who, having no other faculty than intrigue, must intrigue or sink. The liberty of the constitution, by throwing down all barriers to personal effort, leaves open a vast commonage to political pauperism. Salary is the substitute for an ambition which they have no heart to feel; but a substitute without the fastidiousness, the precipitancy, or the hazards of ambition. It is steady and systematic, callous and base, selfish and servile; it appeals to its kindred qualities among mankind: the night march will often surprise the camp which would have scared attack by day, and intrigue remains master of the field.

Lord Melbourne was now at the head of the ministry; and here Whiggism found the first advantage of its choice. Probably no other minister on earth would have ventured to meet parliament with such a compilation. But the easy temperament which in Falstaff supplied the place of courage, carried him onward at the head of his troop. The only distinction between the leaders was, that Falstaff was ashamed to march through Coventry with his ragamuffins, while his Lordship marched on with all the complacency of a successful recruiting of ficer. Still a Chancellor of the Ex. chequer was wanting; but he was easily found. Lord Althorp had played chief mourner at the political funeral of Lord Grey, and followed the remains until he saw that rigid remnant of Whiggism, not merely laid in the common receptacle of extinguished statesmanship, but firmly fastened down; and then, with a lightened heart and rapid step, he returned

"To the warm precincts of the cheerful day."

A little coqueting ensued-the suit was pressed; his Lordship's aversion to public life was not a struggle of long continuance; and, like Hamlet's mother-" ere those shoes were old" in which he had followed the departed premier to the political churchyard, he was seen throwing off his weepers, and figuring in fond alliance with the new possessor of the supre

macy.

The Premier's first announcement to the House was characteristic. It was, that he had " withdrawn the Coercion Bill." From this beginning,

every act of his administration might have been foreseen. There was a power behind him stronger than he ; a modified bill was introduced on the 18th of July, limiting the enactments to the Lord-Lieutenant's power of proclaiming districts. It passed into a law on the 29th, though under a strong protest from the Dukes of Cumberland, Wellington, and twenty-nine other peers.

But this feeble Cabinet was dropping to pieces. All their concessions could not conciliate; all their humiliation could not save them from insult. A series of furious letters from Ireland, showed them the hollowness of the alliance which they had purchased by the utter loss of English popularity. The political pillory was revived for their use, and they stood helpless under an universal and unremitting discharge. A missive of the Irish agitator, addressed to Lord Duncannon, thus began:-"My Lord,I write more in sorrow than in anger. It is true that you have deceived me, bitterly and cruelly deceived Ireland. But we should have known you better. You belong to the Whigs; and after four years of the most emaciating experience, we ought indeed to have known that Ireland had nothing to expect from the Whigs but insolent contempt, and malignant, treacherous hostility.'

These letters, which in other times would have been flung aside as the effusions of a solitary scribe, were now formidable as manifestoes of a powerful faction. They palpably cut off the retreat of the Cabinet on Irish party. Looking round England it could find no refuge. There every pass was blocked up. Ministers, unable to fight, now attempted to negotiate. But nothing would be accepted but a surrender at discretion. The king had prorogued the parliament on the 15th August. But though they were thus relieved from the pitiless pelting storm of debate, they were only exposed to more merciless antagonists-the whole press of the empire bore down upon them; and, after an ineffectual attempt to fall with dignity, the Cabinet gave up the ghost in the midst of national rejoicing.

On the 14th November, Lord Melbourne had gone to Brighton, to state that the death of Lord Spencer, four days before, had rendered it necessary

quer.

Lord Lyndhurst, Lord Chancellor.
The Duke of Wellington, Foreign
Secretary.

Mr Goulburn, Home Secretary.
Lord Aberdeen, Colonial Secretary.
Earl de Grey, First Lord of the Ad-
miralty.

Lord Ellenborough, President of the
Board of Control.

Sir George Murray, Master-General of the Ordnance.

Mr Baring, President of the Board of
Trade.

Mr Herries, Secretary at War.
Ireland.

The Earl of Haddington, Lord-Lieutenant.

Sir Edward Sugden, Chancellor ; and Sir Henry Hardinge, Secretary,

Immediately after this arrangement, the bold step was taken of dissolving the Parliament, and on the 30th of December the first Reform Parlia

ment was no more.

The experiment of Reform had now been tried, and no more abortive results ever followed from a public mea

sure.

It had been barren in every promise of public benefits, and been productive only in the evils which it so loudly proposed to extinguish for ever. Instead of a Ministry on a new construction, pure from all intrigue, combining the abilities of the Legislature, and incapable of doubt, disunion, or decay, it exhibited the feeblest Ministry ever known in England-tottering through a succession of measures, temporary and triflingrelying on assistance which it dared not acknowledge, and acting on principles which it dared not profess, until it found itself abandoned by the few men of political manliness within its circle, and was forced to make up

its deficiencies from the first wanderers of party whom it could allure into the service. To prevent the vessel from rotting in port, they had been obliged to put to sea without chart or compass, and supply the place of the British sailor with Lascars.

Of the House of Commons it had been predicted, that the Reform Bill would pour into it a new stream of public talent; that the genius of the people, so long pressed down by the weight of local patronage and here. ditary influence, would suddenly recover its spring, and start up with equal purity and power. Unquestionably, there was a change in the House, but it was a change from its old intelligence, decorum, and dignity, into habits equally hostile to them all. Yet, still the leaders of debate continued to come from the class of former times; no genius from the rabble started up -no glittering fragment of native ability was discoverable in the mass of rude and malleable material thrown on the floor of the house. After the first irruption, debate recurred to its old course-knowledge, scholarship, and experience, asserted their original rank; and the demagogues, powerful in tavern meetings, the political gladiators of the streets, like the barbarian gladiators of old, showed themselves awkward, undisciplined, and fugitive, when they marched into a more honourable field.

The boast of Reform had been equally falsified in its promise of national tranquillity. In England the tumults had subsided with the elections for which they were raised. But in Ireland they had spread only with more rapid and deadly violence. What had been clamour was now conspiracy; what had been irritation was now all but revolt.

But we must hear their principles from their own lips. "I am," said the Papist leader,“ still for the Repeal. Sink or swim, I am for the Re peal. I am for shortening the duration of parliaments. I have heard a great deal about the King's dissolv. ing the Parliament next year; why, if my principles were carried into effect, it would die a natural death next year. Three years, however, was the period fixed at the Revolution; and as I like to build upon the old foundations wherever I can, I would not go further than the principle of

Triennial Parliaments established at the Revolution."

"I am likewise for the extension of the Suffrage. Every man who contributes to the taxes has a right to vote, the moment he attains the legal age.

"I am also decidedly for the vote by Ballot. Whoever votes by Ballot votes as he pleases, and no one needs know how he votes."

This was the theoretical declaration for England, the practical was for Ireland. In the election for Kerry, it was proclaimed-"whoever votes for the Knight of Kerry, shall have a death's head and cross bones painted on his door." The Knight of Kerry, who had represented the county for thirty years, was defeated. The system of terror was spread with all the vigour of Rome. The candidate for New Ross was obnoxious to the cabal; he was instantly put under ban. The decree was issued-" whoever shall support him, his shop shall be deserted; no man shall pass his threshold; put up his name as a traitor to Ireland; let no man deal with him-let no woman speak to him-let the children laugh him to scorn." The candidate for Clonmel was obnoxious, and he was thus held up to the people by one of the leading authorities of the party. "If any Catholic shall vote for him, I will supplicate to the throne of the Almighty, that he may be shown mercy in the next world, but I ask no mercy for him in this." What must be the effect of such denunciations against individuals, coming with the force of commands, flung among the inflammable passions of a peasantry, at once the most headlong and the most bigoted in Europe, with impunity for every crime in their combination, and with absolution for every crime awaiting them at the confessional. Yet it was with this cabal that Whiggism entered into a "compact alliance," for the possession of power. One ally more was to be gained, and there, too, the "compact alliance" was formed. Radicalism had risen in the period of the French Revolution, and been crushed by Pitt. That greatest of statesmen disdained the public feeling and compromise, as much as he abhorred the employment of conspiracy; he grasped Radicalism at once, dragged it before the indignant justice of the country, and sending some of its leaders to wither in

exile, and others to give their last moral on the scaffold, cleared the land. But with his death it revived, stole from its retreats, and in the frequent changes and declining character of public power, and feeble cabinets, ventured to appear among men-as the plunderer and the incendiary ventures abroad in the decline of day. The avowed doctrines of the Radical were the Ballot, an unlimited extension of the Suffrage, and a reduction of the duration of Parliaments to three years, or, "as short a time as need be." It required no oracle to tell the world what these demands implied, or into what gulf they must rapidly have drawn the constitution. Thus came Whiggism prepared for the field. Its centre composed of the remnant of the party whose expulsion from power had been always the signal of public prosperity, and whose return had been synonymous with public misfortune; its wings were Popery and Radicalism, and its instruments Irish agitation and English reform. Yet, Radicalism, though daring, was not new, and though scorning a master, was not above a model. "I intended," said this model, " to have abolished the monarchy, and established a republic. I should have separated Ireland from England, the former of which I should have made an independent republic. I should have then left them to themselves, after having sown the seeds of republicanism in their morale.” And how was this overthrow of the monarchy, this establishment of the rule of the multitude, and this separation of the empire, to have been effected? "I should," says the same original authority, "have suffered the House of Commons to remain; but I should have introduced a great Reform. I should have published a proclamation, declaring that I came as a friend to the English, and to free the nation from a corrupt and flagitious aristocracy, and restore a popular government.' We ask, was this the language of a rambling enthusiast, the fancy of a melancholy speculator, dreaming of life in his chamber, and weighing the fates of empire in a scale of cobwebs? No, it was the language of the keenestsighted sovereign of his age, one of the most profound thinkers that ever sat upon a throne, and one, too, who hated the name of England at once as a rebuker of his tyranny and a bar to his ambition. This was the language

"

of Napoleon in his dungeon at St Helena, where solitude gave him leisure to revive the memories of his day of power, and the consciousness that he had no more to hope or fear taught him candour. In the unrestricted bitterness of those prison hours, he indulged himself with the contemplation of the ruin which he had devised for his great rival, and bequeathed the legacy to the surer hand of faction to come.

We return to the progress of this most important session. The election for the speaker was carried against ministers; in a house of 526 members, 318 voted for Mr Abercrombie and 308 for Sir Charles Sutton. The power of Opposition was now complete, and the fate of the session and the cabinet was palpable from the beginning. Every part of the ministerial policy was instantly assailed. The first charge was against the Duke of Wellington, grounded on his having held the seals of three secretaryships of state during Sir Robert Peel's absence abroad. This possession was undoubtedly rare in constitutional his. tory; but was not without precedent, nor even without important use; for, at the demise of Queen Anne, it had saved the country from the intrigues of Bolingbroke and the return of the Stewarts. On that occasion, for the express purpose of securing the Protestant succession by the overthrow of the most dangerous and powerful agent of the pretender, the three high offices of the Lord Treasurer and Lord Chamberlain of England, with the Lord Lieutenancy of Ireland, had been conferred at once on the Duke of Shrewsbury. Thus Jacobinism was flung from the steps of the throne, which it was already ascending, and the nation was saved from the renewed dominion of despotism, and the renewed supremacy of a superstition. But, in the instance of the Duke of Wellington, precedent was wholly unnecessary; for principle had been altogether untouched. His tenure of those offices had been confessedly for the public service, temporary and authorized. But the Duke's own language, in all instances, is the best authentication of his acts; and his statement was decisive with the country.

"I am charged," said he, "with having usurped powers which cannot be held without danger to the state; with having advised his Majesty to call me to his councils as first Lord of the

Treasury, and Secretary of the Home Department, and with having, in the latter capacity, acted as holder of the three seals. But it is established, that any minister appointed to one of those offices is competent to hold the seals of the other two, in the absence of those to whom they have been confided. During this period there was no exercise of patronage, nor a single office disposed of but in cases essential to the public service. Sir Robert Peel found all things, on his return, as nearly as might be, in the same situation in which they were left by the late cabinet.

An amendment to the Address was moved by Lord Melbourne, but negatived without a division.

In the Commons, the debate on the Address continued for three nights; an amendment was moved by Lord Morpeth, and ultimately carried by a majority of seven, in a house of 611 members. The coalition was now fully formed, the ranks of Opposition now fully exhibited their dangerous auxiliaries. The attack commenced on the Church.

Every man in England capable of studying the Constitution, knows that it must live and die with the Established Church: for, if it fell, England must be either sectarian or Popish; if universal sectarianism should usurp the place of the Church, the monarchy must perish, as it has done before, in the confusion and fury of unrestrained fanaticism; and that if Popery should be

paramount, its first fruits would be persecution, and its next the total loss of civil liberty, as has been before. It is also equally obvious, that to destroy an Established Church, the first step is to destroy its property. Not that wealth is essential to individual virtue, but that property is essential to the independence of judgment, and the straightforwardness of conduct, without which a national church must only be a slave to the government, or a slave to the people. That there may be individuals who will be neither is perfectly possible; but we have to deal with a vast system, embracing the religious education of a vast empire, possessing 15,000 clergy in Great Britain alone, and requiring twice the number. Among vast bodies of men, we must calculate on human nature; and the true calculation will tell us, that if we have a pensioned clergy, we must expect the unhesitating submissiveness of pensioners; and if a