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When shall scepter'd Slaughter cease?
Awhile He crouch'd, O Victor France!
Beneath the light'ning of thy Lance,
With treacherous dalliance wooing Peace.[1]
But soon up-springing from his dastard trance
- ↑ With treacherous dalliance wooing Peace.—To juggle this easily-juggled people into better humour with the supplies (and themselves, perhaps, affrighted by the successes of the French,) our Ministry sent an ambassador to Paris to sue for Peace. The Supplies are granted: and in the mean time the Arch-duke Charles turns the scale of Victory on the Rhine, and Buonaparte is checked before Mantua. Straightways, our courtly Messenger is commanded to uncurl his lips, and propose to the lofty Republic to restore all its conquests, and to suffer England to retain all hers, (at least all her important ones) as the only terms of Peace, and the ultimatum of the negociation!
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ταλαινα ΠΑΡΑΚΟΠΑ πρωτοπημων
Æschyl. Ag. 230.
The friends of Freedom in this country are idle. Some are timid; some are selfish; and many the torpedo touch of hopelessness has numbed into inactivity. We would fain hope, that (if the above account be accurate—it is only the French account) this dreadful instance of infatuation in our ministry will rouse them to one effort more; and that at one and the same time in our different great towns the people will be called on to think solemnly, and declare their thoughts fearlessly, by every method, which the remnant of the constitution allows.
C
