If all this be true--and whoever impeached the veracity of Burke in any thing?--the more effectually his enemy was trampled the better: malice can be punished sufficiently only by extirpation. A powerful letter to Henry Flood, then one of the leading members of the Irish House of Commons, shows how deeply Burke felt the vexation of Hamilton's conduct, and not less explicitly administers the moral, of how much must be suffered by every man who enters into the conflicts of public life. Flood, too, had his share of those vexations; perhaps more of them than his correspondent. Henry Flood was one of the most remarkable men whom Ireland had produced. Commencing his career with a handsome fortune, he had plunged into the dissipation which was almost demanded of men of family in his day; but some accidental impression (we believe a fit of illness) suddenly changed his whole course. He turned his attention to public life, entered the House of Commons, and suddenly astonished every body by his total transformation from a mere man of fashion to a vigorous and brilliant public orator. He was the most logical of public speakers, without the formality of logic, and the most imaginative, without the flourish of fancy. For ten years, Flood was the leader of the House, on whichever side he stood. He was occasionally in opposition, and the champion of opposition politics in his earlier career; but at length, unfortunately alike for his feelings and his fame, he grew indolent, accepted an almost sinecure place, and indulged himself in ease and silence for full ten years. A loss like this was irreparable, in the short duration allotted to the living supremacy of statesmanship. No man in the records of the English parliament has been at his highest vigour for more than ten years; he may have been _rising_ before, or inheriting a portion of his parliamentary distinction--enough to give dignity to his decline; but his true time has past, and thenceforth he must be satisfied with the reflection of his own renown. Flood had already passed his hour when he was startled by the newborn splendour of Grattan. The contest instantly commenced between those extraordinary men, and was carried on for a while with singular animation, and not less singular animosity. The ground of contest was the constitution of 1782. The exciting cause of contest was the wrath of Flood at seeing the laurels which he had relinquished seized by a younger champion, and the daring, yet justified confidence of Grattan in his own admirable powers to win and wear them. Flood, in the bitterest pungency of political epigram, charged Grattan with having sold himself to the people, and then sold the people to the minister for prompt payment. (A vote of £50,000 had been passed to purchase an estate for Grattan.) Grattan retorted, that "Flood, after having sold himself to the minister, was angry only because he was interrupted in the attempt to sell himself to the people." The country, fond of the