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chievous oppressors in his place . Coriolanus refused ' a bribe to pay his sword . ' Wellington scrupled not to take as much pelf as he could get , whether in the shape of pay , prize-money , or gratuities . Does he not now receive , in round numbers , 50 , 000 / .
per annum from the nation , or rather from the misrulers of the nation , as a retiring pension ? Let the Editor of the Black Book ' speak to those who doubt . And can there be a question , that if the intellect of the nation were polled , a large majority would be found opposed to such a grant ? Wellington was not the patriot defender of his country , but only the tool of a greedy and selfish faction , ready to make war upon all mankind , for the furtherance of their own ends . He was not a warrior but a hireling—a soldier—i . e . a stipendiary slaughterer of his fellows ; not fighting even for what has been misnamed glory , like the Herberts and Bayards of former days , but simply from the love of pelf and its concomitant , power . He took the Tory bribe to pay his sword , or rather his brain , for his sword had little to do with it ; there are no notches in the blade . Wellington has , it is true , filled a conspicuous station in the march of human events , but the words of Byron on him were no satire .
* He did great things , but not being great in mind , He left undone the greatest—and mankind . ' Great men have ever scorned great recompenses , Epaminondas saved his Thebes and died , Not leaving e ' en his funeral expenses . George Washington had thanks , and nought beside Save the all-cloudless glory which few men ' s is To free his country . Pitt too had his pride , And , as a high-souled minister of state , is Renowned for ruining Great Britain gratis /
We can pardon much in Byron , for the sake of his evident appreciation of what is the most truly beautiful in human nature —self-abnegation for the welfare of others . Coriolanus was no hireling ; he was the voluntary and unpaid (warrior of his country , fighting to promote his country ' s welfare , and he possessed sympathy , kindly' sympathy with his follows . It is not upon record that he kept hounds upon the bread which his soldiers were lacking . Wellington fought not for his country , but for himself , and he has never shown any tokens of sympathy
for the community . Coriolanus loved his wife , and his mother , and his boy , and old Menenius Agrippa . Where is the being whom Wellington loves ? Tho pension list gives no token of his love , it merely proclaims the * taking up of a commodity' ;* (' saddling the expenses on the community . Talleyrand , vvhil ** his grace was in France , provided this' commodity' gratis , and the commodity served him well as a sponge to suck up the contents of his grace ' s brain . In England , his grace ' s brain not
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136 Coriolanus no Aristocrat *
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Citation
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Monthly Repository (1806-1838) and Unitarian Chronicle (1832-1833), Feb. 2, 1834, page 138, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse2.kdl.kcl.ac.uk/periodicals/mruc/issues/vm2-ncseproduct2630/page/54/
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