[As Strong as ‘Sealing-Wax’]

First published Edinburgh Saturday Post, 22 March 1828, p. 364. Never reprinted. This leading article has three references to past leaders in the Post, each one of which would be sufficient to indicate De Quincey’s presence. The phrase, ‘As to the sacramental test in particular, we have already expressed our opinion’, distinctly recalls the leader of three weeks earlier. Both that leader, and the present one, refer to the sacramental test in identical words, as a ‘sublime and mysterious rite’ (see above, p. 278). But the strongest allusion is the writer’s recollection of having ‘ridiculed the notion’ that Don Miguel of Portugal would be ‘bound to his good behaviour’ by anything ‘stronger than “sealing-wax”’. Those words can only refer to the leader of 29 September 1827 (see above, p. 81). Italics, dashes, and rhetorical implications, together with English interests, interest in ‘the Church of England’, and a jaundiced view of some of Edinburgh’s clergymen, support the attribution.