Jed :

གལ་

Breath

THE DESTRUCTIVES.

TIME was when Whigs called themselves Whigs, and Tories called them. selves Tories, and both condensed all objurgation in the term RADICAL. The word Radical covered all conceivable sins; expressed all possible contempt and abomination; implied imputation of vulgarity, ignorant prejudice, and low associations. Now it has come to pass that the Whigs call themselves Reformers, and the Tories call themselves Conservatives, and both call the Radicals Destructives. The change is full of significance. The Whigs found their name a little spotted, and thought it as well to take another, without actually flinging away their old one; but the Tories had made their name so foul and filthy-so offensive to the senses of so pestilent an odour, that they were per force compelled to cast it from them and abjure it. There it lies in the highway, and no one will pick it up and make it his own, or acknowledge to have worn it. Let the town-crier, taking it with a pair of tongs, hold it up and call upon him to whom it belonged to come forward and claim it; and men will put their handkerchiefs to their noses, and spit, and turn away their heads, and protest they never wore such a thing in their lives, or could conceive any human being of habits so foul, as to have brought it to its loathsome pickle. One says, "I think I have seen you in some thing very much like it; that button with the crown on it, and the motto, Church and State,' I have surely seen on a blue coat with red facing, of which you used to be not a little proud when it was styled the Pitt uniform ?" "Indeed you are mistaken," replies the questioned party; "I was never a Tory, I was always for seasonable and reasonable reformations, consistent with the genius of our constitution. I could never go the lengths of Castlereagh and Eldon, or Wellington; in short, sir, I would have you to know that I am a Conservative-a Conservative, which you will find in the Dictionary to mean one opposed to injury." "But did you not," asks the interrogater, approve the Manchester massacre, so injurious to human bodies; and the system of profuse expenditure, so injurious to property; and can you find apter clothing for such political judgments than that in the tongs?" "Oh, the circum.. stances were peculiar!" rejoins our Conservative. "The Radicals-some few ragged folks of no sort of consequence-mechanics, and that sort of people-unwashed artisans-were destroyed, to prevent them from destroying Heaven knows what. And as for the expenditure, it could not be retrenched without injury to vested interests, expectations, reversionary claims, the dignity of the crown, and all those important and paramount considerations. No, no; you must find some one else to fit that fool's livery; it never was mine. I was no Tory; but always open to reason, and a good Conservative."

66

In a year's time this name ("new-fangled," as the Tories should call it from their own vocabulary) will be as foul, and in as vile odour as the other.

Meanwhile, how has the Radical worn his name? The Whig looks at his spotted name; the Tory at his disgraced and discarded one; and they turn to the Radical and find that he has made respectable the appellation which they cast upon him as a stigma! He is not ashamed to avow himself RADICAL, and no reproach is conveyed in the description of him as such. In this case, the enemy must give him a new bad name, for our enemy has no other weapon than vituperation; and the Radical is called

DESTRUCTIVE. The Radical is not uneasy under this description. He turns foul to fair, as his adversaries turn fair to foul. He accepts the name in good part, and declares himself destructive of all ill things.

"On m'assassine!" cried the thief under the whip of the executioner. "They destroy," cries the Conservative, when abuse is theatened with extinction. The French army before Antwerp were Destructives, and the barbarian Chassé made loud complaints of the destruction of the works he had turned against the laws of humanity and civilized warfare. The French shelled the citadel with true Radical effect; and, after all the bluster, when it came to the point of peril, the roar of Chassé's complaints of rough usage, was heard, instead of the roar of his artillery. Here was Conservation illustrated. Our Chassés would hold out the citadel of abuses against the besieging force, and console themselves by calling destructive, the righteous powers they vainly endeavour to resist.

Never did political animosity run so high, as that of the Whigs and Tories to the Radicals. The hatred is all on one side; for the Radical knows that Whigs and Tories are under the necessity of serving to his objects; and this knowledge softens the enmity he might otherwise feel. On the other hand, it is exasperating to the two parties to see that they cannot battle with each other without malgré lending themselves to the purposes of the Radicals; nor can they unite without infamizing themselves to such a pitch, as to set the whole country against them. The quarrel between the Whigs and Tories, was that of rivals of a trade ; but their quarrel with the Radicals is a quarrel with enemies of the trade. The Whigs proposed to open a cheaper Government Shop than the Tories; but the Radicals are for abolishing the whole traffic in patronage, and breaking up all the engines of extortion and misrule. The Whig sentiment is, that no man's jobs are safe with the Radicals; and every Whig loves his own jobs, though he hates the Tory's jobs with the hatred of envy, which possession converts to love. Seconded by the Radicals, the Whigs thrust the Tory power out of Parliament, by the Reform act; in which measure they have found this remarkable convenience, that its sound parts are good against the Tories, and its rotten parts serve against the Radicals. Can we wonder then, if they have no wish for further organic improvement? We have a contented Ministry-men as happy as the mouse who made his hermitage in a Cheshire cheese. All their wishes are bounded by their offices; and they cry, "Here let us rest from our labour; here for ever be our repose." But like the mouse in the cheese, they will find they "must stir or cease to gnaw."Of course, the mouse abominates the cat as a Destructive.

men.

One cannot but laugh with scorn at the stupid presumption of these The hand-writing has been seen on the wall; the sentence has gone forth to the aristocracy, that their kingdom has departed. Incom plete as the constituency is, it has recorded the judgment of the middle classes against the aristocrats; yet Ministers think that, making common cause with them, they may arrest the tide of improvement. They ima gine a vain thing. Radicalism, destruction of abuse and misrule, is in sure progress. The waves roll in and break, and the fool says, "It is but foam ;" and they roll back, and he says, "Aha! the waters are retiring." But the tide is flowing; and each wave as it rolls in, advances farther than the wave before it; and each wave as it rolls back, recedes to a point short of the one before.

Where have the Radicals been beaten? where have they lost ground?

from what object proposed by them has opinion declined? There was a
time when they were vilified for alleging defects in the Law. The ne..
cessity for Law Reform has been admitted, and the accomplishment of it
pretended. There was a time when they were vilified for opposing In-
tolerance. Toleration has been granted by a Tory Ministry. There
was a time when they were vilified for alleging the Corruption of Par-
liament. The Commons' House has been in part purified, and the repre-
sentative system improved. There was a time when they were vilified
for reprobating the Union of Church and State, and denouncing ecclesi-
astical abuses. The necessity for Church Reform is now acknowledged
by all; and if the country were polled, the majority of the people would
be found adverse to a National Church. But we need not recite instances
which will readily occur to the minds of our readers. The truth of the
representations of the Radicals has been tardily and reluctantly ad-
mitted, and acted upon in manifold measures of improvement, which have
been signal triumphs of the popular cause; and is it not fair to suppose
that the doctrines which remain disputed and traduced are as sound as
those which, one by one, despite of desperate resistance, have been
pushed to success? All are in course of success. Short Parliaments may
be considered as gained; and conversions to the ballot are in steady and
rapid progress. While any of these propositions remain in question,
they are pronounced visionary, absurd, or revolutionary; and the Radi-
cals are covered with abuse for advocating them; but when the justness
of them is at last confessed, there is no retractation of the calumnies
cast upon the early supporters,-no admission of the forethought and
better intelligence of the traduced Reformers: and for the next object
advanced by them, there is a repetition of the same insult and slanders.
The fate of Acteon is the fate of all early reformers: they penetrate
mysteries, are aspersed by those whose secrets they have espied, and
made to seem what they are not, and persecuted and torn to pieces by
the hounds who should lick their hands.--But Diana has lost her great-
ness; her aspersions have lost their force ; her priests their credit. De-
metrius has long been bankrupt; and Actæons of the present day make
discoveries without danger, and follow them up successfully, notwith-
standing some clamour, which no men of good heart and righteous pur-
poses heed. All now is a question of time. To-day the man is railed
at as a Destructive who proposes a beneficial change; and to-morrow it is
acknowledged Reform, and the Minister who devotes himself to it is
called the Saviour of his Country.

ODE

TO JOHN GULLEY, ESQ., EX-C. P. R., AND NOW M. P.

I've turn'd the matter in my mind,
And still but this conclusion find,
("Twill strike all bards the truth who can see)
That of the Nine there's not one Muse
To you her incense can refuse,

Who rule, and long have ruled, "the Fancy,"
Brave Jack!

I take that back:
So-"Glorious John !"-

But this is not the way I should get on-
No-Mister Gulley!

And, if a prouder title you desire,

I'll say Newmarket Squire:

Or, to prononce at once your top degree,
Illustrious M. P.!

I hope that in the House you'll prove a Tully:
Not like a nag of your's, (of which you ve
lost the knees)

Break down,

When you should rise into renown,
And rival your friend Fogo,+ or Demos-
thenes!

C. P. R., Champion of the Prize Ring.

+ Jack Fogo, Poet Laureate, and Orator to the Fancy,' a covey,' combining the powers of a Southey and a Cicero.

By England's mighty champion must be And ne'er the crossing' system went,

And though you've often been inclined to
And thump such knaves as Scarlett, black
Be now the champion of the commonweal,
and blue.

At all events, no' yokel' shall they catch,
When you they meet,--
Whose science' is a perfect treat,
And who-but I must use despatch,-
For ah! I'm now deserted by the Muses,
And my old pen refuses
To come again, O Gulley! to the scratch.

cessary to state, that sparring for a bellyful is un. +Notwithstanding the last note, it may be ne derstood by pugilists to mean a fight in downright earnest, save only that the combatants wear box. ing gloves throughout the fight.

Exq

THE GHOST OF GLEADLESS.

6

A SHEFFIELD TALE.

In that year of our Lord which is distinguished in the annals of Shef-
field by the arrival of the half-Jesuit Defleuscin, who endeavoured, by
French promises, to induce the file-smiths to abandon their comfortable
English homes, there lived in the coal district of Gleadless, which is
found on some high ground, a few miles eastward of the town, a man of
many sorrows. He wandered to and fro, and reproach and shame fol-
lowed; while his racked heart told him how vain was the opinion of the
vulgar, that a conscience untouched with crime ensured continual hap-
piness and tranquillity to its possessor. Sometimes he would complain,
that he was assailed with a grief which Satan was not permitted to
wield against the ancient Job; and sometimes forgetting the submission
to God which that man's most sublime history had taught him, he would
with daring wickedness demand of Heaven, what he had done that he
should be so tortured. 66
"I am denounced to be a murderer!" he ex-
claimed, "yet is the boneless hand of a weak suckling not clearer of
blood than my own. My sorrow is greater than I can bear. When the
idle and the vicious point at me with scorn, I can say boldly, they know
The not; but when the good and the wise shun me, or throw upon me
their awful looks of abhorrence and condemnation, then is my soul riven,
and I would be there-there-with the sweet clod of the valley, where
the great and the small are, and the servant is free from his mas-

ter,"

Before the circumstances are narrated, which caused the chief person of this true tale to be numbered amongst "the virtuous few," the "good afflicted," whose constancy the poet of nature sought to celebrate and sustain, it may be well, as fiction nowadays promises fairly to drive out all true history from the memory and attention of men, to pronounce his name, and describe his humble station; and further, in a few words, let the suspicious reader into the true intent of inditing the story of the Ghost of Gleadless."

There was, about the time before mentioned, a large and ancient coalpit at Gleadless, called the Black Heading. The owner of it was some London lord, or very rich man; but it was managed by one Matthias, the unhappy being whose wrongs are about to be detailed. This Matthias lived in a cottage, placed at a convenient distance from the chief mouth of the pit. It was so large, and diverged in so many directions into the bowels of the hills, that it had many places of lateral entrance; and his business was to govern the half-human beings who laboured within it, and, by his skill, in what the colliers call" dialing," to direct the miners where to turn their picks in search of virgin seams of coal, or where, on the top ground, to sink tunnels for the supply of necessary air into the dark chambers beneath. Whether it was that the hideous vices of the people who were under his control, had made him more distinctly perceive the beauty of a spotless and holy life, or whether he had himself discerned the innate value of virtue, it is certain that Matthias was a just and upright man. Such he was; and he had a helpmate called Hester, who was his joy and pride, when the slander of the world had not scathed him, and who was his only refuge and comfort, yea, his

NO, XI,VOL. II.

2 R