (for state prosecutions they are, however tliey may be veiled under 

 the seeming appeal of individual injuries,) — and he will at once destroy 

 the strong and growing suspicion which now prevails throughout the 

 country, that he is the enemy of public liberty in the exercise of its 

 dearest franchise, the freedom of the press. We warn him not to con- 

 firm that suspicion, even though he may know his own intentions to be 

 " pure as unsunned snow." A wise man aims at two thino-s : to do no 

 wrong, and to do nothing that may make him suspected of wishing to 

 do wrong. The nation looks with a moody brow, and an angry eye, 

 at what is going on. It is patient, because it is slow to believe in what 

 it will not brook. But " beware the fury of a patient man." It will 

 not see itself gagged. It will not submit to be stripped of the first 

 right of a free people, that of speaking aloud its opinions of its rulers. 

 There is no slavery so gaUing as the slavery of the mind ; none so 

 dangerous ; for pent-up thought, when it bursts loose, is like the 

 volcano, it spreads destruction far and wide. The French Revolution 

 was a signal and a terrible example of redemption from this kind of 

 thraldom. Tliere was a long arrear of oppression to settle, and we 

 know how the accounts were balanced. 



We have sliewn, in the cases cited from the Court of Star-Chamber, 

 how morbidly sensitive the public men of that day were to the gentlest 

 breath of public opinion, and how fiercely they guarded themselves 

 from tlie most tender handling of the profane vulgar. Why was this ? 

 Were the people prone to exercise an insolent privilege.^ Was " the 

 age grown so picked, tliat the toe of the peasant came so near tlie heel 

 of tlie courtier, he galled his kibe ?" No. But there were rottenness, 

 and decay, and foul sores, in the higher ranks, and they shi-ank from 



