Page:The plot discovered; or, An address to the people, against ministerial treason (IA plotdiscoveredor00cole).pdf/27

19 We proceed to the second Bill, for more effectually preventing seditious meetings and assemblies. At my first glance over it, it recalled to me by force of contrast the stern simplicity and perspicuous briefness of the Athenian laws. But our minister's meaning generally bears an inverse proportion to the multitude of his words. If his declaration consist of fifty lines, it may be compressed into ten; if it extend to five hundred, it may be compressed into five. His style is infinitely porous: deprived of their vacuities the, the universe of his bills and speeches would take up less room than a nutshell. The Bill now pending is indeed as full-foliaged, as the Manchineel tree; (and like the manchineel will poison those who are fools enough to slumber beneath it) but its import is briefly this—first, that the people of England should possess no unrestrained right of consulting in common on common grievances: and secondly, that Mr. Thelwall should no longer give political lectures.

The public amusements at the Theatre are already under ministerial controul. And if the tremendous sublimity of Schiller, if "the RobersRobbers [sic]" can be legally suppressed by that thing yclept a Lord Chamberlain, in point of literary exhibition