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to a false amount, on taking out letters of administration. I find, on searching at the proper office, that this infant was never arrested, and I cannot learn that he was ever known to be in pecuniary difficulties. A simple fact may easily confound an orator, who unworthily condescends to listen to calumnies, and to make statements prejudicial to others, without minutely exa mining into their truth.

"And now I will ask my reader, what is his opinion of the credit due to parliamentary motions, and the members' attention to the facts on which they are founded, even when those members are men who wear the robes of English advocates? I dare not tell him mine-but I dare ask if it be necessary, after an exposure like this, to be at the trouble of examining the truth and tendency of the other statements, as to this cause, in these notable debates,

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some of which I know to be false, and all of which, it seems, proceeded from the same office? The above statement triumphantly answers this sweeping and general interrogatory.

"Christian charity teaches me to believe that this scandalous letter might be written in ignorance; and to write so heart-rending a letter to the first Judge in the realm, without due inquiry into the truth of that melancholy event which its contents insinuate and allude to, was culpable in no ordinary degree; but I hope there is not any man suffered to exercise the profession of a gentleman, who, if conusant of the truth of the case, could

condescend to be the author of such a letter, or who, if he had done so, could read this statement without a blush; for he that blushes not at his crime, but adds shamelessness to his shame, hath no instrument left to restore him to the hopes of virtue.""

Here I stop--the Whig who reads these things and yet blushes not for his Brougham, but adds shamelessness to his shame. I certainly know of no instrument by which such a man can be restored to the hopes of virtue. Your obedient servant, P. R. Edinburgh, Aug. 20, 1823.

P. S.-Mr Denman is represented by the Times as having said in the House, that he was much more proud of his own silk gown, than he would have been of any silk gown the Chancellor could have bestowed on him." If a lawyer has any reason to be proud of a silk gown at all, it must be on the score of its being the mark of his real eminence in the law-and if Mr D. seriously thinks the Common Councilmen of London better judges, in regard to such a matter, than Lord Eldon, he assuredly has good reason to be a happy man. I wish him much joy of this new illustration of "Laus est a laudatis laudari."

P. R.

*In what is stated to be Mr J. William's specch, in the Times of the 5th of June, I find these words: "All the cases he should bring forward, and all the documents he had, were furnished by one single office;" and the learned member seems to have been peculiarly happy in the selection of his office."

LETTERS OF TIMOTHY TICKLER, ESQ. TO EMINENT LITERARY CHARACTERS, No. VIII.

TO THE EDITOR OF BLACKWOOD'S MAGAZINE.

On the last Number of the Edinburgh Review, and Things in General.

MY DEAR NORTH, I wish you would excuse me. In good faith, though I earnestly desire to do all I can for your Magazine, yet you are hunting me over hard, when you ask me to be the regular periodical reviewer of the reviews-the mallet of the malleters. There is something rather saucyish even in the reviews themselves pretending to get through, with the assistance of half-a-dozen hands, all the subjects discussed by all the intellects

of England, in any given time. There is a kind of assumption of universal knowledge, which is laughable enough in any dilletanti paragraphists. But you wish me to take up a more arduous task-I must whip the cream off the whipt cream. I myself, I, not even sheltered by the defensive armour of "We," must, at your request, set myself up as a sort of Encyclopædia, a walking, stalking dictionary, de omni scibili. Six feet four as I am, this is

rather too much for my inches. However, I shall oblige you this time, though, among other causes why I should wish to decline giving my opinions on the last Number of Mr Jeffrey's Review, this is a fine day, and I had my Joe Manton in prime order. Credit me, though I like the sport critical well enough, I prefer bagging savoury muir-fowl to bringing down such vulture-beaked carrion as Brougham, or parrots, as our fat friend, or tom-tits, like Jeffrey the Great. But vogue la galere!-here I have taken pen in hand, and shall fall foul of Blue and Yellow.

And a foul book it is-somewhere about the basest effusion in some of its articles which has for a long time come from the faction. Good heavens! with what a different set of minds I am now grappling from those which engaged my attention last month! I pin not my faith on the Quarterly Reviewers; I acknowledge their affectations, and I scruple not to expose their bookselling humbug, or their occasional puerilities. But making every deduction for these qualities that the most fastidious can think reasonable, what a solid fund of honourable, true, hearty British feeling, remains behind! I pass their learning, their taste, their great information-I speak only of their affection for the honour and glory of England, for her happiness at home, and her character abroad. My heart swells with delight when I hear their praises and their defences of the glorious institutions which have enabled us to lay claim to Goldsmith's compliment, which have given colour to his boast, of our being lords of the human race. But in the Northern Review what do I see? Talent occasionally, I admit, though, of late, very rarely displayed, and never of a high or manly order; but a spirit mean, malignant, and fiendish-sneers at all that is sacred, scoffs at all that is upright, ruffian howlings against all that is established. A hungry discontent lours over every page the chime of pinch-gutted poverty rings in your ears in every sentence. Nothing is right, because the scribes and patrons of the declining pamphlet have not the management of concerns. The plain truth is, that the country has fought the good fight, trampled the demon of Jacobinism to the ground, and extinguished the hopes of anarchy and murder-and this con

trary to the wishes, and in opposition to the croaking prophecies, of Whiggery. Still more, it has weathered through the difficulties unavoidably incidental to the gigantic contest in which we were engaged, and prosperity, in the shape of diminished taxation, surplus revenues, cheap provisions, increasing commerce, diffused comforts and luxuries, and, to crown all, a contented populace, gladdens our eyes on every hand. This, too, rankles in the hearts of the Whigs. They prophesied misery -so far did they resemble Cassandrabut, unlike the prophetess, the misery they called for has not come. Hence the national exultation is their sorrow ;they are in mourning when we are in joy. Long may they so continue! It is no wonder, therefore, if everything they write is tinged and tainted with this unhappy feeling; it is no wonder that they loathe the soldier who won his country's victories, the sailor who brushed her enemies from the deep, and the statesmen who directed her energies during danger and difficulty; it is no wonder that, in the writhings of their woe, they curse the very sun for ripening our harvests, and the winds of heaven for wafting riches to our shores. Whig feeling at present appears to be something similar to that which dictated the wish of a wretched Radical fleeing to America, some poor creature, embittered by the demoniac writings of those whom Mr Hume calls in Parliament the most moral men in the empire-" May every curse," said the unhappy man, as he stood upon the deck, to take a last view of the white cliffs of the country of his birth-" may every curse which all the sects of England can devise, with their utmost ingenuity, fall in tenfold bitterness on the accursed land which I am leaving!" There is not a Whig in the Island who is not ready to respond, Amen!

Were I disposed to jest, I should attribute this uncomfortable sensation to the empty state of the stomach, the grumbling of the lower guts, for the unfortunate devils have been long hankering in vain after the flesh-pots of Egypt. But it is in truth no jesting matter. What Doctor Johnson, in his beautiful tribute to the memory of Gilbert Walmesly, so truly and expressively called" the virulence and malevolence of the Whig party," appears to me to have become more rabid

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and acrimonious of late-happily, I may add, however, more powerlessbut yet there is many a Catiline among them, who deserves the close and earnest attention of those who are ringed and banded in defence of the constitution of the country. But I am keeping too long away from the consideration of this individual Number of the Edinburgh, while I am dilating on the general tendency of all its Numbers.

We have then, to set out with, a paper four-and-thirty pages thick, lamenting over the decisions of the Lord Chancellor in cases of infamous books when pirated. On this my opinion has been long made up, and it was fully expressed in your Magazine, in reply to a something similar article in the Quarterly of last year. This of the Edinburgh is not so canting as that in its rival Review, but just as shallow and sophistical, when looked at with the eye of common sense. The two Reviewers had in fact different cards to play. He of the South wanted to sell Murray's bad books-the Northern had only for his object to abuse the Lord Chancellor. This article is written with all the hard hammering technicality of a hired pleader, and encumbered with all the pedantic sweeping of the lower courts. also most scientific in its distribution, It is helping you to firstly, secondly, thirdly, lastly, and to conclude, in every second page. I pass by the historical rubbish, which serves as balaam for the introduction, and which any solicitor's boy might have furnished at sixpence a page of brief paper, and shall say a few words on the real merits of the question, which may be discussed pro and con in almost as many sentences as this relentless scribbler has wasted pages. Let us look at the affair as it practically stands. A bookseller publishes an improper work, which is immediately pirated by some unprincipled fellow, for I certainly shall not say anything in favour of the morality of the Benbow and Dugdale school. On this he applies to the Chancellor, to interfere to protect his property by injunction, and the Chancellor refuses, on the ground that no man can have property in a nuisance. "Shew me," says my Lord Eldon, "that your book is entitled to my protection, and it shall have it. I think that it is not so entitled, and,

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But it

until my doubt is removed by competent authority, I shall not interfere in the matter." I would be glad to know if this be not common sense. is urged, that he is doing that which he ought to prevent-that he is spreading the sale of injurious works-that he is allowing a rogue to plead on his sheer, rascally cant, and nothing else own wrong, &c. &c. Now this is

partly the low cant of low law, quibbles, and partly the cant of weak shirking and shifting on technical morality-both equally contemptible. The Chancellor is no criminal judge. With the punishment of such books he has nothing to do; other officers have to look to that; and his plain him, that he must not protect works and clear line of duty points out to unworthy of protection. But here the ingenious special pleading hack of the in with an argument, which I should original publisher of the filth comes suppose is deemed quite unanswerable, for it is urged at least fifty times in proved to be bad by the competent authis article." Why are not the books thorities? or, until so proved, presuof the competent authorities, I shall med to be innocent?" On the conduct speak by and by-but here, I must say, that this, on the part of the pubments. Here is a question of properlisher, is the most impudent of arguty,-Mr A has invaded what belongs to Mr A what is his remedy. An acto Mr B, and the law has pointed out tion is open to him, by which he can deprive the pirate of the books he has printed. The reviewer has quoted the very act, authorizing the proceeding, in p. 282. From motives of convenience, however, he prefers claiming the fore, submit to have the nature of his assistance of Chancery; he must, thereof the Chancery judge. That breast property decided by the single breast of humanity, (though in the cases commay be in error-it is the common lot plained of there has been no error,) but there exists a method by which the complainant may appear with a direct certainty of removing any doubt which may arise in the Chancellor's mindI

allude to the very simple plan of coming into his court fortified by the much panegyrized verdict of a jury in his favour. He omits to do this, and the very omission brings him forward in a suspicious character. Let Mr Murray prosecute Mr Benbow, get his penny

a-sheet damages, confiscate the pirated copies, and then, when he has obtained common-law revenge against his brother bookseller, when the ordinary jurisdiction has pronounced him possess ed of defensible property, come into the court of final appeal to demand its extraordinary protection against all pirates whatever. But Mr Murray well knows, that no twelve men, on their oaths, would declare Don Juan anything but a nuisance, and therefore very wisely keeps away from their decision. It is found much easier to get hack-fellows about Albemarle Street to sully the Quarterly with stuff abusing the Chancellor, which, out of hatred to Lord Eldon, is echoed by Brougham from the Mount of Procla

mation.

In truth, the whole article is evidently enough the product of the same feel ings which have of late inspired that gentleman, and some other barristers of inferior ability, to so many exertions of a similar tendency. The Chancellor is, without doubt, the greatest lawyer now in the world-he is, even the Whigs admit, as upright a judge as ever adorned the Bench of England -he is a Tory-he is a member of a Tory Administration-he stands, both in his judicial and in his ministerial capacity, as high as any man can do: What wonder, then, that his name should be gall, and his glory wormwood, to the Whigs? They look at Lord Erskine, and they-yes, even they-blush. They cannot away with this unapproached and unquestioned eminence. They cannot endure the spectacle of this Tory greatness, and they abuse the man! It is all as it should be.

The Morning Chronicle openly and boldly attacks the Chancellor for not giving Mr Henry Brougham a silkgown. This topic is not touched upon in the Edinburgh Review; but the Edinburgh Review, immediately after the appearance of the series of papers upon this topic, puffs the Morning Chronicle as the most "liberal and decorous" of journals; and inserts an article, the object of which is to convince the world, that the Chancellor is profoundly ignorant of the first

principles of the law of England, because he will not protect the property of lewd, irreligious, blasphemous li bels-because, in their own words, he does that the effect of which is to suffer" a Hone, or a Benbow, to be arrayed in the spoils of a Moore and a Byron!"

Not being an English lawyer, I do not mean to enter the lists with Mr Brougham as to the technicalities of his trade. But I shall just mention in a single sentence, why I conceive the whole of the argument in this written pleading of his to be founded on a palpable fallacy. The argument, the only thing that can aspire to the name of an argument, is-that injunctions are granted, in cases of patents, before the property of the patent is ascertained in a court of law; and that, therefore, injunctions should at once be granted in the case of books, leaving the question of property, or not property, to be subsequently discussed in a court of law, and settled by the voice of a jury. Now, I just ask, is this the course that has been adopted, or that would be adopted, in regard to a patent poison? If so, then Lord Eldon is wrong; if not so, he is right; and Lawyer Brougham's thirty pages have been dearly paid for, if he got ten guineas a-sheet for them.

As for the other attempt at an argument, viz.-" Chancellors, in former days, protected by their injunctions the property of Pope's Dunciad, Swift's Miscellanies,* &c. &c. ; therefore the present Chancellor should also protect the property of Cain, and Don Juan, and Tommy Little:"-As for this, I confess, I make very little of it. Were former Chancellors in the habit of granting injunctions to protect books, the libellous tendency of which was known to, or laid before them? This is the real and the only question.

"Is it not intolerable, however," say the Anti-Cancellarii," that you should suffer works, which you yourselves declaim against as infamous, to be circulated with the most unrestrained freedom?" This, I own, is the practical question; but the Chancellor has nothing whatever to do with it. Here his Majesty's Attorney-Ge

* By the way, the reader will be amused with finding the assertion, that the Dunciad was "one series of libels," in the same number with all these fine diatribes about the novel origin of libelling. But let that pass.

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neral steps in, and we must ask him to justify his conduct, as he can most easily do. How rejoiced would be the Whigs, if they could clamour him into commencing a crusade against the press! Wisely, most wisely, does he keep from it, being taught by the result of the cases against Hone, that an appearance of persecution suffices to sell trash the most stupid, blasphemous, and ill-intended, and to supply the ever-watchful enemies of ministers with sounding common-places in defence of the liberty of the press, which, after all, these noisy declaimers tremble before and detest. I am rejoiced at this determination of our rulers. Never, never was I afraid of our being able to defeat the foes of religion and order at their own weapons-of being fully powerful enough to put them down by the pen; and accordingly I never shall call for the arm of power to aid us. As I have often said before, give us a clear stage let us expose the fallacy of the arguments, the villainy of the writers, the stupidity of the compositions, the profligacy of the lives of the liberales, and I warrant, that no man worth retaining will fail to be shocked by the hideousness of the picture, or will hcsitate to depart from their banners. See what we ourselves have done for the Cockneys-see what, I am sorry to say, Lord Byron is doing for himself, and pluck up your heart, comforting it with the assurance, that merry old England is not yet destined to be yielded to the dominion of the devil.

The real effect of the Chancellor's decrees, is, as this Reviewer well knows, to keep out of the market books of clever wickedness. Most truly does he say, (p. 305,) "Fame is good as garnish, but something more is required." Sorry should I be indeed to think that money is the sole stimulant of genius, or to imagine for a moment that Paradise Lost, or Hamlet, ay, or Childe Harold, was called into being by any such paltry consideration. But I do think, that, when a man's mind becomes so debauched as to compose, in cold blood, corrupting and unmanly works, gain is a greater stimulant than any wretched fame which they may confer; and that the example of a highly paid and successful profligate of genius must operate as an encouragement on the mercenary crew, who are always ready to enlist

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their pens in any cause at the command of the highest bidder. Now, sir, when wealthy booksellers are frightproperty is incapable of being protectened away, by the certainty that such ed, this ungodly source of traffic is cut off. Murray gave L.1000 for the first two cantos of Don Juan-if Hunt gave L.100 for the three last, it is as much as he could have afforded. This is of itself a consummation devoutly to be wished. Let us not be afraid, that the little possible extra damage done fusion of the one, two, or three pirated to public morals by the increased difworks, will counterbalance the good done by the establishment of the great principle. Besides, I doubt the fact of the great increase of the diffusion. Two and two in trade as often make one as they make four. In the hands of a rich, powerful, and fashionable bookseller, five or six editions the gentry, by his exertions and those would be put off among the trade or prints but for the canaille, depends of his friends; while the pirate, who only on the first burst of feverish curiosity, which is soon cooled, when the rabble find that the books pirated are not destined for their palates. Such has been notoriously the case with the Don; but, at all events, the cry in behalf of public morals comes admirably from the publishers of books to which they are ashamed to put their names, and from writers in the Edinburgh Review. Of one thing I can venture to assure these persons, that the before the public neutralizes them very in which these works come way

much.

the persecution of the great, or the pufThey are graced neither by fery of the cultivated. Nay, the very apathy and indifference of the head of the ministry deprives them of much tempt with which Lord Eldon perfactitious piquancy. The cool conhis government, and decrying the sysmits the circulation of poems libelling tem of which he is one of the most able supports, communicates itself insensibly to their readers, and they, who would have looked on them as most decisive knockdown blows to his authority, if he had let loose the Attorney-General against them, now consider them as mere bagatelles, which ing. ministers are very right in not mind

Has any one ventured to say a word in favour of the individual book clamour

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