то WILLIAM SMITH, Esq. M.P. SIR, You are represented in the news-papers as having entered, during an important discussion in Parliament, into a comparison between certain passages in the Quarterly Review, and the opinions which were held by the author of WAT TYLER, three and twenty years ago. It appears farther, according to the same authority, that the introduction of so strange a criticism, in so unfit a place, did not arise from the debate, but was a premeditated B thing; that you had prepared yourself for it by stowing the Quarterly Review in one pocket, and Wat Tyler in the other; and that you deliberately stood up for the purpose of reviling an individual who was not present to vindicate himself, and in a place which afforded you protection. My name, indeed, was not mentioned; but that I was the person whom you intended, was notorious to all who heard you. For the impropriety of introducing such topics in such an assembly, it is farther stated, that you received a well-merited rebuke from Mr. Wynn, who spoke on that occasion as much from his feelings towards one with whom he has lived in uninterrupted friendship for nearly thirty years, as from a sense of the respect which is due to Parliament. It is, however, proper that I should speak explicitly for myself. This was not necessary in regard to Mr. Brougham,.. he only carried the quarrels as well as the prac tices of the Edinburgh Review into the House of Commons. But as calumny, Sir, has not been your vocation, it may be useful, even to yourself, if I comment upon your first attempt. First, as to the Quarterly Review. You can have no other authority for ascribing any particular paper in that journal to one person or to another, than common report: in following which you may happen to be as much mistaken as I was when upon the same grounds 1 supposed Mr. William Smith to be a man of candour, incapable of grossly and wantonly insulting an individual. The Quarterly Review stands upon its own merits. It is not answerable for any thing more than it contains. What I may have said, or thought, in any part of my life, no more concerns that Journal than it does you, or the House of Commons: and I am as little answerable for the Journal, as the Journal for me. What I may have written in it is a question which you, Sir, have no right to ask, and which certainly I will not answer. As little right have you to take that for granted which you cannot possibly know. The question, as respects the Quarterly Review, is not who wrote the paper which happens to have excited Mr. William Smith's displeasure, but whether the facts which are there stated are true, the quotations accurate, and the inferences just. The Reviewer, whoever he may be, may defy you to disprove them. Now, Secondly, as to Wat Tyler. Sir, though you are not acquainted with the full history of this notable production, yet you could not have been ignorant that the author whom you attacked at such un fair advantage was the aggrieved, and not the offending person. You knew that this poem had been written very many years ago, in his early youth. You knew that a copy of it had been surreptitiously obtained, and made public by some skulking scoundrel, who had found booksellers not more honourable than himself, to undertake the publication. You knew that it was published without the writer's knowledge, for the avowed purpose of insulting him, and with the hope of injuring him if possible. You knew that the transaction bore upon its face every character of baseness and malignity. it must have been effected bery, or by breach of trust. You knew that either by rob These things, Mr. William Smith, you knew! And, knowing them as you did, I verily believe, that if it were possible to revoke what is ir revocable, you would at this moment be far more desirous of blotting from remembrance the disgraceful speech which stands upon record in your name, than |