I can look at him with an
easy curiosity, as prisoner within bars in the menagerie of the Tower.
But if, by _Habeas Corpus_, or otherwise, he was to come into the lobby
of the House of Commons whilst your door was open, any of you would be
more stout than wise who would not gladly make your escape out of the
back windows. I certainly should dread more from a wild-cat in my
bedchamber than from all the lions that roar in the deserts behind
Algiers. But in this parallel it is the cat that is at a distance, and
the lions and tigers that are in our antechambers and our lobbies.
Algiers is not near; Algiers is not powerful; Algiers is not our
neighbor; Algiers is not infectious. Algiers, whatever it may be, is an
old creation; and we have good data to calculate all the mischief to be
apprehended from it. When I find Algiers transferred to Calais, I will
tell you what I think of that point. In the mean time, the case quoted
from the Algerine Reports will not apply as authority. We shall put it
out of court; and so far as that goes, let the counsel for the Jacobin
peace take nothing by their motion.
When we voted, as you and I did, with many more whom you and I respect
and love, to resist this enemy, we were providing for dangers that were
direct, home, pressing, and not remote, contingent, uncertain, and
formed upon loose analogies. We judged of the danger with which we were
menaced by Jacobin France from the whole tenor of her conduct, not from
one or two doubtful or detached acts or expressions.
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