of the public welfare in our
exaggerated admiration of him who is appointed to reign only for its
promotion and support.... _God save the King_, you say, warms your
heart like the sound of a trumpet. I cannot make use of so violent a
metaphor; but I am delighted to hear it, when it is a cry of genuine
affection: I am delighted to hear it when they hail not only the
individual man, but the outward and living sign of all English
blessings. These are noble feelings, and the heart of every good man
must go with them; but _God save the King_, in these times, too often
means--God save my pension and my place, God give my sisters an
allowance out of the Privy Purse--make me Clerk of the Irons, let me
survey the Meltings, let me live upon the fruits of other men's
industry, and fatten upon the plunder of the public."

This brings us again to the "sepulchral Spencer Perceval," as he is called
in another place, with his enormous emoluments from the public purse, his
dream of pacifying Ireland by converting its inhabitants to Protestantism,
and his fantastic policy of the Orders in Council.--

"He would bring the French to reason by keeping them without rhubarb,
and exhibit to mankind the awful spectacle of a nation deprived of
neutral salts. This is not the dream of a wild apothecary indulging in
his own opium; this is not the distempered fancy of a pounder of
drugs, delirious from smallness of profits--but it is the sober,
deliberate, and systematic scheme of a man to whom the public safety
is entrusted, and whose appointment is considered by many as a
masterpiece of political sagacity."

And now, having exhausted the "Catholic Question" as it presents itself in
England and Ireland, Peter Plymley (who has already called attention to the
religious liberty established in France) cites the cases of Switzerland and
Hungary as illustrating the civil strength of nations free from the
legalized animosities of religion. Did Frederick the Great ever refuse the
services of a Catholic soldier? There is a Catholic Secretary of State at
St. Petersburgh. There was a Greek Patriarch associated with a
Vicar-Apostolic in the government of Venice. A Catholic Emperor has
entrusted the command of his guard to a Protestant Prince. But what
signifies all this to Spencer Perceval? He looks at human nature from the
top of Hampstead Hill, and has not a thought beyond the s