Page:Hazlitt, Political Essays (1819).djvu/213

From Wikisource
Jump to navigation Jump to search
This page has been proofread, but needs to be validated.
171

throne, and from which, amidst the groans of the dying and the dead, she utters, laughing, the sacred doctrine of "millions made for one!"—One thing contents us, and sits light upon our hearts, that we have always seen through her disguises: we have known her from first to last, though "she has changed shapes with Proteus," and now gone by the name of Religion, now of Social Order, now of Morality, now been personified at Guildhall as Trade and Commerce, or sat in the Speaker's chair as the English Constitution (the most impudent trick of all)—under none of these respectable alias's and swindling characters, nor when she towered above the conflagration of Moscow, dressed in a robe of flame-coloured taffeta, or sat perched as Victory on the crests of British soldiers, nor when she hovered over the frightened country as the harpy of Invasion; no, nor at any other time did we ever take her for any thing but what we knew she was, the patron-saint of tyrants and of slaves; an adulteress, an impostor, and a murderess. The world, whom she has juggled, begin to find her out too: it will hardly "stand now with her sorceries and her lies, and the blood of men, with which she has made herself drunk;" and we may yet live to see her carted for a bawd.

Having thus vented the overflowings of our gall against the old lady above-mentioned, we shall proceed to a detail of some of her fraudulent transactions, as they are stated with great clearness and command of temper, in Mr. Macirone's "Interesting Facts." Interesting indeed! But no more comments for the present. We have not time to grace our narrative or confirm our doctrine of "the uses of legitimacy" by giving Mr. Macirone's history of the treatment of his family by the Holy See, which brought his father to this country, and eventually led to his connexion with Murat. It appears that his grandfather, the head of a noble and wealthy family at Rome, was ruined in a large concern, and then robbed of his right by Monsignore Banchieri, treasurer to the Pope, a "gentleman and man of honour" in those times; and that, though the tribunals awarded him reparation, the decisions in his favour were constantly defeated by the interposition