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 CURRAN 8SS peevish mind may be exasperated, and how shall it be cor- rected by refutation ? How fruitless would it have been to represent to that wretched chancellor, that he was betray- ing those rights which he was sworn to maintain,-that he was involving a government in disgrace, and a kingdom n panic and consternation; that he was violating e sacred duty, and every solemn engagement, that bound him to his sovereign, his country, and his God!-Alas!- my lords; by what argument could any man hope to re- m or dissuade a mean, illiberal, and unprincipled minion of authority, induced by his profligacy to undertake, and bound by his avarice and vanity to persevere ? He would probably have replied to the most unanswerable arguments by some curt, contumelious, and unmeaning apophthegm, delivered with the fretful smile of irritated self-sufficiency, and disconcerted arrogance; or even if he should be dragged by his fears to a consideration of the question, by what miracle could the pigmy capacity of a stanted pedant be enlarged to a reception of the subject? The endeavour to approach it would have only removed him to a greater distance than he was before, as a little hand that strives to grasp a mighty globe, is thrown back by the reaction of its own effort to comprehend. It may be given to a HALE or a HARDWICKE to discover and retract a mistake. The errors of such men are only specks that arise for a moment on the surface of a splen- did luminary, consumed by its heat or irradiated by its light, they soon disappear. But the perverseness of a mean and narrow intellect are like the excrescences that grow on bodies naturally cold and dark; no fire to waste them, and no ray to enlighten, they assimilate and coalesce with those qualities so congenial to their nature; and acquire an incorrigible permanency in the union with kindred frost and kindred opacity. Nor indeed, my lords, except where the interest of millions can be affected by the vice or the folly of an individual, need it be much regretted that to things not worthy of being made better, it bath