progress of all such changes. Stronger flattery of the populace is required, more abject submission to the majesty of the people imposed, with every successive addition made to their power. Moderate language is immediately derided; extravagant eulogiums upon themselves, unmeasured vituperation of their superiors, considered as an essential preliminary to the favour of the people. To those who are unacquainted with the history of the French Revolution, it is hardly credible in how short a time this change in the popular taste can be effected. To those who are, innumerable illustrations of these observations will suggest themselves.

If such be the unavoidable tend ency of human nature, upon every concession of power to the lower orders, upon what conceivable basis, save actual corruption, is the influence of the great proprietors to be founded? Let any man say, whether a great Tory proprietor in the neighbourhood of Manchester, Leeds, Birmingham, or Glasgow, could induce the householders of those great cities to support him in a contest with a popular candidate. Who are the members returned for Westminster, Preston, Middlesex? If the right of voting be extended to a great number of similar places, popular representatives of the same description will be returned from them all.

But if the aristocracy are to be driven to the necessity of expending their fortunes to maintain their ground against the incessant attacks of the democracy, what a boundless scene of corruption and venality must ensue! The late scandalous scenes at the election in an English great town, demonstrate in how wholesale a manner corruption will be carried on, when it is necessary for men of fortune to exert themselves to secure the return from numerous bodies of electors. The gratuity of ten or fifteen pounds a man, is the simple expedient by which, and by which alone, a return from large classes of electors can be secured.

Thus the result of reform will be, either that the higher ranks will lose their influence altogether, and become the victims of the encroachment and spoliation of their inferiors, or that, in defence of their existence, they will be driven to an extensive

system of corruption. Either alternative is infinitely to be dreaded. The first is the commencement of a revolution; the last is poisoning the sources of freedom, and converting the poor into the hireling supporters of the rich.

No method could be devised by which the influence of the aristocracy, that influence which is essential to the existence of a mixed government, could be secured in a way so little obnoxious, so little subversive of public morals, so little conducive to corruption, so little galling to the feelings of the people, as by the decayed boroughs. It is usual to hold up these boroughs, Old Sarum, for example, in which there are only two or three voters, as the most scandalous instances of corruption. It might with as much reason be contended, that a city in which there are only two or three alehouses, is the most scandalous example of inebriety. If corruption is to be exercised, it is incomparably better that it should be dispensed on a few than a number of voters; on two or three householders in Cornwall, or ten or twelve bailies in Scotland, than on 20,000 or 30,000 weavers in Manchester, or as many radicals at Glasgow. The conduct of the reformers who exclaim against corruption in the rotten boroughs with one breath, and with another contend for the extension of the elective franchise to hundreds of thousands of corruptible weavers at another, is just as absurd as it would be to condemn two or three gin-shops in back alleys of the city, and at the same time set up two or three thousand in all the streets of the metropolis.

The aristocracy of land and of wealth will not submit without a struggle to be deprived of all their influence. The great merchants, bankers, and freeholders, will soon discover the tendency of the violent reformers: they will see that, under the name of reducing the burdens of the people, a fatal blow will be struck at public credit, and all their enterprises ruined by general bankruptcy. The landholders will see that the church is only the first victim; that their own estates are the real and ultimate object, and that strenuous exertions must be made to avert a catastrophe worse than death itself.

Corruption, incessant wholesale corruption, must be practised to dilute the fountains of popular ambition, by mingling with them the poison of private selfishness. The great cities, like the Prætorian Guards of Rome, will sell the empire to the highest bidder; and corruption, emerging from the decent obscurity of the rotten boroughs, will stalk with shameless prostitution through the land, and convert the rights of freemen into the vehicle of the basest passions.

Our object, say the reformers, is not revolution but restoration. We do not wish to change the constitution, but to remove those excrescences which time has fastened upon its parts. The observation is plausible, and has been illustrated with much eloquence; but it admits of an easy answer. Can the reformers, when they abolish the decayed boroughs, abolish at the same time the changes in society which have rendered them necessary? Can they abolish the millions of manufacturers who have sprung up within the last century, crowded together in great cities, limited in information, profligate in habits, reckless in disposition? Can they abolish the swarms of Irish who are always ready to fill up the vacancies in the ranks of labour, lowering thereby their wages, degrading their habits, augmenting their discontent? Can they abolish the national debt, which is a continual source of oppression to the people, and yet cannot be touched without producing evils far greater than its continuance? Can they abolish the democratic press, which panders with incessant activity to the diseased appetites of these enormous assemblages of men; ever inflaming their passions, never strengthening their reason, or correcting their infirmities? Can they abolish the mental cultivation which has given the craving for political excitation to multitudes incapable of acquiring the information, or exercising the thought, which political subjects require? Can they restore the good old days of English simplicity; when the moral evils of manufacturing cities were unknown; when the largest borough out of London did not contain 20,000 inhabitants; when every three or four acres had their little farmer; when the barons lived in rustic plenty on their

estates, diffusing plenty by their hospitality, exercising influence by their example? If they can do this, they may with some reason contend for the disfranchisement of the decayed boroughs; if not, let them not deceive mankind by professions of restoring the Constitution to its pristine state, or destroy the bulwarks which time has gradually raised against the new and portentous flood of demo

cracy.

There is no person who must not be sensible that the power of the people "has increased, and is increasing." Whether it ought to be diminished, is an ulterior question, upon which parties will of course differ; but the simple fact that it has increased, is too obvious to admit of dispute. Indeed, it is upon the assumption of this fact, that the reformers ground their main argument for a change in the state of the representation, because it is said the Constitution must be modified according to the increased intelligence of the lower orders. But if this be the fact upon which all parties are agreed, on what principle of expedience are their passions to be inflamed by a still farther increase? If there were any symptoms of the liberties of the people being on the decline; if the popular journals were fast veering round to arbitrary principles; if the people were become careless or negligent of their rights; if infringements on public freedom were evidently in the contemplation of Government, and passive acquiescence were to be expected from the people, then it would indeed be reasonable to propose reform, as the only means of reviving the democratic spring of the Constitution. But if the reverse of all this is avowedly the case; if the power of the people is evidently increasing with extraordinary rapidity; if the boast of the reformers be true, that at every successive dissolution of Parliament a number of boroughs are thrown open, and that on no occasion did this happen to such an extent as on the last election; if the aristocracy are now evidently and avowedly overmatched by the Commons, where is the expedience, or what is the necessity for the concession of additional Parliamentary influence to the popular party? If a man's pulse be already risen to 100,

According to the arguments of the popular party, the stronger they are, the more power they should receive in the Legislature. This was just the principle of Napoleon; the stronger he was the more he required; and because he was fenced round with the Confederation of the Rhine and a girdle of vassal thrones, therefore it was indispensable that he should demolish Russia also. It is curious to observe how ambition in every department of human affairs adopts the same principles. Possibly there may be a retreat from Moscow for popular as well as imperial ambition. The three great causes which render the maintenance of the aristocratic boroughs indispensable to the balance of the Constitution, are, 1. The prodigious increase of our manufacturing population. 2. The experienced democratic tendency of that body. 3. The revolutionary tendency of the public press, which feeds their passions.

In every age, and in every part of the world, large manufacturing bodies have been actuated by turbulent and democratic principles. The democracies of Athens and Rome in ancient, of Florence and Genoa in modern times, were nothing but the artisans and manufacturers of those great cities. Ghent and Bruges have in every age been turbulent in the extreme; and Lyons and Rouen were, through all the French Revolution, the stronghold of extreme republican principles. It was from the Fauxbourg St Antoine, the seat of all the manufactories of Paris, that those terrific bands issued,-who deluged France with blood, and filled every house with mourning. And it was on the same spot, and to support the same principles, that those columns proceeded, who, by overturning the Bourbon dynasty, have already steep. ed Paris in unheard of distress, and promise to unfurl the standard of revolution through Europe. What the principles of our manufacturers are, is already known, from the journals which they read. Nobody take in papers which displease them; and the manufacturers read nothing but the most extreme radical publications.

The number of this democratic body is a most formidable consideration. From the census of 1821, it appears, that out of a population of somewhat above 14,000,000, only 4,800,000 were employed in agriculture.* At this time, it is certain, that the population of the island exceeds 15,000,000; and that of them, only 5,000,000 are employed in the cultivation of the soil. In other words, two-thirds of the whole population are engaged in trade and manufactures. The great bulk of this enormous body are, and ever will remain, attached to radical principles. If any approach to universal suffrage is made, two-thirds of the House of Commons will be returned in their interest, and they will soon rival the Constituent Assembly of France.

Every concession, however small, made to the manufacturing interest in the House of Commons, is to the highest degree dangerous. They are already too strong, and have been gradually becoming so for a century back. The same silent change which has covered rural districts with crowded cities, and converted twothirds of our people into artisans, has wrought a corresponding alteration in the balance of power in the Constitution. The power of the manufacturers "has increased, is increasing, and ought to be diminished." Concede to them Parliamentary reform, even in a modified form, and they will speedily become irresistible. The present clamour is raised precisely because they know that, if conceded, it will make them the ruling power in the State.

The liberal and radical press is another power in the Constitution, the growth of the last forty years, which has already become of the most formidable character. Nothing is more erroneous than to imagine that public discussion, as now carried on in this country, leads to the present extrication of truth. It tends, on the contrary, more than any thing else, to the diffusion of error. Truth will indeed be in the end triumphant; but it will become so only on the cooling of passion, and the decay of interest. It will not be found while the newspapers are seeking it.

rests of life? Is the voice of reason always heard in opposition to that of passion? Whence the hundred thousand prostitutes who nightly walk the streets of London, or the ten thousand illegitimate children who are annually thrown upon the public in Paris? Whence the innumerable gin-shops, which disgrace the metropolis, and swallow up all the fortunes of life, for the gratification of a few intoxicated moments? When these evils have ceased; when intoxication is unknown, irregular passion exterminated, and sober industry universal, the people may, possibly, follow their real interests in the choice of representatives, but not till then.

Future ages will observe, with astonishment, the mental hallucinations under which the present generation have laboured. The delusion about the national debt was one; the jointstock mania a second; the cry for reform a third. It is the public press which perpetuates and spreads these baneful eras of national insanity. Nobody reads any thing but what coincides with his wishes; the arguments are followed which fall in with preconceived opinions; none other so much as looked at. The moment either party meet with any thing hostile to their wishes, they lay it aside; but there is this essential difference between the two, that the clamour of the reformers, as it is addressed to the passions of the great bulk of readers, becomes proportionally louder, and forces itself upon the consideration of the opposite party; while the arguments of their opponents, being acceptable to a comparatively inconsiderable class, are less heard of, and remain utterly unknown to the great body of the people.

Public opinion, of which so much is said, when formed upon the public press or the events of the day, and not on a cool consideration of history, is just as unworthy of consideration as the transports of a mob. It is all formed on hearing one side only. It is not like the verdict of a jury, made up on a consideration of the evidence on both sides; eleven out of the twelve, of the great jury of the nation, stop their ears the moment the evidence for the opposite party begins.

"It is for the interest of the people," say the reformers, "that they should be well governed; they, therefore, will choose the best representatives: the thing is as clear as demonstration."*

It is for the interest of mankind, it may be added, not to sin; vice is as imprudent as it is dan gerous: therefore, all men will be virtuous. To hold that the real interests of men always govern their actions, is to know little, very little, of human nature. Does youth, thoughtless extravagant youth, never follow the career of passion, to the utter ruin of the real and permanent inte

Was it for the real interests of the electors of Preston to return Mr Hunt? Has reason been triumphant, passion unfelt, at all the reform meetings which have been held to support the administration in the measures they are to propose? Were the French electors all governed by reason when they returned the Constituent Assembly which unhinged the fabric of society, or the Convention which bathed the nation in blood? One would imagine that history is forgotten in political discussion at this time; the best proof that the people will not choose proper representatives is, that they are deemed capable, by able men, of being misled by such an argument.

Deeming themselves secure, under the wings of administration, of obtaining reform, the democratic party have lately made the most strenuous efforts to support vote by ballot. This, it is said, will effectually prevent bribery. Nobody will buy a secret vote. By this simple expedient corruption will be destroyed, and the constitution restored to its pristine purity.

If it were really true that the ballot would destroy bribery, we hold that of itself a decisive argument against its adoption. If it be true that the great bulk of the manufacturing interests, and of the inhabitants of towns generally, are, and ever must be, democratical in their principle, then the adoption of a mode of election, which destroys the influence of wealth, gives the finishing stroke to the aristocracy, the free