A MAL APROPOS QUOTATION.
In one of the debates in the House of Lords, on the war with France in 1794, a speaker quoted the following lines from Bishop Porteous' Poem on War:—
"One murder makes a villain,
Millions a hero! Princes are privileged
To kill, and numbers sanctify the crime.
Ah! why will kings forget that they are men,
And men that they are brethren? Why delight
In human sacrifice? Why burst the ties
Of nature, that should knit their souls together
In one soft bond of amity and love?
They yet still breathe destruction, still go on,
Inhumanly ingenious to find out
New pains for life; new terrors for the grave;
Artifices of Death! Still monarchs dream
Of universal empire growing up
From universal ruin. Blast the design,
Great God of Hosts! nor let Thy creatures fall
Unpitied victims at Ambition's shrine."
The Bishop, who was present, and who generally voted with the Ministry, was asked by an independent nobleman, if he were really the author of the lines that had been quoted. The Bishop replied, "Yes, my Lord; but—they were not composed for the present war."