Various

“ In short, war surrounds us on all sides; its passions are raging throughout the world; an era of such hostile prognostications is scarcely to be found in the annals of mankind. And yet Mr Cobden and Mr Bright declare, to admiring and assenting audiences in Manchester, that the era of war is past, and that we should disband our troops and sell our ships of the line! They are like an insane patient in a distant wing of a building which is wrapped in flames, who positively refuses to do anything to save himself, saying, "They will never reach me." ”

“ If the consequences of a particular line of policy could be brought before them by a clear and short process of demonstration—if they could see from whence their suffering in truth comes, and the arrow, known to have been discharged from the quivers of Free Trade and a metallic currency, could be seen festering in the breast of every industrious man in the country, one universal burst of indignation would arise from one end of the kingdom to the other. ”

“ But, if Ireland is even now neither the nominis umbra which the Assyrian empire has been for so many ages, nor the Irish legislature the heir of the fierce and falcon-eyed council which sleeps in the sepulchres of Nineveh, there is something of a curious relationship in the adventurous industry which has so lately exhumed the monuments of Eastern grandeur, and the patriotic reminiscence which has retrieved the true glories of the sister country, the examples of her genius, from an oblivion alike resulting from the misfortunes of the Land and the lapse of Time. ”

“ Hippopotamus, however, did not care a rush either for addresses or epistles. He was perfectly convinced in his mind that so long as the Squire's household remained without change, he had nothing earthly to fear; and, accordingly, he snapped his fingers and laughed at the whole opposition. He had brought over with him from foreign parts such a collection of tapestry, brocades, images, pyxes, censers, and gilded sheep-hooks, as utterly eclipsed the glory of poor Augustine's paraphernalia, and these he took occasion to display with all the pride and satisfaction possible. ”

“ The burst of indignation with which the appointment of the Lord Cardinal was received throughout England, the more suppressed apprehensions with which the opening of the Californian treasures was viewed by our moneyed oligarchy, can afford but a faint image of the feelings of agony which will then wring the British heart—the frightful cry of distress which will then rise up from famishing millions, the universal horror at past neglect which will send the iron into the soul of our whole people. Their efforts to redeem the past will probably be great, their struggles will be those of a giant. ”

“ Why are poor-rates—measured in the true way, by quarters of grain—heavier in this year of boasted prosperity than they were in any former year of admitted adversity? Because, in every department of industry, we have beat down native by letting in a flood of foreign industry. Why are 300,000 industrious citizens annually driven into exile, and Ireland threatened with a depopulation the most rapid and extraordinary which has been witnessed in the world since the declining days of the Roman empire? Because we would lower wheat from 56s. ”

“ These walls sheltered him from that perpetual clinging of Popery, which dragged down his fine tastes to its own level. Within these walls, he was relieved from the petty interests of partisanship, and raised from the feuds of an island to the policy of an empire. In Ireland, popularity required perpetual submission to the caprices of the multitude, and no man had more fully felt than Grattan the impossibility of taking a stand on his own principles—he must be either on the shoulders of the mob, or under their heels. ”

“ But the Papist demands religious liberty. The words, in Papist lips, are jargon. He has never had it in any country on earth. Has he it in Rome? Can the man have the absurdity to call himself a freeman, when the priest may tear the Bible out of his hand; when, without a license, he cannot look into the Book of Life?—when, with or without a license, he cannot exercise his own understanding upon its sacred truths, but must refuse even to think, except as the priest commands?—when, for daring to have an opinion on the most essential of all things—his own salvation—he is branded as a heretic ”

“ Have we 100,000 regular troops and 200,000 landwehr, in the British Islands, ready to repel insult; and a fleet of 30 ships of the line and 20 armed steamers, ready afloat and manned, on the German Ocean and in the Channel, to secure our harbours from attack, and raise a blockade of our coasts? Have we—since we are so set upon a foreign war, and have done so much to spread the passions which necessarily lead to it, and made so many hostile demonstrations calculated instantly to induce it—made preparations in our Exchequer and our granaries for its expenses and its privations? ”

“ Let us suppose that Austria ventured to send a dozen of her monks here to carve the land into dioceses. What would be the universal exclamation, but that Austria was mad; and that the first monk who made the attempt should find his only diocese within the walls of Newgate. What if France declared England a province? Can we doubt that our answer would be a declaration of war? And is a beggarly Italian—a fugitive from his own territory, a priest flying for his life in the livery of a footman—to offer this insult with impunity? ”

“ Of all the kingdoms of this world, since the fall of Rome, the Popedom has been the most marked by calamity. There has been no nation whose sovereign has been so often flung from his throne; whose throne has been so often contested with bloody dissension, whose sovereign has been so often a prisoner in foreign lands, whose capital has been so often sacked, whose provinces have been so often in foreign possession, whose population is so miserable, and whose vassalage has been so palpable, so humiliating, and so wretched. ”

“ Some of the feeblest, and even the most fanciful, and of course the silliest, managers of great principles, have been mathematicians of celebrity. Napoleon said of Laplace, the first mathematician of his day, to whom he gave a title and a seat in his Council of State, on the strength of his scientific renown, that "he could do nothing with him,—that as a public man he was useless—that his mind was full of his infinite littles." And this is the history of nearly all mathematical minds: beyond their diagrams, they are among the dullest, most circumscribed, and most incapable of mankind. ”

“ Is America more peaceful, and is the advent of the reign of peace foreshadowed by the entire abstinence from ambitious and angry passions in the republicans of its southern or northern hemisphere? Has not the former, since the disastrous era when its revolution began, been the theatre of convulsions so frequent, and bloodshed so incessant, that history, in despair, has ceased to record the names of these conflicts, and points with horror only to their woeful consequences? ”

“ Reverend and Dear Sir,—I have this moment learned with great astonishment and surprise, the insidious attempt which has been made by Peter to extend his authority in Bullockshatch. This gives me the greater surprise, because I consider myself ill used by Peter, having on previous occasions behaved with marked civility to his people, and having moreover shown myself anything but hostile to his exercising his functions here, moderately and discreetly, and within due limits. ”

“ The men who can abandon their duties to England (and what man is not without his duty?) for cheap wine, gossip, and grimace—the race of sullen selfishness and perpetual vacuity—are justly punished by foreign ill-usage. But still, the insult is to the religion of England, and it teaches us the real feeling of Popery in power. Let the Protestant ever suffer the predominance of Rome in England, and he will then only know what Popish power is in its nature, its fierce recollections, and its grasping ambition. ”

“ Surrounded then, as we undeniably are, with the flames and the passions of war on every side; slumbering on the edge of a volcano, the fires of which are smouldering under our feet and gathering strength for a fresh and still more terrific explosion; actuated as we are by unbounded national haughtiness, and a most aggressive system of foreign policy, have we done anything to support our pretensions, or avert those ravages from our own shores which we have so liberally scattered on all the adjacent coasts? ”

“ Have we fortified Woolwich, the general arsenal of the empire, and Chatham, and our other naval depots, hitherto undefended? Have we cleared out the glacis of Portsmouth and Plymouth, so as to give free range to the guns of the works, and established a great central fortification at Weedon, or some other central point in England, whither our troops might retire, if obliged to evacuate London, and where the new levies, raised in haste, might receive the elements of discipline, without the risk of being assailed, while yet in the awkward squad state, by the enemies' cuirassiers? ”

“ I wonder if I could persuade them to quit the Squire's service without making any noise about it! No—that they won't do; and the mischief is that they know a thing or two more than is convenient. Then what am I to write to that old pantaloon Martin, whom I have not spoken to for many a day? If I commit myself against Peter, Gray and Claretson will be down upon me to a dead certainty, and I shall have to account for all Mat-o'-the Mint's blunders, which would puzzle any conjurer living. ”

“ But your Excellency [2] does not think of making a nun of his only child!"
"And yet why not?" said Riccabocca mournfully; "what can I give her in the world? Is the land of the stranger a better refuge than the home of peace in her native clime?"
"In the land of the stranger beats her father's heart!"
"And if that beat were stilled, what then? Ill fares the life that a single death can bereave of all. In a convent at least (and the priest's influence can obtain her that asylum amongst her equals and amidst her sex) she is safe from trial and from penury—to her grave." ”

“ With a few positions of great wealth, all below was barren: livings of vast extent, with a meagre population, and still more meagre income; Romanism was hourly spreading with a population, itself spreading until it had nothing to eat, and embittered against Protestantism until conversion became more than a hopeless toil—an actual terror. Law was the only instrument of collecting the clerical income, and the collector and the clergyman were involved in one common obloquy, and often in one common danger—a condition of things which must have largely repelled all those who had the power of choice. ”

“ The Squire proceeded—
"I don't say it was all your fault; perhaps it was mine."
"Noa—noa—noa," burst forth in a general chorus.
"Nay, friends," continued the Squire humbly, and in one of those illustrative aphorisms which, if less subtle than Riccabocca's, were more within reach of the popular comprehension; "nay—we are all human; and every man has his hobby: sometimes he breaks in the hobby, and sometimes the hobby, if it is very hard in the mouth, breaks in him. One man's hobby has an ill habit of always stopping at the public house! ”

“ But while all this is perfectly clear on the one hand—and there is obviously no limit to this long continuance of the most ruinous error in the opinions and policy of a particular nation—it is equally evident, on the other, that there is a bar imposed by Providence to the eternity of error in the world in general. The laws of nature at length come to the aid of truth: some great and decisive event occurs which renders its effects palpable to all the people ”

“ In those tranquil subtleties and meek submissions they both labour to conceal the fact, that if they are to be Papists, they must be worshippers of the Virgin Mary; they must be worshippers of imaginary saints; they must be worshippers of stocks and stones, as the images of those imaginary saints; and they must be prepared to do the bidding of the Papacy, even though that should amount to the dissolution of society; for to this they must come. This is their yoke. To this every man who apostatises is bound for life: he must drag the whole length of the chain. ”