"Great ends are often effected by little means. I am sorry he has worked himself up into such a desperately vengeful fit against me; because, really, when I, in the first Volume, mentioned Sophy's porkman having wrapped her black pudding up with a dirty piece of Times newspaper, I never thought of calling its editor a dirty fellow, as that most worthy gentleman has taken it: but, could I help a cap fitting now and then, though it was never made to order? I declare, I merely conceived the porkman's greasy hands had made a dirty Times newspaper of it; for, whether it be good or bad composition, I know not, as it is a paper which neither I nor any other well-bred person of my acquaintance ever looks into.
"I would appeal, even to Fred. Lamb himself, on whom I perhaps have been a little too severe, whether the editor's anonymous, personal, and low abuse of me, who affix my name to my Memoirs, is not disgraceful to any man?
"And then the worthy editor winds up his oration with an argument, which, to all noble fathers and parents of high taste and renown, must be found irresistible. He declares that his mighty immaculate pigmies, Gogs or Magogs, the Miss New Times's, or the Misses New Times, shall not read one line of my book!
"Quel malheur! tant pour les Misses New Times, que pour moi!
"But who on earth are the Miss New Times's? We declare, plurally speaking, in humble imitation of the worthy editor, that we never once knew, saw, nor heard of such people, or if we did, like our Latin, we have forgotten them.
"Editors, I humbly suppose, ought to be something like gentlemen, and if, though they may be old ladies, they are really moral characters too, I conceive they would be justified in expressing with manly firmness, their disapproval of any publication which they believed to be dangerous or improper; but the low meanness of loading with abuse a female like me, whose only protector resides on the continent, is the more cowardly, inasmuch as the said editors never applied those epithets to Lady Caroline Lamb, nor, in short, to any lady whose husband happened to be at hand, with that hand ready to pull their noses, if they have courage enough to let them appear.
"Now I beg to ask the editor of the New Times, what can be more immoral than Lady Caroline Lamb, a wife and mother, publishing her own desperate love-letters to Lord Byron, written under her husband's own roof? Yet what editor ever took to task a lady whose friends were on the spot? While this bold champion of the public morals spits his toad-like venom on me, who never yet deceived, nor acted a dishonourable part towards anybody, except myself, and who was at first forced into that unfortunate situation, which the heartless conduct of my former acquaintances obliged me to continue in. Yet, whatever may have been their sins against me, I am confident, as of my existence, that they will all express their unequalified disgust at the editor's unmanly abuse of me."
Thus far the fair auto-biographer. The whole and sole conduct of the editors may be defined in one word, selfishness. Their private pecuniary interest, and that alone, influenced their proceedings. They one and all expected to derive pecuniary advantage from the conduct they adopted in regard to these Memoirs, and, while many of them were abusing her, for having endeavoured to get money by her work, their single object was the very same, whether they affected to be loud in their complaints, whether they assumed a tone of moderation, or whether they were wholly silent—a very rare occurrence!
Scarcely inferior to the abuse of the press has been the abuse of power in the same case. Happy indeed is it for all concerned, and most happy for the general interests of society, that we live in a country where those who wield the sharpest swords with the most skilful hands, have even their power to oppress limited, and, from the throne itself, have bounds set to their wishes, by a constitution, which emphatically and almost with more than mortal voice exclaims, "Thus far shalt thou go and no farther."