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to escort home any of the ladies whom I occasionally meet at those places of pious recreation.

But the Maltese Petition! Who can endure the idea of vile bigotted Papists talking of Liberty and the British Constitution! claiming also the performance of good faith! as if it were to be kept with such impious idolaters by us true Evangelical Protestants! Why will they not remain content with Popery and wooden shoes? Have we not already and repeatedly told the people of Ireland, that the enjoyment of the British Constitution and the profession of the Catholic Religion are incompatible? We hate, Sir, the name of Liberty Buonaparte is not more alarmed at the mention of it; but he is more cunning than ourselves. He will give his dependencies occasionally the form of a free Government-Councils, Senates, Republics, any thing but the reality of Freedom. But we seem inclined to repudiate both form and substance.

We seem determined to show the people of the Mediterranean that we can do things in a higher style than Napoleon; and, in order to prove it, we have left, as it appears, the people of Malta, during twelve years, without any Government at all! The Civil Commissioner openly declares it; and when the Maltese claim a Popular Assembly, a Free Press, and Trial by Jury, a Constitution," in short, to use their own expressions," wherein may enter the spirit of their free and legitimate Government with that of the Constitution of England"-the Civil Commissioner "observes, with regret, that some weak and inconsiderate persons have been induced to subscribe a paper, purporting to be an application to the King for certain changes in the existing form of Government."!!!— The gallant General is not satisfied with this: he mounts his charger, unfurls his Proclamation, and, brandishing his sabre in the air over the heads of the vile rabble, or, to use an Italian expression, canaglia, he claims the merit "of lenity and forbearance towards

VOL. XV.

"the

the misguided feu," who are so much attached t their own ancient institutions, and to England, as lo wish for the benefits of the British Constitution!This, Sir, is our system, in all its vigour, energy, and splendour; and it is by such Proclamations we are cer tain of accomplishing a general confederation in defence of Liberty, against the despotism of Buonaparte!!!

We talk big, Sir, but we are confoundedly fright ened. Our once kind friend the " Protestant," who wrote for us in 1807, in the Morning Post, and gar bled Cabinet Minutes with such dexterity, we under stand, is now alarmed, and we dread the vengeance of the Ex-Secretary for Foreign Affairs. He gave us much trouble about Malta at the time of the Peace of Amiens. Why would not General Oakes let the Petition have come over quietly without making a noise? We would have kept it snug; and if any one had called for it, we should have told the Country Gentlemen in the He of Cs, that we did not understand it ourselves, as it was written in Arabic. No one 'would have sent for the Oriental Professor from Ox. ford; no one would have searched for former remonstrances in the Political Register, or have looked for them under the table of the H-e of Cs itself, and all would have gone on smoothly. We might have sent the Maltese, as was threatened by the French, to the coast of Barbary.

PRAISE-GOD BARE-BONES.

LETTER IV.

TO THE EDITOR OF THE MORNING CHRONICLE.

[Nov. 23.]

DEAR SIR,

for

G REAT News! Mr. Perry-Great News! Great News! The Irish Grand Jury have found the bills against the Irish Papists! We took them up "purposes," and we now are going to try them for pretences!"

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tences !”. Have not we managed the things dexterously, and most consistently? We are, I assure you, all alive and half intoxicated with delight. We consider the intelligence of much more consequence than the destruction even of all the immense fleet collecting by Buonaparte.

Long live those saviours of the Empire, the Policemen of Dublin, and though last not least in love, Major Sirr! These, Sir, are your men for a Grand Jury upon a great public occasion; and as criminal informations are becoming unpopular even in England, we think of substituting in future the Grand Inquest, over which it is proposed the Governor of the Cold Bath Fields Prison, or, as the rabble call it, the Bastile, shall preside for the County of Middlesex, and Macmanus for the City of Westminster. It is a good thing to let all people have sometimes a holiday. It is allowed to chimney-sweepers in London, and why should it be denied to the ws and rogues in Dublin?

What a noble Grand Jury would have been formed heretofore of those who were called the trading Justices. s! I wonder, in the times of Wilkes, and Almon, and Woodfall, no one thought of resorting to such an expedient. It would have saved all our Attorney-generals much obloquy; and how grandly the exordia of their speeches to Juries would have sounded with the words" Gentlemen of the Jury, the defendant is brought before you this day, by the finding of the Grand Inquest of the Country. Mr. Justice-president Hyde, Mr. Justice-clerk Bond, and the most respectable thief-taker whom we could select, and whom we have spared purposely for the occasion, in order that the liberty of the subject might be regarded that the people of England may be convinced of the desire which His Majesty's Government entertain that this great and important case should be brought under discussion without prejudice to the parties accusedthese liberal, enlightened, and independent gentle.

men, it is proper I should inform you, were sum moned upon the Grand Jury-to whom we would have willingly added, had he not been otherwise em‐ ployed in executing some factious orators, condemned for High Treason, and who, at this moment whilst I am addressing you, are expiating their crimes by the forfeit of their lives on Tower Hill; a personage whom you all may know, and will, I am sure, highly respect, Mr. Jack Ketch!!! When I mention to you, Gentlemen, these exalted characters, you will, I am sure, be convinced, that, charged as they were by the Judge, without any directions, upon law, and having to consider an indictment, which, framed as it now is, involves indeed only a pure simple question of fact, they would not, upon their oath, have returned a true bill, had they not been satisfied in their consciences, that there existed grounds for believing that this assembly was convened, and the parties deputed met for the real and avowed purpose of petition ing, which I will admit to be lawful, whatever may have passed on former occasions, or I may have stated in former opinions; but that it was all a pretence. Gentlemen, I have troubled you with these observations, because it has been said, and indeed with truth, that not a single individual could be found in London, or throughout England, who would venture to swear that he believed that the Methodists, who form so large a portion of our population, had it not in contemplation to petition Parliament. The Grand Jury so respectably composed have thought otherwise, and have found a true bill upon their oath, after the Convention had actually met, and the draft of a Petition had really been adopted, subject to future revision and alteration. Had I filed a criminal information, I should have been told, perhaps, in the newspapers, which, strange to tell, are all become the organs of faction, and against which his Lordship, in harging the Grand Jury, thought it incumbent on

him

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him to pass, in the strongest terms, a most severe and general condemnation, in order, no doubt, that they might duly, fairly, and without prejudice, take into their calm, dispassionate, sober consideration, any indictment which it was probable would be preferred against the publishers of such pestiferous infection as discussions upon civil and religious freedom,' in a land of libertyI should be told, I say, that I was comporting myself in my office with tyranny and oppression. Gentlemen, I have determined to avoid the charge of such slander-like Pontius Pilate, I wash my hands. The accusation is not found by myself, but by the respectable Grand Jury whom I have named--and from such a Grand Jury I am sure it will come before you as I have already stated-without prejudice!"

This, Mr. Perry, is the true way, and we have determined to send Sir V. G. to Ireland, to take a lesson from the Crown Lawyers in that country. He will beat them as a good classic and an excellent special pleader; but they will improve him in the conduct of Crown prosecutions..

There was to-day a grand Cabinet dinner; and as we think less (though with all duty and respect) of the K-g, poor man! than formerly, it was agreed, upon the motion of the E-1 of Wd, that, in future, the first toast shall be "The Police-men of Dublin," after all our Cabinet dinners; and, to encourage Irish manufacture, all agreed to order razors from Alderinan Hone. It was also agreed, that all future anonymous pamphlets, and all that we have been writing upon Popery, at our country-house near Ealing, shall be sent to Dublin, to be printed by Mr. Alderman Blacker; and we have recommended him particularly to Dr. D-g-n, in case, what we cannot believe, he has any new calumnies ready for the press. They suffered indeed formerly in England, in a Latin translation at least poor Wright sustained by them a heavy loss.

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