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land, from the heroic display of Neapolitan Carbonarism, he was feté by the Whigs; and now, when Riego, a poor miserable creature, who never did anything memorable in all his life, except one feat of military mutineering, and who conducted himself throughbut this last affair with just as much brigand cruelty, and just as little sense and spirit, as any other Spaniard of 1823, when this man is put to death, what a cry they make! a monument, forsooth, for Don Rafael del Riego! Absurdly, no doubt, uselessly, and, perhaps, all things considered, wrongfully too, has Ferdinand acted to this man: but, were we not prepared for a civil war? and did we dream that no blood was to be shed at all, either on the field or the scaffold? The affair is too contemptible to receive a moment's notice from any man of sense; but, certainly, it is very consistent in those who presented Sir Robert with a sword, to give Don Rafael a cenotaph.

That despotism is destined to be extinguished in Europe at no distant date, no man can doubt. But this sad business of Spain, with all its circumstances of folly, meanness, rashness, and imbecility, furnishes the best of all possible evidence, by what sorts of men, and principles, and measure, its "fatal day" is most likely to be procrastinated.

We have disdained to go into minute criticism of the details, that have as yet reached us of Ferdinand's proceedings under the circumstances of his present proud and happy restoration. One thing, however, we may just notice, because its effects are not confined to Spain; we mean his determination

not to hold by the contracts entered into by the late government with the English stock-jobbers. This is cer tainly idiotcy itself embodied. If foreign merchants are not to be safe in their dealings with the ostensible governments of countries, what becomes of their assistance in all cases of future need and emergency? The Spaniards are unable, confessedly so, to raise the immediate funds necessary for the ordinary purposes of administration within their own country; they will, assuredly, get no more from without-and who cannot see the consequence? Money might have lent some energy even to the government of a Ferdinand-but, at all events, without it he is weak as a weanling. And then, think of the abject soul capable of declaring himself to have been a quiet slave so long, in a country where he tells us he has been all along "seated in the hearts" of the vast majority of the people! And, to conclude, look at the absurdity, and worse than absurdity, of which he convicts himself; for, that two and two make four, is a proposition not one whit more indisputable, than that, if the government de facto, (he himself being the nominal head of it too,) had no right to borrow money, it had no right to perform any other function of government. It follows, that every man who has been executed for murder in Spain, during the last two or three years, has been murdered. There was only this one thing wanting to complete the picture of the degradation of Spain, and "YO EL REY AB

SOLUTO.

LETTERS OF TIMOTHY TICKLER, ESQ., TO EMINENT LITERARY CHARACTERS.

No. XII.

To Christopher North, Esq.

ON THE LAST NUMBER Of the edinbURGH REVIEW.

DEAR N. WHY, yes I think pretty much as you do. It is not worth a cutting up. I am sorry for it, for I never was in such good humour in my life; and I always observe, that, when I am perfectly pleased with myself, and quite overflowing as it were with the milk of kindness, I am in the best order possible for tearing an unfortunate rascal of a scribbler all to rags. Nothing can be a more mistaken idea than that a thorough-going, cut-and-thrust sort of a critic is ex officio an ill-natured man. The poor devils who try to be severe, and who grin as hideously as if under the impression of a half pound of Glauber's salts, or other diabolical compost, while exercising the act of severity, are, no doubt, suffering from unpleasant feelings. They think, while sticking in their lancet, generally as blunt as the razor of a barber's apprentice after the forty-fifth patient has passed under his hands on a Sunday morn, that they are committing murder, and rejoice in the circumstance, like the Turpin-like lads who sent the worthy Weare on a visit to an eminent character in the other world. are such bilious, yellow-visaged, under-sized, gall-bladders of devils extant, beyond doubt-mostly Whigs, of course. Just read some of the attacks in the Liberal, and other venomous, spider-like little books on us, Kit, and you will see what I mean. The tea has soured on the stomachs of the wheezing animals shortly after breakfast; and, as they have had no dinner, the seventh cup of Bohea at the evening potation has exasperated them into an acidity quite irrepressible. God help them! I am not at all angry with the poor vagabonds, but sincerely pray that they may give up the simple -trade of botched calumny, and take to some lawful calling, in which they might cut a figure as exemplary men

There

milliners or tailors, commendable to the usual fraction.

On the contrary, a man in sound health, well fed on five meals a-day, supplied with wholesome nutriment, kept in proper exercise of mind or body, or both, able to take his quantum of fluid from his morning gun of moun→ tain dew, down to his concluding libation of cold punch, or hot toddy, or the blood of Bourdeaux-Con state days, and holidays, of course, for economy is the order of the day, and there is no sense in sporting claret on plebeians, who would not know it from catsupa man who despises not Orinoco, nor scruples to dissipate a cigar into thin air-such a man, I say, is quite happy, benignant, and milky-minded, while dissecting a jackass. He thinks no more of it than he does of taking off the thigh of a woodcock after a hearty dinner of five courses. In the world of everyday life, who is jollier than a fox-hunter, more cheery-spirited than a fowler, more sweetsouled than an angler? Nobody at all. The true bloody-minded, blood-snuffing cannibals, are your fellows who whine about the destruction of animal life, and long for the perfectibility of man by the massacre of some millions of his species. Such was Oswaldsuch was Robespierre-such is

We wage war on vermin-they are our natural prey-and we carry on the massacre- chase with as much jocularity and free-heartedness as ever Cecil Forrester-I beg pardon-my Lord Forrester, felt, when giving a cheery tallyho at the tail of the best pack of hounds in Leicestershire.

Therefore, feeling, as I do, such an elation of spirits, I am sorry that Blue and Yellow is such dull carrion this quarter. There are scarcely three articles in it worth abusing. It is poor work to be running a drag after a dead cat. You may take in the beagles by

* Thank you, Tim, I have no fancy to be brought up before the Chief Justice in ·Banco Regis, on an information. I shall pocket the name, if you please.-C. N.

it, but you can never impose it on yourself as a real hunt, no more than you can make believe that Conscience, or Bellamira, or Fiddlededevil, is a real tragedy. So, as I said in the first line of my letter, I agree with you as to the inexpediency of wasting an article on this Number of the Edinburgh. I shall throw a few remarks on it off my stomach in a kind of miscellaneous way, leaving you quite at liberty to print them, or keep my MS. as food for your pipe, according as may be most agreeable to your phantasy.

The first article is on the Funding System, and is, of course, full of all the usual humbug and jugglery of arithmetical fanfaronade. Figures in proper hands can be brought to prove anything. I own I have not read the article. Luckily, in turning over the pages farther forward, I found [p. 260 it confessed that the computations on which the reviewer relied were made by Mr Joseph Hume. I felt quite satisfied, and read no more. I remember the adventures of that eminent figure-factor with Jonathan Croker of Watling Street, John Wilson Croker of the Admiralty, and others. I recollected inter alia his having made the agreeable error of eleven millions in a sum of seventeen, and was easy in my mind as to the correctness of the Review. There is something rash-something intensely spoony, in fact, in the reviewer's blabbing on Hume, and exhibiting him in print.

In the House of Commons, Joseph is very well. It would require talents and patience superhuman to follow any man through a maze of figures, calculated with seeming accuracy down to half farthings, embarrassed by fifty intermediate tottles," until they all merge in the grand "tottle of the whole." The Opposition cheer, of course, and nine-tenths of the Ministerialists know nothing about the matter. At last, up gets the groaning officer, whose department it is to refute Joseph, and in a speech as yawn-begetting as Hume's own, proves that every statement of the honourable gentleman opposite is wrong, humbly submitting to the House, and offering to prove, by respectable evidence, if required, at the bar, that three times four is no more than twelve, and by no means nineteen, much less thirty-one, as

stated by the Honourable Member for Montrose. In reply, Hume admits, that there is some error, he believes, in the details, but is quite sure the principle is correct, and withdraws his motion for the present. Bennett, then, or some person of that grade, rises, and compliments his friend on his skill, and perseverance in hunting corruption to its inmost recesses and the affair is over. Next morning, the dirty-faced papers refer their readers to the very able and accurate speech of Mr Hume last night, and the little Whig journals throughout the provinces, repeat the cuckoo cry of "very able very able, indeed-accurate man

amazing industry;" and that beautiful body among ourselves, the Pluckless, God bless them! "must admit, that, after all, Mr Hume is a man of considerable talents, and, in reality, has done a great deal of good." All the while, there are not three lines in the so lauded speech, which do not contain a piece of blockheadism, or mendacity. Ainsi va le monde.

You may think that I am treating the really important question of the Funding System too lightly, in resol→ ving it merely into a disquisition on the nothingness of such a humbug as Mr Hume; but if I were called on by anything worth attending to, I should speak differently. But I am only writing scraps on a scrap-book. I take it for granted, that the article of the Whig reviewer-for I beg leave to repeat I have not read it-shews us how we are ruined in consequence of the anti-whiggosity of our Chancellors of the Exchequer; proving happily-though perhaps with a hungry up-snuffing of the distant feast, of which, thank Heaven, there is no chance whatever of a Whig's partaking-that had the fifty-headed, nobrained, blood-bespattered, filth-begetting Juggernaut of Whiggery, been the idol at Downing-Street, England would be just now one entire and perfect chrysolite. We too well remember the exhibition of Lord Henry Pettyhodie, my Lord Landsdowne-to be taken in by this cogging cant. If ever a series of financial operations merited full and unsparing measure of contempt, for imbecility and nonsense, mixed with outrageous breach of promise, [ex. gr. the doubling of the income tax, after the whole pack had been yelping in full chorus against

its existence, in the most modified state,] and shuffling duplicity of legerdemain, it was merited by those adopted in the brief-happy wordthe brief administration of the wretched Talents; and if we forget them, it is only because we are absorbed by the contemplation of the more heinous villainies of the faction.

And, again, we are too well used to hear of England's ruin in the particular of its funds, to be much frightened. Hume—not exactly Joseph, but David, a man a leetle more famous some seventy years ago, pronounced us bankrupt. Many have been the similar prophecies since. In 1796, Tom Paine proved, in a most mathematical manner, that in twenty years from that time, the English funding system would be demolished totally; and Cobbett was so enraptured with the accuracy of the demonstration, that he, as we all know, disinterred a baboon or a negro, (I forget which,) and brought over the bones as the identical skeleton of the brandy-bibbing advocate of the Rights of Man. Cobbett has since put off the date to May 1822; on which day he was to broil himself on a Gridiron; of which he gave an accurate likeness at the beginning of one of his Registers, if the bubble did not burst -if there was not, as he called it, a puff out. I should be sorry, indeed, to hear that he was taken at his word; for I could better spare a better man.

Now, sir, I never despaired of the stability of any of the institutions of the country. Before Trafalgar was fought, I said, and enforced my saying by the British argument of a rump and dozen, that the English fleet would sweep the French and Spaniards off the sea. When Buonaparte was moving on Waterloo, I said he would be smashed before the Duke of Wellington; and that the ever-to-be-honoured flag of Old England would wave where the leopards of Harry the King had waved long ago-over the conquered walls of Paris. I was reminded of the talents of Napoleon-his mighty marshals-his enthusiastic soldiers his undoubted knowledge of war-his well-won fame as a great captain ;-I was assailed besides by the Jacobin

slang, of which you will see a specimen in Hobhouse's Letters from Paris, which always sung defeat and disgrace to England, and rejoiced in the hoped-for approach of a new mess of murder. I made no reply-I merely offered the wager. I said nothing against the arguments, which proved, to the satisfaction of Sir Richard Philipps, and other philosophers, that we should be overthrown; for I trusted in the bayonets and the bottom of the soldiery that NEVER was beaten in the field, and the honour and steadiness of officers, whose backs an enemy NEVER had seen in a rout; and disdained to argue on the subject. That feeling do I carry into everything connected with my country. I trust in our present ministers; not because I care a farthing about any individual statesman among them, but because I know that any ministry put forward to represent Tory feeling, must have the interests of the country in their inmost hearts; and because Ĭ know also, that any ministry chosen by that party, which, with about a dozen exceptions, contains all the intellect, in every department of intellect, of England, must have the talents and knowledge requisite for the due guardianship and promotion of those interests. The financial bark may be tempest-tost; but lost it will not be, while in the hands of our chancellors. Feeling this as plainly as I feel the goosequill in my fingers, I shall not bother myself with the first three-and-forty pages of the 77th Number of the Edinburgh Review. Sperno HUMUM fugiente penna. (Pardon the pun.) I despise Hume with flying pen, and pass

on.

The general fama against Joseph is not relieved by the character of the Review, in which his conclusions are adopted as infallible. Do you not remember some of its contributors in former days-Chalmers, I believe; for he used to sully himself by dabbling in the sable stream, before we frightened him away, by our execution of the infidels-gravely asserting, and arguing, page after page, on the assertion, that nine-tenths of the people of England were paupers, supported by poor-rates extorted from the other tenth? This bedlamite proposi

As this piece of almost beastly stupidity may appear incredible to those who have forgotten the back Numbers of the Edinburgh-that is, of course, everybody except professional people like ourselves-we shall copy it verbatim. In the 58th Number of that

tion, which one would think should have startled anybody with ears of any length short of a yard, was grounded on the fact, that in a year of great distress, 900,000 people were returned as paupers; and the reviewer, with a knowledge of division worthy of the great Joseph himself, discovered, with much art and pains, that that sum is the tenth part of ten millions! Shade of the much-injured Cocker! what an immensity of misery you have escaped, by leaving the terrestrial globe before the days of Whig computers!

Article the second, on the Game Laws -a set of rehashed jokes, by the reverend jester of the Edinburgh, Sydney Smyth, who obviously is growing very old-is appended to the name of a poor pamphlet, (concerning which, most judiciously, not a word is said in the Review,) by the Honourable and Reverend William Herbert, the facetious author of Helga, and other excellent jeux-d'esprit, much lauded in the Edinburgh Review, and highly patronized by the confectioners. Let it pass. Valeat quantum. After it, the third article, on the intolerable imposture of Prince Hohenlohe, which is needlessly cut up, may waddle. With them, let the sixth article, on Foreign Wool, spun out by some woolly-brained Balaamite, march in company. And the tenth, on Geology, shall slumber uncut by me.-How interesting a selection we have hitherto got through!

The fifth article is on the pamphlets lately published by the mem

bers of the French royal family. That the simple fact of their being written by persons of that rank, would suffice to get them pretty roundly abused by the Whigamore, was quite to be expected: I own, however, that I did not think he would have had the candour to avow, as he has done, in the very opening sentences of his critique, the existence of such a feeling. He begins, indeed, by a tirade against all royal authors. But I can assure this reviewer, that he is very ill-advised, when he thinks proper to do over again anything which Croker has already handled, as every one will confess who will compare this article with that on the same subject which appeared in the Quarterly. It is a poor exhibition; but the last page is by a different hand from the rest. And what a hand! The editor of the Duchesse D'Angouleme's Memoirs reprobates, with proper gentlemanly feeling, an indecent order made by the villains who were in power when the Bourbon ladies were in captivity. He justly remarks, that the phraseology of the order is untranslateable into English'; on which the reviewer flies into a passion, and with great good taste, profound regard for truth, and decorous style of language, reminds us of the unhappy lady-unhappy, because she was profligate-who, for our sins, was given us as a queen. He silences, as he imagines, the editor by one word, "Milan. Talk, indeed, of our language having no name for the act of

work, is an article on the Causes and Cure of Pauperism, (p. 262, &c. vol. 29,) and a supplement to it, as inserted in p. 498-501. In the supplement is given an abstract of the House of Commons Report on the subject; by which it appears that the average of paupers in the last three years of the war, amounted to 940,626. On which the reviewer remarks, that "the population of England and Wales, as taken from the abstract laid before Parliament in the year 1811, appears to have been 10,150,615; so that the number of persons relieved from the poor's rates, appears to have been 94 in each 10 of the population !!!" The italics are the reviewer's own. "Such," he adds, "is the extraordinary picture, exhibited on the highest authority, of the richest, the most industrious, and most moral population that ever existed. More than nine-tenths of its whole amount occasionally subsisting on public charity!!!!" What a thricedouble ass! But the winding up of the article is one of the most delightful pieces of selfsatisfied blockheadism ever exhibited. "We," quoth the wiseacre," do not mean, however, to resume any part of the argument on this subject; but" (what think you, gentle reader?)" shall end by merely recommending the facts" (his own italics) “we have just abstracted, to the serious meditation of all whom they may concern." The facts! Oh! the facts! viz. that nine is more than nine-tenths of a hundred ! Valuable facts, indeed; but just as good as Hume's facts, or Earl Grey's facts, or Duke Bedford's facts, or Little Waddington's facts, or Olive of Cumberland's facts, or Henry Brougham's facts; or, in short, the facts of the whole worshipful party. If Chalmers, as Tim suspects, is the person guilty of this stupendous betise, nothing can be said in his defence, except, perhaps, that he was dozing at the time. Christian charity can suggest no other apology.-C. N.

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