intercourse with the Home Department. The fleecy fools, whom the writer holds up as models of wisdom and spirit to his countrymen, do, to be sure, make a terrible noise at a sheep-shearing, and a short struggle when they feel the knife at their throats. But our allegorist, we suspect, would regard these as Jacobinical, or Ultra-Jacobinical symptoms. He would have the people stand still to be fleeced, and have their throats cut, whenever Government pleases. He has in his eye the sublimest example of self-devotion: "As a lamb, he was led to the slaughter: as a sheep before the shearers is dumb, so he opened not his mouth." We cannot understand the point of comparison in this sheep-biting argument. If the people are really to be as silly, and as submissive as sheep, they will be worse treated. A flock of sheep pass their time very comfortably on Salisbury plain, biting the short sweet grass, or lying with "meek mouths ruminant," till they are fit to send to market: we have sometimes heard them fill the air with a troublous cry, as they pass down Oxford-street, to Smithfield, and the next morning it is all over with them. But Governments have not the same reason for taking care of the people, "poor, poor dumb mouths," they do not ordinarily sell them or eat them. The comparison would be much nearer to beasts of burden, asses, or "camels in their war," who, as Shakspeare expresses it,—
———"have their provender
Only for bearing burthens, and sore blows
For sinking under them."
However edifying and attractive these kind of examples of simplicity, patience, and good behaviour, taken from sheep, oxen, and asses, must be to the people, they are rather invidious, something worse than equivocal, as they relate to the designs and good-will of the Government towards them. This writer indeed commits himself very strangely on this subject, or, as the phrase is, lets the cat out of the bag, without intending it. In a broadside which he published against the author of the "Political Register,"
