that the suppression of Wat Tyler is to suppress those opinions, and that a lying article in the Quarterly Review is to persuade us that they who made war on those opinions from the beginning (and by so doing, produced all the evils of those opinions, produced them purposely, in the malice of their hearts and the darkness of their minds produced them to destroy all liberty, truth, and justice, and to keep mankind their slaves in perpetuity by right divine) were right from the beginning, that they deserved well of mankind, that their boasted triumph, the triumph of kings over the species, is ours and Mr. Southey's triumph? Or would he persuade us that the Greek and Roman History has become obsolete, because Mr. Southey left school three and twenty years ago; that poetry and romance were banished from the human heart when he look a place and pension; that Lucan and Akenside will not live as long as Wat Tyler, or the Quarterly Review!—We broke off in an interesting part. Mr. Southey proceeds:] "Following those opinions with ardour wherever they led." [This is an old trick of the author, he is a keen sportsman;] "I soon perceived that inequalities of rank were a light evil compared to the inequalities of property,[1] and those more
- ↑ A sarcastic writer, like Mr. Southey, might here ask, whether it was a disappointment in sharing the estate of some rich landed proprietor that made Mr. Southey turn short round to a defence of sinecures and pensions? We do not know, but here follows a passage, which "some skulking scoundrel" in the Quarterly Review appears to have aimed at Mr. Southey's early opinions and character:—"As long as the smatterer in philosophy confines himself to private practice, the mischief does not extend beyond his private circle—his neighbour's wife may be in some danger, and his neighbour's property also; if the distinctions between meum and tuum should be practically inconvenient to the man of free opinions. But when he commences professor of moral and political philosophy for the benefit of the public—the fables of old credulity are then verified, his very breath becomes venomous, and every page which he sends abroad carries with it poison to the unsuspicious reader." Such is the interpretation given by the anonymous writer to the motives of smatterers in philosophy; this writer could not be Mr. Southey, for "he never imputes evil motives to men merely for holding the opinions he formerly held," such as the evils of the inequality of property, &c.
