"SIR,--I shall address you without ceremony, for you are deserving of none. There is nothing in your station, in your abilities, or in your character, which entitles you to respect. The first is too often the reward of political, and frequently of PRIVATE, crimes. Your talents, such as they are, you have abused; and, as for your character, I know not an individual of any party, or in any class of society, who would not consider the defence of it a paradox. Low as public principle has sunk, _you_ are still justly appreciated; and no one is deceived by _qualities_, which, even in their happiest exertions, are not calculated or employed to conciliate esteem.
"To what a state of degradation are we sunk, when a defendant is to be cheered into being a plaintiff; to be applauded when he assaults the sufferings of the oppressed, and arraigns the motives of men of honour and unsullied reputation! You are yourself aware, sir, that in no other assembly in England would you have been allowed to proceed, for an instant, in so gross a violation of all decencies of life as was hazarded by that speech, which found a patient and a pleased audience in the House of Commons. Can there exist in that body,--composed as it undoubtedly is of men, who, in the private relations of life, are distinguished for many good qualities,--an habitual disregard of decency, a contempt for public opinion, an absurd confidence, either individually or in mass, to which, absolving themselves from the rules of common life, they look for protection against the censures of their fellow-citizens? Were it not for such a groundless persuasion, there is not a gentleman (for such a being is not quite extinct in parliament) who would not have thought himself compromised by listening to your insolent attacks upon the national character, and to a flashy declamation, which, from beginning to end, supposed an audience devoid of all taste, judgment, spirit, and humanity.
"I am at a loss, sir, to account for the insulting policy of your colleagues in office, who, though they take their full share with you in the public hatred, are far from being equal competitors for its contempt. Those worthies must have had some motive, deeper than their avowed designs, for entrusting their defence to such 'inept hands.' Were they afraid of your partially redeeming your character by silence? Were they resolved, that if you were yet not enough known, some decisive overt act should reduce you below the ministerial level? Did they suspect, that you were again willing to rebel or betray? How was it that you were selected for the odious and TREACHEROUS task of justifying the rigorous measures of the imbecile, but unfeeling, SIDMOUTH, directed as they were against the aged, the infirm, the powerless of his own countrymen? How was it that you were required to emerge from your suspected, though prudent, silence, in behalf of him whom you had first insulted by the offer of your alliance, then by your coarse hostility, and, lastly, by the accepted tender of an insidious reconciliation?