A copy of this letter had been forwarded to the Morning Advertiser, and appeared in full in its columns on April 18th. It is as follows:
“To the Editor of The Times.
“Sir,—It is written—‘Whom the gods would destroy, him they make mad.’ Your doom then seems inevitable; for if an utter abandonment of the laws of morality, a reckless disregard of the laws of honour, a desperate determination to court the contempt of your countrymen—if these be symptoms of madness, then are you mad indeed—mad as moon can make you.
“But the gods are guiltless of the act. The demons have done it. Your own vile passions have crazed you.
“Once more you have assailed M. Kossuth; once more you have shot your envenomed shaft; and once more, glancing back from the pure shield of that gentleman’s honour, your poisoned arrow has recoiled upon yourself. Unscathed stands he. His escutcheon is unstained. Even your foul ink has not soiled it. It is pure as ever; spotless as the pinions of the swan, as the wing of the wave-washed albatross.
“You have created an abyss of infamy. Into this you designed to drive M. Kossuth. You essayed to push him from the cliff. Headlong you rushed upon him; but, blinded by bad passions, you missed your aim. You have staggered over yourself; and your intended victim stands triumphantly above you.
“From the declarations of the gentleman himself, from my own personal knowledge of facts, I pronounce your whole statement regarding M. Kossuth and his Rotherhithe arsenal a web of wicked falsehoods. But the cold-blooded audacity, the harlotic abandon, with which you have uttered these falsehoods, and commented upon them, are positively astounding. It is difficult to believe you in earnest; and one is inclined to fancy you the dupe of some gross deception.
“But the palpable animus that guides your pen will not permit this charitable construction, and we are prevented from giving you even the benefit of a doubt. We have no alternative but to believe you guilty, with deliberate forethought, with ‘malice prepense.’
“But, sir, if you are to be suffered to drag innocent men from the privacy of their hearth to charge them with imaginary crimes—to support your charges with not a shadow of evidence, but, upon the contrary, to substitute coarse calumny and vengeful vituperation—if all this be permitted you with impunity, it is full time that we inquire, in what consists English freedom?
“There are other tyrannies besides that of despotic governments. There is the tyranny of a licentious press; and, for my part, I would rather submit me to the rule of the sabre and the knout, than live at the mercy of a conclave of dissipated adventurers who sneak around the purlieus of Printing House Square.