burned to the snuff, and glimmered and stunk in the sockets, whilst he grew pale at his constitutional studies; long, sleepless nights has he wasted, long, laborious, shiftless journeys has he made, and great sums has he expended, in order to secure the purity, the independence, and the sobriety of elections, and to give a check, if possible, to the ruinous charges that go nearly to the destruction of the right of election itself.

Amidst these his labors, his Grace will be pleased to forgive me, if my zeal, less enlightened, to be sure, than his by midnight lamps and studies, has presumed to talk too favorably of this Constitution, and even to say something sounding like approbation of that body which has the honor to reckon his Grace at the head of it, Those who dislike this partiality, or, if his Grace pleases, this flattery of mine, have a comfort at hand.  I may be refuted and brought to shame by the most convincing of all refutations, a practical refutation.  Every individual peer for himself may show that I was ridiculously wrong; the whole body of those noble persons may refute me for the whole corps.  If they please, they are more powerful advocates against themselves than a thousand scribblers like me can be in their favor.  If I were even possessed of those powers which his Grace, in order to heighten my offence, is pleased to attribute to me, there would be little difference.  The eloquence of Mr. Erskine might save Mr. ***** from the gallows, but no eloquence could save Mr. Jackson from the effects of his own potion.

In that unfortunate book of mine, which is put in the Index Expurgatorius of the modern Whigs, I might have spoken too favorably not only of those who wear coronets, but of those who wear crowns.  Kings, however, have not only long arms, but strong ones too.  A great Northern potentate, for instance, is able in one moment, and with one bold stroke of his diplomatic pen, to efface all the volumes which I could write in a century, or which the most laborious publicists of Germany ever carried to the fair of Leipsic, as an apology for monarchs and monarchy.  Whilst I, or any other poor, puny, private sophist, was defending the Declaration of Pilnitz, his Majesty might refute me by the Treaty of Basle.  Such a monarch may destroy one republic because it had a king at its head, and he may balance this extraordinary act by founding another republic that has cut off the head of its king.  I defended that great potentate for associating in a grand alliance for the preservation of the old governments of Europe; but he puts me to silence by delivering up all those governments (his own virtually included) to the new system of France.  If he is accused before the Parisian tribunal (constituted for the trial of kings) for having polluted the soil of liberty by the tracks of his disciplined slaves, he clears himself by surrendering the finest parts of Germany (with a handsome cut of his own territories) to the offended majesty of the regicides of France.