‘Like wonder-wounded hearers?’
’Tis the editor of The Times, (poor man, his virtuous indignation must cost him a great deal of pains and trouble!) as hard at it as ever, about liberty and independence without respect of persons; in a most woundy passion, we warrant now, at finding legitimacy at some of its old tricks, caught flagranti delicto, so that the poor gentleman could not hush the matter up, if he would, and would not, if he could, he is a man of such a nice morality, and such high notions of honour;—thrown into daily and hourly cold sweats and convulsions at the mention of daily and hourly acts of tyranny and base submission to it; flying into the same heats and hysterics as ever, for he has all the reason now, that he used to say he had; laying it on, thick and threefold, upon the magnanimous deliverers of Europe; still in the old King Cambyses’ vein, ‘horrors on horror’s head accumulating’; heaping up epithets and compound epithets of abuse against his new friends, as he used to do against his old ones, till Mr. Koenig’s new press groans under the weight of both together; ordering in a new set of types with a new set of unheard-of nicknames to be applied everlastingly to the present candidates for newspaper fame, as the worn-out, feeble, and now insignificant ones of Monster, Tyrant, Fiend, Upstart, Usurper, Rebel, Regicide, Traitor, Wretch, Villain, Knave, Fool, Madman, Coward, Impostor, Unnatural Monster, Bloody Tyrant, Hellish Fiend, Corsican Upstart, Military Usurper, Wicked Rebel, Impious Regicide, Perfidious Traitor, Vile Wretch, Base Villain, Low-born Knave, Rank Fool, Egregious Madman, Notorious Coward, Detestable Impostor, were applied to the old; swearing as he picks his way to court along the streets, (so that the people ask who the honest, angry gentleman is) that Ferdinand alone has done more acts of baseness, treachery, cruelty, oppression, infamy, and ingratitude, in one year, than Napoleon did in his whole reign; teaching a parrot to call jade and rogue to all legitimate princes and princesses that deserve it, as he used himself to rail at all the illegitimate ones, whether they deserved it or not; repeating over and over, till he is black in the face, Dr. Slop’s curse upon the Allies and their proceedings; cursing them in Spain, cursing them in Italy, cursing them in Genoa, cursing them in Saxony, cursing them in Norway, cursing them in Finland, cursing them in Poland, cursing them in France, cursing them every where as they deserve, and as the people every where curse them; sending the Pope and the Inquisition to the Devil; swooning at the extinction of Spanish liberty under the beloved Ferdinand; going into a shivering fit at the roasting of Protestants under Louis the Desired; biting his lips at Lord Castlereagh’s Letter to Mon Prince; horror-struck at the transfer of so many thousand souls, like so many head of horned cattle, from one legitimate proprietor of the species to another, after all his vapouring about the liberties of the people and the independence of states; learned and lofty, sad and solemn, on the Convention of Paris; looking big at the imposing attitude of Russia, and going stark staring mad at the application of the torture and the thumb-screw to the brave Cortes; gnashing his teeth, rolling his eyes, and dashing his head against the wall, at the total falsification, and overthrow of every one of his hopes and his prognostics in every corner of Europe where the Allies have got footing, and there is no corner which they have not got under their feet, like a toad under a harrow; and roaring out like Perillus’s bull against the partitions and repartitions of the coalesced Sovereigns, their invasions, conquests, seizures, transfers of men and lands; the murders, massacres, imprisonments, pillagings, frauds, treacheries, breaches of written treaties and of verbal promises; usurpations, pretensions, and overt acts of legitimacy, since it was restored to itself, to one and the self-same tune that he used to lift up his voice, ‘his most sweet voice,’ against Bonaparte’s wars and conquests, till the Stock Exchange was stunned with the clamour, and Mr. Walter well-nigh fainted! The only fault of this account is, that not one word of it is true.
‘Thy stone, oh Sisyphus, stands still:
‘Ixion rests upon his wheel!’
Once a Jacobin and always a Jacobin, is a maxim, which, notwithstanding Mr. Coleridge’s see-saw reasoning to the contrary, we hold to be true, even of him to this day. Once an Apostate and always an Apostate, we hold to be equally true; and the reason why the last is true, is that the first is so. A person who is what is called a Jacobin (and we apply this term in its vulgarest sense to the persons here meant) that is, who has shaken off certain well known prejudices with respect to kings or priests, or nobles, cannot so easily resume them again, whenever his pleasure or his convenience may prompt him to attempt it. And it is because he cannot resume them again in good earnest, that he endeavours to make up for his want of sincerity by violence, either by canting till he makes your soul sicken, like the author of The Friend, or by raving like a Bedlamite, as does the Editor of The Times. Why does he abuse Bonaparte and call him an upstart? Because he is himself, if he is any thing at all, an upstart; and because Bonaparte having got the start of him one way, he turned back to gain the race another, by trying for a court-livery, and to recommend himself to the house of Brunswick, by proclaiming the principles of the house of Stuart. Why does he make such a route about Kings and Queens, and Dukes and Duchesses, and old women of all ages and both sexes? Because he cares no more for them in his heart than we do. How should he? ‘What’s Hecuba to him or he to Hecuba?’ What motive has he, or what ground of passion, that he should
‘Cleave the general ear with horrid speech,
‘And, like a whore, unpack his heart with words!’
None in the world, any more than the poor player in Hamlet, who tried to ‘work his soul to his conceit, tears in his eyes, distraction in his looks,’ because it was his cue to do so. He blusters and hectors, and makes a noise to hide his want of consistency, as cowards turn bullies to hide their want of courage. He is virulent and vulgar in proportion as he is insincere; and yet it is the only way in which he can seem himself not to be a hypocrite. He has no blind prejudices to repose on; no unshaken principles to refer to; no hearty attachment to altars or to thrones. You see the Jacobinical leaven working in every line that he writes, and making strange havoc with his present professions. He would cashier Louis and Ferdinand, Alexander and Frederick, to-morrow, and hurl them headlong from their thrones with a stroke of his pen, for not complying with any one of his favourite dogmas. He has no regard for any thing but his own will; no feeling of any thing but of hatred to the cause he has deserted, and of the necessity of keeping from his mind, by every demonstration of outward scorn and horror, whatever might recal his old, unprofitable, exploded errors. His hatred and dread of the principles of others, proceeds from his greater hatred and dread of his own. The spectre of his former opinions glares perpetually near him, and provokes his frantic zeal. For close behind him stalks the ghost of the French Revolution, that unfortunate Miss Bailey of modern politicians, their mistress and their saint, what time
——‘Society became their glittering bride
‘And airy hopes their children,’—