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THE METROPOLITAN.

VOL. III.

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JAMES COCHRANE AND CO.

11, WATERLOO PLACE, PALL MALL;

BELL AND BRADFUTE, EDINBURGH; SMITH AND SON, GLASGOW ;

AND W. F. WAKEMAN, DUBLIN.

1832.

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THE

METROPOLITAN.

JANUARY, 1832.

ORIGINAL PAPERS.

SIR CHARLES WETHERELL.

"Nothing of that wonderful promise, to read him by his form, as you are like to find him in the proof of his valour. He is, indeed, Sir, the most skilful, bloody, and fatal opposite, that you could possibly have found in any part of Illyria." TWELFTH NIGHT.

SIR CHARLES, thrice dear to that party whom Newcastle, Kenyon, and Londonderry delight to honour, is at once furious and frolicsome, a player of tragedy and comedy in one breath, duly tinctured with those narrow-minded prejudices, opinions, and pernicious principles of government, which constitute, as it were, the very cognizance and livery of his faded party,—he is, too, its most conspicuous and renowned champion. Whenever the lunatics of the world (considering the interests of the sacred tribe to render requisite the measure) shall resolve to stock a tyrant "setting up in business," they may constitute a not uncongenial addition to his household in the worthy knight. But the ruler upon his principles who governs men that "know their rights, and knowing dare maintain," who should choose to treat himself with such an agent to act upon them, would soon hear the roar of revolt from end to end of his dominions. What sorrow would a prince prepare for himself, who yielded himself up to the councils of a temper so insane, and ventured to rate his own security by a proud defiance of the public voice! It was when the doctrine of prerogative, which Sir Charles maintains to the letter, was at its height, that the unhappy Charles I. stepped from his palace to the scaffold. They were such councils that encouraged Louis XVI. in his vacillation and insincerity, which no subsequent concessions were found sufficient to cancel, for which no degree of abasement before the vilest and lowest of his subjects was sufficient to purchase his security; and he fell the victim to errors not his own. Happily for this party, it is powerless and insignificant; to which state its members will owe it that they have not, in the present crisis, been overwhelmed by their indiscretion. The Ultra-Tories do not compose a moiety of the opposition to his Majesty's Ministers-what were they on the division upon the Catholic Question?

We have sometimes heard it proposed as an apology for the intemperate opposition exhibited by Sir Charles to Reform, that while the boroughdealers, namely, those persons who condescend to teach the subtle mystery according to which a man may at once do his duty to his country, and accommodate them with the power of sacrificing to their own, the interest of that same country,—are prompted by the baser concern for the loss of their usurped property, Sir Charles can, at least, only be actuated by the less unworthy motive of preserving a vitiated usage. This extenuation do we utterly reject. Does not the enforcing of a wrong, although involving no retention or acquisition of property, bring as much gratification very frequently, as the enforcing of avarice on an unjust claim, which does involve them? The mischief is, at least, as great in the one case as the other, the motive not less selfish or inexcusable. When King John January, 1832.—VOL. III. NO. IX.

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