roughly, we acknowledge; they were not vermin to be crushed by a delicate finger. That we did our work personally, we deny; unless their own consciences applied to their persons what we said of their books. A man who writes a luscious poem, lauding a hero and heroine, whose only claim to notoriety, was their having committed incest, is an incestuous poet-it does not by any means follow that he is an incestuous man. Or, to descend to mere jocularities, when we say, that a rugged, uneven, foully-heated, scurfy style, is pimpled, our metaphor may not be a good one; but there is no reason that the writer of that style should take the epithet intended for his sentence, to his nose. We positively assert, that our hatred and disgust to these scribblers, was political and literary. How, in fact, could it be personal, against men whom we never saw, and who moved in such a sphere of life as to render it impossible for us to meet them?

The men are now very poor; and, for that reason only, we forbear ripping up their insolence. Everybody was pleased at their exposure, except themselves. The nickname we gave them, has become a regularly established word in our literature. Lord Byron, while patronizing the sect, called them by no other title than the Cockneys; and the other day, when a declining Magazine got into their hands, it was quite amusing to see the French papers announcing that it was to be edited by the "Cockneis." The thing, in fact, only required exposure to be destroyed for ever. They have since been abusing us with all the impotence of defeated malice; and in the bitterness of their woe, have declared, out of hatred to us, a harmless though disgusting war against Sir Walter Scott, and lately against the whole Scottish nation !-Poor blockheads!

V. We were involved in a quarrel with the London Magazine five years ago. We are extremely reluctant to dwell on this subject for a very obvious reason; but, in justice to ourselves, we must say, that we were the attacked party-that we scarcely replied-and that before the attack had been made on us, we always had spoken with compliment and civility of the London Maganine. We must add, that Mr John Scott abused us, as a great many inferior Magazines before and since, from a mean desire of getting his own Magazine into notice-that he had employed a fellow whom we had unwittingly, in the ignorance of our provincialism, engaged to write London articles for us, to attack his Magazine in our pages, in order to fasten a quarrel upon us—and that we peremptorily refused to lend ourselves to what we thought was

mere malice. As this fellow (all magazine-people will know who he is, and nobody else would care about hearing his name,) is in the habit of printing private letters, he can contradict us on this point, if he is able. When Mr John Scott found that he could not quarrel with us on his own account, he took up what he thought proper to call the public cause, and poured against us two or three tirades of abuse, which, for virulence, falsehood, and vulgarity, were never surpassed. With a recklessness of blackguardism, he, without knowing anything of our management, attributed articles right and left to anybody whom he thought it would least become to have written them. How well qualified he was to judge from internal evidence, is clear from his attributing the Ayrshire Legatees, with the most brazen assurance, and insolent vituperation, to Sir Walter Scott,-that he could have no assistance from external evidence, is needless to say. Yet he persisted in flinging the most coarse Billingsgate allusions on gentlemen, immeasurably his superiors in every respect, and bawling and brawling with as much fury on a jeu d'esprit, as if it were a murder. He did not stumble upon a true assertion in all this random firing. Coleridge, he assured the public, was quite indignant at our Magazine, at the very time that C. was corresponding with us by every post. Our conduct towards Hogg, he said, was infamous, and only submitted to by the Shepherd from fear of offending powerful patrons; -before six months had elapsed, James had published his Life, claiming one of the most objectionable compositions in our Magazine, and avowing his connexion with it from the very beginning-a connexion which we are happy to say, subsists unimpaired to this hour. The author of Peter's Letters was accused of writing some verses that gave offence to the Cockneys, which really were written by a man living 500 miles from Edinburgh. All this was mixed up with the grossest abuse,-ruffian, pickpocket, poisoner, scoundrel, assassin, were the mildest words in his mouth. The substance of private conversations was pried into -domestic life of the most honourable and pure kind was ransacked for grounds of insult. At last, a gentleman, of the most splendid abilities and noblest nature, who had been blackguarded by name, determined to put an end to the disgusting businessand he found, that the dog who barks will not always bite-that the bully is often the same person with the coward. He treated him accordingly; and the unhappy man, soon feeling the degradation of his own conduct, fastened upon a gentleman, with whom he had no legitimate ground of quarrel, and came to the ground.

There he fell by the hand of an unwilling antagonist, and a ball never directed against him. Calumny and misrepresentation— too gross for belief by far-were yet at work. But the Gentlemen of England saw the affair in its true light, and in admiration of the temper, honour, and bravery of the living, thought with forgiveness of the misguided and infatuated dead.

But let us pass from such subjects, and offer some explanation touching the course which we have for some time pursued in our more serious political articles.

We are attached to the principles of Toryism, not because they were promulgated by this great name, or that; not because they form the creed of one party or another—but because we conscientiously believe them to be truth and wisdom. Our belief rests on what we conceive to be decisive demonstration. These principles, in the last forty years, have been brought to every imaginable test; and if their truth be not matter of perfect and unassailable proof, such proof cannot exist in the world. We can arrive at no other conclusion, when we look at the tremendous dangers through which they carried us in the period we have named—at the evils and misery from which they delivered Europe-and at the height of prosperity, happiness, and greatness to which they have raised this empire ;-and morcover, when we remember that the opposite ones-the principles of modern Whiggism-have been tried in other States, and have only produced the most terrible evils. These principles form the basis and bulwark of our system ;-upon their preponderance, from the changes that have been made in Whiggism, depends the existence of the British Monarchy.

Upon these principles, the Ministry has long acted, and so long we have been its warm friends. It has, however, on some occasions, in the last two years, wandered far from them to adopt others, which have hitherto been regarded as the essence of Whiggism and the reverse of Toryism. This has been followed by its natural consequences. Our policy has been greatly changed-some of our most important laws and systems have been changed-some of the leading relations and regulations of society have been changed-certain of the habits and feelings of the nation have been changed-and other changes are in preparation, which must affect most seriously almost everything in the country that we have been accustomed to worship.

If we had been the menials, and not the independent friends of

the Ministers-if we had been believers in Toryism merely because it was the creed of Lord Liverpool or Mr Canning—we should perhaps have changed with them. But we were not. We followed them, only because we followed their principles-we supported the creed and not the men. They did not give us our faith, and it was not for them to take it away. We saw them leave us with pain and grief, but we went not after them; we still kept in the path of our fathers.

If the Ministry had only changed its opinions on speculative points, we should not perhaps have opposed, if we could not have supported it. But, alas! to reverse the relations between master and servant to carry the trade of a nation like this from one system to another—to prejudice the people against monarchy and in favour of republicanism—and to make changes in the laws which materially alter the balance of our interests and bodies, and reach, to injure, every man's purse and breadloaf, are not matters of mere abstract opinion. The changes of the Ministry have had the most sweeping practical operation; they have destroyed some of our most valuable laws and systems; they have altered the circumstances and shape of society; they are hostile to the old and true principles of the country; and they are pregnant with mighty evils. This is our conscientious conviction, and therefore we have opposed them.

Moreover, we cannot shut our eyes to the truth of history; we cannot ascribe to the experiments of the ministry, that prosperity which the kingdom at present enjoys, and which, in the exultation of the moment, all parties so readily ascribe to these experiments; for we can distinctly trace its root and ramifications to the laws and principles of the old system-the system of the fathers and founders of our liberties, our strength and our dominion. Nay, more-Was it not in the fruits of that old system, that the ministry found the means by which they have been enabled to make their speculative changes, and to persuade Parliament to adopt their theoretical improvements? What proof, indeed, have we yet received, that these changes have done England any good? Was it not under the old commercial regulations that the overflowing of the revenue arose, by which the reductions were enabled to be made in those particular taxes that restricted the importation, and of course the consumption of the products of foreign and alien ingenuity? Is it not a problem which the evidence of facts is still required to determine, whether it would not have been bet

ter to have allowed the restrictions to continue on foreign commodities, and to have confined the reduction of taxation to the burdens which repress the growth of our own existing national and colonial industry?-We are not here touching any doctrine of political economy, much as we are disposed to question some of the axioms of the science. We are only contending, that while the world consists of separate communities and different nations, it is the duty of the respective governments of each to regard exclusively their own interests. Formerly, when boons were granted to foreign countries, to encourage them to trade with England, it was the custom to obtain some equivalent benefit in return; but now, since our policy has become libertine, we are exerting all the means of legislation to bring the products of foreign artizans into competition with those of our own operatives, not in the general market of the world, but in the very shops and huxteries of our remotest towns and villages. England is forgotten in the cheers which the ministry are receiving from alien commercial interests; and the surplus revenue derived from the ancient precautions of the wisdom of experience, is converted, by this new anti-national system, into boons and bounties, which will have the effect of raising competitors in trade and manufactures, by whom the profits of our own capitalists will be reduced to fractions, and the earnings and employment of our own people impoverished and curtailed.

If there had been an efficient Opposition to have examined these changes, we should perhaps have been silent: but there was not. If we could not have opposed them without assisting the Whigs to obtain the reins of government, we certainly should not have written a line against them. We assuredly would have them rather than a Whig Ministry. Such a Ministry, when Whiggism is what it is in persons and principles, would be the greatest curse that could visit the country. The Whigs, however, were even more firmly pledged to the change than the Ministers; and, of course, our opposition was as much directed against the former as the latter. We have not, by this opposition, contaminated ourselves with Whig alliance; we have not disgraced ourselves by warring for Whig benefit; we have fought for the good of our country ONLY, in company with the most honourable and upright of our countrymen.

The Ministry, however, by its change, placed us in a most painful and embarrassing situation. It naturally carried along with it all its own prints, and many of its friends. Its new principles and measures were cried up by the Opposition, and, as it seemed,