On this page

• Text (1)

  Note: This text has been automatically extracted via Optical Character Recognition (OCR) software. The text has not been manually corrected and should not be relied on to be an accurate representation of the item.

  • 

    Untitled Article

• Transcript

  • Note: This text has been automatically extracted via Optical Character Recognition (OCR) software. The text has not been manually corrected and should not be relied on to be an accurate representation of the item.

    Additionally, when viewing full transcripts, extracted text may not be in the same order as the original document.

    Untitled Article

    Ireland . It is also an admirable provision that the speech should be made for him , otherwise the King might be too eloquent * His present Majesty succeeded to the Throne of his la--mented brother" in the year 1830 , and as our Almanack-makers have , by common consent , agreed that this is the year 1837 , he has clearly completed what the disciples of Pythagoras

    would designate the first septennial , or infantile section of hia reign . This being the completion , therefore , of a climacteric period , is the fittest season that could be chosen for collecting the Nuga Canorte which he has really delivered from the Throne * Nay , as a certain Roman Emperor estimated the size of Rome from the quantity of cobwebs collected in it , so

    may our politicians draw very shrewd inferences from the speeches of William IV , concerning the progress of political philosophy in Great Britain during the last seven years * We have read them with profound attention , and do not remember to have met with anything like them in the history of ancient or modern oratory . They are infinitely more concise than any * thing that is to be found in the orations of Cicero or

    Demosthenes ; and are pervaded by a sort of family resemblance , which is remarkable . They are as like one another as the two Dromios . The speech for 1834 would do very well for 1836—* that of 1835 for 1836 , and so on . Nothing but an art sui generis could have accomplished this . It is done by a sort of political alchemy , by which one principle of government can be dexterously converted into another ; and both , when

    expedient , be still further melted down into one of a perfectly different character . Thus , the principle upon which the Catholic Emancipation Bill was so long opposed was suddenly ; as the Duke of Wellington was presiding over the cauldron , stirring up the elements of discord with his Field Marshal ' s baton ; converted into a principle in favour of its being passed . The principle upon which the citizens of Paris were allowed to choose their

    own King , after a three days glorious struggle , was convertible into the very opposite application in the case of the Troy citizens of Madrid . The crown of the Bourbons was permitted to be hurled into dust , while the crown of the bigotted Ferdinand is yet to be secured to his immaculate descendants , at the point of the British bayonet . Admirable consistency Then again , these Royal speeches are all of them dictated in a

    tone of unrivalled policy . Machiavelli himself need no longer be cited a the prince of wily politicians . The art of false prophecy , as everybody knows , consists in predicting a certain number of events vaguely . Sybils , soothsayers , astrologers , gipsies , come within the same category . None of their oracles , however , are conceived in such a convenient spirit , and admit of such an universality of application as the inaugural tad

    Untitled Article

    Speeches of his Majesty , William IV . Vt&

• Citation
  • Monthly Repository (1806-1838) and Unitarian Chronicle (1832-1833), March 1, 1837, page 175, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse.ac.uk/periodicals/mruc/issues/vm2-ncseproduct1829/page/49/