And the true reason why Mr. Southey was eager to suppress this publication was not what he pretends, a fear that it might inculcate notions of perfect equality and general licentiousness: but a feeling that it might prevent him from defending every abuse of excessive inequality, and every stretch of arbitrary power, the end of which must be to sink "the people" in an abyss of slavery, and to plunge "the populace" in the depths of famine, despair, and misery, or by a sudden and tremendous revulsion, to occasion all that confusion, anarchy, violence, and bloodshed, which Mr. Southey hypocritically affects to deprecate as the consequences of seditious and inflammatory publications. Now we contend in opposition to Mr. Southey and all that servile crew, that the only possible preventive of one or other of these impending evils, namely, lasting slavery, famine, and general misery on the one hand, or a sudden and dreadful convulsion on the other, is the liberty of the press, which Mr. Southey calls sedition, and the firm, manly, and independent expression of public opinion, which he calls rebellion. We detest despotism: we deprecate popular commotion: but if we are forced upon an alternative, we have a choice: we prefer temporary to lasting evils. Mr. Southey has indeed a new-acquired and therefore lively dread of the horrors of revolution. But his passion for despotism is greater than his dread of anarchy; and he runs all the risks of the one, rather than not glut his insatiable and unnatural appetite for the other. Such are his politics, and such are ours. He says, "The piece was written under the influence of opinions which I have long since outgrown, and repeatedly disclaimed, but for which I have never felt either shame or contrition. They were taken up conscientiously in early youth, they were acted upon in disregard of all worldly considerations, and they were left behind in the same strait-forward course, as I advanced in years." The latter part of this statement is not self-evident. Mr. Southey says that while he adhered to his first principles, he acted with a total disregard of his worldly interest; and this is easily understood:—but that his desertion of those principles, so contrary to his worldly views,
