ged the
religion of their country and their own by a parliamentary majority,
but which never refunded the booty. Here too was brought forth that
monstrous conception which even patrician Rome in its most ruthless
period never equalled--the mortgaging of the industry of the country
to enrich and to protect property; an act which is now bringing its
retributive consequences in a degraded and alienated population. Here
too have the innocent been impeached and hunted to death; and a virtuous
and able monarch martyred, because, among other benefits projected for
his people, he was of opinion that it was more for their advantage that
the economic service of the state should be supplied by direct taxation
levied by an individual known to all, than by indirect taxation,
raised by an irresponsible and fluctuating assembly. But thanks
to parliamentary patriotism, the people of England were saved from
ship-money, which money the wealthy paid, and only got in its stead
the customs and excise, which the poor mainly supply. Rightly was
King Charles surnamed the Martyr; for he was the holocaust of direct
taxation. Never yet did man lay down his heroic life for so great a
cause: the cause of the Church and the cause of the Poor.

Even now in the quiet times in which we live, when public robbery is out
of fashion and takes the milder title of a commission of inquiry, and
when there is no treason except voting against a Minister, who, though
he may have changed all the policy which you have been elected to
support, expects your vote and confidence all the same; even in this
age of mean passions and petty risks, it is something to step aside from
Palace Yard and instead of listening to a dull debate, where the facts
are only a repetition of the blue books you have already read, and the
fancy an ingenious appeal to the recrimination of Hansard, to enter the
old abbey and listen to an anthem!

This was a favourite habit of Egremont, and though the mean discipline
and sordid arrangements of the ecclesiastical body to which the
guardianship of the beautiful edifice is intrusted, have certainly done
all that could injure and impair the holy genius of the place, it still
was a habit often full of charm and consolation.

There is not perhaps another metropolitan population in the world that
would tolerate such conduct as is pursued to "that great lubber, the
public" by the Dean and Chapter of Westminster, and submit in silence to
be shut out