Next to this episode, Jemmy Bradshaw's speech at Canterbury has attracted the greatest attention, and he has been for many days the hero of newspaper discussion. This speech, which was a tissue of folly and impertinence, but principally remarkable for a personal attack of the most violent and indecent kind upon the Queen, was received with shouts of applause at a Conservative dinner, and reported with many compliments, and some gentle reprehension by the Tory press. His example has since been followed in a less offensive style by two others calling themselves Tories--a Mr. Roby and a Mr. Escott. Of these rabid and disloyal effusions, the Government papers have not failed to make the most, by pointing out the disaffected and almost treasonable character of modern Toryism when embittered by exclusion from office; and there is no doubt that, contemptible as the authors are, their senseless and disgusting exhibitions are calculated to do great mischief; for, if no other evil ensued, it is one of no small consequence to sour the mind of the Queen still more against the whole Tory party, and fasten upon her an impression which it will be difficult to efface, that she is odious and her authority contemptible in their eyes, so long as she is unfavourable to them, and commits herself to other hands than theirs. Peel is to be pitied for having to lead such an unruly and unprincipled faction. Everything seems disjointed, all is confusion; moderate men, desirous of good government, stability, security, and safe amendment of political evils or errors, can find no resting-place. The Tories, the professors and protectors of Conservative principles, the abhorrers of changes, who would not have so much as a finger laid upon the integrity of the Constitution, are ready to roll the Crown in the dirt, and trample it under their feet; and the Government, to whom the maintenance of the Constitution is entrusted, whose especial duty it is to uphold the authority of the laws, are openly allied with, and continually truckling to, those factions, or sections of factions, which make no secret of their desire and determination to effect changes which nobody denies to be equivalent to revolution; and then we have the weight of the Crown thrown into the scale of this unholy alliance, from the mere influence of personal predilections and antipathies. To such a degree is principle dormant, or so entirely is it thrust into the background by passion, prejudice, or the interest of the passing hour. November 13th, 1839 {p.245}