which is as ready with its admiration of any thing new to-day, as it is with its contempt to-morrow. At present, no individual can be sufficiently obscure or absurd to be entitled to a denial of admission into any Society, Union, or Club-literary or political-of which one object is to promote the cause of Reform. Every prig and puppy who, from prating habits, supposes he has a voice, wishes that it may be heard by the ministry, and the nation, and the king-and must in some place or other, so public as to be at least out of his papa's house, make a speech, to be foisted into some newspaper, mutilated and in great affliction. If the young Demosthenes has not had sufficient strollings on Leith or Portobello sands, with some chucky-stones in his mouth, he confines himself to writing, and adds his signature to a requisition. It gratifies us to see that the Six-Feet Club have kept themselves aloof from this folly though Lord Errol's body-guardand henceforth, in our eyes, they will seem to hold their heads higher than

ever.

The Whigs of Scotland have their headquarters, of course, in Edinburgh; and numbering among them some men of great, and many men of considerable abilities, ready enough with tongue and pen, though tongue be their more powerful weapon, which they keep wagging indefatiga bly in pursuance of all political purposes, however apparently insignificant -you may imagine, if you can, the shout set up on this occasion, by so many active agents, in honour of their Great Sultan. Pipes and trumpets (they can be purchased for a penny) were never for a moment silent, and the pigmies who played upon them conceited themselves musicians. Even the "God-help-you-silly-ones" of the set, bestirred themselves surprisingly; and still the cheep was, A Jeffrey! a Jeffrey!" from the beaks of the tiniest bantams. The newspaper press, with almost the exceptions alone of the always stanch and spirited Evening Post, and the now right-thinking and judicious Advertiser, kept up a ceaseless, though often ill-directed fire of paper pellets of panegyric on the man of the people; and thus, on the day of election, Mr Jeffrey had really much need of a

slave to keep whispering into his ear, "Remember, O Francis! that thou art mortal!"

In all this, it is too plain almost to bear mention, that nothing was heard but the expression of the opinion of the Whig party through all its restless organs; yet had that party the audacity to declare, and some of them the folly to believe-for the delusions of unprincipled and self-conceited weakness are incredible-that it was the voice of the whole city, nay, of the entire nation!

Had the party been satisfied with such vain-glorious assumptions and assertions, their behaviour had been worthy but of laughter; but while they thus raised their idol to the skies, they strove to sink all who would not worship it into the dustafter having bedaubed one and all of them over with filth that flies filthier from the hands that hurl it. With several of the newspapers there was but one general rule, without any exceptions. Every man who opposed the Bill was a fool, or knave, or both; the abusive, but somewhat vague, epithet "boroughmongers" being first applied to them all-they were pictured as all wallowing in political profligacy and corruption; and this language was, with all the familiar insolence of low-born and lowerbred apostates, levelled not against this or that individual,whose conspicuous talent or integrity might have made him a mark for their mire-for the calumniators we allude to are the obscurest dastards-but against all those classes of citizens whose opinions they knew to be adverse to such a plan of Reform as blunders in the three bills-with the principles and details of which these starveling scribes are at this moment as ignorant as they are of the meaning of the simplest Latin sentence they have ever misquoted. We allude not now to any of the long-established and consistent papers-such, for example, as the Scotsman, which has all along advocated the same principles, and is entitled now to advocate them more strongly than ever-nor to the Observer, which, though its politics be too moderate for our taste, is edited by a scholar and gentleman-but chiefly to those apostate upstarts, that from Tories, high or low, have become Whig or Radical. Into their

columns communications are constantly admitted, of which their reputed editors, men of character, if they ever think of the past, must be in their hearts, and on their faces, most painfully ashamed. Of the Electors, supposed to be in the interest of Mr Dundas, some wretched ingrates have lately written with a libellous quill, ludicrously quivering to the apprehension of the law; and with the most brutal threats they have at times kept mingling the most nauseous flatteries, as if on wiping their slaver from his sleeve, any honest man could think it worth his while to consider whether it had been spat in the drivel of fear or favour. Seemed you but to shew to their bleared eyes but one single solitary symptom of being like themselves, an apostate, and the shout in a moment would have been, “hail goodfellow well-met, we are all Friends of Freedom." Had it been but suspected that you were even candid to the claims of Mr Dundas, you would have been set down instantly and thenceforth as a corruptionist.

But this was but a small part of the policy of the Billmen. They kept threatening the electors who should vote for Mr Dundas with vengeance, and pointed their fingers at them in the face of a populace, whom their base and brutal arts had exasperated and infuriated; and warned them, "but with no friendly voice," that if blood were shed-which probably it would be-if the people were defrauded of their right to the Lord Advocate-for it seems his Lordship is their natural or acquired property-that it would lie at their doors, and for ever stain their thresholds. No more savage system of intimidation ever raged in Paris under the sway of the Jacobins, than that which was transacted here-on a small scale indeed-against all those respectable citizens who were supposed to be in the interest of the corrupt candidate," forsooth-a man, like his fathers before him, and all his race, of the highest and most stainless honour, equal to that of the Lord Advocate himself, and far superior indeed to that of many, if not most, or all of his noisiest agents and supporters.

People living in a prodigious place Jike London, can have no notion of

the power of political personal persecution in a small spot like Edinburgh. One of a million and a half of inhabitants, what the deuce need you care for an angry buzz, here and there, at a few points of the immense and enormous hive? In your own cell you are secure-and make or eat your own honey, without caring either for drones or workers. Seldom or never does a long lank wasp force his way beneath the lintel of your skep, and threaten to sting you to death, unless you suffer him to rummage at will in the interior, and to convert your balmy store into poison. We mean by a long lank wasp, neither more nor less than a ferocious political agent of some fine or thinskinned candidate, who darkens the doors of your domicile daily till he finds you in the dumps or dismals, and wrings or rugs your vote out of your conscience; and then leaves you naked of principles, and covered with promises, as sorry a sight as may be seen in a summer's day. Bribery and corruption, we doubt not, are plentiful as blackberries in London; but her citizens of credit and renown, during times of political ferment, in the exercise of their elective franchise, are seldom, if ever, we believe, exposed to an organized system of merciless persecution, whose ministers haunt their daily and nightly life, and threaten, if they withstand it, to cut them off from fire and water. Nay, such political persecution is not, we verily believe, in England at all; she has no such tyrants-no such slaves. But Scotland, small and savage, (start not at our seemingly inconsistent speech,) has many of both breeds-or rather, here many Whig tyrants do sometimes, on such occasions, prevail over a few Tory slaves, and, with liberty on their lips, affix to the limbs of their victims, irons that eat into the bone-and into the soul. It needs rare strength of mind to stand out against such devilry; imps swarm round your very hearth, and Satan himself, in the Figure of a tall man in black, or perhaps in blue, with cord breeches and top-boots, assails you on your threshold, over which you have neglected to nail a demon-driving horseshoe. The lost elector goes to bed dazed in despair, and, waking early in the morning, shivers to feel that he is no longer an

honest man ;-for that he " has sold to brass what gold could never buy."

Never anywhere in small and savage Scotland, had the political persecutor been abroad, with the bootikins and the thumbikins that crush the heart, in such truculence as in Edinburgh on this Election. Men's wives were tampered withwe mean their fears and their loves for their own husbands; and small families of children-consisting, perhaps, each of about a dozen-in silence or in squall beseeched daddy to vote for the Lord Advocate, that they might see his Bill. It must have happened that the elector who had resolved to vote according to his conscience, did, in some instances, begin to doubt if he were human-and not a misbegotten and almost anonymous monster. What! shall seventeen citizens presume to set up their private or public opinion against seventeen or seventy thousand? Are they wiser in their generation than all the Eleven Corporations, each with a distinguished Deacon at its head? If they think sowhy then they are fools-if they do not think so-but vote against the man of the people-then they are knaves; but whether fools or knaves, or both, let them cut their cozen'd consciences, and come over, and then the city shall celebrate their names in annual pomps, instead of tramps hawking them, as now, about the streets in opprobrious ballads.

That seventeen citizens-for such proved to be the amount-should suppose themselves sufficiently capacious to contain the wisdom of seventeen or even of seventy thousand, does, indeed, at first hearing, seem not a little presumptuous, and such self-conceit appears not undeserving of reproof, or even punishment. But, on consideration, 'tis not more unreasonable than for seventeen or seventy thousand to blow their stomachs up with the windy belief that they are continent of the lore of at least a million. On the lowest computation there must be some million Anti-Reformers and Moderate Reformers Tories within the four seas; and while they come to the relief of the presumptuous seventeen, they do not hesitate for a moment to knock the breath out of the bellies of the inso

lent seventeen thousand, till you think you hear the bursting of all the bladders in the island. This is the only logical mode of putting the question-and exposes, it will be seen, the Whigs of Edinburgh, whatever may be their numbers, when in a state of fancied security to castigation, which it would be equally disagreeable to hear as to see, and indeed odious alike to all the senses. A few grains of modesty, therefore, might not be amiss to relieve their swollen stomachs-and so save them from the necessity of having recourse to medicine "made of sterner stuff," which would waste them to shadows.

The same logic applies strictly to the question of honesty. That any seventeen citizens should have more honesty than seventeen or seventy thousand, we should hope-without selection-for the honour of human nature, is unlikely; though it will be granted that it is certain there must be among them less dishonesty ;but then, again, what can the amount be of the honesty of such a mere trifle of men, as seventeen or seventy thousand, in comparison with that of some millions? And by what powers of the differential calculus might La Place himself, were he now alive, work out the result, in that more than "irreducible case,"-if you will allow us to confuse geometry and algebra,-where the thousands happen to be Whigs, and the millions Tories?

And this brings us back, with a beautiful airy motion, like that of a glad bird on full-imp'd wing floating through the sunshine homeward to its native tree-back to the tower of Toryism, the stronghold of truth. The seventeen electors uttered the voice of the friends-the fourteen electors uttered the voice of the foes-we use the words in a political sense-of their native land. Look at the Scotch counties-listen to the speeches of such men as Sir George Murray and Sir George Clerk, and compare their eloquent speeches with such dismal drivel as the attempt of that apparent imbecile, Sir John Dalrymple, t'other day, at our County Meeting, or with such inflammatory Radicalism as that of Mr Maxwell-though he is a man of talents, accomplishments, and worth,

the more's the pity he so should speak -and then dare to talk of the intelligence of all the Counties, as well as of the Boroughs, being in favour of the abortion.

What, then, was the real meaning of this audacious and profligate demand and command, that the seventeen should elect the Lord Advocate?

Risum teneatis?-That the Tory power should lower its banners to the Whig, without a blow, deliver up its camp, and be marched, bound two and two, under the yoke, Unstomachable insolence! bespeak ing tyranny that had suddenly lost its senses, in its supposed escape from a long life of servitude!

Let us tie down these idiot Whig despots to the iron prison-bed they had prepared for us Tory kings, and administer to them some of their own intended discipline. Do they say, that in all cases-everywhere else as well as in Edinburgh-where a celebrated man of sixty opposes an uncelebrated man of thirty-he shall be elected by them, Tory, in preference to Whig? Cashier Mr Kennedy then, though he is fat, fair, and forty-and elect CHRISTOPHER NORTH. Do they say, that in every contest for city or county, the political principles of the candidates must by their respective friends be set aside, and nothing be considered but talent, or the reputation of talent, or the glory of grizzled hair? Do they say, that nothing else shall be considered, in addition, but the voice of the majority, though that majority be composed entirely of their own political foes? Bah! They would bluster till they were black in the face to bring in, in opposition to Sir Walter Scott -Mr Robert Hunter !

If not let them commence their career-and, out of courtesy, the Tories will follow them on their grand discovery of a new patriotism. Let them work a miracle before our no longer incredulous eyes, and when they have the black and white balls in their own hands, send to Parliament half a score, or half a dozen, or even one old, eloquent, ingenious, and amiable Tory-the brilliant counterpart of Mr Jeffrey-in preference to a young, tongue-tied, unidea'd, and sulky Whig-the cloudy counterpart of Sir John Dalrymple

and then we shall confess that their practice is consistent with their profession-that the world must be very near its end-and that there will be no loud laughing even for the Times' reporter in Parliament, on a motion by Mr Perceval for a general fast.

Political principles, forsooth! reform! What do these useless words of a few unmeaning syllables signify, when genius is in the field, arrayed in his golden helmet and refulgent arms. Blow, heralds! blow! clear the way, cavaliers !-for lo

star-bright his head appears," and the wide welkin of Scotland is torn with one national shout that hails the glorious advance of Sir Walter Scott. There is a Knight of the Shire! His" European reputation" is even equal to that of the illustri ous Ex-Editor of the Edinburgh Review. Yet hear it, ye Whigs, and give ear, O thou radical, "the foremost man of all this world" is assailed by culprits you cherish, with a dismal hiss, the sound of public scorn! Return him to Parliament ! No! Rather than that He should have his vote, not a Whig, or Whigling, but would pluck up courage to endure, without much shrieking, the martyrdom of the first joint of his little finger chopped clean off above the dirt-encircled nail-and expresses would be sent all over broad Scotland to announce the glorious intelligence that a Cockney-cub, the reputed author of a rejected article for the Edinburgh, was cutting his monkey capers, to the delight of all true believers, at the top of the poll.

The truth is-the truth must bethat the Whigs care little or nothing

in most cases-about the talents of their own members of Parliament, provided only they stick to the leading articles of their creed. This accounts-and there is no other equally handsome explanation of the fact -for the excessive stupidity of the Scotch Whig members of Parliament. There are many men of talent in the party-then why do they in Parliament so rarely appear? The men of talent are generally embarrassed in their circumstances, or if not, tied to the professional oar; they lie by, and send up some richer ninny who prates at their dispose-and at their cramming; and thus cooks at a distance

rule the roast which their creature merely turns; they wind up the jack, and round he goes; when about to go down, another wrench on the wheel, and away he flies reasoning in a circle; or in this age of improvement, especially in the mechanical arts, our friend revolves by his own smoke, which, like a good and grateful boy, he in turn consumes.

Thus, and hence, when by the chances and changes in the political world, the Whigs found such a man as Mr Jeffrey-Lord Advocate-and had him to send to Parliamenthis genius, glorious through their gloom, seemed to be the only light in heaven, and they called on the stars at his sight not only to hide their diminished heads, but to retire from the contest, and from their own dim nooks afar not to venture even so much as to twinkle towards the luminary that flamed unapproachably over the whole region.

Perhaps, then, we are not going too far in saying that liberty was not the distinguishing feature of our late Election. To a lover of liberty like the Lord Advocate, the want of that feature must have disfigured its whole face, and given it the look of a diseased wanton who had lost her nose. Yet his lordship, a few months before, had an opportunity of seeing a borough or two even more uncomely; nor do we think that his own conduct at Forfar was such as to kindle a smile on the countenance of that flirting fair. It was acknowledged on all hands, that the feather he added to his cap in Fife, whatever might have been thought of it in that kingdom, possessed, if a peculiar, not a very pure, lustre on this side of the Frith. His friends could only be silent with regard to his availing himself of the vote of Dundee, which still stood disfranchised, to get himself illegally thrust into the House. He had himself been counsel for Colonel Ogilvy, and had given his opinion that Dundee had no right to send a delegate to vote at the election, an opinion which was afterwards at once confirmed by the House of Commons. But worthless as every one knew the vote to be, it was grasped at even by a high-minded man; while he and his adherents set every engine to work to raise the popular feeling in his favour, and,

by harangues and inflammatory placards, and by the nimious use of the diligence of the law (arrestment of a voter for debt, a most mean expedient,) he had nearly succeeded in securing a majority of votes in Cupar. The mob there was in his favour, and he and his deputies (how dignified they!) received with delight its acclamations, leaving the other party and their friends to be hooted and pelted without offering any protection. The affair was not very serious, and little or no mischief done; but it so happened that the mob of Forfar, incredible as it may now appear, were against his lordship; and though the affair_there was as little serious as at Cupar, and little or no mischief done there either, except that his lordship" was rubbed," an express was sent off instanter to Perth for a troop of dragoons, whose clanking hoofs, ere rosy-fingered morn tipt with fire the steeple of that ancient burgh, disturbed many a dream, and awoke the burgesses from their ideal worlds of bliss. We shall see, by and by, that his lordship's military ardour is of the nature of an intermittent fever and excited by alarms only on one side of the House.

By the vote of a non-existence the Lord Advocate got into Parliament-and by a vote that was a nonexistence he may be said to have carried the second reading of the Reform Bill. The glorious Unit was a cipher.

How sarcastically Mr Croker cut his Lordship up for that undaunted deception, after his having had the injudicious, or rather infatuated audacity to accuse all the members legally and honourably returned for boroughs, of occupying seats they had no right to there, and of speaking and of being about to vote unconstitutionally on the Great Question! They were in his Lordship's haughty eyes-interlopers; then what was he who had practised a political cheat upon a political cheat, and was sitting there at the moment, not on a sound vote of a rotten borough, but bolstered up by the fag-end of a dead borough, that had once been the rottenest of the rotten, but had since ceased to have any vote at all? A ludicrous sight it must have been to see those stalwart knights, Lord J. Russel and