too, was induced to announce a new edition of his 66 Letter on the Coronation Oath;"-and lastly, a writer in the Edinburgh Review has put forth an article, entitled, " George III. and the Catholic Question," in which, with the usual accompaniment of sneers and sarcasms, I am thanked for "the very signal service I have done to the great cause of Catholic Emancipation," by this extraordinary instance of "indiscreet and unthinking zeal."

This formidable array of adverse judgments gives me, you will readily believe, very little concern. But as you, and some other of my friends, think it may be useful to expose the weakness of the grounds, on which these gentlemen build their opinion, I shall not decline the task proposed to me.

It can hardly, I hope, be necessary for me to assure you, in the outset, that I feel most strongly the delicate and solemn nature of the duty I incur, in thus venturing to comment on the obligation of my Sovereign's Oath. It is a subject, which, in itself, and under any circumstances, would demand from a religious mind, to be treated with the strictest and most scrupulous sincerity. But, if it were otherwise possible, in the heat of controversy, to forget this duty, the awful event, which has removed

for ever from the scene of our contention the ablest and most distinguished of all the individuals engaged in it, could hardly fail to recall us to better thoughts,-to admonish us, in a voice more eloquent even than his own, "what sha- · "dows we are, and what shadows we pursue."

Bear with me, I entreat you, for a very short space, while I do justice to myself, in speaking of the eminent person to whom I have here alluded. I have been accused, in a late number of the Edinburgh Review, of treating him with "scurrility;" a charge, which, without stooping to confute it, I fling back on the head of my accuser. Had I ever addressed to Mr. Canning any language, which a public man, on a public question, would have a right to complain of hearing, much more, had I ever used towards him the smallest portion of that coarse and unmanly ribaldry, which this very Review,* as

* In the 74th Number of this Review is an elaborate article of 30 pages, entitled "Mr. Canning and Reform," founded on a collection, made by a country bookseller, of his Speeches at his Elections for Liverpool. To select all the gross and insulting passages, which this article contains, would be to transcribe a very large portion of it; but for one or two specimens I must find room.

It will perhaps be remembered that Mr. Canning, in addressing his late constituents, when about to sail for the government,

often as it suited its factious purposes, delighted to heap upon him, I should now feel, what it

of India, intimated his opinion, that it was desirable to compromise the Roman Catholic Question, rather than keep alive the discord attending its continued agitation. The reviewer characterizes this part of the speech as "advertising for the place of Leader of the House of Commons, then vacant by the death of Lord Londonderry : Tenacity of place," he continues, being to public men,' what tenacity of life is to reptiles. "Therefore, the Catholic Question is got rid of with very little

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ceremony, in a passage which we will not cite, because it "varies materially from the first newspaper report of this speech; and though either edition is humiliating enough for Mr. Canning, and must be sufficiently grateful to the "Lord Chancellor and the Orange party, yet we might, by "giving the one, misrepresent him unfavourably; and by

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adopting the other we might weaken the sort of recantation "which he unquestionably intended to make." Again—“ The "fear of reform, the love of our ancient order of things, could, "it seems, avail nothing, unless place was superadded to the "calls of duty but the instant this graceful and convenient "union is formed, he is all ear to those claims to which he had "been so often and so obstinately deaf,-and after ridding himself of the Catholic Question, he steps unencumbered into "his situation," &c.—p. 388.

Once more after charging him with wilful and " gross mis"representation of the Reformers," and speaking of one "great source of our calamities being the profligate conduct of our "statesmen, Mr. Canning among the number," &c. "But "what cares Mr. Canning for these things? "to tell about a red lion, and he must make, if he could not

He had a story

would perhaps be well for my accuser, if he himself were capable of feeling. As it is, no con

"find, a way to let it into his speech. We shall not extract "this fable, as the reader has, in all probability, already seen "it; but we will remind its author of an old maxim connected "with the subject of lions, the substance of which, though "not in the same language, his new colleagues" (A. D. 1822) " will, doubtless, oftentimes have in their minds during the "limited period of their connexion with him.—

ου χρη λεοντος σκυμνον ἐν πολει τρέφειν,

ἦν δ ̓ εκτραφη τις, τοις τρόποις ὑπηρετειν.

"which may be thus shortly expressed ;- If you choose to "take up one of this breed, and make much of him, you must lay

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your account with having to bear with his tricks,” (literally his tropes.')-p. 404.

"It is impossible to conclude this article, without expressing more distinctly, the astonishment with which we have been "stricken at the prodigious assurance with which Mr. Canning "ventures to treat the subject of the country's distresses. His "levity we say nothing more of; but it required the evidence ❝of our senses to make us believe, that any man in his situation "could have the audacity to come forth and tell the ruined "landowners of England, that the only thing he could recom"mend to them was patience. Patience enough, indeed, they "had shown, before he had obtruded his advice; and if they can endure that advice, they will prove that they have no "need of it; for to be patient under such an outrage is more "hard than to bear all the other buffetings of their cruel for"tune. He, indeed, to tell them so! and in the body of the "advertisement for the place which he has since gotten! He to "recommend patience as the only remedy! the coadjutor of

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sideration, not even the call of self-defence, shall prevail with me to violate the Sanctuary of the Tomb, or to recur to any parts of Mr. Canning's character or conduct, but those on which I can offer an honest, however humble, tribute of respect to his memory. His genius, his eloquence, all the best and noblest endowments of his highly-gifted mind, devoted by him to the service of his country, during the long period of her greatest danger;-he himself ever foremost,

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"those ministers whose blundering and profligate courses have brought the landowners to ruin! For which, of all the "schemes that have sunk them to the earth, did not this talker support? Which of all the men that have stript them of their revenues did not this place-hunter league with? And when "he sees staring him in the face, the countless miseries which he has "occasioned, he can coolly stop the current of his mirth, to give "them a bit of serious advice—it is all he can do for them, after "what he has done to them. Take my word for it (says he) we have undone you so completely, that no power on earth can mend your lot, and all you have for it, is to bear with patience what we have brought upon you.' Such experiments upon the temper of the country could only be attempted in "the present state of its representation; and we may venture "to foretel, that the House of Commons will practise the car“dinal virtue thus recommended to the landowners, in a man

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ner as exemplary as Mr. Canning could desire. They will "bear even him, and his gibes, and his counsels, that is to say, as long as the court pleases."-p. 407.