It is the sacrifice of all principle, that is the triumph of corruption; it is the shameless effrontery of a desertion of the people, that is the chief recommendation to the panders of a court; it is the contempt, the grinning scorn and infamy, which is poured on all patriotism and independence, by shewing the radical baseness and fickleness of its professors in the most startling point of view, that strengthens the rotten foundations of power, by degrading human nature. Poor Bob Southey! how they laugh at him! What are the abuse and contumely which we are in the habit of bestowing upon him, compared with the cordial contempt, the flickering sneers, that play round the lips of his new-fangled friends, when they see ‘the Man of Humanity’ decked out in the trappings of his prostitution, and feel the rankling venom of their hearts soothed by the flattering reflection that virtue and genius are mere marketable commodities! What a squeeze must that be which Mr. Canning gives the hand that wrote the Sonnet to Old Sarum, and the Defence of Rotten Boroughs in the Quarterly Review! Mr. Canning was at first suspected of being the author of this last article: no one has attributed _Wat Tyler_ to the classical pen of that glib orator and consistent anti-jacobin. Yet what are the pretensions of that gentleman’s profligate consistency opposed to Mr. Southey’s profligate versatility; what a pitiful spectacle does his sneaking, servile adherence to a party make, compared with Mr. Southey’s barefaced and magnanimous desertion of one! Mr. Canning has indeed served a cause; Mr. Southey has betrayed one. Mr. Canning threw contempt on the cause of liberty by his wit; Mr. Southey has done it by his want of principle. ‘This, this is the unkindest blow of all.’ We should not mind any thing but that;—that is the reflection that stabs us: —— —— —— ——‘That the law By which mankind now suffers, is most just. For by superior energies; more strict Affiance with each other; faith more firm In their unhallow’d principles; the bad Have fairly earned a victory o’er the weak, The vacillating, inconsistent good.’