lor of the Exchequer, downwards, there was but one opinion as to the boundless wealth and inexhaustible resources of the British empire. The public as little suspected the catastrophe of December 1825, as the reformers of the present day do the probable consequence of their mea

sures.

Examples of this sort lead the thoughtful to distrust public opinion on all occasions, when it is violently excited. Education cannot give intellect. Newspapers will not extinguish passion. The great majority of the public are now as incapable of judging on political subjects as they were in the days of Aristides. Printing has extended to the whole people the passions of a mob; it has not given them a larger share of intellect. Suppose that Lord Goderich, during the joint-stock mania of 1824, had come forward and said, " Public opinion is irresistible; it runs with a tremendous current just now in favour of joint-stock companies. Government must head the movement, and therefore the whole resources of the empire must be forthwith embarked in a grand national joint-stock speculation."

What would we now have said of such an attempt to increase, instead of subduing, that dangerous effervescence in the public mind? Which would have rendered permanent the ruinous effects of individual extravagance, and made popular delusion the means of inflicting an indelible wound on the credit and resources of the country? That is precisely what the Reformers are attempting on a far greater scale, and with infinitely more dangerous implements, to effect at this time.

If the representatives of the people are to yield to all the caprices of their constituents, if the outcry of journals, or the effusions of orators at meetings, are immediately to stamp their authority on the measures of the Legislature, where is the advantage of a Parliament, where the superiority of a representative over a republican form of Government? Hitherto it has been supposed, that the great advantage of a representative form of Government was, that it prevented this sudden and perilous communication of public impulse to national measures; that it gave the passions time to cool, and

rendered Government not the organ of popular excitement, but of sober thought. All these advantages, sanctioned by the experience of ages, are now forgotten. Parliament is represented as a body of delegates, not legislators; and reform, it is said, must be granted, not because it is right, but because the people will it.

That distress has existed to a very great extent in this country, for many years past, is certain; and it has existed in the most galling form; in immediate and painful contrast with extraordinary wealth and prosperity. By the operation of some great causes, as universal and irresistible as the tempests of Heaven, whole classes have been precipitated into ruin, while others have been eleva ted almost unconsciously into comparative affluence. The suffering produced by these great changes, has unquestionably been one great cause of the universality of the present cry for reform among the middling ranks. Now, we would ask the agitators, how they can reconcile it to their conscience, to take advantage of general distress, to rouse the people to de. mand a great change in Government, from which they well know they can derive no practical benefit; but from which, if conceded, the means of future convulsion are irrecoverably placed in their hands?

Ministers came into office with three pledges, Peace, Retrenchment, and Reform. The first they will not be able in all probability to keep. The passions awakened in republican France, by their favourite revolution in that country, will soon render that impossible. The second, they admit, they cannot carry farther than their predecessors have done; on the contrary, their estimates have exceeded those of former years by above L.500,000 yearly. What practical benefit then will accrue from the concession of Reform to the lower orders? If the Reformed Parliament preserve the national faith, (and we cannot suppose it is intended to violate it,) how are the public burdens to be relieved? How is labour to be rendered more abundant, grain more cheap, taxes less oppressive, than at this time? Do the Reformers mean to say, they will be able to carry on Government without taxes, pay the interest of the debt

without customs, teach the poor without a church establishment, relieve distress without a poor's rate? If they can do so, let them boldly proclaim the abolition of taxes, tithes, and poor's rate; if not, cease to delude the people into demanding a measure which can confer none of the benefits which are generally expected from its adoption. To say it will prevent future war, is contrary to all experience. Nations invariably grow warlike and turbulent in proportion as they become democratic. Republican Rome conquered the ancient, republican France, the modern

continent.

But though a Reformed Parliament will not, without violating the public credit-that is, extinguishing the capital of the country-be able to give any relief to the poor, it may confidently be expected to furnish an inexhaustible source of agitation to aggravate the severity of future distress. We have a signal example of this in Ireland, where distress has facilitated agitation, and agitation in its turn, by paralysing industry, and debarring the entrance of capital, has perpetuated distress. With this vicious and fatal circle staring them in the face; with the example of France and Belgium suffering to an unparalleled degree from the same cause, it is into this vortex of alternate distress and agitation that the Reformers would precipitate this country. They would create a Parliament bound to respond immediately to the clamour of the populace; compelled to give vent to every burst of public discontent; destined to become not the scene of beneficent legislation, or practical improvement, but of factious contention and querulous de

bate.

If there is any one duty more sacred than another in such periods of excitement, it is that on the part of legislators to moderate the public effervescence, and resolutely with stand those demands which they judge fatal to the balance of the constitution, or perilous to the institutions of the empire. Concession, in such circumstances, is the weakest, as well as the basest policy. It was not by yielding to the extravagant demands of the plebeians, that the Roman senate obtained the empire of the world, but by resolutely re

sisting them, and enduring the last extremities, rather than surrender the constitution of their forefathers. Such conduct was in the end triumphant; the nobles ultimately prevailed in every contest, and the empire, though often endangered, was never overturned by popular violence.

Concession and conciliation were tried to their utmost extent by the Britons and other inhabitants of the Roman empire, when exposed to the inroads of the Danes. The weak and timid monarchs of the Heptarchy, proceeding on the principle now urged in support of Reform, sought to buy off their enemies, by giving them sometimes L.10,000, sometimes L 20,000, on condition that they would depart, and not return. They did depart, accordingly, and returned invariably in six months, in greater force than before, equipped with the spoils of their weak and pusillanimous enemies. Who put an end to that ruinous system of conciliation and concession? Alfred the Great, who from the first refused to yield any payment, and fought his enemies hand to hand, till he expelled them from his shores, and founded the English monarchy.

The case is exactly the same with the concessions now so loudly recommended to the popular demands for power. The more you concede, the more daring and vehement they will become. Every successive acquisition will be made the means of a still more extravagant demand, until the last remnants of the monarchy are swept away, and bloody republicanism proclaimed in its stead. There is no evading the danger. Concession must now be stopped, or the nation may make up its mind to republican institutions; and what will then become of the church property, the national debt, the estates of the nobility, or the lives of all the higher orders?

Concession was the principle on which Charles I. acted. He first yielded the Petition of Rights, which, as Mr Hume observes," was so great a concession to the Commons, that it in truth amounted to a revolution." He gave up tonnage and poundage; he yielded Strafford to their violence; he agreed to triennia! parliaments; he allowed the

sheriff to be invested with the power of summoning them, if not convoked by royal authority; his ministers were chosen exclusively from the popular party; he paid the arrears of his rebellious Scotch troops; he conceded to all the demands of the Scotch Parliament; the famous "Remonstrance" of the Commons was carried, after a vehement debate; and what was the consequence of all these concessions? Encouraged by so much success, the Commons openly declared to the Lords, "that they themselves were the sole representative body of the nation; that the Peers were nothing but individuals, who held their seats in a particular capacity; and, therefore, if their Lordships would not consent to the passing of acts, necessary for the preservation of the people, the Commons, together with such of the Lords as were sensible of the danger, must join together, and represent the matter to his Majesty."* Having stript the Crown of all its prerogatives, the Commons next insisted for the command of the Militia, which would have given them the exclusive use of the sword; the civil war ensued; the king was beheaded, the peers abolished, and Cromwell enthroned.

Louis XVI. was the next monarch who in turbulent times tried the system of concession. The nation demanded the States General-he convoked them: they demanded a popular representation-he anticipated them by, voluntarily and by a royal ordinance, doubling the deputies from the Tiers Etat: they demanded the abolition of feudal rights and personal services-he abolished them. He agreed to abandon all the prerogatives of his crown: he formed the National Guard, dismissed his Royal Guard and attendants, made war on his own brother-in-law, the Emperor of Austria, issued severe proclamations against the emigrants, granted a constitution more free than the Republicans themselves have adopted in 1831, and sanctioned the confiscation of all the property of the Church. His whole life was one uninterrupted series of concessions

* Hume, vi. 393.

and reforms, and, in return, he was led to the scaffold.

The nobles vied with the Sovereign in the surrender of their rights. Atthe first struggle, in July 1789, between the noblesse and commons as to sitting in one or separate Chambers, forty-six of their number, headed by the Duke of Orleans, joined the Tiers Etat; they voluntarily, on the night of August 4th, surrendered all their exclusive privileges; they consented to the abolition of tithes, titles of honour, entails, and dignities of every description. They concurred in a constitution of the most democratic character; and they received, in return for so many concessions, exile, confiscation, and death.

The clergy of France were the first and steadiest friends of the revolution. During the dependence of the contest as to a single or separate Chambers, 127 of their body left their own order, and united with the Commons; and, by so doing, first gave them a numerical superiority, and compelled the union of all the three estates in the National Assembly. Unbounded gratitude, universal joy, followed this first and decisive movement towards the popular side; and, in return, the Assembly confiscated their whole property, banished and proscribed their leading members, and sent them forth destitute into that very country, whose freedom their adherence had been the first means of establishing.

At the very time that these dreadful scenes were passing in the neighbouring kingdom, the cry for reform, spreading as at present by contagion, became vehement in this country. Revolution, bloodshed, and massacre, were loudly threatened if it were any longer delayed. "The nation," it was said," will no longer submit to be trifled with; the representation must be reformed, the demand for extended popular constituents must be satisfied, or a revolution will inevitably ensue." But this clamour was not met by concession. Mr Pitt resisted the popular cry. He was supported by the firmness and intrepidity of the British aristocracy; the threatened revolution came to nothing, and the

constitution, with its inestimable blessings, was preserved.

"The revolution in France in 1830," says Lord John Russell, was occasioned by a refusal to bend to the popular voice. There never was a more mistaken assertion. It was occasioned by a violation of the constitution, and by no refusal to concede Reform. Because, say the Reformers, a violation of the constitution brought on a revolution in France, therefore a violation of the constitution will prevent it in this country: because the disfranchisement of 40,000 French electors overturned the French, therefore the disfranchisement of 40,000 English electors, will establish the English throne!

If the demand for Reform were occasioned by any experienced grievance, which Reform could remedy, it would, indeed, be dangerous to refuse it. Actual evils do not pass away like the fleeting passions of the multitude. But there is no actual evil in the country to which Reform could apply a remedy. The demand for it has all grown up within these six months: it has arisen from foreign contagion, and been fanned by party ambition.

When the disunion among his adherents had brought the constitution into the highest peril; when public opinion was violently shaking, and the press, as usual, was fanning the flame, there was one man who dared in Parliament to front the danger, who threw away unequalled popularity, and abandoned supreme power to discharge his duty, who greatly dared to tell an insane nation that they were rushing on destruction-that man was the Duke of Wellington. Again we repeat what we said on 1st January last:there never was a determination of a minister so much the subject of obloquy at the time, as his declaration against Reform in November last. There is none to which posterity will point with more exultation:

"Justum, et tenacem propositi virum,

Non civium ardor prava jubentium, Non vultus instantis tyranni,

Mente quatit solida, neque auster, Dux inquieti turbidus Hadriæ,

Nec fulminantis magna manus Jovis,

Si fractus illabatur orbis,

Impavidum ferient ruinæ."

The ultimate success or rejection of this measure is altogether immaterial in the estimate of the moral grandeur of this conduct. We read with more admiration the firmness of Cato at Utica, than the triumph of Cæsar at Pharsalia.

"Victrix causa Deis placuit, sed victa Catoni."

But if the fatal division of the conservative party have brought the country to its present perilous condition, their subsequent union has nobly atoned for the error. In the long annals of British greatness, there is nothing more splendid than the conduct of the minority in the House of Commons on the Reform Bill. To say that they have nobly sustained the combat, that they have proved themselves infinitely superior to their adversaries in debate, is to bestow the lowest praise of which their conduct is worthy. The moral courage, the enduring firmness they have displayed, is its noblest quality. Placed between ministerial frowns and popular discontent, threatened with the loss of their seats in the Legislature by insane constituents, and met by the whole weight of government influence, they have never flinched from their duty. If Parliament is to give place to a Convention; if the long career of its glory is to terminate, it will not have perished in the decline either of its honour or its usefulness. Its last acts have been the most beneficent and the most just of its existence. The names of its latest defenders, of Peel, Vyvyan, and Wetherell, will stand foremost in the lists of English patriotism; and when the delusion of the moment shall have passed away, when history shall judge the actions of men, and the voice of ages shall pronounce their doom, they will be classed by a mourning posterity with the first authors of British freedom; and the same honours decreed to those who have sought to prolong, with those who called into existence, the British constitution.

How peculiarly painful is it to all parties-judges and juries, government, the public in general, the culprit, and his friends in particularwhen a literary man falls under the lash of the law! How irritating to himself and others that he should be transported-how disgusting that he should be hanged! Such fates, however, befell some of Dr Parr's dearest connexions; he lived to see his most valued pupil expatriated, in company with felons, to "the Great Botanic Bay;" and he lived to accompany another friend (who also by one biographer is described as a pupil) to the foot of the gallows.

We mention not these things by way of reproach to Dr Parr's memory. The sufferings of his un happy friends, after they came into trouble, called out none but the good qualities of his nature. Never, indeed, was Samuel Parr seen to greater advantage, than when animating the hopes, supporting the fortitude, or ministering to the comforts of the poor dejected prisoner in his gloomy cell, at a time when self-reproaches had united with the frowns of the world to make the consolations of friendship somewhat more than usually trying to the giver, and a thousand times more valuable to the receiver. When all others forsook the wretched, and fled, Dr Parr did not; his ear was open to the supplications of all who sate in darkness and sorrow; and wherever the distress was real, remembering that he himself also was a poor frailty-laden human creature, he did not think it became him too severely to examine in what degrees guilt or indiscretion had concurred to that effect. Sam Parr! these things will make the earth lie light upon your last abode; flowers will flourish on its verdant roof; and gleams of such remembrances extort an occasional

twinge of compunction even from us-at the very moment when we are borrowing old Sir Christopher's gentler knout (No. 3-his scutica, not his flagellum] gently to "perstringe"

your errors.

Sam Parr! we love you; we said so once before. But perstringing, which was a favoured word of your own, was a no less favoured act. You also in your life time perstringed many people; some of whom perstringed you, Sam, smartly in return; some kissed the rod; and some disdained it in silence. Complaint therefore on your behalf would be unreasonable; that same parresia, which in your lifetime furnished a ground for so many thousand discharges of the same Grecian pun on your own name, (each duly delivered by its elated author as the original explosion,) obliges us to deal frankly with your too frequent errors, even when we are most impressed by the spectacle of your truly Christian benignity. Indeed, the greater your benignity, the better is our title to tax those errors which so often defeated it. For why, let us ask of Dr Parr's friends, should he choose to testify his friendship to men, in standing by them, and giving his countenance to their affliction, rather than in the wiser course-so suitable to his sacred calling-of interposing his gentler counsels between their frantic designs and the dire extremities which naturally conducted to that affliction? In Gerrald's case, he certainly had counselled and warned him of the precipice on which he stood, in due season. But to him, as to the chamois hunter of the Alps, danger was a temptation even for its own sake: he hungered and thirsted after political martyrdom. And it is possible, that in that case Dr Parr found no grounds of self-reproach. Possible, we say; even here we speak doubtingly, because if Dr Parr applied sedatives to his fiery nature in 1794, he had in 1790-2 applied stimulants; if, finally, when Mr Pitt and the French Reign of Terror shewed that no trifling could be allowed, he pulled vainly at the curb-rein (as his letters remain to shew)-originally, it is beyond all doubt that he used the spur. Violence and intemperance, it is true, in Mr Gerrald were constitutional; yet there can