Lord John here rallied, and interrupted the speaker, by saying that “he had admitted the fact of a _report that the Pope said so_, but had also stated that Lord Minto denied having heard it.” Thus terrier seemed to have rat in his fangs, but rat could still show his teeth to terrier. It was the first impeachment to which he had ventured any reply; and, by replying to this, he convicted himself of the more grave charges, which he was obliged to hear in silence, with his hat slouched down over his criminal features. Who can feel any respect for an English patrician, caught in such a felony, and proved as truly a moral delinquent, on a gigantic scale, as ever a petty thief at the Old Bailey on a small one? Oh! for a conscience in mankind to save their sympathy for the poor wretch in the bail-dock, and to consign to merited infamy the titled and decorated offender, whose crime is unfaithful stewardship in the State, and treason to the Crown Imperial of the Most High God! I have no abstract prejudice against a peerage. For my own country only do I deprecate the idea of an aristocracy; but what are patricians worth, if they cannot present to the State, in which they are an organic part, a high and wholesome example of integrity and honour? In my heart, therefore, as I looked at this scion of the house of Bedford in his moral degradation, I felt—would that he might know the unaffected pity with which a republican looks at him from this gallery, as a man, in this great crisis of history, false to his rank, false to his sovereign, false to his country, and false to his Redeemer.