THE Letter which is here reprinted, as connected with the preceding Essay, was occasioned by a speech delivered in the House of Commons by the Member for Norwich, Mr. William Smith, the part of which in question is thus reported in the Parliamentary Debates:

'The honourable member then adverted to that ' tergiversation of principle which the career of political individuals so often presented. He was far from supposing, that a man who set out in 'life with the profession of certain sentiments, was 'bound to conclude life with them. He thought 'there might be many occasions in which a change of opinion, when that change was unat'tended by any personal advantages, when it appeared entirely disinterested, might be the result ' of sincere conviction. But what he most detested, what most filled him with disgust, was 'the settled, determined malignity of a renegado. He had read in a publication (The Quarterly 'Review), certainly entitled to much respect from ' its general literary excellences, though he dif'fered from it in its principles, a passage alluding 'to the recent disturbances, which passage was as follows:

"When the man of free opinions commences professor of moral and political philosophy for 'the benefit of the public.. the fables of old cre➡ dulity are then verified.. his very breath becomes venomous, and every page which he sends

it was now first issued into the world. It must ' remain with the government, and their legal 'advisers, to take what steps they might deem 'most advisable to repress this seditious work, ' and punish its author. In bringing it under the notice of the House, he had merely spoken in ' defence of his constituents, who had been most 'grossly calumniated; and he thought that what he had said would go very far to exculpate them. 'But he wished to take this bull by the horns.'

A LETTER

TO WILLIAM SMITH, ESQ. M.P.

SIR,

You are represented in the newspapers as having entered, during an important discussion in Parliament, into a comparison between certain passages in the Quarterly Review, and the opinions which were held by the author of Wat Tyler, threeand-twenty years ago. It appears farther, according to the same authority, that the introduction of so strange a criticism, in so unfit a place, did not arise from the debate, but was a premeditated thing; that you had prepared yourself for it by stowing the Quarterly Review in one pocket, and Wat Tyler in the other; and that you deliberately stood up for the purpose of reviling an individual who was not present to vindicate himself, and in a place which afforded you protection.

My name, indeed, was not mentioned; but that I was the person whom you intended, was notorious to all who heard you. For the impropriety of introducing such topics in such an assembly, it is farther stated, that you received a well-merited rebuke from Mr. Wynn, who spoke on that occasion as much from his feelings towards one with whom he has lived in uninterrupted

friendship for nearly thirty years, as from a sense of the respect which is due to parliament. It is, however, proper that I should speak explicitly for myself. This was not necessary in regard to Mr. Brougham, . . he only carried the quarrels as well as the practices of the Edinburgh Review into the House of Commons. But as calumny, Sir, has not been your vocation, it may be useful, even to yourself, if I comment upon your first attempt.

First, as to the Quarterly Review. You can have no other authority for ascribing any particular paper in that journal to one person or to another, than common report: in following which you may happen to be as much mistaken as I was when upon the same grounds I supposed Mr. William Smith to be a man of candour, incapable of grossly and wantonly insulting an individual.

The Quarterly Review stands upon its own merits. It is not answerable for any thing more than it contains. What I may have said, or thought, in any part of my life, no more concerns that journal than it does you, or the House of Commons: and I am as little answerable for the journal, as the journal for me. What I may have written in it is a question which you, Sir, have no right to ask, and which certainly I will not answer. As little right have you to take that for granted which you cannot possibly know. The question, as respects the Quarterly Review, is not who wrote the paper which happens to have excited Mr. William Smith's displeasure, but whether the facts which are there stated are true, the quotations accurate, and the inferences just: