attending the levee of the most gracious of all Whig-worshipped kings. Hundreds of thousands of persons, now reformers to the utmost extent of the bill, and indeed to any extent that the ministers might have chosen to go, went along with the anti-reform or moderate reform opinions and arguments of Mr Jeffrey during upwards of twenty years; and now, at Lord Brougham's bidding and his, they have made-not a wheelnot a gradual Scotch reel-but a sharp turn-about on the heel, with one shout "The Bill, the Bill!" Now, we ask these noisy persons, who have answered the arguments and set aside the opinions that, during these twenty or thirty years, usurped the seat of their understandings? Certainly not the Lord Advocate; for though his speech on reform in Parliament was a pleasant speech, and also not unphilosophical, it bore but lightly indeed on the Bill, and would have been every whit equally as suitable an eulogium on any or either of a hundred imaginable moderate reform bills. If it touched at all on Principles or Details," it was with the touch of a feather. Indeed the best passage in it was little more than a rifaccimento of several passages in old numbers of the Blue and Yellow, that had originally been indited for a different purpose, and it merely went to shew that as the whole framework of society was now wonderfully changed, and expanded by wealth and knowledge, so ought the constitution of government and the system of representation. Sir John Walsh has some fine reflections on this part of the Lord Advocate's speech-which his Lordship must himself admire, but which are far above the comprehension of ninety-nine in a hundred who are now blustering about the Bill.

Another view of this subject, a very ingenious and striking view of it, was brought forward by the Lord Advocate. It is, perhaps, somewhat too abstract and philosophical in its nature, to be exactly adapted to the House of Commons, and would be better suited to a literary essay. His theory appeared to be, that we are now arriving at an epoch of great change, that one of those mighty crises which occur in the history of civilisation is at hand. Society, it is

declared, is now in a state of transition, it has out-grown the institutions which were sufficient for its earlier days, it has wants and desires which are irrepressible, it is moving in a course which we may guide, but which we cannot arrest. We are supposed to be in a sort of chrysalis state, but undergoing that transformation which is to supply us with new wings, to soar to a yet higher pitch of prosperity and happiness. The whole of this argument may be true, and yet the Bill of Reform the worst possible, since the means adopted to facilitate the transition, may be far too violent and sudden. I object to the whole doctrine, if applied to justify a Government in effecting great and immediate changes in national institutions. I can only subscribe to it as a ground of gentle and gradual modification. It may be a

curious speculation of moral philosophy in the closet, to trace this working of a new spirit in the human race, and to measure the chances of its fermentation, eventually producing some great and novel benefits to mankind. But I contend that our faculties are too finite, and our experience too limited, to allow of practically shaping our course upon confused perceptions of an occult moral influence. The statesman is not justified in steering his course on such metaphysical abstractions.-He must cling to certainties.-Who, for example, is to calculate whether this shock of conflicting principles in Eu. rope is to be succeeded by a new impulse of improvement, or whether it is to shake the whole social fabric, and throw us back into disorganization and anarchy? Such a crisis may be at hand, but if so, I have not philosophy enough to contemplate such a prospect without alarm; I am not sanguine enough to look at it with hope. History teaches us that these portentous periods, happily of rare occurrence, are, to those who live in them, periods of great suffering and calamity. Social order cannot take an entirely new form, without wrecking the happiness of a whole generation in its fearful change. If, indeed, one of these great mortal convulsions is at hand, we cannot hope to avert its progress. It belongs to greater wisdom to foresee, to greater power to direct its terrible course. We all

hope for happiness beyond the grave, yet we recoil at the prospect of that dread change with instinctive horror and avoidance. The night of revolution may be succeeded by a bright aurora of prosperity and happiness, but it is beyond our ken, and probably it will never dawn to us. The very insufficiency of our faculties to calculate such stupendous results, renders it our plain duty, our clear interest, to avert such trials, if they can be averted by prudence, by temper, by policy, or by courage.'

But though the opinions sworn to for twenty or thirty years have been all flung aside, or forgotten, by the serviles who never understood them; no change has taken place anywhere but in the jumble in their brains. The opinions, as we said, are as good as ever, and most of them-are ours.

The truth is that an opinion-common name of an idea is a strange thing. Seemingly sometimes changeful in its colours as the chameleon, it is yet all one as the unchanging blue of its native sky. Your eye is in fault-and there is blame too, perhaps, in your position. Nay, who knows but you squint, and are positively in the jaundice? Poor miserable crooked and yellow political opinion! You look at it superciliously, askance, and adunic, and the world wonders at the elevation of your eyebrows, the misdirection of your eyes, and the dilation of your nostrils. You kick it from you as it is lying inoffensively in your path, or trample it under your feet, as a weed or a worm. But "igneus est olli virtus et cœlestis origo" what you thought a crushed weed, springs upwards unharmed from your heel "a bright consummate flower"--what you thought awrithing worm, (and even if it were, oh! why did you tread on it?) was in truth a wing-folded bird, that up into the sun-light that shines not for such children of the dust as he who knew not its simple plumage, soars singing to Heaven's gate, and disappearing therein, mingles its hymns with those of the immortal choir.

But, to "descend from these imaginative heights," will the people who work the press, consider for a moment what they are doing, in heaping such loads of hardly-human abuse on the heads of all moderate reformers? What worse are we than

what Mr Jeffrey-for example-was, every night and day of his life, between the 1800 and 1830? Do you, gentlemen of the ink press, if not of the wine, look back with disgust and anger on all the past life of that distinguished person? Had he been cut short in his career before the Bill arose to enlighten the Bar, had his miserable soul, think ye! been for ever lost? And what! if the newlight hath not yet dawned upon Maga, and other frail sisters-nor on Christopher, and other frail brothers -remember that, "Though many are called, few are chosen ;" and that though tergiversation is in the power of all men, to a few only belongs conversion.

Praise ye then the Bill, the whole Bill-(Heaven forbid we should add, nothing but the Bill!)-and we as lustily shall abuse it with a corresponding deprecation. Let the groundwork of our article be-argument, and the mere ornaments, vituperation; and we care not, then, what figure you make of us-nor we hope, in our hands, need you—though we should seem mutually to make mouths at one another, like a brace of Frankensteins designed by Mrs Shelly, and wrought in worsted by Miss Linwood.

Say not that we are Satan reproving Sin. Compare our vilest abuse of the most blackguard even of the Billmen, with yours of many of the most respectable, and some of the most illustrious, of our Men-at-arms, and ours will absolutely appear panegyrical. Every man, young or old, that opened his mouth in the House against the measure, was, while on his legs at least, and generally ever since he sat down, in all the London newspapers, except two, a distinguished idiot, a fool likely one day to be famous, or a knave worthy of being known across the most distant seas. This is surely de trop-an unseemly neglect of the ne quid nimis-and will yet, we trust, so sicken the country of all violent reformers, as to impel her to throw them from her stomach.

Suppose we give you some instances of what we mean-not the first that come to hand-for these are shocking-but two or three of a slighter sort, where the abuse on their part, though gross, was not in

tolerable. No. Even these are disgusting-so, with a very few remarks, let us hasten to our end.

Mr Horace Twiss is a very respectable man, and a man of very excellent abilities; and that is no highflown eulogium, surely, on one who was once in office-not, indeed, under Lord Grey-but the Duke of Wellington. Well, then-Mr Horace Twiss, being of opinion that L.10 was too low a qualification for the elective franchise among householders, was so presumptuous as absolutely to rise up in the House, and, among other matters, to say so-not sparing to give calm utterance to what seems to us a self-evident truth," that a large portion of them must be men of narrow habits, scanty information, and strong prejudices-little shopkeepers, and small attorneys" -and others, of whom the author of Ecclesiasticus, he truly added, had no higher opinion, as public counsellors, than himself, who was not the son of Sirach. Now, such gentlemen as think, in opposition to Mr Horace Twiss and the author of Ecclesiasticus, that little shopkeepers and small attorneys are, for the most part, men of wide habits, full information, and weak prejudices, ought assuredly to say so-but not with a loud voice, and " visage all inflamed"-neither should they have abused the ex-secretary like a gang of pickpockets. Why, the most important point about the whole bill is the character of the L.10 a-year householders-and if not a single syllable must be said in detraction from their high merits, why any debate? Pass the bill, and by vote by ballot-that we may all be mutes.

Lord Wharncliffe had no disposition to dishonour those classes of persons who pay L.10 rent for their houses, but he found, on enquiry, that, in large towns, and in the neighbourhood of London, from which sixteen additional members are to be sent to a Reformed Parliament, there were few houses indeed under that rent. And if you add to the L.10 householders in Mary-le-bone, Pancras, and other parishes in the neigh bourhood of the metropolis, the same class of householders in the extensive villages of Greenwich and Woolwich, you will have a constituency enormous beyond all calculation.

Are all men there likely, then, to be enlightened electors? and does the bill amount in many large districts to universal suffrage?

Sir John Walsh is not a man-is he?-to be abused and sneered atand what says he about the L.10 householders, and others of their class? Why, he says this-" I admit, and admit with that pleasure with which I shall ever observe the real improvement of my country, that a great advance has been made of late years, in the acquirement of knowledge, and in the mental cultivation of a considerable portion of those ranks. Among the opulent shopkeepers in London, among the respectable retail dealers in the provincial towns, among the superior class of yeomen and farmers, I have met very generally a degree of intelligence and information not merely confined to their own business, but embracing a more extensive range. I have observed a facility of language, and a propriety and correctness of thought, which denoted a considerable share of education and refinement. If these persons really have a very eager desire to possess votes for the return of members to Parliament, I should certainly not be inclined to throw any obstacle in their way. But I contend that Ministers have, in their measure, exercised no discrimination. The qualification Ministers have adopted will have the effect of introducing, not the intelligent and educated portion of the middle ranks alone, but a vast majority very differently endowed. I am sure that to no portion of the community would this measure be practically more unsatisfactory than to the valuable part of the middle classes, who would be thus confounded with those so much their inferiors both in attainments, property, and station in society."

The Lord Advocate, to be sure, drew a picture of L.10 a-year household life in great towns and cities, exhibiting something like the relics of the golden age. Alas! his lordship's fancy was too poetical-and the records of the Sheriff-court in Glasgow, for example, and the statistical enquiries of Mr Cleland, (see article on the French Revolution and Parliamentary Reform,) will convince him that he was dreaming of

an Utopia. Then, his lordship said, that such tenants would always be most happy to oblige their landlords by voting with them in all cases where a legitimate influence lay with the landlords. Sir Robert Peel, in a few words, dispelled that delusion -in which his lordship seems to see, in this provision of the bill, increase of the power of the aristocracy. In times of political quiet perhaps it might be as he said; but how now? or during any similar storm?

But we are leaving the subject, we fear, a few inches; all we meant now to say was, that neither Mr Horace Twiss, nor any one else on his side of the House, said a syllable that was not true, about those said "middle orders"-and that the savage worry in which he and others, who uttered the same truths, found themselves involved for weeks, was disgraceful even to the canine and canaille that waged it. Why, the Lord Advocate himself a few years ago in the Edinburgh Review-wrote a severer truth of these " same middle orders," which in the House he so beautifully eulogized. "It unfortunately happens, that this sound and pure body have more to hope from the favour of government than any other part of the nation. The higher class may, if they please, be independent of its influence; the lower are almost below its direct action; upon the middling classes it acts with concentrated and unbroken force." True or not, this opinion is not very reconcilable with his Lordship's enthusiastic delight in his tenpounders. They ought immediately to be discharged.

But why do not the Ministers, who build their bill on the character of the middle orders, as on a foundation, explain to us the virtues-and the vices, if indeed they have any-of that character? Simply because they know nothing about it. "I confess," says Sir John Walsh, "it appears to me that they have the very loosest and most inaccurate ideas of those orders, for whom they profess so profound a respect. It is not wonderful, that, contemplating this division of society from the lofty eminence of their aristocratic elevation, many shades and gradations in it should have escaped them, quite apparent to nearer observers. The li

berality of the great leaders of the Whigs has ever been of a peculiarly abstract and speculative character, dealing much in generals, but little marked by any unusual affability or urbanity of demeanour, or by any attraction of social or friendly intercourse with less distinguished ranks."

were

Most true indeed; and it is as creditable to Sir John's temper as to his talents, to be able to speak so mildly of this part of the universal Whig character. Even the very meanestborn among them are as proud of their birth as so many little loathsome lucifers. Or if not proud, worseashamed; and they hang down their heads before those who may accidentally have discovered that they "drab-delivered in a ditch," or whelped in a kennel. But of the Whig-magnates of the land, the pride of person and of place, as well as of birth, is so monstrous, that sometimes they seem, as they pass mere mortals by, like maniacs conceiting themselves to be each the angel Michael. Even the few men of high mental endowments they have ever had among them, held their heads absurdly high after this fashion; and so likewise-if after no other-did the women. Charles Fox himself-kindhearted as he was-and having in the article of birth so very little to be proud of-except about electiontime, held aloof in hauteur from his greasy constituents-nor was there on earth one more ignorant of the common character and ordinary ongoings of middle or lower life than the Man of the People. Nor much knew of her fellow-creatures, out of her own high circle, the beauteous and lovely Devonshire, although once she kissed a butcher.

Eulogiums, then, from Whig lords and lordlings, come with a bad grace and a good guffaw, on the character of the "middle orders." They have not among them all the tenth-part of an idea of what is the meaning of these two words. Nor is their ignorance without excuse; for besides the disadvantage of the seclusion of their own estate, they have this difficulty to encounter on coming to the consideration of the subject-that it is most various and complex-and including-which many others as well as they do not seem to be aware of

many differences of character and