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Enough. I do not call your attention to these extracts as examples to practise personality, but to support my opinion, that personal as controversy has become, it has still participated in the general refinement of manners and that few things now actually prosecuted, are, in reality, so bad as many things that were formerly tolerated. But, in the days of King William and Queen Aune, the circulation of satire and libel was comparatively very cumscribed, and the taste of the age in such things was much grosser than that of the present. Besides, the reciprocities of social intercourse were more strictly confined to particular classes and families; so that the abuse of satire was then, in fact, less mischievous. But now, when commerce has broken down the fences of the privileged classes, and mingled all orders and professions into one general multitude, the peace of society is much more endangered by the additional chance of conflicting interests and individuals coming into contact with each other. And it is upon this consideration that I would justify, were I in your place, the necessity of restraining the licentiousnes of the press, and not upon the paltry pretext of its having become more libellous and blasphemous than of old, which it has not, as the extracts I have quoted abundantly testify.

But I am wandering from the object of this letter, which was certainly not to point out the defects of the law, or to justify the prevalence of personalities, but simply to apprise those

worthy silly personages who complain of your quizzical allusions to the public follies of public characters, that the personalities of the present day are as oil and honey, compared with the vine gar and salt of Pope and Dryden's time; and that nothing can be more demonstrative of their own puerile and pitiful judgments than to speak of the elegant satire of the one and the spirited sarcasms of the other, when alwould set the whole Parliament House most the very least of their touches aghast.

So much, my old friend, for the present; at some other time, when I have more leisure, I will perhaps resume the subject, and give it a more direct application; that is, make it tell upon certain individuals whom I mention them by name-they have have in my eye. I shall not, however, made themselves sufficiently notorious

but only quote a few things, of which tice, and rejoice in the application. every one will at once admit the jus

In my last, I exhorted you to entertain your readers with two or three tit the Morning Chronicle-the two great bits from the Edinburgh Review and vehicles of Whig pretension and intolerance. But in this you have been partly anticipated by a clever article in "THE JOHN BULL;" and I now letter, in order that your readers may earnestly beg you to subjoin it to this see how false in fact, and fraudulent in motive, are those cries about your creatures are making at every corner, personalities, which the discomfitted as if they had not long ago incurred the contempt of all honourable minds, by the libertine license which they have taken with private characters. Meantime, I remain, my dear Kit,

Your

OLD FRIEND WITH A NEW FACE. Cliff-House, Ramsgate, October 2, 1821.

We adopt the suggestion of our correspondent, and the more readily, as we may thereby be the means of preserving what might be lost in the columns even of such a newspaper as JOHN BULL. The following is the very able and striking article alluded to :~

"When the Chronicle says, We HAVE HEARD OF NO WHIG who has made the press a vehicle for inroads into the bosom of families, and that the Whigs are stran gers to this rancour and meanness-that they loathe the idea of detraction, and more especially when female reputation is the subject of it,'-it is from a supposition that we shall be unwilling to quote their filth VOL. X.

that they presume to make such bare-faced assertions but quote we must. We have to apologise to the noble and illustrious personages libelled by them, for doing so; the necessity will plead our excuse it is our duty, and it must be done.

"At the 59th page of the Fudge Fami ly in Paris, we find this stanza :

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Htd, who, though no sot himself, Delights in all such lib'ral arts, Drinks largely to the house of GUELPH, And superintends the Corni parts.'

At page 103 of the same book we find→→→→

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Why then, my Lord, in Heaven's name, PITCH IN, without reserve or stint, The whole of R-gl-y's beauteous dame; If that won't raise him, devil's in't.'

"But, may say the Chronicle, this is an anonymous work, and we disclaim it.

"Whether anonymous or not, every body knows who wrote these libels, and we shall, therefore, look at them with a careful eye. We have, in the Two-penny Post-bag, page 22, the most indecent allusions to the conduct of a married lady of high rank, and at page 58 we see these lines

Last night a concert vastly gay, Given by Lady C-stl-r-gh; My Lord loves music, and we know, Has two strings always to his bow. In choosing songs, the R-G-T named, Had I a heart for falsehood framed!' Whilegentle H-rtf-dbegg'd and pray'd, 'Young I am, and sore afraid.'

"The postscript to the second letter of the same book is, from the beginning to the end, a filthy libel upon female reputation; and the third letter, giving a supposed account of a private dinner in a private family, beginning with these words,

We miss'd you last night at the hoary old sinner's,

Who gave us, as usual, the cream of good

dinners,'

seems to us to be carrying war into domestic circles as resolutely as Thistlewood him

self would have done it.

"An Anacreontic, republished at page 55, is pretty much in the same taste. The conclusion of the free translation of Horace's Ode, at page 68, excels it in gross、 ness and brutal scurrility, while therancour' and meanness' which the Whigs disclaim so vehemently, burst upon one in every page of a work devoted to scandal of the most shameful nature, and an unremitting attack upon the Regent of the country, from whose hands the writer had received every mark of kindness and consi

deration.

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traction in ridiculing the first subject in the land, whose shoes the Whigs have licked, and would lick again if they were suffered to do so; but, above all, there is a tender regard for female reputation, and a holy reverence for the sanctity of private families, in these lines, which is quite exemplary.

"Why, says the Chronicle, to be sure, it is rather bad-and rather licentiousand rather scandalous but wewe Whigs loath such personalities.

"Gentle reader, turn to page 149 of the same book, and you will find these lines, preceding the couplet in question :—

The following pieces have already appeared in MY FRIEND Mr PERRY'S PAPER, and are here, by desire of several persons of distinction,' reprinted.—————T. B.

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"Every body knows (as we said before) that they are by Tom Moore; but whether they are, or are not, we here see printed and published that they are by some man who calls Mr Perry HIS FRIEND. And, after having put forth such friendly communications to the world, to hear the Chronicle careful abstinence from personality, PARtalk of the delicacy of the Whigs, and their TICULARLY when female character is concerned, is about the best joke that once pert paper has hit upon in latter days.

But lest the Chronicle should suppose that we wish to particularize the extracts from the two works we have above quoted, as being peculiarly striking proofs of its delicacy, mildness, and moderation, we will bring before our readers some more specimens of its style and manner, which are equally gratifying, as examples of the pure literature of the Whigs, who shudder at rancour and meanness, and are so careful of female character, and so tender towards disarmed enemies! ! !

"In the first place, we would observe, that when the Whig-radicals speak of the late Queen, they talk of a systematic attack, a continued attack, and an incessant attack, having been made upon her. The attacks upon ONE noble lady, which were made by the Chronicle, in the year 1812, were, as we may shew, more systematic, certainly incessant, and assuredly of longer continuance, than any made by the constitutional press upon the Queen ; and when it is recollected that that noble lady is a lady of superior mind, qualities, and accomplishments-living honourably and happily with her husband we think the few bijoux we shall collect as testimonials of the Chro

nicle's consistency and consideration, will bear away the palm for rancour, meanness, falsehood, and scurrility, from any Paper ever published.

"The Chronicle of the 12th of March, 1812, contains a poem too long and too disgusting to be copied.. It is full of the most indecent and filthy invective. We

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"In the Chronicle of March 25, is another attack upon the same lady, equally brutal and unprincipled.

"On the 23d of March, 1812, we have a striking proof of Whig abstinence from making inroads into the bosoms of pri

vate families'let us read it.

"We seldom think it within the pale of newspaper license to notice what passes in the drawing-room of select society, BUT an incident occurred at the concert of the Countess of D. in Grosvenor-square, last week, so comical and diverting as to be worthy of record.'

"He then goes on to tell a tittle-tattle story about a lady, and her age, and personal qualifications, the point of which is

now lost, and the thing not worth repeat ing; but it is evident, that though the Chronicle seldom thinks it right to invade domestic privacy, yet when there is any cording, he pockets his scruples-particúthing sufficiently ludicrous to deserve relarly when a wOMAN is to be ridiculed.

"In the Chronicle of Feb. 6, 1812, a story is told of Lord and Lady Castlereagh, by far too indelicate for us to copy--but as ing vulgarism, with a filthy allusion, is put the thing is imaginary, and the most disgust

into the mouth of one of the loveliest and most exemplary of women, it is necessary to mention it as another proof of the sweet consideration of Whig libellers for the most tender feelings a delicate female is supposed to possess.

"But if females are thus treated by the Whig paper, let us see how carefully they abstain from the attacks upon disarmed enemies. Mr Perceval was murdered in the Lobby of the House of Commons BY AN ASSASSIN. We pass over an epitaph published in the Chronicle, (and re-published in the Twopenny Post Bag, full of political invectives against him,) and come to the following paragraph, which we read in that paper of June 2, 1812, a few days after his MURDER!

"The Post has published a volume of verses upon the death of Mr Perceval; the said rhymes are all of one character.

• Full of sighs,
Social ties!!!
Tears that flow,
Children's woe,
Drooping head,

And Statesman DEAD!!!
And streaming tear,

Lie buried here.'

"These verses put us in mind of some which we once saw written on spring, beginning as follows:

• How beautiful the country does appear At this time of the year."

We thick, as illustrative of respect for the dead, and disarmed enemies, we need say but little on this article.

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"That the death of an able Tory, even by the hand of an assassin, should delight the Whigs, we can easily fancy, and their joy at the prospect of place, opened to them by his fall, is natural to men who have never had one single thought of any thing except loaves and fishes; but that a London paper-A WHIG PAPER, a DELICATE paper, an honourable paper, a CHRISTIAN paper, should have made doggrel verses out of the sorrowing tears of eleven orphan children, and ridicule the sudden dissolution by MURDER of the sociab ties of such a husband and such a father as Mr Perceval, does seem so incredi❤ bly horrid, that if the fact did not stand re

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Honest JOHN returns to the charge in his next Paper, from which we have only room for a short extract:

"Mr Waithman appears to have borrow ed a little of the oblivious unction which the Chronicle has been using for some weeks past, when it talks big about personality and scurrility. The orderly and decent manner in which it takes the gentle set down we gave it last Sunday softens our hearts and feelings towards it prodigiously.

"Our defence (for they attacked) is and was unanswerable-it is conviction out of their own mouths; but lest they should imagine that we are silent for want of materials to go on with, we shall continue to mention articles which may be adduced in support of our vindication, to quote which we have no room.

"We beg, in the first place, to call the attention of our readers to a Character from the Persian,' in the Chronicle of July 16, 1812; and a poem in that paper of Sept. 8, of the same year. On the score of beastly indelicacy, we beg to refer to an article in the paper of Oct. 12, in the same year, with a Latin quotation; and for a striking mark of the durability and steadiness of its principles and attachments, as well as its great caution against personalides, we insert four lines, published upon

the late Richard Brinsley Sheridan-the wit-the patron-the favourite, and the friend. Poor Sheridan had ventured to be moderate in the year 1812, and we have this:

No, no, his fire he still retains,
Whate'er you may suppose !
Its lustre has but left his brains,

And settled in his nose."

"Let us contrast these with some infamous lines which appeared in the Chronicle of June, 1816, on the death of the same person, and we shall find a striking proof of political consistency, and of loyalty to the King (whom the Chronicle now affects invidiously to praise) into the bargain.

"In short, let any impartial person compare the productions, in verse or prose, of the Whig-radicals for the last eight or ten years, with any thing ever published, and the palm must unhesitatingly be yielded to them, not only for their excellence in sedition, blasphemy, attacks on females, personal invective, and the violation of domestic privacy, but for the invention and first adoption of the mode of warfare which characterizes their works.

JOHN BULL, No. XLIII. Oct. 7.

Our worthy friend, Dr Stoddart, too, in his excellent Paper, takes up the subject with great spirit, and large as our extracts have already been from JOHN BULL, we cannot help quoting the following from THE NEW TIMES of October 8.

"The Chronicle affects great indignation that the raillery which has occasionally appeared in his columns,' should be confounded with the infamous detraction and the merciless inroads into private life," which are to be found in John Bull! So that imputing to men (and women too) the most gross and flagitious crimes is mere raillery, so long as it appears only in the Chronicle; but when charges not a tenth part so virulent are found in another paper, oh! then they become detraction then they are infamous-merciless, &c. &c. Now, we have no other wish than to hold the scales perfectly equal between these two journalists; but the matter in dispute is a plain simple fact; and it is to be easily and conclusively settled, in the mode pointed out by the writer whom we quoted, on Thursday last, from Blackwood's Magazine. Take,' says he, any four or five files of the Chronicle, for the last thirty years, and. with page, and day, and date, dare them to match from your pages the

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base and merciless ribaldry, with which that virulent Journal has assailed every political opponent.' This is exactly what John Bull has done. He only yesterday se'nnight detailed (with page, and day, and date,) a long string of quotations from the Chronicle, and the Chronicle's correspondents. What does the Chronicle say in answer to this? Does it deny any one of the quotations to be accurate? Does it prove any one of them to be mere raillery? Does it prove that more infamous detrac tion, more merciless inroads on private life, nay, more vile and libellous attacks on female character, are to be found in John Bull or elsewhere? No. Not a syllable of all this. It only blusters about its consistent course during a long political life,' and is pleased to say that our public life' has been marked with inconsistencies a circumstance of which we certainly were not aware, and which we humbly conceive can have nothing at all to do with a comparison between the Chronicle and John Bull.”

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JACOBUS CORCAGIENSIS CHRISTOPHORO SEPTENTRIONALI, 8.D. QUUM in Magazinâ vestrâ pro mense Augusti, (charissime) Dowdeni cujusdam civis mei, satisque mihi noti versus legerem, quosdam ex iis pseudo-prophetico spiritu inspiratos (ut probavit eventus) statim sensi. Ne posteros igitur ea res fallat, sequentem veram adventûs Regis historiam ad te mittere decrevi. Poeta enim noster prophetavit dicens, Regem ad Dunlearium appulsurum esse, quod ne credant futura secula, obsecro ut sequentibus versibus locum in Magazinâ tuâ haud deneges.

Datum Corcagi, hâc die Octobris 10mâ, 1821.

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* Glaucâ veste induebantur prope omnes adventum Régis expectantes.

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