It is no loss of honor to submit to the lion, but who in the figure of a man can think with patience of being devoured alive by a rat?" . . . "If the famous Mr. Hampden rather chose to go to prison than pay a few shillings to King Charles I., without authority of Parliament, I will {247} rather choose to be hanged than have all my substance taxed at seventeen shillings in the pound, at the arbitrary will and pleasure of the venerable Mr. Wood." Mr. Gladstone, perhaps, did not observe this allusion to "the famous Mr. Hampden." If he had done so, he would have better understood the inspiration of the "Drapier's Letters." Mr. Hampden was not so ignorant a man as to believe that the mere collection of the ship-money--the mere withdrawal of so much money from the pockets of certain tax-payers--would really ruin the trade and imperil the national existence of England. What Mr. Hampden objected to, and would have resisted to the death, was the unconstitutional and despotic system which the levy of the ship-money represented. The American colonists did not rise in rebellion against the Government of George III. merely because they had eaten of the insane root, and fancied that a trifling tax upon tea would destroy the trade of Boston and New York. They rose in arms against the principle represented by the imposition of the tax. We can all understand why there should have been a national rebellion against ship-money, and a national rebellion against a trumpery duty on tea, but English writers and English public men seem quite unable to explain the national outcry against Wood's patent, except on the theory that a clever writer, pouring forth captivating nonsense, bewitched the Irish Parliament and the Irish people, and sent them out of their senses for a season.