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    politician which is objectionable in the man , because we deemed it certain from his position ( even if to his personal feelings it were a matter of indifference ) that the main direction of his exertions would always be on the popular side , and that he would render valuable service to the popular cause . But there are political crimes of so atrocious a character , that whoever is accessary to them , must for the common safety be cast out of the

    communion of honest men : every politician who thinks , or even would be believed to think that in politics there is a right and a wrong , must endeavour that the line drawn between himself and such men , may be as broad and as conspicuous as possible . We consider the pillage of the fund holder to be a crime of this description ; and Mr . O'Connell , having advocated it , ought to be put into political quarantine , until he purge himself by confession and retractation .

    Mr . O'Connell is much mistaken if he imagine that , by the course he hag adopted , he is serving Radicalism , or recommending himself to the better part of the Radicals . He is playing into the hands of the Aristocracy . The fundholder has more to fear from them than from the Radicals . Accustomed , by their paramount influence over the Legislature , to take , when it suits them , what is not their own ; feeling that the country is clamorous for a reduction of its burthens , and not knowing how they should contrive to live , if deprived of the power of taxing the public for their own benefit—the

    landholders are under constant temptation to appease the anger of the public , not by restoring to them their own , but by plundering somebody else and presenting them with a part of the spoil . The most inveterate enemies of the fundholder are a party among the landlords : and although the majority , we trust , would shrink from any personal participation in the mingled folly and atrocity of a national bankruptcy , we cannot expect from them any strenuous resistance to it . The only tried friends the fundholder has , the only combatants who plant themselves in the breach whenever he is assailed , who are ever ready to peril their influence in his defence , are Radical writers . To whom but to

    ihe * West minstei Review , " or 'Tait ' s Magazine / or the ' Examiner , ' can the fundholder look , to place the justice of his cause in a striking light before tiie public ? While the ' Quarterly Review * was urging Parliament to rob him , while Earl Grey was proclaiming in the House of Lords that the robbery was greatly to be deprecated , but that necessity had no law , and nemo tenetur ad impossibile ,- while Sir James Graham was writing a pamphlet expressly lo prove that 30 per cent . ou < j ; ht to be struck off from the national debt and from all private mortgages ; nobody repelled these iniquities with any thing like energy or indignation but the Radical press .

    There is much to be said for paying off the national debt by a tax on property ; treating the debt of our fathers as a mortgage upon the property which our fathers left , and therefore a charge upon those to whom that property has descended , and not upon unborn generations of those who have nothing but their labour . This proposition may become a popular one among the Radicals generally , liut , if the landlords attempt to effect a compromise with the profligate portion of the Radicals , and save themselves who

    contracted the debt from paying their due share of it , by cancelling it either wholly or partially , they must be plainly told , that they may have the power of determining where confiscation shall begin , but not where it shall end . Of all kinds of property , the public funds consist the most peculiarly of the pavings of honest industry , and the pittance of the widow and the orphan . These may be the first robbed , but let the robbers rely on it , they shall not I'e the last . The people consent to bear with a most mischievous and

    demoralizing inequality of fortunes , for the sake of the security which springs from the general inviolability of property . But let that inviolability be once seriously infringed , that security destroyed , and it will not •> e , and ought not to be , longer endured that there should be men who hav « 00 , 000 / . a year , while others are starving . Ere long it would be told to the Aristocracy in a voice of thunder , that if the funds are confiscated to th «

    Untitled Article

    The Pillage of the National Creditor . 237

• Citation
  • Monthly Repository (1806-1838) and Unitarian Chronicle (1832-1833), April 2, 1834, page 237, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse.ac.uk/periodicals/mruc/issues/vm2-ncseproduct2632/page/5/