lace; it was our forbears who
sold Willie Wallace. . . . If Edward Longshanks had asked us to sell
Wullie Wallace we would soon have shown him that--' Lord better ye, ye
poor trumpery set of creatures, ye would not have acted a bit better than
your forefathers; remember how ye have ever treated the few amongst ye
who, though born in the kennel, have shown something of the spirit of the
wood. Many of ye are still alive who delivered over men, quite as honest
and patriotic as William Wallace, into the hands of an English minister,
to be chained and transported for merely venturing to speak and write in
the cause of humanity, at the time when Europe was beginning to fling off
the chains imposed by kings and priests. And it is not so very long
since Burns, to whom ye are now building up obelisks rather higher than
he deserves, was permitted by his countrymen to die in poverty and misery
because he would not join with them in songs of adulation to kings and
the trumpery great. So say not that ye would have acted with respect to
William Wallace one whit better than your fathers; and you in particular,
ye children of Charlie, whom do ye write nonsense-verses about? A family
of dastard despots, who did their best, during a century and more, to
tread out the few sparks of independent feeling still glowing in
Scotland; but enough has been said about ye.

Amongst those who have been prodigal in abuse and defamation of
'Lavengro' have been your modern Radicals, and particularly a set of
people who filled the country with noise against the King and Queen,
Wellington and the Tories, in '32. About these people the writer will
presently have occasion to say a good deal, and also of real Radicals.
As, however, it may be supposed that he is one of those who delight to
play the sycophant to kings and queens, to curry favour with Tories, and
to bepraise Wellington, he begs leave to state that such is not the case.

About kings and queens he has nothing to say; about Tories simply that he
believes them to be a bad set; about Wellington, however, it will be
necessary for him to say a good deal of mixed import, as he will
subsequently frequently have occasion to mention him in connection with
what he has to say about pseudo-Radicals.

CHAPTER X--PSEUDO-RADICALS

About Wellington, then, he says, that he believes him at the present day
to be infinitely overrated. But there certainly was a time when he was
shamefully underrate