we should revolt with the shudder of aversion, if it were not indispensable and imperative upon us to expose it in its naked deformity to the public eye.

We will turn, in the first place, to history. But history can present to us nothing of equal turpitude. What was the appnoia of Athens to the licentiousness of the British press? For some short space indeed a parallel may be drawn. The orators of the Athenian democracy, like the present political writers, threw about them the most vituperative and opprobrious epithets. They heaped abuse upon the public conduct and private character of each other with the most prodigal profusion. Nor were they content with attacking the lives and persons of their rivals, but extended their acrimonious strictures to their families, their ancestors, and their connexions. So far, we confess, Demosthenes, and Æschines, and Lysias, had no superiority over our anonymous scribblers of the nineteenth century. They used words and phrases, perhaps, which would not be tolerated even at the present moment; and indulged themselves in appellations, which, according to our modern notions of courtesy and honour, must have led to daily duels, and thus been soon stopped in one way or the other. But the parallel ends here. Demosthenes, and Eschines, and Lysias, did not stab in the dark. What they spoke, was spoken in public; and the speaker was known. A man had then to encounter an open enemy, not to tremble at the dagger of a lurking assassin. There animosity was excited against one, not suspicion of all. The waters of social life were not poisoned with distrust. The accusations, too, which were urged by a vehement orator before an assembly of the people, if false, might be refuted; if base and calumnious, might be held forth at once to their contempt and reprobation. They had no time to do their work of moral murder, before they could be detected and exposed. Moreover, the rival demagogues fought with equal arms. The weapons which they wielded, could be employed against themselves. The immense power of the press was not put into action against a man who had no such instrument at his command, and whose

only crime was a difference of political opinions. But the present practice is neither more nor less than rushing with a loaded pistol upon a person, who is either totally defenceless, or furnished only with a stick. This system, therefore, can find no excuse in the most outrageous disputes of the Athenian orators. The cases are wholly different. There the person attacked, knew and saw his antagonist; here his foe is anonymous and concealed; there the contest, however fierce and violent, was fair and open; it was man to man, demagogue against demagogue: here it is, almost always, unequal and dishonourable; the most disgraceful advantages are taken; a man is assaulted unawares and from an ambush. All these remarks may be applied to the Roman Republic as well as to the Athenian democracy.

It would be idle to hunt for examples under the Roman Empire, or in any state of modern Europe, where the freedom of thinking, speaking, or writing, is at all restrained. Private libels can only spring from the abuse of liberty. Let us turn our attention then to the annals of our own country. Still we must look in vain for a perfect prototype of the existing system. Junius himself is not an instance in point. We can have no intention to defend the character or tenets of that too celebrated writer: we are not so dazzled by the splendour of his acquirements, or the brilliancy of his style, as to be blind to that moral infamy, which such qualifications can serve only to irradiate; we cannot forget our detestation of his conduct in our admiration of his abilities. But Junius must not be degraded by a comparison with the paltry miscreants who defame private individuals from malignant or mercenary motives. Junius derived no emolument from his labours; he unfolded constitutional principles, and reverenced the noble inheritance of freedom and established government, which has been delivered down to us by our forefathers; he took political grounds, and argued questions of high, general, unfading, interest; public men and public measures were the objects of his terrible castigations; he scorned, except in very few instances, to aim his deadly shafts against the

bosom of domestic life. He could not descend to such practices; if he had little virtue or integrity to stand in his way, there was a sufficient obstacle in his pride.

Mr. Wilkes is another political writer of the same period. But Mr. Wilkes, however false might be his pretensions to patriotism, however great his public and private errors, was at least a man of honour and of spirit. He made personal attacks on his own personal responsibility. His name was not affixed to his writings, but his concern in them was universally understood; and he never denied satisfaction to any individual, who had a right to demand it. What he had done, or written, he was incapable of disowning; and when he had committed an offence he suffered the consequences.

If we divert our thoughts for a moment from politics to poetry, we can discover nothing parallel to the system which we are deprecating, in the most unsparing satirists of ancient or modern times. Juvenal, and Persius, Boileau, Pope, Churchill, or Byron, besides being men On whom the public gaze

Is fixed for ever to detract or praise,

were either actuated by the love of virtue, and lashed the vices and corruption, the follies and venality, of the age from disinterested and honourable motives; or they broke upon the wheel only the envious scribblers, from whom they had long endured insult and provocation. They consecrated their enemies to eternal ridicule and opprobrium rather in the spirit of retaliation and retributive justice, than of gratuitous malice and wanton cruelty. There are, doubtless, few things so detestable as anonymous lampoons in verse: nor have we the slightest wish to shelter their authors from one iota of the contempt and hatred, which is their portion in all reputable society. But, even on the supposition that they have no private wrongs to avenge, that they inflict their wounds without cause as without mercy, that their conduct is altogether incapable of justification or defence, at worst they are solitary individuals acting according to their own caprice, without concert or combination.

Still, therefore, on whatever side we turn our view, this

exemplary system, by which a number of men are joined together for the purpose of diffusing calumny and slander by means of the public press, may lay full claim to unrivalled barbarity and unexampled profligacy. In these

noble attributes

None but itself can be its parallel.

We are little given to flattery: but this is a compliment which cannot, in justice, be withheld. There is no servile imitation of any existing model: the phoenix of all schemes for destroying peace, and defaming reputations, soars, by its own unassisted efforts, far above the flight of all former atrocity. Now, although precedents are no excuse for guilt; although previous examples cannot alter the nature, or mitigate the punishment, of present enormities; it may surely be urged in aggravation, when any existing system stands, like Confucius, "superior and alone," that all former instances of political depravity have fallen short of its heinousness and extent.

But there are some other peculiarities equally novel, admirable, and extraordinary. We consider ourselves bound to notice, in the first instance, the extravagant pretension, which has been asserted with unblushing effrontery by the guiltiest and most despicable journals;—that it has been, and must ever be, their object to support the Government, to maintain order, to preserve the decencies of society, to promote the interests of morality and religion. For our own parts, however, we are perfectly at a loss to conceive, how the Government can be supported by a violation of the laws; how order can be maintained by engendering confusion and bloodshed; how the decencies of society are to be preserved by perverting what is most honourable, and profaning what is most sacred, in life; how the interests of morality can be promoted, or the meek spirit of Christianity inculcated, by fomenting the vilest feelings, and inflaming the worst passions of human nature. Can these things be effected in the same manner, as the Spartans were warned against drunkenness by the exhibition of a reeling Helot? Was there ever a pretension at once more shameless and more ludicrous? Yet the pretension has been made; and, what is infinitely more

strange, many well-disposed persons have been its dupes. The infamous practices, which we have just enumerated, have been left, as they ought naturally to be left, until within the last few years, to the wretched enemies of ancient institutions, to the hungry conspirators against the public peace. Had it been still so, we should have suffered the system and its abettors to remain in that obscure oblivion, which has so long shielded while it enveloped them. But when the employers of such disgraceful machinations exhibit themselves as the advocates of regular authority, the champions of the establishments in Church and State; we feel it high time to stand forward, and prevent them, as far as lies in our power, from injuring and disgracing a good cause. We doubt much, whether they can advance the interests of Toryism: but we are sure, that their only effect upon the Government must be to weaken its strength, and endanger its security. Well might a Minister exclaim on such an occasion, "I can defend myself from my enemies, but heaven defend me from my friends." A Government, like that of Great Britain, firm in itself, "ponderibus librata suis," requires not such assistance for its support: any Government, which does require it, deserves not to be supported, and must be already tottering on the very brink of destruction.

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We proceed to another peculiarity, still more disgraceful, another enormity, still more flagrant. It is insinuatednay almost boasted-that the journals, in which this infamous and detestable system is chiefly carried on, are conducted by gentlemen. Good God! what an occupation for a gentleman! to diffuse unacknowledged slanders and anonymous lies; to dart the arrows of concealed vengeance at a private foe, under the pretext of performing a public duty; to expose the secret history of himself and his family to the idle comments of the mass of mankind; to ridicule natural defects and personal deformity with barbarous levity or unfeeling bitterness! What! must we couple such base and dastardly occupations with the proud title of an English gentleman? Shall the man, who is thus sunk, abandoned, degraded, and disgraced, be suffered to