That this alone were guilt to death allied? Rai. That Heaven, whose eye Pro. Rai. And I have but to die. Mont. Comes thy great task. The pang is o'er, Now, Procida, Wake! summon to thine aid All thy deep soul's commanding energies; Pro. Ha ha!-Men's hearts should be of softer mould Mont. Rouse up thy mighty heart. Pro. Ay, thou say'st right. There yet are souls which tower As landmarks to mankind. Well, what's the task? Is he then guilty? All. With one accord. Pro. Thus we deem of him And hath he nought to plead? Why, that is little. Rai. Nought but a soul unstain'd. Pro. Stains on the soul are but as conscience deems them; And conscience-may be sear'd. But, for this sentence! E'en from creation's dawn, that he must die? Obey Heaven's mandate, when we cast dark souls To th' elements from amongst us. Such be his doom!-I have said. Be it so ! Is girt with adamant, whose cold weight doth press Oh, Raimond, Raimond ! If it should be that I have wrong'd thee, say Thou dost forgive me. Rai. So may all-pitying Heaven! Pro. Whose voice was that? Where is he?-gone?—now I may breathe once more SECTION LXXIX. EXTRACT From CANNING'S SPEECH ON UNLAWFUL ASSOCIATIONS IN IRELAND. My honourable friend has expended abundant research and subtilty upon this inquiry, and having resolved the phrase into its elements in the crucible of his philosophical mind, has produced it to us purified and refined to a degree that must command the admiration of all who take delight in metaphysical alchemy. My honourable and learned friend began by telling us, that, after all, hatred is no bad thing in itself. "I hate a Tory," says my honourable friend"and another man hates a cat; but it does not follow that he would hunt down the cat, or I the Tory." Nay, so far from it-hatred if it be properly managed, is according to my honourable friend's theory, no bad preface to a rational esteem and affection. It prepares its votaries for a reconciliation of differences-for lying down with their most inveterate enemies, like the leopard and the kid, in the vision of the prophet. This dogma is a little startling, but it is not altogether without precedent. It is borrowed from a character in a play which is, I dare say, as great a favourite with my learned friend as it is with me: I mean, the comedy of The Rivals; in which Mrs. Malaprop, giving a lecture on the subject of marriage to her niece, (who is unreasonable enough to talk of liking, as a necessary preliminary to such a union,) says, "What have you to do with your likings and your preferences, child? depend upon it, it is safest to begin with a little aversion. I am sure I hated your poor dear uncle like a blackamoor, before we were married; and yet you know, my dear, what a good wife I made him." Such is my learned friend's argument to a hair. But finding that this doctrine did not appear to go down with the house so glibly as he had expected, my honourable and learned friend presently changed his tack; and put forward a theory, which, whether for novelty or for beauty, I pronounce to be incomparable; and, in short, as wanting nothing to recommend it but a slight foundation in truth. "True philosophy," says my honourable friend, will always continue to lead men to virtue by the instrumentality of their conflicting vices. The virtues, where more than one exist, may live harmoniously together; but the vices bear mortal antipathy to one another, and therefore furnish to the moral engineer the power by which he can make each keep the other under control." Admirable ! but, upon this doctrine, the poor man who has but one single vice must be in a very bad way. No fulcrum, no moral power for effecting his cure. Whereas his more fortunate neighbour, who has two or more vices in his composition, is in a fair way of becoming a very virtuous member of society. I wonder how my learned friend would like to have this doctrine introduced into his domestic establishment. For instance, suppose that I discharge a servant because he is addicted to liquor, I could not venture to recommend him to my honourable and learned friend. It might be the poor man's only fault, and therefore clearly incorrigible; but if I had the good fortune to find out that he was also addicted to stealing, might I not, with a safe conscience, send him to my learned friend with a strong recommendation, saying, I send you a man whom I know to be drunkard; but I am happy to assure you, he is also a thief; you cannot do better than employ him; you will make his drunkenness counteract his thievery, and no doubt you will bring him out of the conflict a very moral personage.. My honourable and learned friend, however, not content with laying down these new rules for reformation, thought it right to exemplify them in his own person, and, like Pope's Longinus, to be "himself the great sublime he drew." My learned friend tells us that Dr. Johnson was (what he, Dr. Johnson, called himself) a good hater: and that among the qualities which he hated most were two which my honourable friend unites in his own person, that of Whig and that of Scotchman. "So that," says my honourable friend, "if Dr. Johnson were alive, and were to meet me at the club, of which he was a founder, and of which I am now an unworthy member, he would probably break up the meeting rather than sit it out in such society." No, sir, not so; my honourable and learned friend forgets his own theory. If he had been only a Whig, or only a Scotchman, Dr. Johnson might have treated him as he apprehends; but being both, the great moralist would have said to my honourable friend, Sir, you are too much of a Whig to be a good Scotchman; and, sir, you are too much of a Scotchman to be a good Whig." It is, no doubt, from the collision of these two vices in my learned friend's person, that he has become what I, and all who have the happiness of meeting him at the club, find him—an entirely faultless character. SECTION LXXX. EXTRACT FROM CANNING'S SPEECH ON THE PORTUGUESE EXPEDITION. SIR, I set out with saying that there were reasons which entirely satisfied my judgment that nothing short of a point of national faith, or national honour, would justify, at the present moment, any voluntary approximation to the possibility of war. Let me be understood, however, distinctly, as not meaning to say that I dread war in a good cause, (and in no other may it be the lot of this country ever to engage!) from a distrust of the strength of the country to commence it, or of her resources to maintain it. I dread it, indeed—but upon far other grounds; I dread it from an apprehension of the tremendous consequences which might arise from any hostilities in which we might now be engaged. Some years ago, in the discussion of the negotiation respecting the French war against Spain, I took the liberty of adverting to this topic. I then stated that the position of this country, in the present state of the world, was one of neutrality, not only between contending nations, but between conflicting principles; and that it was by a neutrality alone that we could maintain that balance, the preservation of which I believe to be essential to the wel SECTION LXXVII. EXTRACT FROM THE WEST INDIAN CONTROVERSY. Blackwood's Magazine. Mr. Brougham adopts boldly, in the Edinburgh Review, the very simple and satisfactory argument on which Mr. Clarkson rests the whole substance of his late pamphlet. It amounts to this:-Every man has an in-born indefeasible right to the free use of his own bodily strength and exertion, it follows that no man can be kept for one moment in a state of bondage, without the guilt of robbery: therefore the West Indian negroes ought to be set free. This is an argument of very easy comprehension, and the Edinburgh reviewer exclaims, with an air of very well enacted triumph, "Such plain ways of considering the question are, after all, the best!" Ingenious Quaker, and most ingenious reviewer! If this be so, why write pamphlets and reviews full of arguments and details, or pretended details of facts? If every West Indian planter is a thief and a robber, why bother our heads about the propriety, the propriety forsooth, of compelling him to make restitution? If the British nation is guilty as an accessary both before the fact, and in the fact, of theft and robbery, why tell the British nation that they are the most virtuous and religious nation in the world, and that they ought to restore what they have stolen and robbed, because they are so virtuous and so religious? The affair is so base, that it will scarcely bear looking at for one second. What! long prosing discussions about whether we ought to cease to be thieves and robbers, now, or ten years, or a hundred years hence! Was ever such a monstrous perversion of human powers? Sir, that estate is not yours-it is your neighbour's estate, and you have no more right to cultivate it, or any part of it, for your own behoof, than the man in the moon. You must restore this estate to its rightful owner-Immediately? No, not immediately. Your neighbour ought to have the acres, and knows that he ought to have them. They are his right, he has been long deprived of the estate -his father was deprived of it before him. The family have all been brought up in a way quite different from what would have been, had they been in possession of their rights. They have formed habits altogether unlike what those of the proprietors of such an estate ought to be. They have |