nant patriot might well have asked, what the opponents of even the smallest iota of parliamentary reform could really and honestly mean to do with those who were clamouring for nothing less than Universal Suffrage, Annual Parliaments, Vote by Ballot, and the abolition of property-qualification? Meanwhile a previous failure in our harvests was sending up the price of corn to ten shillings a bushel; when, as might naturally have been expected, the great capitalists of the north began to sound an alarm. Committees were organized, large sums of money subscribed, interminable speeches spoken, and last though not least, magnificent dinners eaten, for the purpose of overthrowing the absurdest and most pernicious monopoly which Europe, not to say England, has ever tolerated. It was demonstrated, that the corn laws imposed a tax of fifteen millions sterling upon the prime necessary of life,that commerce and manufacturing superiority were deserting our shores, through the greater cheapness of the loaf, and therefore of labour, in other countries,- that the only gainers in the juggle were the members of an oligarchy, calling themselves the Landed Interest, and that these were only apparently so, since they, as well as others, would participate in the general relief derived from strangling this Old Man of the Mountain. Truth for a time took its customary course; that is, it was admitted and acknowledged by all who were not purblind or biassed. Had our lower classes stepped forward at this moment, and supported the mass of the middle ones, they would have delivered themselves from a burthen equivalent to twenty-five per cent upon every crust consumed by themselves, their neighbours, or their children; besides averting from Great Britain that commercial catastrophe, which must sooner or later arrive, should no modification ensue. But no, it was an opportunity too good for faction to lose. Moreover a vast majority of the monopolists mustered under conservative banners. It is idle to deny this statement of the case, because here and there occurred not a few honourable exceptions. Just as in the question of National Education a cry was raised of the Church in danger; so for the preservation of high rents, the proprietors of land, headed by the aristocracy, vociferated Agriculture, agriculture! They roundly asserted, that Manchester manufacturers wanted to render our fields desolate,-to lower the rate of wages,--and drive our rustics into their factories. They affirmed that the rate of wages would sink in proportion to the income of the landlord, and the money-price of grain which it is now well known is not, never has been, nor ever will be, the fact. The falsehood however passed current for just a sufficient number of weeks to deceive the Chartists into swelling the force of conservative clamour against altering the corn laws. Political partizanship makes strange bedfellows, as the late Mr. Sadler remarked and it was illustrated on this occasion. : : Parliament assembled in February, about as early as usual. Expectation was on the tiptoe. Besides agitation in Ireland, where O'Connell had enrolled some myriads of Precursors,— besides all the copia verborum touching the Corn Laws and the National Charter,-there was the anticipated collision between Viscount Melbourne and the Earl of Durham. The Quarterly Review promulgated an article on this express subject: nor ever, during the feudal ages, could young ladies have looked forward more earnestly to an approaching tournament, than the old ones of a certain party in the state did to the expected duello in the House of Lords. It would have been years added to their natural life, could they but have witnessed some fierce and foul rencontre between the Premier and the Governor-General of the Canadas. All however have been cruelly disappointed. Verily that play of our great dramatist has been acted all through the session,-Much ado about Nothing. The Upper House for months was tameness itself, except when a noble and learned lord, the intellectual Samson of his generation, having had the eyes of his mind extinguished, either through vanity or infirmity, condescended to make sport for the Philistines! In the Commons there appeared violence and storm enough: for an unlucky seconder of the Address, from accident and not design, made the sort of trip respecting the Corn Laws, which a clumsy menial does towards some dainty dish, which, by stumbling at the threshold, he deposits in ruin upon the floor, instead of placing it with dignity upon the table. In days gone by, an affair, so malappropos, would have excited in Pitt, or Fox, or Tierney, or even in Perceval or Lord Castlereagh, immense laughter, and yet much commiseration. Alas! for men, ooo vvv Boro E! The present leader of opposition had no pity for a fallen antagonist. In the debate, he not only kicked him when down; but instead of helping him to get up, as one gentleman should do another, whether friend or enemy, he continued to keep him down, and then kicked him again. We feel satisfied, that amongst even his own party, Sir Robert Peel by no means retains the elevated position which he held twelve months ago. More than one significant symptom of this has recently appeared. In trampling however on the member for Kendal, at the expense of enormous self-debasement, he was enabled to make some heavy, and for the session a few fatal thrusts against Mr. Villiers. He also well knew, as an experienced parliamentary tactician, that the majority of his audience went with him, in their wishes for maintaining a monopoly, in which the landed aristocracy imagines itself so deeply and personally interested. Nothing will ever make either Whig or Tory lords alive to the true nature of the question, except fear; that tingling, indefinable apprehension, which renders juvenile depredators, for the moment, honest even in an orchard; the certainty of being found out, and well whipt by their schoolmaster. The extreme folly of the Chartists has effectually, but unfortunately checked this salutary sensation for the year 1839, at all events. We trust 1840 may produce better things: a little more of the wisdom of the serpent as well as of the harmlessness of the dove. : Not long after our legislators had come to the conclusion not to receive evidence at their bar, to prove that which indeed was already proved, that expensive bread is a curse instead of a blessing, the bill for coercing the Jamaica Assembly into decent behaviour began to attract attention. We have always protested against Lord Stanley's fraudulent measure of compensating West India proprietors, upon the simple principle of there being two bad classes of paymasters, namely those who pay beforehand, and those who never pay at all. His lordship was kind enough to place us amongst the former, and we have been treated accordingly. Through the pressure of public opinion at home, Jamaica has kept her promise in the letter, and broken it in the spirit, just so far as she dare. She even surrendered the semblance of slavery, with precisely that growling ungracious manner in which a mastiff allows the bone to be taken out of his mouth, although he knows that he has stolen it. Her legislature, having received their money, looked forward to the idea of real and perfect emancipation with an evil eye. That between three and four hundred thousand bondsmen should walk as freely upon the face of the earth as themselves, was more than they could bear and therefore every subterfuge and artifice was put into requisition to filch back again the liberty of the negroes, which had been purchased at so enormous a price. The government at home, having of course another standard of honesty, insisted upon something like justice being done. Jamaica then took the Colonial office by the beard, with an air of defiance, denounced by Sir Robert Peel himself; who yet nevertheless, when a bill was brought into the House of Commons to correct the refractory Assembly by suspending its constitution for a certain period, became to all intents and purposes advocate and intercessor on behalf of the planters, because the measure introduced by the cabinet might form a precedent hereafter for invading popular rights! His followers no doubt must have been much relieved to find, that this new born zeal in their leader for popular rights involved nothing more than the defence of a nominal constitution, comprising an electoral body not exceeding fifteen hundred voters, and wielding a scourge of scorpions over serfs and sable apprentices nearly three hundred times their own number. This constituted the precious pearl of freedom, a jewel hung in an Ethiop's ear,' which the right honourable opponent of the Reform Bill, and abolitionist of all Irish municipal corporations, was now so anxious to conserve. Warm VOL. VI. SS discussions ensued between those who tried night after night to keep on the masque of philanthropy and patriotism, and those who tried to tear it off. We need not remind our readers how often it fell to the ground during the fray, Primi clipeos mentitaque tela Agnoscunt, atque ora sono discordia signant. After several close divisions, the ministerial majority dwindled to five, when Lords Melbourne and John Russell, in their respective places, announced their resignations. The umbrageous foliage of office now overshadowed the weather-beaten brow of Toryism; but it grew up in a night,—and it perished in a night! Root and branch, leaves and fruit, were all alike unsound. The nation fancied none of them; although so thoroughly disheartened was it with the palsied, timid, vacillating sway of whiggery, that it folded its arms, and respectfully waited in confidence for an ultimatum from the throne. That soon followed, as the world well knows, to the dismay of expectant placemen, already revelling amidst their dreams, in the fattest pastures of patronage. The hero of a hundred fights in vain advised her majesty to commit a carte-blanche to Sir Robert Peel. That statesman shrunk at once into his real intellectual size, a personage of very ordinary dimensions. From his having been enabled, through successive sessions, to embarrass a weak government, public opinion had magnified his powers of mind exceedingly; having come to estimate him as something like a concentrated essence or impersonation of his three hundred parliamentary adherents. The crisis tried him fearfully, and has damaged his reputation irretrievably, both amongst foes and followers. He in fact launched into public life far too early, as well as under far too unfavourable auspices, not to confound cleverness with wisdom, and cunning with sagacity. The eye of his soul not being a sunbeam, he has never been able, save only as a debater, to see farther than his nose before him. Had it been otherwise, he certainly might, at the expense of no greater tergiversation than he has repeatedly displayed, have kept his ground, at least for a considerable time. Having felt the political pulse of his young sovereign, he should have intuitively perceived, like an able physican, how much would be borne in the way of demand, both on her part, and that of the nation. It was an exquisite occasion for a really skilful Palinurus to have manifested his acquaintance with the signs of the social firmament, and his knowledge of human nature. Happily however there always exists an inherent weakness in what is wrong, as there does an innate strength in what is right. Sir Robert in grasping at all, lost all; all we mean that he could ever have,—an opportunity of rolling the chariot of improvement some few years backward, and kindling a rebellion in Ireland. The Queen is allowed, on all hands, to have evinced sufficient spirit. She was at once frank and firm; frank in avowing her preference for liberalism, blended with a candid commission of the seals of office to those whom the representatives of her people might be prepared to support; whilst at the same time, she reserved herself from dictation, or any needless interference with her personal predilections. Never were the rich stalls of a court so equally and impartially distributed amongst all classes and parties in the kingdom, as they are now. But the demons of monopoly and exclusiveness follow Conservatism wherever it appears. Not to engross the entirety of any prize, seems tantamount to having neither part nor lot in the matter. And so, as we ventured to predict several months ago, the Tories, happening for an instant to come into the doors of the palace, experienced a speedy exeunt from the windows of the bedchamber. The ex-premier felt quite ready to volunteer every possible explanation of his fall, except the true one; Et simul his dictis faciem ostendebat, et udo His compeers endeavoured to rub him down, and clean him, with that species of officious alacrity which enabled them to hide their own wry faces, and smother their execrations in professions of warmest friendship. Not quite so considerate were his subalterns, the hungry whippers-in disappointed of their meat and wages: Away they rode in homely sort With visage long,-and money short; And here commences the most melancholy stage of the business. Somewhere about the Ides of March last, Lord John Russell had published a letter to his constituents at Stroud, which has completely shelved him as a politician; proving for the thousandth time, that no hand can so effectually destroy a character as that of its owner. Men generally augured from that publication, that the Melbourne administration must soon be stranded, as turned out to be the case: but when the friendly sceptre of their mistress had once more shoved them off the rocks into floating water, they might have made their own terms amidst the applauses of three nations. This, the liberal members of the House of Commons over and over again told them; yet so strong is the leaven of aristocracy, throughout what are termed the upper |