“Do not be too sure of your victory in the House of
Commons. It is not unlikely that when the securities come to be discussed you
will find yourselves in a minority there, as well as in the country at large.
The mischief, however, is done. It is like certain bodily complaints, trifling
in themselves, but of infinite import as symptomatic of approaching death. The
more I see, the more I read, and the more I reflect, the more reason there
appears to me to fear that our turn of revolution is hastening on. In the minds
of the busy part of the public it is already effected. The save-all reformers
have made them suspicious; the opposition has made them discontented; the
anarchists are making them furious. Methodism is undermining the Church, and
your party, in league with all varieties of opinionists, have battered it till
you have succeeded in making a breach. I give you all credit for good
intentions; but I know the dissenters and the philosophists better than you do,
and know that the principle
| Ætat. 39. | OF ROBERT SOUTHEY. | 25 |
“The end of all this will be the loss of liberty, for that is the penalty which, in the immutable order of things, is appointed for the abuse of it. What we may have to go through, before we sit down quietly in our chains, God only knows.
“Have you heard of the strange circumstance about Coleridge? A man hanging himself in the Park with one of his shirts on, marked at full length! Guess C.’s astonishment at reading this in a newspaper at a coffee-house. The thing is equally ridiculous and provoking. It will alarm many persons who know him, and I dare say many will always believe that the man was C. himself, but that he was cut down in time, and that his friends said it was somebody else in order to conceal the truth. As yet, however, I have laughed about it too much to be vexed.
“I have just got General Mackinnon’s Journal*: never was any thing more faithful than his account of the country and the people. We have, I fear, few such men in the British army. I knew a sister of his well some years ago, and should rejoice to meet with her again, for she was one of the cleverest women I ever knew. When they lived in France, Bonaparte was a frequent visitor at their mother’s
* See Inscription, xxxv. p. 178. one vol. edit. |
| 26 | LIFE AND CORRESPONDENCE | Ætat. 39. |
