hat
eminent nobleman Lord Greaten, and that not less eminent philosopher
Mr Mackensie Coefhis. In spite, however, of his connection with these
well-known ornaments of our country, he was so ill-informed about us as
to fancy that our government was always laying plans to torment him.
If he was hooted at Saintes, probably by people whose relations he had
murdered, it was because the cabinet of St James's had hired the mob. If
nobody would read his bad books it was because the cabinet of St James's
had secured the Reviewers. His accounts of Mr Fox, of Mr Pitt, of the
Duke of Wellington, of Mr Canning, swarm with blunders surpassing even
the ordinary blunders committed by Frenchmen who write about England. Mr
Fox and Mr Pitt, he tells us, were ministers in two different reigns.
Mr Pitt's sinking fund was instituted in order to enable England to pay
subsidies to the powers allied against the French republic. The Duke
of Wellington's house in Hyde Park was built by the nation, which twice
voted the sum of 200,000 pounds for the purpose. This, however, is
exclusive of the cost of the frescoes, which were also paid for out of
the public purse. Mr Canning was the first Englishman whose death
Europe had reason to lament; for the death of Lord Ward, a relation, we
presume, of Lord Greaten and Mr Coefhis, had been an immense benefit to
mankind.

Ignorant, however, as Barere was, he knew enough of us to hate us; and
we persuade ourselves that, had he known us better, he would have hated
us more. The nation which has combined, beyond all example and all hope,
the blessings of liberty with those of order, might well be an object
of aversion to one who had been false alike to the cause of order and
to the cause of liberty. We have had amongst us intemperate zeal for
popular rights; we have had amongst us also the intemperance of loyalty.
But we have never been shocked by such a spectacle as the Barere
of 1794, or as the Barere of 1804. Compared with him, our fiercest
demagogues have been gentle; compared with him, our meanest courtiers
have been manly. Mix together Thistlewood and Bubb Doddington; and you
are still far from having Barere. The antipathy between him and us is
such, that neither for the crimes of his earlier nor for those of his
later life does our language, rich as it is, furnish us with adequate
names. We have found it difficult to relate his history without having
perpetual recourse to the French vocabulary of horror,