Portland Gazette, And Maine Advertiser

EUROPEAN NEWS.

The English ministry we are inclined to believe, look upon the attack made upon the prince regent, as a most fortunate political windfall. For a long time previous to the sitting of parliament, the public mind had been wrought up to a paroxism by the inflammatory speeches of Burdett, and Cobbett, and Hunt, and Cochrane. Reform, reform, demands for the suppression of sinecures, annual parliaments, universal suffrage, &c., were thundered in the ears of the ministry until parliament were called together, while the whole nation was more or less affected by such violence of remonstrance. At the very outset of all this business, while the opposition were congratulating themselves on this favorable prospect, the outrage is committed on the prince regent. This affords the ministerial party a fair opportunity to play the same game that their political opponents have done. They will now put all their ministerial machinery in motion. We shall hear now of assemblies of the people presenting their addresses of loyalty at the foot of the throne, expressing the most unqualified horror at this atrocious attack, accompanied with an inflexible resolution to support the constitution, and the sovereign of the house of Hanover. The mayor and the common council of London have already taken the lead in this business—they have told the prince regent in their address, that they are very sorry for the outrage which was committed on his carriage, and he in return tells them, that he is very glad that they are so very sorry. This outrage enables the ministry to appeal to those very passions that the opposition have appealed to with so much success. And it probably will be proved that those very men who blistered their hands by clapping applause to orator Hunt some time since, when he intimated that the prince regent's head if taken from his shoulders, would not compensate for the miseries of his government, will be the loudest in their demonstrations of loyalty and of attachment to the government of the prince. Our papers have or a long time past been loaded with the speeches and addresses of those orators, who have represented England as on the very threshold of ruin, by the profligacy and corruption of the ministers. We must now be prepared to hear, and perhaps from the same men, how much happiness and prosperity the nation have enjoyed under this dynasty, the glory she has gained, and self compliments in all their charming varieties. Indeed it may well be doubted whether the most profligate and corrupt ministry would not exult in any commotions of the people that ended in insurrections and mobs. They then gain an accession of strength from all the men of property in the kingdom. Men of fortune, when they see to what plunging lengths such characters will go, set their faces against the reformation of any abuses whatever; they will yield nothing, when if any thing is yielded, it ends in turbulence and riot—ministers will in this manner be able to shelter their own enormities, under the turbulence which the extirpation of such enormities would excite. There is a certain species of fish, denominated the scuttle-fish, that lies close to the bottom of the river and conceals himself in congenial mud! When he is pursued, he is able to darken the transparent element by his own exertions, under which, there is a possibility of his making his escape. But if the detecting hand raises the muddy sediment to the summit, the fish will to a dead certainty escape. He has not only his natural pollution for protection, but the pollution raised by the benevolence of his antagonist, also.

Bal. Telegraph.