1852. Lord Brougham's Statement at the time and since. 549

not to act, could be described as the course on which they were forced.' But Mr. Roebuck has had the imprudence to refer, in confirmation of his hypothesis, to another work of Lord Brougham's, which is strong evidence against him (Reply to 'Letter of Lord John Russell to the Electors of Stroud'). In this pamphlet Lord Brougham describes the creation of peers as an expedient which nothing could have justified us in using but ' its absolute necessity for avoiding the greatest evils.' He adds, 'I I firmly believed the Bill to be a wise and necessary measure, and in the state of the country I was certain that its friends were bound to carry it.' (P. 6.) Can any man of candour believe that a measure which Lord Brougham thus states that he was bound to carry,' he was really prepared to betray? Can any man of integrity doubt that in May, 1832, Lord Grey, Lord Brougham, and the other members of the Cabinet (whose honour we respect, and whose services we acknowledge, however forgotten by Mr. Roebuck), were all fully determined to redeem their solemn engagements to the people of England, and to use the means placed at their disposal, to save the Constitution? If evidence were wanting to prove Mr. Roebuck's mistrust of his own theory, it will be found in the eager credulity with which he repeats and adopts the absurd calumnies of the time. To those ministers whom he charges with indifference or insincerity, and to their friends, he nevertheless attributes the encouragement of threats and violence on the part of the people in order to intimidate or coerce the Peers. A speech of Lord Fitzwilliam, in which the possibility of refusing the payment of taxes, under a certain contingency; the petitions for stopping the supplies; an encouragement of the political unions, are all by him connected with this charge. An inconsiderate election speech made by Mr. William Brougham, in which he announced that his brother, the Lord Chancellor, was in good health, and ' in good fighting order,' is quoted to give point and personality to the argument. (Vol. ii. p. 297.) The Whig leaders, with ' certain exceptions, employed language and adopted tactics which made the country believe that armed resistance might eventually be necessary.' (Vol. ii. p. 310.) The violence of language employed by persons intimately connected with the Whig chiefs the furious proposals of the newspapers known to speak the sentiments and wishes of the Cabinet, - all conspired to make the country believe that if an insurrection were to break out it would be headed by the great Whig leaders, and sanctioned by the general acquiescence of the great majority of the Whig party.' (Vol. ii. p. 311.) We do not quote this extravagance for the purpose of contradicting it, but as it

forms a prominent part of his narrative we cannot, without disrespect, attribute to Mr. Roebuck a disbelief in his startling announcements. But if he really imagines that the Dukes of Devonshire and of Norfolk were about to join Mr. Thomas Atwood, and to take the field, in order to carry Schedule A.; if Gold Stick, Silver Stick, and the Lords with white staves, were, according to Mr. Roebuck's conviction, ready to head an insurrection, under the command of Lord Glenelg; we almost envy the author his happy and innocent credulity. But we beg to ask him how he can reconcile with this supposed readi ness to encourage civil war the supposed unwillingness to create a few peers? We flatter ourselves that with this question we may close our argument.

If we had not already trespassed so far upon the attention of our readers, we might be tempted to amuse them with some of Mr. Roebuck's lucubrations on the subject of Whig finance. Every effort made by the Whigs, in opposition, to enforce economy, is represented as faction; all their acts, in office, are described as base violations of their engagements. This can be easily proved by Mr. Roebuck's convenient logic. All facts that bear against him he omits; all that are doubtful he perverts, and what remains, he moulds and exaggerates after his own peculiar fashion. For instance, in charging the Whigs with a disregard of their economical pledges, he omits all mention of their first economical measure in the reduction of their own official salaries. This is described by a more candid writer as a graceful beginning in the work of retrenchment.' (Thirty Year's Peace, vol. ii. p. 23.) He, in like manner, omits to state the reduction of the annual estimates 2,727,000l. below the estimate of the Finance Committee. He omits to state the reduction of 623 persons employed in the Civil Service, receiving annual salaries to the amount of 109,000l. He charges Sir James Graham, as efficient in the Government as he had been energetic in Opposition, with faction, for moving for a return of all salaries exceeding 10007. a-year. He charges the Whigs with inattention to this question when seated at the Treasury; but the financial accounts would have shown him, that under this very head of expenditure, salaries of 166,000l. had been reduced out of a total of 315,000l. He sneers at Lord Spencer's reduction of taxation; he suppresses the fact that it amounted to between four and five millions. He discusses the settlement of the Civil List, but begins by stating the surrender ' of the hereditary revenues to be a mischievous farce.' 'The King of England,' he adde, has no hereditary property in the 'true sense of the term. All belongs to the nation.' (Vol. i,

1852.

Whig Measures since 1830.

551

p. 364.) The History of the Thirty Years' Peace,' written in a spirit very different from that of Mr. Roebuck, (though not without mistakes of its own, which we should wish to see corrected,) affords us a standard by which to measure the effects of Whig administration. The Legislative desiderata on the accession of the Whigs are described as follows by a Radical:- As f to what remains to be done, obviously in the view of all the people in 1830; (1.) The House of Commons must be reconstituted; (2.) Municipal Government must be purified'; (3.) Slavery must be abolished; (4.) Something must be done to lighten the intolerable burden of the Poor Law; (5.) The Corn Law, and as a consequence, the Game Law, must be abolished; (6.) Religious liberty must be made complete ; (7.) The youth of the country must be educated.' Let our readers inquire how much of this was rapidly and fully accomplished. Parliamentary Reform and Municipal Local Government, have been carried. Slavery no longer exists; the Poor Law has been placed upon sounder principles, combining a wise economy with a more efficient relief of distress; import duties upon corn were abolished, at a later period, it is true, and by the vigorous hand of Sir Robert Peel, a statesman of whom Mr. Roebuck writes with almost as much asperity as if he considered him a Whig; the complaints of the Dissenters respecting the laws of marriage and of registration have been altogether removed, and a noble university has been founded, free from all sectarian tests, and degraded by no intolerant exclusions. system of enlarged National Education has been extended throughout the length and breadth of the land, only checked in its usefulness by the unreasonable claims of a small section of Churchmen, and by the absurd crotchets of the assertors of the voluntary principle. But is this all that has been done, and done, for the most part, within the first period of the Whig Administration? The Irish Establishment has been reduced within more reasonable limits by Lord Stanley's Church Temporalities Act. The East India Charter was renewed, but liberalised. The trade with China was opened. The Bank of England was placed in greater security by subjecting all its transactions to the control of public opinion, by enforcing the publicity of its accounts, as well as by other salutary reforms. Tithes have been commuted, equally to the advantage of the Church and of the cultivator. Throughout this period, as well as up to the present moment, those services to his fellow men, of which Lord Brougham laid the foundation in his noble speech upon Law Reform, have been continued; and if, in the present Session, as we confidently hope, the Court of Chancery will be changed from a curse into

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a blessing, and if we shall see completed his great work, by the enactment of a clear and consistent Criminal Code, Lord Brougham will have secured to himself an imperishable renown. We might go further, but we think we have said enough to prove how unjust and unworthy are the insinuations of those detractors who undervalue the services of honourable politicians. No greater injury can be inflicted on a free government, and on those who administer it, than the unworthy effort to depreciate all public services, and thus to create a disbelief in all public virtue. Our defence of the Whig party is made not in the time of their prosperity, but when they have been driven from power. We have abstained, as far as was practicable, from noticing the living. We have rather preferred to defend the acts of those who are no more. Of Lord Grey, more especially, till the publication of Mr. Roebuck's work, we should have thought the only defence needful, was the quis vituperavit? Lord Althorp was equally irreproachable. Mr. Roebuck's laboured, but ineffectual attack has proved that more is required both for Lord Grey and the Whig party. It is somewhat singular that the bitterest attacks upon that great party, should uniformly come, not from their natural opponents, but from some of those, (we believe but a small section), who entertain extreme popular opinions. The reason is however obvious. They are jealous of men who profess the same faith, but who adopt a more sober and a purer form of worship. Rivals are always more hateful than enemies.

We now close our review of Mr. Roebuck's history. We have cautioned our readers against its more glaring defects, we have proved its faithlessness in point of authority; we have not disguised our opinion of the author's peculiar talents, though we regret and condemn the mode in which they are displayed. Those who pass from the review, to the work itself, will be enabled to apply the remark of Dr. Johnson, that we should not mistake the venom of the shaft for the vigour of the bow,' and to those who desire an opinion on the merits of the Whig leaders in their greatest work, the Reform Act, we commend the following observations of a witness, unbiassed either by private partiality, or by party allegiance. The framers of the Reform Bill were noblemen and gentlemen of high family, who were laying down hereditary possessions of their own, while requiring the same sacrifice from others. If we read with ⚫ tender admiration of loyal noblemen and gentry who brought their wealth to the feet of an unprosperous sovereign, and made themselves landless for the sake of their King, what must we feel at this great new spectacle of the privileged

1852.

classes divesting themselves of privilege for the sake of the 'people, for the honour and integrity of the country? It was a great deed; and posterity will ever declare it so. It is objected by some that these peers and gentlemen were well aware, and indeed openly avowed, that they could not retain this kind of wealth, nor perhaps, any other, if Reform of Parliament were not granted: they apprehended a convulsion, ' and said so; declaring also that this was the reason why their ' reforms were made so prompt and sweeping. This is quite true; but it is precisely this which shows how superior these men were to the selfish greed which blinded the eyes of their opponents. They had open minds, clear eyes, calm consciences, and hands at the service of their country; and they, therefore, saw things in their true light, and turned the pressure of an 'irresistible necessity into a noble occasion of self-sacrifice, and 'disinterested care for the public weal.' (Thirty Years' Peace, vol. ii. p. 30.)

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ART. IX.-Nicaragua: its People, Scenery, Monuments, and the proposed Interoceanic Canal. By E. G. SQUIER, late Chargé d'Affaires of the United States to the Republics of Central America. 2 vols. 8vo. London: 1852.

HISTORY presents few more striking contrasts than those

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afforded by the course of British and Spanish colonisation in America. We do not here speak of such differences as are justly attributable to diversities of national character, government, and religion. On all these enough, and more than enough, has been said, and is daily repeated, to gratify the ostentatious self-complacency of the Anglo-Saxon'; nor have we any intention of dilating on the tempting subject. The contrast to which we more immediately advert is that of circumstances contrast so great, that more confusion of ideas has been produced by comprising the proceedings of English colonists and Spanish conquistadores under a single name, than by almost any other current looseness of phraseology on political subjects. The American colonies of England have been conquered in reality from nature alone. In no single instance did her emigrants encounter a native race possessed of an established polity, or even cultivators of the soil to any extent. Our settlers had only to resist at first, and subjugate afterwards, the courageous but scanty warriors of the wilderness. The mighty States which they have founded are the first fruits of human cultivation in their respective countries. There is not one of the greater

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