"To brand with the names of 'rebel and traitor' those whom you have been unable to prove rebellious and traitorous, is but in the ordinary course of official perseverance and incorrigible folly; but that you should presume to assail those unfortunate individuals, the victims of your own recorded credulity, by making a mockery of old age and of natural infirmities, which have been occasioned by your own injustice!!—such an outrage upon your audience—how is that to be accounted for? 'The revered and ruptured Ogden!!!' This mad, this monstrous sally was applauded—was received with roars of laughter! and if there was a confession from some more candid lips, that such allusions were not 'quite in good taste,' an excuse was drawn from the warmth of the debate, clear as it was, to those accustomed to your patchwork, that the stupid alliteration was one of the ill-tempered weapons coolly selected from your oratorical armoury.

[[186]]"The little knot of dependants, who were willing to make common stock and carry themselves to market with you, have become ashamed of the trifling, oscillating buffoon, whom they mistook for the head of a party, and who accepted the first and lowest vacancy that could replace him in the precincts of power. Even the miserable chuck-farthing, Ward, who has learnt from you how to run riot on his apostacy, owns, that he hesitates between the disgrace of 'serving without wages, and of being dismissed without a character.'

"Go on, sir, I pray you; proceed with your pleasantries; light up the dungeon with the flashes of your merriment,—make us familiar, make us pleased, with the anguish of the captive; teach us how to look upon torture and tyranny as agreeable trifles; let whips and manacles become the play-things of parliament; let patriotism and principle be preserved only as vain names, the materials of a jest; and, as you have disturbed the bed of sickness with your unhallowed mirth, hasten, with appropriate mockery, the long foretold approaching Euthanasia of the expiring constitution. But confine your efforts to that assembly where they have been so favourably, so thankfully received. You will find no other hearers. You are nothing but on that stage. The clerks, the candles, the heated atmosphere, the mummeries and decorations, the trained, packed paper audience, confused, belated, and jaded into an

[[187]]appetite for the grossest stimulants; these are the preparations indispensable to your exhibition. Thank heaven, however, the House of Commons is not the only tribunal; and it is possible, that, in spite of your extraordinary progress and probable success, there may still be, in this country, a body of men, now dispersed, but whom their common interest will ONE DAY COLLECT AND UNITE, FOR THE DEFENCE OF THEIR RIGHTS AND THE PUNISHMENT OF THEIR OPPRESSORS[187:A].

"Believe me, sir, not an echo of those shouts of laughter which hailed your jests upon rebellious old age and traitorous disease, not an echo has been lost in the wide circumference of the British islands. Those shouts still ring in our ears; they will never die away as long as the day of retribution is deferred; they will never die away until we are finally extirpated by your triumph, or you are annihilated by our indignation. Do not flatter yourself that, by securing the connivance of parliament, you are safe from all national censure. Parliament does not represent the feelings of the British nation. It would be an assault upon the character of this great, this glorious people, to suppose that their representatives were sent to the House of Commons to encourage the playful ferocity of a hardened politician. The nobler portion of the nation are certainly not members of either house: the better educated,

[[188]]the more enlightened, and the more wealthy, at least the more independent, are to be found without the walls of parliament. You are (and what ministerial man is not?) an enemy to reform. But you shall be told, sir, that the necessity of reform, and of choosing our representatives from some other classes of society, was never so decidedly shewn as in the reception of your speech. If Mr. Canning was, on a former occasion[188:A], applauded for saying, that the constitution of that assembly could not be bad, which 'worked so well in practice' as to admit of the selection of such men as Mr. Windham and Mr. Horner, I am sure it is to be allowed me to say, that the assembly can have no feelings or opinions, in common with the rest of their countrymen, which would receive, with shouts of approving laughter, such a speech as this of Mr. Canning.

"You cannot be far from the close of your career; for, either we shall be so lost that all your farther efforts will be superfluous, or you will be so resisted as to disable you for ever from all noxious exertion. This, then, may be the time for summing up the evidence, furnished by the unbiassed, uncontradictory witnesses of your life; and for enabling your countrymen to pass the verdict.

"Let him speak who ever knew you in possession of any respectable reputation. The rag you

[[189]]stole from Mr. Sheridan's mantle was always too scanty to cover your nakedness: like all mimics, you caught only the meaner characteristics of your archetype; oratorical, not orator; poetaster, not poet; witling, not wit. You were never the first or best in any one line of action. You might not have been altogether inept or slow in playing second parts, but on no one occasion have you ever evinced that sincerity, either of principle or capacity, which the lowest amongst us are accustomed to require from the pretenders to excellence. Your spirit was rebuked in presence of those accomplished persons whom the followers of all parties recognized as beings of a higher order, and were willing to yield even more deference than their unambitious merit required. The chances of survivorship have left you a great man in these days of little men; but you keep true to the epic rule; you end as you began; power has conferred upon you no dignity,—elevation has not made your posture more erect. The decency of your character consists in its entire conformity to the original conception formed of you in early life. It has borrowed nothing from station, nothing from experience. It becomes you, but would disgrace any other man."

To a person of Mr. Canning's warmth of temper, such a production was felt most acutely; for he could not, with all his ready eloquence and talent, deny the truth of the writer's charges, or the justness