is indeed the very receptacle for contradictions ‘to knot and gender in,’ these two sorts of peace appear to be perfectly compatible, and the one a most happy explanation of the other, viz. a peace void of every shadow of regard to the rights and honour of a rival nation, and a peace consistent with those rights and that honour. If this is not ‘mere midsummer madness,’ we do not know what is. Or if any thing can surpass it (‘for in this lowest deep of absurdity a lower deep still opens to receive us, gaping wide’) it is the forlorn piece of sentimental mummery by which it is attempted to protract this endless war of proscription against the pretensions of France, under the mask of relieving the wants and distresses of the meanest peasant of this our native land! Compared with the tears and blood of our countrymen, all the sophistries of Vetus by which he would make them victims of his own vanity and egotism, not less than of the arrogance and ambition of Bonaparte, are indeed contemptible and mischievous baubles. ‘What means the impious cry raised by degenerate Englishmen against the mere chance—nay, the remotest possibility of a peace, whose terms should be honourable to their country? Whence arises this profligate and abandoned yell with which these traitors insult us? _Are they still in pay? Is their patron still rich enough to bribe them?_ When we demand compensation for our _dreadful sufferings_, it is but what justice grants. When we call for security, it is what our existence requires. Yet, when these undoubted rights and essential safeguards of an injured people are asserted, it is nothing less than blaspheming the holy supremacy of Bonaparte!’