Ar length, then, we have lived to see a Cabinet of Reformers! Forty years of opposition to Reform, as a fantastic speculation, through every organ of the state; and, until lately, through every mode-shape-and function of the national property; opposition, therefore, which (if any ever did) expressed the language of the national will, has at last given way. It has sunk under the combined assaults of design, concurring with accident, and the temper of the times. Yes: Reform has triumphed! and the very dust of some great statesmen, whom England once venerated, might be supposed to suffer agitation in the grave, in sympathy with this great event. Three different agencies have co-operated to so unexpected a result; the pestilent perseverance of the sincere reformers, which, by pressing the subject, has at length reached, penetrated, and mastered the passive or the neutral part of the public mind; secondly, the factious necessities of false or pretended reformers; and lastly, the quickening excitement of the late French Revolution. Messrs Hunt, Cobbett, and many others of a more literary order, who have either spoken or written with the same violence, and the same pertinacity, could not fail, at length, by mere dint of iteration, to produce some impression upon the many in every community who are nerveless in will, or unsettled in opinion. The seed sowed by them germinated powerfully under the French Revo

VOL. XXIX. NO. CLXXVI.

lution of July. And at length the accidental position of the party opposed to government, which stood greatly in need of some popular occasion for elevating them into power, concurred, for a moment, with the purposes of these real reformers. The indiscretion of the military Premier, who solemnly threw down the gauntlet, proclaiming as the watchword of his future government, no reform! threw open to the antagonist faction, under the temper of the times, a sudden avenue to power; but under one manifest condition-that they should adopt, as their badge and cognizance, that cause which had lent them so seasonable an aid. The existing passions of democracy adopted the soi-disant Whigs, on the understanding that the Whigs adopted them. That compact was well apprehended, and upon that the Whigs vaulted into power.

The foolish many are weak enough to imagine that Lord Grey's cabinet are unaffectedly and cordially reformers. Those who are in the secret, or have discernment enough to read what passes before their eyes, know that they would make any conceivable sacrifices to escape from their pledges. Reform they must. To that, under some interpretation, and for some extent, they are sold irretrievably. Escape, loophole, absolute evasion, they have none. Something in the shape of reform, some one or two of those changes which are within the meaning of that jealous, watching, suspecting

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party, which, for the moment, have lent them the popular countenance of their name and doctrine, they are under a twofold necessity to grant; the necessity of character, such character as they have, and the necessity of immediate interest. Their word is pledged on the one hand; and on the other, the storm of democratic would be far heavier upon vengeance the fraudulent traitor, than upon the frank avowed opponent. The reaction of public feeling would be tremendous against Lord Grey and his colleagues, if they were to shew any disposition to evade their engagements. And yet how, or under what modifications, is it possible that they should observe them? The contest has already become-how much shall be demanded, how little shall be conceded? The party within the Cabinet know that they are suspected; they know that the whole world of the discerning understand their situation, and are smiling at the perplexities in which a feeble instinct of conscience, and a strong one of selfinterest, have concurred to involve them. Their language confesses their sense of the public suspicions; they keep exclaiming that they will convince the world that they are in earnest; knowing how ruefully they would desire to be tolerated in being in joke. Tentatively seeking to find out the very minimum of compromise which will be accepted, they would wish to disarm their vigilant overseers with a clamorous outcry that they are ready to go along with them to extremities. Almost we could pity their dilemma, were pity for the distresses of the unprincipled an allowable infirmity; for they have to deal with a faction, that, beyond all others, n'entendent pas la raillerie, gloomily and sternly keeping watch upon them, precisely understanding what they want, resolute to accept of nothing less, absolutely inaccessible to all cajolery, and upon any attempt in that direction armed and competent to let loose a storm of popular fury upon Lord Grey and his party, such as no administration has yet experienced. It is past doubting, that, by accepting a momentary strength from the reformers, Lord Grey has for ever communicated strength to them. The monstrous alliance between the government and

the very refuse of the jacobin gang, may supply a momentary force to either; but in the end, and for permanent effects, it can elevate only the last. A minister who stoops to court aid from such an association, may and will give the elevating strength of respectability to them, but inevitably by degrading his ministry.

In such a contest, in such a competition for overreaching each other, between the king's ministers and a faction of disorganizers, are we the men to abet and befriend these last? We hope not. And yet, by comparison, if respect were not out of the question for either, we readily confess, that we could grant it more cheerfully to the frank and undissembling patrons of disorder, than to those who have adopted an alien cause,-fearing, hating, loathing it, -as the one sole means of scrambling into power.

Is it then certain that the present Ministers do fear, hate, and loathe the cause of reform? And secondly, is it certain that this cause is the cause of social disorganizers ? We shall answer both questions firmly and distinctly.

First, for the personal question,laying aside the general merits of reform, are we sure, and have we convincing evidence that Lord Grey's Cabinet is only by compulsion the patron of that measure, as applied to the constitution of parliament? Is it not upon record, that, in very early life, Lord Grey himself was the originator, and even intemperate champion, of some such scheme, differing, perhaps, in its details, but going upon the same grounds, assuming the same abuses, providing the same remedies in substance, as Major Cartwright, or any later politician who has moved in that cause? The Major, no doubt, being a thoroughly honest, zealous, incorrupt man, (however wrong-headed,) and more unchecked by aristocratic prejudices, was disposed to go somewhat farther: he would wholly have annihilated the influences of property; and he would have gone the full length of universal suffrage, and even of annual parliaments. But Mr Grey, of the year 1792, was not very far from Major Cartwright's standard. Whatsoever he narrowed in the Major's sweeping plans, would very soon (and that he

could not disguise from himself) have been enlarged to the most liberal expansion by a parliament framed upon his democratic constitution. Two sessions of such a Parliament would have annihilated the distinctions between him and the most revolutionary of his rivals. How, then, it will be demanded of us, should it seem so clear a certainty that Lord Grey, the peer of 1830, may not be as sincere as Mr Grey, the aristocratic commoner of 1792? As sincere by possibility; that we can believe, though age is found to modify a man's views upon such questions. The simple and child-like Major Cartwright might be an exception; but, generally speaking, there is a wide difference between the theories of a man at the age of twenty-nine, and the same man at the age of sixtyseven, on questions affecting popular privileges. But what reason is there, we demand, in our turn, for presuming Mr Grey to have been sincere in 1792? It is a most obvious policy for a young man to court popularity for himself, and to sustain the interests of opposition for his party, by patronising measures of reform, which he is absolutely certain have no chance for success. Firmly secured in the privileges of his "order," those interests placed beyond hazard, he could well afford (as others have often done before and since) to offer ideal concessions, and to parade a spirit of self-sacrifice, which was sure of being called to no practical test. In reality, the Whig traders of that day, and in particular Mr Grey, and his principal, Mr Fox, were notoriously more aristocratic, and, by temper and in manners, at least, more jealous of their patrician pretensions, than Mr Pitt, the tutelar support and patron minister of the aristocracy; a spirit which, perhaps, they derived in part from their position throwing them more frequently upon the necessity of courting plebeian favour, and in part perhaps from the novelty of their own family claims. Mr Grey relied, at that era, upon three mighty antagonists, which were these, Mr Pitt, the King, and the Nation. There

was no prospect at all that his own party could come into power; none therefore that they could be summoned to give effect to their theories. England was for them a pure Utopia or Laputa, in which they might safely indulge any excess of speculation, because their chance was so little of having any opportunity, in that reign, for acting or legislating upon the wild schemes they threw out, that it was hardly possible to charge them even with exciting unreasonable expectations. None at all were excited in any quarter; their own exclusion from office seemed very probably commensurate with that reign and that war. Secondly, even on the slender contingency of their acceding to office, the sovereign was known to be of a temper that would tolerate no innovations in that direction. And lastly, which was a barrier still more insurmountable, the spirit of the na tion, in those years, and the all but universal hostility to innovating doctrines, was an absolute guarantee that the constitution of the House of Commons would remain unaltered. With this triple security, fenced in this impregnable manner by his very antagonists, Mr Grey might safely indulge himself in a young man's li cense; nor was it even necessary that he should question his conscience very severely upon the exact measure of his own sincerity.

That was the state of things in 1792. At present, how immeasurable are the changes that have been wrought in the whole condition of society; and, above all, in such of its aspects as bear upon this particu lar question! What was then the most romantic of chimeras, is now bare fact, and matter of absolute practice. What was pure jest, has become the most earnest of realities. And the mere vision of youthful speculators, indulged by the minister with one night's discussion in each lustrum, as a theme for academic rhetoric, is now entered upon the minister's note-book, as the most imperative, and the most immediate of the necessities which he has to meet in the public service. Trifling is

past-the dallying and toying of youthful fancy is at an end. Instant ratification of engagements, absolute performance, that is now demanded loudly-sternly-inexorably. And what is Lord Grey's present disposition? It is possible that, in 1792, he was cordial with respect to reform, for the very reason, that circumstances made it impossible for him to be entirely sincere; now, the case is exactly reversed-circumstances oblige him to be sincere; and for that very reason, if there were no other, it is impossible that he should be cordial. A proposition, which cannot be other than a fanciful exercise for the talents, it is very natural that an advocate should seriously take to his heart. That same proposition, when it is extorted from the mere necessity of his situation, it is not possible but he must abhor, if otherwise even he were disposed to it. But we know that Lord Grey is not favourably disposed to it. Upon this there can be no deception, except for those who wilfully court it. We all know, that he has stood forward as the volunteer champion of his " order." The occasions on which he has done this are memorable. And what measure is there, which, by a thousand degrees, could so much affect his order as a measure of reform in the structure of the House of Commons-that sort of reform which is contemplated, less than which will not be accepted by the people, under the guidance which has now gained the mastery? Extensive changes might be borne in the composition of the Housethey might leave the aristocratic influence unaffected for the presentand would be chiefly ominous, as paving the way for other changes, by increasing the popular infusion into the deliberations of the House, and throwing an overbalance into the democratic scale. For example, the thirty-six new members for the leading commercial towns would so far present neither an unbecoming nor a dangerous innovation, except in as far as this addition gave a precedent of revolution, and as one means, amongst others, of securing its democratic tendency in future; the commercial and monied interest being naturally opposed to the territorial and aristocratic. But thus

far the effect would be limited; and that change, therefore, is the least of what is meditated. Violent and radical alteration in the electoral body, sweeping changes in the very constitution of the elective franchise, these are what the reformers demand; these are what Lord Grey and his cabinet are understood, and secretly understand themselves, to be pledged to; these are what, under the sheltering ambiguities of language, they have for the occasion countenanced; and these are what, in the end, they will seek to evade, or will most reluctantly fulfil. To a man who has not considered the subject, it may seem but a trivial or merely personal change, that borough influence should be abolished. The highest effect that it can work, may seem, probably, to him no more than the destruction of some family importance, or perhaps (in the event of no adequate indemnification being yielded by the nation) the sudden dissolution of some fluctuating wealth. But Lord Grey knows better than that. He is aware that every part of his order-those who have, and those who have not, borough property; nay, the whole of the landed aristocracy, and eventually, we may add, the whole property of the kingdom, will be neutralized as political powers in the state, by the abolition of borough influence. It matters not, for this view of the case, that no more than a couple of hundreds, suppose, of aristocratic proprietors, were the actual depositaries and virtual exercisers of the elective privileges which determined the composition of a large proportion of the House of Commons. They were in the nature of trustees for their whole body; for they could not wield their privilege so as not to favour the influence of property.

Property, and the aristocracy as the fixed and abiding possessors of property, and as the representative guardians of the stationary and conservative interest in each nation, in opposition to the terræ filii and the innovating interest,-through Parliament only-through the legislation of the land-and by no imaginable substitution for that mode of influence upon the national counsels, obtain their legitimate political weight. Deny to property this sort of weight,