——‘have their provender Only for bearing burthens, and sore blows For sinking under them.’ However edifying and attractive these kind of examples of simplicity, patience, and good behaviour, taken from sheep, oxen, and asses, must be to the people, they are rather invidious, something worse than equivocal, as they relate to the designs and good-will of the Government towards them. This writer indeed commits himself very strangely on this subject, or, as the phrase is, _lets the cat out of the bag_, without intending it. In a broadside which he published against the author of the ‘Political Register,’ he says with infinite _naiveté_:—‘Mr. Cobbett had been sentenced to two years’ imprisonment for a libel; and during the time that he was in Newgate, it was discovered that he had been secretly in treaty with Government to avoid the sentence passed upon him; and that he had proposed to certain of the Agents of Ministers, that if they would let him off, they might make what future use they pleased of him: _he would entirely betray the cause of the people_: he would either write or not write, or _write against them_, as he had once done before, just as Ministers thought proper. To this, however, it was replied, that “_Cobbett had written on too many sides already to be worth a groat for the service of Government,” and he accordingly suffered his confinement_.’ This passage is at least worth a groat: it lets us into the Editor’s real opinion of what it is that alone makes any writer ‘worth a groat for the service of Government,’ viz. his being able and willing _entirely to betray the cause of the people_; and, we should hope, may operate as an antidote to any future cant about sheep and shepherds!