The National Register. — London, England, 1819-12-12 00:00:00

rbt fiationat 31 toitittr+ t 4 Our Ring, eoluititution attb U alma. No. 233.—V0t. XII.] olitical Lirtroopect. ir our readers will do us the favour to refer to our Posteript, penned ten days before the opening of Parliament, they will there find the anticipation of all those melancholy topics which are now felted on our attention by•the tremendous accuracy of their fulfilment. It is now our mournful duty to announce the speedy extinction of that glorious con stitution, which the great philosophical historian of Rome .declared it to be impossible to establish, or which, ;if established, could not, from its great purity and excellence, be of long duration. " Fuit Ilium et ingens Gloria Fueror . " Yes, the illustri ous fabric in which we have revelled with delight, and contemplated its massy pillars, its curious work manship, and its wondcrous fitness for the comfort, the happiness, the security. and the prosperity of all who dwell within its walls, is now doomed to crum ble to the dust and ashes from which it was reared with so much difficulty. and grathially cemented with so much blood. A revolution is no longer a a thing to be talked of, it has already begun.— When we hear anti see such men us Lord Grenville and Lord Wellesley falling into that horrible strain, which we had-until now hoped had been the senti ments and language of either crude inexperience, or besotted ignorance, or the rottenest corruption.— That Englishmen must no more look for the free dom of their forefathers - that society is become more ungovernable, and therefore the reins of government must be proportionalby strengthened and drawn tighter, we really know not where we are, nor which way we turn We know not where to cast a glance in the hope of meeting with a friendly and protecting hand to guide us safely.— The old opposition, the Whigs of former days have unquestionably, nobly performed their duty. We thank them as Englishmen, and we wish that the people of England may he as true to themselves as these admirable defenders of national freedom have in an hour of severe trial been true to them.— The Bills divided into five, ‘vhich are now in progress, and hurried through their respective stages with all that precipitancy which belongs to measures of that sort, have been battled, and argued, with an ability on the, part of the opponents seldom equalled, and never surpassed even in our best times. If in any cause truth and argument could have prevailed over party spirit and party influence, we should have hoped that instance would have been the pre sent. But alas ! the conduct of the Magistrates of Mancheeer has not been justified—and yet that con duct has been approved and sanctioned without enquiry .Opinions of the highest and most unim peached integrity have given their testimony, and alledged the authorities upon which that testimony rested, against the panic studiously excited, and yet it could not be held as furuiihing any ground even for a day's investigation. The inquest at Oldham, so often referred to by the enemies of inquiry, has been dissolved as illegally conducted by the Coro ner's own .misconduct and neglect, and yet that inquest is refused to be again instituted, ur those errors amended. A Noble Lord declares that there areloo,ooo men armed and united in the North, and prepared for insurrection ; another Honourable member in the House of Commons, whose connec tions are most intimately blended with the -very .quarters and district, in which this formidable array is said to be organized and established, firmly asserts his confidence that no such thing exists, assures the /louse that every possible enquiry has been made by SUNDAY, DECEMBER 12, 1819. him, that the persons charged with this treason are his own constituents, and yet all this is no ground for enquiry ; the case is established upon noloriely alone, as if the world did -not know that there may be such things as notorious fal as well as notorious truths. As if out nished no meal-tub and no green-bag plots.— Blasphemy and sedition also arc abroad, therefore blasphemy and sedition must be checked by new laws, *mitt Bill restricting the liberties of the press is now in progres ; and as the best remedy under the present State Directors is taxation, this grand, this universal remedy, is to be applied, and a tax, as we stated last week, is to be imposed on all those cheap journals which have been most accessible to the public, upon the ground that they have been the principal vehicles of that poison which is said to have infected society. Now we are no friends, as our readers well know, either to impiety towards God, or disobedience to Rulers lawfully discharging the high duties of their office, but impiety and sedi tion are things not necessarily connected, any more r than a libel against a private individual with a libel against the State, and yet, as if these things were identified, one Bill is supposed to cure them all again. A tax upon cheap publications will equally affect , good and bad, and if the freedom of discussion and the promotion of knowledge have any connection with public spirit and public welfare, that union is here disclaimed and as far as possible dissolved.— Further, also, we may observe, that all government is a delegated trust, delegated for the protection of those who live under it, and delegated also to carry into effect their wishes, and represent their senti ment& and opinions. It' the bulk of.any society shall think its government a bad one, or its rulers unfitted for their office, it is time some alteraiton should be made in both. It is true even of an established religion itself, and much more then of any political minor meafures. If then the writings against ministers, for this is in fact the whole pies tion,•be more eagerly read and more easily circu lated than those in their defence, it is only a proof that those ministers are not in possession of public confidence (however the House of Com mons may vote,) and that a change of Councils is called for and required. But indecency and calumny,and fulsCluxxl,and all those vices which work into the licentiousness of the Press, are not confined to the cheap trash of Messrs. I'. Wooller, Carlilc and Ct. ,bett, and little is the idea correct that the mischief should be stopped be cause it is placed within the grasp and addressed to the capacities of the lower orders. We know nothing which should authorize a man to administer poison to a rich man rather than a poor one, or to labour to excite by libelous and infamous productions, though they may cost live shillings, odium and de testation of those who oppose a bad government, whilst those who support it are to be praised, en couraged anti rewarded. There is fur instance a pamphlet, than which nothing more scurrilous, more false, more libellous has for several years issued from the l'ress, now circulating- in Nurfo Nit is read and swallowed by many us truth and reason, and comes from the pen of a cicrgs man of the established Church. If it was in opposition to Government, instead of being in support of it, the Attorney- General would long since probably have felt it his duty to settle his author. Nor can you say that these things do no harm to society because they are only read by those who can detect their errors, and [yawls 944 are leas likely to Iv led away by their assertions. The pamphlet we allude to abounds in tire grossest indecency, the grossest calumny, the grossest igno. ranee, the most absurd nonsense, and yet a second edition is now announced to the public, We do not make this charge lightly, as perhaps our readers will allow, with regard to indeney ut least, when we quote the following sentence from several others of the same complexion. "Of older time, when Jove bad no other game in view than to amuse him self with impregnating the sir." How does this Reverend Gentleman, a wag might ask, amuse him self in similar moments? Thecalumnyof the publica tion we shall instance, only from a private letter sent by Mr. Coke's steward to his tenants on she subject of their leases, which this infamous libeller has procured from some quarter or other, printed in his task of scurrility, with the comment in one page that it was fit only " for the hondmen of Egypt", am! yet in the next, as if stung by con science, subjoined in a note " that it does not appear to him so very tyrannical." His ignorance as well as the value of his politics may perhaps be sufficiently determined by the simple fact, that though quoting the history of llame over and over again, and his essays also, he belic.vcs and proclaims that historian to be a Whig, ignorant that he wrote his history to defend the Stuarts, ignorant of the character Hume drew of Sir Robert NVal pole, ignorant that the ccle. prated dialogues of Bishop Huad.were written as an answer to his Tory principles, and with respect to antieq history, ignorant whether Sparta was a monarehy trc,a republic. Ifis nonsense we shall leave to be judgbd by the inconsistencies and contra• dictions every where apparent, as we shall leave the private chnracter of such a writer to the report of his own patishioncrs. All we complain of is that whilst Government is thus buried in legislating, and calling upon what they denotaina,e the loyal and peaceable part of the community to put down two-penny essays upon politics, which we neither approve nor defend, five shilling productions quite equally infamous are tolerated and praised. We shall notice the other Bills hereafter. By accounts from the Island of St. Thomas, it appears that the Viceroy of New Granada, after his expulsion from Santa Fe, had escaped to the vici nity of rarthagota, where he had encamped on an elevated spot, with a fince of no more than about 100 men. General Latorre was with 250 men, that remain of the five IPgiments of Navarre, at Cucuta ; while General Nloriilo was stationed with about .600 men, at St. Carlos, about 100 piles west of the Caraccas, where he appeared to be waiting the arrival of reinthrectuents. Sir Henry 'Wellesley, aocordiug to report, has eagerly pressed the Spanish Government for u free trade in favour of British vessels with the colonies of South America. ANECDOTE.—I.nrd Lyttleton, and Ilk friend the cele... bra:e4hen West, both men of acknowledged talents, had imbibed the prinesples of infidelity from fit ial view of the Scriptures. Fully pets, B We was an imposture, they were deterut the cheat. Mr. Heat chose the Remy:m.li and Lord Lyttleion the Conversion of St. sot ict of hostile crtticisai. Both sat reepeetive tasks, lull of prejudice and Christianity. The results of their squiate truly ex.raindinary. They were both their attempts to oventitow the truth ut ('hey came together, not a. 5 they expected, an imposture, exposed to ridicule, but to folly, and to congratulne each inner on victims, that the Bible is the Word of enquires hate furnished two most valuable urea tads its Latour of Revelation, one cotitled.--o ot isenat i o „, ou the Conversion of St. Paul," and the other, " Obsertab volts on the Resurrection of ' y from a slyer. !rsmoted that ha • . roame renon d of (7.hr - tit. Patti. 141 • i. down to t Id contenv IC attempcb h convenc 1 .4;4 .1 ChriA L 4 Ps - ed, exult rJ to lament I w r I t heir joint cor. ALM theta