Lanterna Rally

Author: William Cobbett

Publisher:

Published: 2020-03-09

Total Pages: 158

ISBN-13:

If such a man be not, after he has survived and accomplished all this, qualified to give Advice to Young Men, no man is qualified for that task. There may have been natural genius: but genius alone, not all the genius in the world, could, without something more, have conducted me through these perils. During these twenty-nine years, I have had for deadly and ever-watchful foes, a government that has the collecting and distributing of sixty millions of pounds in a year, and also every soul who shares in that distribution. Until very lately, I have had, for the far greater part of the time, the whole of the press as my deadly enemy. Yet, at this moment, it will not be pretended, that there is another man in the kingdom, who has so many cordial friends. For as to the friends of ministers and the great, the friendship is towards the power, the influence; it is, in fact, towards those taxes, of which so many thousands are gaping to get at a share. And, if we could, through so thick a veil, come at the naked fact, we should find the subscription, now going on in Dublin for the purpose of erecting a monument in that city, to commemorate the good recently done, or alleged to be done, to Ireland, by the DUKE of WELLINGTON; we should find, that the subscribers have the taxes in view; and that, if the monument shall actually be raised, it ought to have selfishness, and not gratitude, engraven on its base. Nearly the same may be said with regard to all the praises that we hear bestowed on men in power. The friendship which is felt towards me is pure and disinterested: it is not founded in any hope that the parties can have, that they can ever profit from professing it: it is founded on the gratitude which they entertain for the good that I have done them; and, of this sort of friendship, and friendship so cordial, no man ever possessed a larger portion.