The premier, at this eventful period, was eager to engage the assistance of all his Tory friends, whether in or out of office, to enable him to bolster up his own misrule. The ancient author who correctly observed, that "there are vices of MEN and vices of TIMES," would have improved, as well as have enlarged, his maxim by adding, that "bad times are made by bad men." Of the truth, that "bad rulers too often make a mean people," the ministerial subjugation of nations has afforded innumerable evidences. But, with science and the manual arts, the knowledge of the best means of banishing liberty and liberal sentiments had now wonderfully advanced. The proficiency in despotism to which the Earl of Liverpool and his junto had attained certainly entitled them to take precedence of any anterior ministry. These men, throughout their whole conduct, from the highest down to the humblest of their misdeeds,--whether they betrayed the king who received their services, or the people who paid their salaries,--whether they dishonoured the crown by insulting a virtuous queen, or injured the country by screening public plunderers and private murderers,--whether they outraged justice by acquitting the guilty and convicting the innocent,--were ever true to themselves. With all their arts, however, they could not destroy the SPIRIT of our free constitution; for that will ever remain immoveably fixed in the British bosom. The flame whose rays shot hence across the Atlantic can never be wholly extinguished. The sparks with which England herself animated the hearts of her regenerated colonists, warmly cherished by every American, will never cease to feed the parent fire. Lord Liverpool might have assisted to re-burthen France with the hated Bourbons, and other parts of the Continent with their legitimate despots; but this could only last for a time. The fire of liberty was but smothered for a season, as after events have sufficiently attested.
It will assuredly be matter of great surprise to posterity, how men of such circumscribed talents as were to be found in the cabinet of the Earl of Liverpool should find it possible to effect so much mischief. But Fortune delights in maintaining a sort of rivalship with Wisdom, and piques herself on her power to favour fools as well as knaves. These beings, however, were indebted to various aids for their long and too successful career; yet their principal dependance rested on the supineness of the people. The generous forbearance of Englishmen unhappily cherished the power which their patriotic vengeance should have destroyed. They were looking for gratuitous justice and liberality, instead of deserving relief by the ardour and nobleness of their own exertions. Had Britons but borne in mind that "zeal, without _action_, is nothing worth," their condition had been very different to what it was at the period of Lord Tullamore's praiseworthy attempts to obtain an inquiry into one of the blackest crimes recorded in our annals; for Thought is the projector, and Faith the encourager, of all our views and wishes; though it is only ACTION that can render them effectual and profitable.