Alter his cold exordium on the Revolution in Holland, our consistent politician enters with warmth on Lord Castlereagh’s speech on the subsidiary treaties, in which he finds a _But_ before the word _Peace_, which has a most happy efficacy in healing the wounds inflicted on his tortured apprehensions, by the explicit, unqualified declaration of Lord Liverpool in the other House. ‘After describing the laudable solicitude of Ministers for the attainment of that _first_ of earthly goods, peace,’ (we thought it had ranked last in the mind of Vetus) ‘his Lordship added _what was worth all the rest_—BUT we must have a _secure_ peace. We must not only recollect with whom we contend, but with whom we negociate, and never grant to _such_ an enemy conditions, which under the name of peace, would disarm this nation, and expose her to _contingent_ dangers.’ (To place any nation out of the reach of contingent dangers in peace or war is, we imagine, an undertaking beyond even the _calibre_ of Lord Castlereagh’s talents as a statesman.) ‘These,’ proceeds Vetus, ‘were nearly the words; they certainly do not compromise his meaning.’ (Our author cannot be much mistaken in attributing to his Lordship any words which seeming to have some meaning, in reality have none.) ’ Here then the noble Secretary has _chased away every doubtful expression_ of his colleague.’ (‘Why so,—this horrible shadow’ of peace ‘being gone,’ Vetus ‘is himself again.’) ‘The sentiment delivered by the sovereign on the throne is now given to us with a construction, at which we need no longer be alarmed. _I_ ask only that _secure_ peace,—a peace consistent with English safety—_void of the shadow of regard or indulgence to the pretensions and honour, otherwise the ambition and arrogance of Bonaparte_, which, as compared with _the relief of one day’s hunger to the meanest peasant in this our native land_, are baubles not worth a name!’—This is undoubtedly one of the most remarkable specimens we ever met with of that figure in rhetoric, designated by an excellent writer as ‘the figure of _encroachment_.’[8] Vetus, by a series of equations (certainly not mathematical ones) at length arrives at a construction of peace at which he is no longer alarmed; at the identical peace which he wants, and the only one he will admit,—a peace preposterous in its very terms, and in its nature impracticable,—a peace ‘void of the shadow of regard or indulgence to the pretensions and honour’ of the enemy, which are to pass with them as well as with us, for so much ‘arrogance and ambition.’ This is the only peace consistent with English safety—this is the secure peace of Lord Castlereagh—the fair and honourable peace announced from the throne—the very peace which Lord Liverpool meant to describe when he startled Vetus by the doubtful expression of a peace ‘consistent with the honour, rights, and interests of France’—‘of such a peace as we in her situation should be disposed to grant.’ To the mind of Vetus, which