They think of the present administration as Mr. Canning formerly thought of it, and they think of Mr. Canning as all the world think. Is that all? Oh no! They speak against the renewal of the Income Tax; and this, in the opinion of some persons, is attacking what is more valuable than all our other institutions put together! For our own parts, our political confession of faith on this subject is short: we neither consider Lord Castlereagh as the Constitution, nor The Courier as the Country.
But if, after all, and in spite of our teeth, we should be forced to acknowledge that Sir Judkin Fitzgerald and the use of the torture, that the system of spies and informers, that Lord Sidmouth's sagacity, circulars, and travelling delegates, that arbitrary imprisonment and solitary confinement, the Suspension of the Habeas Corpus, Standing Armies, and Rotten Boroughs, Lord Castlereagh's past measures or future designs, Mr. Canning's love of liberty, and Mr. Vansittart's hankerings after the Income Tax, are all that is left valuable in our institutions, or respectable in the country, then we must say, that the more effectually the Opposition "attack all that is valuable in such institutions," the more we shall thank them; and that the sooner we can get rid of all that is "most respectable" in such a system, the less occasion we shall have to blush for the Country.
ENGLAND in 1798.
By S. T. Coleridge.
"The Monthly Magazine tells us that this country has occasioned the death of 5,800,000 persons in Calabria, Russia, Poland, Germany, France, Spain, and Portugal. This country, reader, England! our country, our great, our glorious, our beloved country, according to this Magazine, has been the guilty
