Jesuit in disguise who is working for the supremacy of the Pope. By the way, I was wrong in recommending you to persist in your averment that Protection is dead and coffined. You have, I observe, of late dedicated at least a couple of Jeremiads each week to that topic, and there is a degree of ferocity coupled with the announcement revolting to the feelings of a Christian. You should assume the fact, Dick; not insist upon it in this absurd manner. If the old lady really is under the sod, and beyond the power of resuscitation and the reach of the resurrection-men, e'en let her repose in quiet. In that case she can do you no further harm, and it would be but decent to give her the benefit of a final forgiveness, or at all events to leave her to oblivion. Queen Anne has been defunct for a good many years, but nobody thinks it necessary to proclaim the fact weekly in a couple of leaders. You differ from me, do you? Very well, then; carry on in your own way; all I shall say is, that if your muttered conjurations don't evoke the shade of the departed saint, in a shape that may appal you consumedly, you run a mighty risk of calling a counterfeit into being. It is a good maxim never to put forward anything which the public cannot readily swallow. I think that, in one respect, the modern system is decidedly preferable to the older. Formerly, we used to combat arguments; now, I observe, you evade them. This I hold to be a great improvement. In the first place, it saves trouble both to the writer and the reader. It is not always easy to reply to a fellow who knows his subject a great deal better than you do. You have to follow him from point to point, investigate his facts, controvert his reasoning, and take, in short, such a world of trouble, as would render the life of a gentleman journalist absolutely insupportable. Milton was occupied nearly a year with one of his replies to Salmasius,--Selden, I believe, took a longer time to double up his opponent Grotius. This is slow work, and you cannot reasonably be expected to submit to it. If anything like argument is to be brought forward, you are entitled to look for it in the _Edinburgh Review_, though I do not intend by any means to assume that your expectations will be realised in that quarter. Costive, beyond the power of medicine, must be the man who battens on the hard dough dumplings, dished up quarterly under cover of the Blue and Yellow! But I forgot--you are not entirely with the Whigs, though you agree with them as to commercial policy.