[38]. Perhaps Mr. Southey will inform us some time or other, whether in Italy also it is the people, and not the Pope, who wants reforming.
[39]. Dues of Office, we suppose.
[40]. It is the making light of the distresses and complaints of our victims, because we have them in our power, that is the principle of all cruelty and tyranny. Our pride takes a pleasure in the sufferings our malice has inflicted; every aggravation of their case is a provocation to new injuries and insults; and their pretensions to justice or mercy become ridiculous in proportion to their hopelessness of redress. It was thus that Mother Brownrigg whipped her prentices to death; and in the same manner our facetious Editor would work himself up to apply the thumb-screw to any one who was unable to resist the application, with a few ‘forsooths,’ and other such ‘comfit-makers wives’ oaths.’
[41]. That he might be deemed so no longer, Mr. Coleridge soon after became passionate for war himself; and ‘swell’d the war-whoop’ in the Morning Post. ‘I am not indeed silly enough,’ he says, ‘to take as any thing more than a violent hyperbole of party debate, Mr. Fox‘s assertion that the late war (1802) was a war produced by the Morning Post; or I should be proud to have the words inscribed on my tomb.’—Biographia Literaria, vol. i. p. 212.
[42]. We never knew but one instance to contradict this opinion. A person who had only fourpence left in the world, which his wife had put by to pay for the baking of some meat and a pudding, went and laid it out in purchasing a new string for a guitar. Some on this occasion quoted the lines,
‘And ever against eating cares,
Wrap me in soft Lydian airs.’
[43]. We hope Mr. Southey has not found the truth of the latter part of the passage. ‘Rich gifts wax poor, when givers prove unkind.’
[44]. ‘And for the Bishops (in Edward VI.‘s days), they were so far from any such worthy attempts, as that they suffered themselves to be the common stales to countenance, with their prostituted gravities, every politick fetch that was then on foot, as oft as the potent Statists pleased to employ them. Never do we read that they made use of their authority, and high place of access, to bring the jarring nobility to Christian peace, or to withstand their disloyal projects: but if a toleration for Mass were to be begged of the King for his sister Mary, lest Charles the Fifth should be angry, who but the grave prelates, Cranmer and Ridley, must be sent to extort it from the young King! But out of the mouth of that godly and royal child, Christ himself returned such an awful repulse to those halting and time-serving Prelates, that, after much importunity they went their way, not without shame and tears.’—Milton—Of Reformation in England, and the Causes that have hitherto hindered it.
[45]. This passage is nearly a repetition of what was said before; but as it contains the sum and substance of all I have ever said on such subjects, I have let it stand.