"As our enemies would-by braving the matter out. You are quite dreaded enough by the Tories to make them swear black is white to get rid of you; and quite valued, enough by ourselves to do the same to preserve you!" "The inference?" "That to have suborned this prosecution by that infernal club, and paid for it out of their purses, would only be a probable assertion," said Longbrain. "Good," returned Crabtree, "not only probable, but I really believe true." "This to me!" observed Longbrain; and his tongue plied his cheek with double force, and the sneer of his mouth assumed horrid obliquity. "I really do believe it!" cried Crabtree. "You are a d-d fool," answered Longbrain. This had very near separated the virtuous pair. Longbrain said he could have forgiven a little falling-off from correctness with a silly girl, and even a refusal by one pauper to marry another, merely because he had damaged her; but to presume to impose upon him by professing innocence, and still more the belief that he could himself swallow the fact that the Tories would suborn perjury to get rid of him, was an absolute affront. We have seen, indeed, all the way through, that Mr. Longbrain was an infinitely honester, as well as abler, certainly a less visionary, rascal, than our adventurer. Mutual necessity, however, kept the friends together, "I think you a blockhead," said Longbrain, "for thinking to impose upon me; you might as well think you could impose upon yourself. Nevertheless, for the convenience of the thing, I will suppose you innocent; the rather because I allow, such is the spirit of the age in which wisdom tells us we are to legislate, that if you had seduced ten wives, instead of a single puling maiden; or committed forgery, instead of teaching caution as you did to old Stockwell; your zeal for Reform would acquit you with all Reformers, and any villany you could invent against the Tories, were it high treason itself, would be believed." Crabtree was scarcely relieved by this speech. He relished not the words fool and blockhead, and almost as little that his profession of innocence was not believed. However, he recovered from his moodiness by degrees, and it was settled that the tone to be given to the trial should be that the Radical was an injured man, punished for his imprudent good nature in becoming a tutor in a Conservative family; that the jury were perjured, and the whole proceeding a conspiracy of aristocrats against a defender of the people. 66 Of course the matter became a public question; all papers, clubs, coffeehouses, and pot-houses, teemed with it; and if the injured Radical's friends were not the most numerous, they were at least the most zealous of those that sat in judgment upon him. Longbrain's advice to him was admirable, and it must be owned he admirably profited by it. You have nothing left for it," said his friend, "but a bold front. Do not avoid the subject-court it, and disarm your judges by defying them." He did so, and, though fifty times foiled, he fifty times renewed his complaints, so that at last some began to doubt, and all agreed that he was either the most injured or the most impudent of men. The affair did not end here, for such was the zeal of Radicalism, and such the desire to screen so great a martyr to the cause, that a meeting of Reformers was called to try the case over again, with only the difference that no evidence was examined but his own statement; the judge who had presided at the trial was found guilty of being an aristocrat, and therefore unfit; the jury denounced as being influenced by the judge; and the Radical was declared, by a solemn resolution, not to have ceased to deserve well of his country. The best is to come. Radical virtue having fallen a victim to the ty ranny of power (such was the language used), it was only meet that it should be protected by Radical generosity; and, as the damages were held to be beyond his means, a subscription was opened to assist him. Strange to say, this was not only voted, but carried in a degree into effect. Longbrain, who was in the chair, headed it with 100%., though it afterwards turned out, through a quarrel between the two patriots, that it never was paid, a reproach which Longbrain answered by asserting that it had been so agreed between them; and the unjust Tories had the insolence to characterize this as a decoy. The noble earl, however, whom we have before mentioned as having advised the people to resist the laws, came forward munificently in this cause of injured innocence, for he not only subscribed, but paid the sum which, in Longbrain, was only a make-believe. It is really scarcely credible that so many fools should have been found among us as came forward upon this occasion. There was a talk even of a settlement of an annuity for life upon the martyr, and the trade of patriotism was evidently at a premium. One piece of ridicule of it, however, deserves to be recorded. The secretary to the committee having written circulars to the most eminent Radicals, requesting to know what they would contribute, and one of these to the banker, Stockwell, that gentleman transmitted to him what he facetiously called the whole 1500, being an acquittance in form, he said, for the sum which he had lent him for the purchase of Pounce's printing-office. SECTION XVIII. Of the jade's trick that Fortune played the Radical, and the consequences of it. "Heavens and honour be witness, that no want of resolution in me, but only my followers' base and ignominious treasons, makes me betake me to my heels.” SHAKSPEARE, Henry VI., Part II. We are sorry to think that the agreeable part of our biography is drawing towards a close, and, notwithstanding the triumphs recorded in the last section, that the glory of our Radical is about to fade. Whether he trusted too much to the fidelity of fortune, although, when speaking of her favours to the Aristocracy, he always called her a strumpet; whether the mob were jealous that their character for fickleness might be lost if they continued true to him; or whether the devil thought that he had sufficiently stood his friend, certain it is that things began to assume a louring aspect, which they had not worn since he sallied from Oxford to reform the world.―The subscription that had been made for him by no means enabled him to discharge the amount of the verdict; and he found, particularly in the House, that his imputation of a conspiracy against him by the Tories, was ridiculed. Some weak persons who had families, had even ventured to (what is called) fight shy of him; and Mrs. Longbrain herself, a quiet correct woman, who had a growing daughter, remonstrated with her husband against the closeness of his intimacy with him. This, probably, he would not have minded, but his lucky star failed him in a matter of much more serious importance. To avoid an execution in discharge of the verdict, he had in vain endeavoured to borrow sufficient of his brother Radicals; and even Longbrain had declined, from certain fears as to his chance of repayment, which his knowledge of his Radical zeal by no means set at rest. It was hence the quarrel alluded to arose between them. From having exhausted, too, all the topics of private scandal, and nearly all of public grievance, and even his rich treasury of slang and blackguardism, his paper began to be thought less poignant than it had been, and the sale fell off. In a word, the lictors and fasces that had waited upon him in his dreams, began to give way to the fears of beings called sheriff's officers; and though his person was safe, it would have been inconvenient to have had his printing-press seized. In this dilemma, he fostered a golden dream, by embarking to a large amount in a great public loan, the differences upon which he assured himself would realize to him many thousand pounds. Unhappily, they turned the other way, and though he had written up the loan with all his powers in his paper, and made a warm speech in Parliament in its favour he was left with an adverse balance of very many hundreds. What was he to do? His character of patriot was not benefited by that of gambler; blame him not, therefore, if, considering (as he afterwards affirmed in his defence), that the cause of Radicalism was at stake in his person, he had recourse to an expedient, not altogether correct indeed, but which he never meant should do injury to any one. Among some red-hot bewailers of their country over whom he had acquired influence, was an elderly person of small fortune, which he was desirous of settling upon his children. He did it by will; and such was his admiration of Mr. Crabtree's virtue, that he made him their guardian and sole trustee. The money (a few thousands) was in the funds; and on his death, which happened soon after, the regular transfer of it was made to Crabtree's name. In the strait to which the iniquity of the Aristocracy had reduced him, can we wonder if the temptation of using a part (it was only a small part, he said,) of these funds could not be resisted? Besides, he meant to restore it as soon as he could. Nothing could be more fairly intended; and the hubbub that was raised about it by the Tories when it was discovered, as it unluckily was, was cruel, mean, and revengeful. It seems that the banker with whom the children's dividends were lodged during the first year of the trust, was, what our Radical called him when the matter came to light, a meddling old fox; and, the last dividend not having been paid in as usual, he was impertinent enough to foster something like suspicion, having in truth been most provokingly put upon his guard by his brother banker, Mr. Stockwell. He, in consequence, actually inquired at the bank (how embarrassing it is to keep accounts so correctly!) into the state of the trust money; and found, more perhaps to his regret than surprise, that several hundred pounds had been abstracted by the trustee. This created an immediate explosion, the effects of which our Radical in vain endeavoured to allay, though even here, many of his brother Radicals, and even some Whigs, protested against the persecution which they said his politics alone had induced, and gave him the fullest credit for his intention to restore the money when he could. His struggle however was hard; he found himself going down both in pocket and in character; and, as misfortunes seldom come alone, from dissensions and changes among the ministers, the Parliament was dissolved. This was a stroke fatal to all hope of recovery, for the immaculate borough of Brawlerstown, which had subscribed for the return of so great a patriot, had got a little tired of subscriptions. To do them justice, however, two or three of the most determined roundheads among them applied to him to know his intentions, but, finding that he stood upon his public character, which they thought a little tarnished, and that he utterly refused (that is, was unable,) to expend a single farthing for his return, they discovered that the borough could not consent to be represented by a gambler, a breaker of his trust, and a seducer of women. They therefore returned home, leaving him to shift for himself. The consequence was, that, with utter ruin staring him in the face, his ambition blasted, and his only prospect a prison, he gave the people to the devil as unworthy his cares, and fled with as much property as he could turn into money, to the nearest sea-port, whence he embarked for that land of promise, liberty, and happiness, America. Well; Cobbett had twice done the same, to avoid certain inconveniences which will now and then befal public men, especially if they be printers and patriots. Yet Cobbett had twice returned, white-washed, and restored, if March.—VOL. XLIX. NỌ. CXCY. 2 c not enriched. To be sure, he had sought alliance and protection from a dead man's bones, whom he called Tom Paine, and was the better received for them in this land of cullibility. And why should not our Radical also have his dead man's bones, and call them Dr. Franklin's? Cobbett went on printing and enlightening in America, and reared, himself above the mountains of unmerited abuse that were heaped upon him solely because of his patriotism; nay, he died a member of the house, and a monument was voted him by some of our wise men of Gotham. And was not Mr. Caleb Crabtree, a printer and a patriot, also forced into banishment from having loved the people, and excited the abuse of their oppressors in revenge? Might not the same retribution therefore await him, when prejudice had subsided, and the light of truth was unveiled? Such were the consoling reflections which supported our illustrious exile while crossing the Atlantic, and such complete hold did these dreams take of him, that, by the time he reached New York, though, in point of finance, he was little better than when he entered Pounce's shop, a dusted, hungry, houseless wanderer, he felt like a man of consular dignity entering Rome. As he had corresponded in the course of his business with a considerable bookseller in this fine city, his first object was to find him, which was easily done, and, relating as much of his story as he thought necessary, and no more, to account for his leaving England, he consulted him as to his plans. England, he said, was not yet in such a state of advance towards Democracy as to give proper encouragement to a real lover of equality to remain in it that an accursed Aristocracy still ruled the people, nor were the people themselves worthy that it should be otherwise; witness the treatment he had received from his veering electors; that he had better hopes in such a soil of liberty as America; and he threw out some hints, that a man who had done so much for her as himself, might, though a stranger, have a fair hope of being enrolled a member of Congress. To his astonishment, Mr. Shrewdly, the bookseller, gave him no encouragement, nor, in return, would our adventurer open himself to him upon the nature and extent of his resources, still less as to certain particulars respecting his conduct, which the American had gleaned from English newspapers that had reached New York. The next day the victim of oppression was favoured with the following article in one of the New York papers, which certainly did not tend to brighten his prospects :"We have heard that we are favoured by the arrival on our shores, after a prosperous voyage from England, of Caleb Crabtree, Esq., printer, and ex-M.P. for the borough of Brawlerstown; well known for his ardent love of liberty and equality, aud his profound knowledge of the science of government. 'Tis said that, despairing of doing any good among his slavish countrymen, he does us the honour to think he may be happier here, and perhaps be able to contribute to our improvement, by the communication of his amazing stores. We are obliged to him for coming so far to enlighten us; but as we want no instruction, either in political science or social duties (such as being true to trusts, or respect for female virtue), it is a pity that he has given himself so much trouble. We as little want printers, being amply satisfied with our own; and, being Democrats from our cradles, and having a considerable stock of the commodity on hand, we see no prospect of advantage. either to the ex-M.P. or ourselves, from the visit. Verbum sat." "These fools are worse than those of Oxford," exclaimed the Radical, as he quitted New York. What afterwards became of him we never could exactly ascertain. Sometime ago we heard of a Mr. Crabtree who was rifled by a back settler in the Illinois, for liberties offered to his wife; and another of the same name was a serjeant-major inone of Santa Anna's Mexican regiments that mutinied, and he, being forced to fly into the Floridas, became a slave-driver there from very want. We trust that this was not the illustrious person whose memoirs, for the sake of all true lovers of liberty, we have thus thought it expedient to record. THE WIDOW TO HER SON'S BETROTHED. BY THE HON. MRS. NORTON. Ан, cease to plead with that sweet cheerful voice, A double bitterness of grief should grow ;' Those words from THEE, convey no gladdening thought, But by their means a haunting shade is brought My son alas, hast thou forgotten him, That thou art full of hopeful plans again? How can thy hand with cheerful fondness press When the LONG PARTING summoned him away? Kiss'd thy smooth cheek, and praised thy burnished hair? How can'st thou laugh? How can'st thou warble songs? How can'st thou lightly tread the meadow-fields, Praising the freshness which to Spring belongs, And the sweet incense which the hedge-flower yields? Does not the many-blossom'd spring recal Our pleasant walks through cowslip-spangled meads, The violet-scented lanes-the warm south-wall, Does not remembrance darken on thy brow When the caressing breezes lift the bough, And the sweet thrush more passionately sings ;- |