This was the man who projected to establish fortresses to awe London and other great towns. This was the man who could not support the war in Spain, but who did support the tithe war in Ireland, and who persecuted the press of England with a ferocity that at last defeated its own object. This was the man who called down vindictive punishment on the head of the poor tinman, Hamlyn of Plymouth, because, in his ignorant simplicity, he openly offered money to a minister for a place; and this also was the man who sheltered himself from investigation, under the vote of an unreformed House of Commons, when Mr. Maddocks solemnly offered to prove at the bar, that he, Mr. Perceval, had been privy to, and connived at a transaction, more corrupt and far more mischievous and illegal in its aim than that of the poor tinman. This is the Mr. Perceval who, after asserting, with a view to obtain heavier punishment on Hamlyn, the distinguished purity of the public men of his day, called for that heavy punishment on Hamlyn for the sake of public justice, and yet took shelter himself from that public justice under a vote of an unreformed house, and suffered Mr. Ponsonby to defend that vote by the plea that such foul transactions were as “_glaring as the sun at noon-day_.” And this man is not to be called factious! Mr. Perceval the younger in his first letter to me says, “_the good name of my father is the only inheritance he left to his children_.” A melancholy inheritance indeed if it be so, and that he refers to his public reputation. But I find that during his life the minister Perceval had salaries to the amount of about eight thousand a-year, and the reversion of a place worth twelve thousand a-year, then enjoyed by his brother, lord Arden. And also I find that after his death, his family received a grant of fifty thousand pounds, and three thousand a-year from the public money. Nay, Mr. Perceval the son, forgetting his former observation, partly founds his father’s claim to reputation upon this large amount of money so given to his family. Money and praise he says were profusely bestowed, money to the family, praise to the father, wherefore Mr. Perceval must have been an admirable minister! Admirable proof! [Sidenote: Ditto, No. 5]