feastings and carousings; these are great securities; but, while you
follow the impulses of your public-spirit and your valour, I hope you
will always bear in mind, that there are such things as _false-swearing_
in the world, and that a defeated coward has never been known to be
otherwise than inexorably cruel. The proprietor of the Morning Post, in
his paper of last Monday, says, that Cobbett and Hunt ought at least to
lose their lives; and the author of the Antigallican has, I am told,
put the drawing of a gallows in his Paper, with a _rope_ ready for use,
having _my name_ on it, or very near it.--And, you may be well assured,
that, if the _false oaths_ of these men could do the job, those oaths
would be very much at our service. Therefore, though I am quite sure,
that these menaces will not deter you from doing any thing, which you
would have done if the menaces had never been made; yet, as being proofs
of the shameless, the remorseless, the desperate villainy of these
tools, their present conduct ought to impress on your mind the necessity
of being on your guard, so far, at least, as not _unnecessarily_ to
expose yourself to the consequences of _false-swearing_. These men and
their associates call the younger Mr. Watson (whom they, without proof,
charge with shooting Mr. Platt) an _assassin_, though they themselves
state, that the shot arose from the seizure of Watson by Platt, and that
the former, like a wild enthusiast as he appears to have been, expressed
his sorrow on the instant, and actually went to work to save the life of
the wounded man. Nobody justifies, or attempts to justify, the shooter;
but, if he were an _assassin_, what are these men who, while they keep
their _names hidden_, are endeavouring to produce persecution and ruin
and death in every direction? The man who shot Mr. Platt, though highly
criminal, is not a thousandth part so criminal as these men, who to
premeditated bloody-mindedness add a degree of cowardice such as was
never before heard of.