Note 112 — Chapter XXXIX · MAINCHANCE VILLA

Quarterly Review, No. xxxi. p. 249. It is curious, that in the fourth article of the same number from which I have borrowed so many exquisite passages, the reviewers are very angry that certain ‘scandalous and immoral practices’ in the island of Wahoo are not reformed: but certainly, according to the logic of these reviewers, the Government of Wahoo is entitled to look upon them in the light of ‘ruffians, scoundrels, incendiaries, firebrands, madmen, and villains’; since all these hard names belong of primary right to those who propose the reformation of ‘scandalous and immoral practices’! The people of Wahoo, it appears, are very much addicted to drunkenness and debauchery; and the reviewers, in the plenitude of their wisdom, recommend that a few clergymen should be sent out to them, by way of mending their morals. It does not appear, whether King Tamaahmaah is a king by divine right; but we must take it for granted that he is not; as, otherwise, the Quarterly Reviewers would either not admit that there were any ‘scandalous and immoral practices’ under his government, or, if they did admit them, they would not be such ‘incendiaries, madmen, and villains,’ as to advocate their reformation. There are some circumstances, however, which are conclusive against the legitimacy of King Tamaahmaah, which are these: that he is a man of great ‘feeling, energy, and steadiness of conduct’; that he ‘goes about among his people to learn their wants’; and that he has ‘prevented the recurrence of those horrid murders’ which disgraced the reigns of his predecessors: from which it is obvious that he has neither put to death brave and generous men, who surrendered themselves under the faith of treaties, nor re-established a fallen Inquisition, nor sent those to whom he owed his crown to the dungeon and the galleys.

In the tenth article of the same number the reviewers pour forth the bitterness of their gall against Mr. Warden of the Northumberland, who has detected them in promulgating much gross and foolish falsehood concerning the captive Napoleon. They labour most assiduously to impeach his veracity and to discredit his judgment. On the first point, it is sufficient evidence of the truth of his statements, that the Quarterly Reviewers contradict them: but on the second, they accuse him, among other misdemeanours, of having called their Review ‘a respectable work‘! which certainly discredits his judgment completely.