LETTERS OF JULIUS.

LETTER I.

TO THE DEGENERATE WHIGS.

GENTLEMEN,

November 26, 1819.

A PROPHETICAL exordium cannot but be acceptable to the Sons of the prophets. Unlike, however, the responses of your tripod, which for twenty years past has dealt in little else than falsehood, or studied ambiguity, my prediction shall be clear and intelligible. Your seers, unable to look forward to ultimate effects, have furnished out oracles from time to time, which in collection present us with nothing but " confusion worse confounded." They have afforded us a practical demonstration that the versatility which may effect subordinate purposes will infallibly defeat the ultimate aim. It would be wondrous, indeed, if any objec whatever could be juggled into the possession of

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those who, in the prosecution of its attainment, have not the wit to abstain from measures which completely neutralize or counteract each other. I would fain present you with a model for contemplation in the pertinacity with which I shall continue the devotee of a dictum which the principles of civil polity send forth from their adyta, as much within the scope of comprehension as beyond the possibility of dispute. This dictum is bold in proclaiming, that as you have suffered yourselves to be the dupes of false prophets, it will be long ere you can become the disciples of true ones. This is the text on which your daily conduct affords an ample comment; on which it expatiates to the conviction of all but yourselves. To you, gentlemen, I may be speaking mystically, because I am speaking truly; but to the majority of a thinking people, who have thankfully accepted the warning your misfortunes hold forth, I am using the unadorned language of simple truth. In you we see concentrated all the errors, which, arraying the shadow as the substance, exhaust perseverance in the chase of phantoms. To you we most probably owe our own safe steerage. You are the beacon that warns us where danger lurks; or, to use a nearer metaphor,

you are the vessel on the shoals, that marks safety to be anywhere rather than in its own company. Far from wishing to rob you of the slightest claim, on consideration, I am among the foremost to vote you thanks for public service, and most willingly bestow upon you the praise, to which, in common with handposts, beacons," deep water" signs, "steel trap and spring-gun" boards, and other mute outmarks of danger, you are equally entitled. Your opponents would grant you some degree of applause for the very determination with which you have laboured to oust them from their post, were it not for the trickery and meanness which have been its peculiar characteristics. Having dabbled in the analysis of mind, you learnt that its weakness in some men is an enemy's best weapon, and that to haunt such persons with a prophecy of their ruin, is the speediest and most infallible method of effecting it. As, however, was natural in your case, alloying this discovery with an utter ignorance of its applicability, you have attempted, against the intelligence of an Empire, what with your powers it were ten to one had succeeded against an isolated individual. You deluged its ears with predictions of destruction, while the seriousness of your folly produced

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that uncontrollable mirth, which, to your mental optics, appeared as none other than the Porpus before the storm. If you knew, gentlemen, that the ludicrous figure you cut was the sole excitement of that mirth; if, instead of saluting your senses as the bravura of desperation, you could, in it, list a nation's scorn; if you could do so, gentlemen, there might be some hopes of you. The moment that can give us these hopes, must witness you overwhelmed with confusion. Ere that period ignorance must. lose its hardihood, and the blush that forebodes improvement take place of the brass that defies it. When contemplating the extravagancies and contrarieties of your conduct, you appear to me like a set of experimentalists, who keep a menagerie for the sake of mutilating its inmates. In this den of quackery, I can imagine grafted quadrupeds and docked baboons. You are the only men I can conceive attempting to introduce gelding tigers for draught, or muzzled lions for ploughing. Extravagant as these similies may appear, I will be bound to prove that the monstrous incongruities of your actions fully justify them. Gentlemen, was I not aware that you make opposition a trade, I should conlude that you were the inventors of the kalei

doscope. I should conclude that the vision which could behold in fair and beauteous order whatever and how many soever bits of schemes might be huddled together, that that vision had presented to the world a material representation of its peculiarities and powers. From the known fact, however, that indiscriminate opposition is the staple commodity of your traffic, there is no need to pay a tribute to your principles in supposing the existence of such a vision, and at the same time still less need to 'defame you with the imputation of a clever and curious invention. Gentlemen, I must offer 'yourselves as an apology to my readers for di gressing from the ordinary line of epistolary composition. In treating such subjects, correctness of description must embody confusion in the picture. I have already charged you with trickery and meanness; and, together with these charges, shall proceed to substantiates a third, which is, your superlative ignoranceof, and consequent incapacity for, political go, verning. When Radical Reform was selected as the watchword of Revolution, you at first hung back as neutrals. In this, as in every other affair of moment, your first movements are marked by a master-stroke of folly. Thera