We make these acknowledgments in the mere spirit of equity, and because we disdain to be confounded with those rash persons who talk glibly of a 'licentious press' through their own licentious ignorance. Than ignorance nothing is so licentious for rash saying or for obstinate denying. The British press is _not_ licentious; neither in London nor in Edinburgh is it ever licentious; and there is much need that it should be otherwise, having at this time so unlimited a power over the public mind. But the very uprightness of the leading journalists, and all the other elements of their power, do but constitute the evil, do but aggravate the mischief, where they happen to go astray; yes, in every case where these journalists miss the narrow path of thoughtful prudence. They _do_ miss it occasionally; they must miss it; and we contend that they _have_ missed it at present. What they have done that they ought _not_ to have done. Currency, buoyancy, they ought _not_ to have impressed upon sedition, upon conspiracy, upon treason. Currency, buoyancy, they _have_ impressed upon sedition, upon conspiracy, upon treason. As to Mr. O'Connell himself, it is useless, and it argues some thick darkness of mind, to remonstrate or generally to address any arguments from whatsoever quarter, which either appeal to a sense of truth, which, secondly, manifest inconsistencies, or, thirdly, which argue therein a tendency ruinous to himself. Let us think. Burke asserted of himself, and to our belief truly, that having at different periods set his face in different directions--now to the east, now to the west, now pointing to purposes of relaxation or liberality, now again to purposes of coercive and popular restraint--he had notwithstanding been uniform, if measured upon a higher scale. Transcending objects, coinciding neither instantly with the first, nor except by accident with the last, but indifferently aided by aristocratic forces or by democratic, shifting weights which sometimes called for accessories of gravity, sometimes for subtraction, mighty fluctuating wheels which sometimes needed flywheels to moderate or harmonize, sometimes needed concurrent wheels to urge or aggravate their impetus--these were the powers which he had found himself summoned to calculate, to check, to support, the vast algebraic equation of government; for this he had strengthened substantially by apparent contrarieties of policy; and in a system of watch-work so exquisite as to vary its fine balances eternally, eternally he had consulted by redressing the errors emergent, by varying the poise in order that he might _not_ vary the equipoise, by correcting inequalities, or by forestalling extremes. That was a man of heroic build, and of him it might be said at his death, 'Truly this man was a son of Anak.' Now, of Mr. O'Connell a man might affirm something similar; that as with regard to Edmund Burke it is altogether useless to