JOHNSON. 61 



political system." The misgovernment of Ireland he 

 equally felt with the Colonial Slave system itself. 

 " Let the authority of the English Government perish/' 

 he exclaimed, "rather than be maintained by iniquity. 

 Better to hang and draw people at once, than by un- 

 relenting persecution to beggar and starve them, and 

 grind them to powder by disabilities and incapacities." 

 (Boswell, II., 120.) This was said in 1770, eight years 

 before the first relaxation of the penal code; but in the 

 'Rambler' and the 'Idler' is to be found as clear and 

 as powerful a statement of the whole argument against 

 capital punishment, and also against imprisonment for 

 debt, as can anywhere be met with, and those papers 

 were published as early as 1752."* 



The occasional writings of which we have been speak- 

 ing, and the mention of which introduced these parti- 

 culars regarding his opinions, were by far his best works, 

 until very late in life he wrote his ' Lives of the Poets/ 

 the production on which his fame as an author chiefly 

 rests. But in his earlier years there were, beside the 

 celebrated pamphlets and other controversial pieces of 

 which alone I have treated, a great number of more 

 obscure performances which he contributed chiefly to 

 periodical works; and many of these have very con- 

 siderable merit, nor are they generally speaking written 

 in the wordy and solemn style which he seems to have 

 used indeed quite -naturally, but rather to have reserved 

 for higher occasions. The most considerable of these 

 writings are his ' Life of Sir Francis Drake/ a long, 

 unaffected, and minute narrative; but in which he, 



* See particularly ' Rambler/ No. cxiv. ; ' Idler/ Nos. xxii. 

 xxxviii. 



