PREFATORY IDEAS. WHAT caused the recent expedition to Spain? Rumour. Which averred that the "universal" Spanish monarchy, would take up arms, as one man, to resist the usurpation of Napoleon-Was it thus proved? No!-Then Rumour is a measureless liar, and so far from being often in the right, she is almost ever in the wrong; the mischief she has perpetrated in the parish, is beyond human calculation to ascertain. What made the late administration send Admiral Duckworth to break his head against the rocks of the Dardanelles? Rumour!-What made them send Mr. Whitelocke to Buenos Ayres, to manifest to our shame, and that he was no soldier? Rumour!-In truth, there is no station wholly free from her baneful sorceries; she infects the atmosphere we breathe, and our faculties are perverted by her malign industry. Has she not wandered from policy to morals, and tainted the purity of the best orders of men? Had she not the cruel audacity to affirm, that it was a limb of the "Vice Society," who caused the late conflagration at the theatres, in order to catch all the strumpets of the metropolis, as it were, in two traps!--Monstrous insinuation! |