iece of what my
view of the case would designate non-government or mis-government, has
pinched, vexed, bruised, and stung my fervent country's love day by day,
session after session. Like thousands of others, I have been a greyhound
in the leash, a bolt in the bow, longing to take my turn on the arena:
eager as any Shrovetide 'prentice for a fling at negligence, peculation
and injustice, and other the long black catalogue of British injuries.
Socialism, Chartism, Ribandism; Spain, Canada, China; freed criminals,
and imprisoned poverty; penny wisdom, and pound folly; the universal
centralizing system, corrupting all generous individualities: patriotism
ridiculed, and questionable loyalty patted on the back; vice in full
patronage, and virtue out of countenance; Protestantism discouraged,
Popery taken by the hand; Dissent of _any_ kind preferred to sober
Orthodoxy; and, fitting climax, all this done under pretences of perfect
wisdom, and most exquisite devotion to the crown and the
constitution:--these things have made me too often sympathize in Colonel
Crockett's humour, tiger-like, with a dash of the alligator. Accordingly
let me not deny having once attempted a bitter diatribe, in petto,
surnamed

FALSE STEPS;

BRITAIN'S HIGHROAD TO RUIN;

a production of the pamphlet class, and, like its confraternity,
destined at longest to the life ephemeral. But, to say truth, I found
all that sort of thing done so much better, spicier, cleverer, in
numberless newspaper articles, than my lack of the particular knowledge
requisite, and my little practice in controversy, could have managed,
that I wisely drew in my horns, sheathed my toasting-iron, and decided
upon not proceeding political pamphleteer, till, on awaking some fine
morning, I find myself returned to parliament for an immaculate
constituency.

Patient reader, of whatever creed, do not hate me for my politics, nor
despise the foolish candour of confession. Henceforth, I will not
trouble you, but abjure the subject; except, indeed, my sturdy friend
"the Squire," soon to be introduced to you, insists upon his
after-dinner topic: but we will cut him short; for, in fact, nothing can
be more provoking, tedious, useless, and causative of ill-blood, than
this perpetual intermeddling of private ignoramuses, like him and me,
with matters they do not understand, nor can possibly ameliorate.

* * * * *

A poet is born a poet, as all the