My young friend, William Butcher, was delighted with the society of Mr. Clifford. Butcher was a disciple of Thomas Paine; he had been bred up in a country village, where the clergyman, Mr. Evans, of Little Bedwin, who was his associate, had instilled into his mind all the principles of Paine, both political and theological, and consequently Butcher was delighted with the society that he had met with at our table. Butcher was a famous great arm-chair politician; over the bottle he would be as valiant as any man, yet he would never _act_. The reason he used to assign for never meddling in active politics was, that, except in a republic, no private citizen could ever attain the eminence of being the first man in the country; and no man, he thought, could have a proper stimulus, unless he could hope to be placed at the head of the government. Washington was his idol, and the American constitution was his creed in politics. He was enraptured to hear me listen with so much earnestness and attention to the political dogmas of Clifford, as he was pleased to call them; for Mr. Clifford never professed to wish for a republican government; he always contended that the English constitution, if it were administered in its purity, was quite good enough for Englishmen. In this opinion I then concurred with him, and from this opinion I have never once in my life swerved, up to this hour. A government of King, Lords, and Commons, so that the latter are fairly chosen by all the commons, would secure to us the full enjoyment of rational liberty. I am for that liberty which is secured and protected by the government of the laws, and not by the government of the sword. But those laws must be such as are made by the _whole_ commons, the whole people of England, and not the arbitrary laws that are made by the few for the government of the whole; not the laws that are made by the few, for the partial and unjust benefit of the few, at the expence and cost of the whole. Mr. Clifford was the brother-in-law of Sir Charles Wolseley, the worthy Baronet's first lady being Mr. Clifford's sister. My good and excellent friend, and true radical, Sir Charles Wolseley, baronet, is, as well as myself, the political disciple of the honest Counsellor Clifford. If Clifford, poor fellow! were now alive, how he would laugh to see two of his staunchest and most disinterested political disciples caught in the toils of the boroughmongers! But he would also laugh to see the melancholy state to which the said boroughmongers are reduced! Now they have caught us they do not know what to do with us.