It appears that some hireling of Lord Falmouth, perhaps his
Lord- ship himself, has virulently attacked the editor of the West Briton, published at Truro, for copying from the Spectator the article on the Thu-render case in the House of Lords; wherein it will be recollected that Lord Falmouth " distinguished" himself. This attack was in- serted in a paper called the Cornwall Gazette, and the last West Briton contains a letter from the editor to Lord Falmouth, which must have discomposed that wise lord's digestion. Among other charges, the editor of the West Briton was accused of having been the "mean syco- phant and fulsome panegyrist" of Lord Falmouth. We copy the pungent paragraph in which this accusation is rebutted.
"My Lord, you know as well as I do, that this is a foul and base slander ; and as such, come from what quarter it may, I repel it with indignation and contempt. I have known something of your Lordship as a public man residing in the neighbourhood of this borough, and filling the office of its Recorder since your accession to the estates and title of the House of Boscawen, and lame 3nost solemnly declare, that never, from your political partisans more than frarn your opponents, did I ever hear a single estimable quality attributed to your Lordship. For what, then, could I prase you? On every occasion of public policy that has been under discussion during the period I have mentioned, we have invariably taken opposite sides; and the county will bear me witness, that I never hesitated to express my opposition to your Lordship, either in this paper, or verbally, on any public occasion when I conceived the principles of civil and religious liberty could be in any wise aided by my humble though zealous exertions. When surrounded by the assembled Clergy of this district, and backed by it packed meeting, chiefly composed of your tenantry, I opposed 'you almost single-handed in the Town-hall of Truro on the question of Ca- tholic Emancipation. Did I then, my Lord, manifest any disposition to sacri- fice the cause I advocated in deference to your views? On the contrary, it is known to hundreds, I may say to thousands, that I resisted your propositions to the last, though I forobore to resent those personal insults in which, as it re- spects me, your Lrad:hip seems to indulge with peculiar pleasure. On that occasion I admitted, and I admit now, that you manifested considerable tact in smiling Ourself of the bigotry and prejudices of your hearers, in order to per- vert an observation made hypothetically as an illustration, into a direct at- tack on a religious body ; and which perversion greatly tended to render the decision more nearly unanimous than it otherwise would have been. It is true, your Lordship's triumph was ephemeral ; for the next morning's post conveyed to you the unlooked-for information, that the Duke of Wellington—of whose determination to resist Catholic Emancipation you had so loudly boosted at the meeting, as a fact personally known to you—had resolved to concede that measure. This was, to be sure, a very untoward event ; but the proceedings of the day I have mentioned fully demonstrated to me, that had you not been born to be a lord, you would have been a most thorough demagogue. If this be fluttery or fulsome panegyric, you are welcome to the repetition of it : it is the amount of all I ever said in your praise.
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