not novel readers, ought to read. It is by far the best disquisition on the Radical question we have met with. It possesses all the luminous wisdom of a Burke or a Canning, united with all the dramatic quickness and liveliness of a Sheridan, and all the sterling unanswerable pith of a Swift.

Pen Owen, our friend the Grazier, and a third hand, a reformer, though not after all a very bloody-minded one, are seated around a table covered with pewter-pots, &c. The curtain rises, and it rises on what might not unworthily have given materials for one of the Noctes Ambrosiane themselves, these exquisite sketches which shew that, in spite of " pale cant and fat humbug," the art of comic dialogue is not extinct in England. We have been obliged, however, to leave out a few passages here and there.

"Is not Parliament,' says Pen, just what it always was; or, if any alteration has taken place, is it not all-on the popular side ?' The deuce it is!' cried the stranger; what, the corruption, the boroughmongering system, the I know nothing of these cant terms of party; I say that, in what are called the proudest periods of our history, corruption stalked in open day, and members of Parliament received bribes, as openly as lawyers now do their fees.' What's that to the question? though I don't believe a word on't.' 'Sir,' exclaimed Pen, I speak from authority.' Suppose you do, sir; our eyes are now -opened; we see the corruption, and we must crush it.' You see what doesn't exist, sir,' retorted Pen; no such degrading traffic is carried on in the presentcorrupt times.' Whoi, ater all, gentlemen,' cried the grazier, what the dickens has Parliament to do wi moi pocket being picked by that confounded rascal Noah Toop, as he called himself?' Every thing! if there is no foundation, the whole building will totter,' answered the stranger. But, sir,' observed Pen, you have not proved the fact yet." Proved! isn't it as light as day? What need of proof? Are not seats bought, and sold, and trafficked like bales of goods?' A man may buy a seat in parliament,' returned Pen, without carrying rottenness to the constitution. I have been told that almost all our greatest patriots and most distinguished statesmen have bought their seats.' What of that, they're your sham patriots, your lack-adaisical whigs, who denounce a minister, and walk arm in arm with the honourable gentleman the next moment.' Why, sir,' exclaimed Pen, it is to such men we owe the existence of our liberties. I don't speak of trading politicians on one side or the other, either in the bigher or lower ranks;

but of men who are interested in the preservation of our rights, and who do not think it necessary to become the tools of faction, or the preachers of sedition, in order to check the excesses of a minister or the peculations of a public servant. They may all be shaken in a bag together,' returned the stranger; whigs and tories,

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ins and outs, and the devil not be much puzzled when he puts his hand in.'And yet, sir,' resumed Pen, it is to the conflicting interests of party that we owe the blessings of our constitution.' Pretty blessings! and heaven thank these corruption-breeders for them.' What has all on a sudden corrupted these men ?' asked Pen; men who, from their property, station, and connexions, are at least as can be in the common weal ?'- Bribery, corruption, and boroughmongering!'

much interested as the sturdiest reformer

But, sir! you will admit, that open boroughs and counties are often bribed into a return of members. That may be; we can't help that.' Will that mend the matter. How is a man, who has bought and corrupted whole masses of people, to carry a load of virtue into parliament; whilst he who simply pays the same money for the purchase of a seat, without either corruption or bribery, is loaded with execration, and accused of mercenary motives?' Because it is against the constitution!' Where is the constitution, sir?' asked Pen. Where! the Lord knows where; any where but where it ought to be.'

The Lord deliver me from such a rigmarole,' cried the grazier; the constitution anywhere! Odds, mun, thee dostn't mean to sai ould England ha'nt a constitution? What's all to do at Westminster there?'

"I only wished the gentleman,'observed Pen, with a smile of contempt, peculiarly his own, to point out the constitution, which appears so defined to him, and to show how the practice of the same constitution in the best times, differs from that of our own.' Why, zounds,' exclaimed the stranger, you don't mean to defend corruption !' Far from it, sir,' answered Pen; I only want to ascertain it.' And isn't it before your eyes?' • If so, I am too blind to perceive it.' None so blind as those who will not see.' I only ask you to open my eyes.' Hav'nt I told you seats are bought and sold among the boroughmongers?'

I answer again, this is no proof of corruption, or at least no proof of corruption peculiar to our times; for I repeat, it existed in what the reformers of the present day call the great and glorious times of the constitution. But I will go further, and confess that I think a man infinitely more independent, in the fullest sense of the term, who enters the House of Commons as the purchaser of a seat, than one who, to secure his own interests with them, has

been playing the courtier and sycophant, and must continue to do so, to please and pamper the prejudices and passions of his constituents. Such a man is a slave to one small faction of the nation, and shackled in his efforts to benefit the whole. If he is sincere in the proffers he makes, (alas! how seldom,) and in the gross flatteries he be stows upon them, he is fitter for a courtier than the legislator of an extensive empire: if he is acting the hypocrite with them to gain a seat, he is capable of any baseness to turn that seat to his own profit. The man who pays his money for what you gentlemen call a rotten borough, may be a rogue but, at least, he has not proved himself one by previous practice. He may, like the other, hypocritically profess patriotism, to further his own selfish ends; but be has not previously cajoled and cheated his electors, as an earnest of his talent at maneuvering.'

"And you call this man a representa tive ?' I do, sir, in the strictest sense of the word. A member of the British Parliament is not a DELEGATE. When a man once passes the threshold of the Commons House of England, he represents the Commons at large, and not a particular county or district. He may, from circumstances, have local interests to guard, but even a turnpike bill, or an enclosure, interesting alone to his constituents, can but command his solitary vote. It is the country,-the majority of the representatives of the whole empire, that must decide its adoption or rejection. If it were otherwise, a member of Parliament would resemble a satarap or governor of a district, and his constituents would become eventually little better than the slaves of the soil. Each would be absorbed in the petty interests and cabals of his particular charge; and being responsible to his constituents, rather than to his countrymen at large, his public conduct without a check, and his private intrigues beyond the reach of investigation, a power unknown to the institutions of a free state, would be engendered and fostered in every corner of the empire. County would be found jobbing against county,-borough against borough; and the practised politician might, by turns, bribe and sell his constituents, with whose local interests he would thus so identify himself as at length to render a separation on their part impolitic, if not impracticable. This is all wild-all abroad, sir.' Wild! is it so wild, as to suppose that you can check corruption, by extending the means to corrupt? or that by opening the doors to sharpers and adventurers, you can cleanse and purify a legislature, composed (no matter how) of all the prominent talent and professional wisdom of the country; of the most distinguished representatives of the landed, the commercial, and trading interests; and altogether of those who bear the

stamp and character of men of honour so legibly, that the least flaw in their title is discernible, pointing them out to public scorn, and barring their access to the higher honours of the state?' Still they are not elected by the people.' Not by the people at large, admitted; but were they ever so elected, or was it ever proposed they should be By the constitution they ought to be.'

Shew me any authority, prescriptive or practical, and I will admit the fact, however disposed to deny its expediency.'— At least, it is generally so believed; and at all events, you will not deny that the right of voting has been shamefully infringed upon,' I do deny it, sir; and upon authority you cannot dispute. When the elective franchise was limited to forty shilling freeholds, the GREAT BODY OF THE PEOPLE were excluded from the right altogether for forty shillings, at that period, were at least equal to as many pounds of our present money, and the change has operated to extend the franchise to thousands, who, without this nominal change in the value of money, would by the constitution have had no vote at all.' I know nothing about that,' returned the stranger, in rather a subdued tone; I am only interested in what concerns the present day; and thousands who have the right of voting are excluded by the tricks and knavery of those who have power to keep us down.' I have shewn, I think,' continued Pen, that they have no right; for natural rights, as you reformers call every wild demand for a participation of power, cannot be abstractedly considered, or applied to a state existing under fixed laws and established compact. But this is from the point; I would limit myself to present evils, which you affirm to exist, and the existence of which, until you produce proofs stronger than mere assertion, I must still deny. What have you to say,-not theoretically, but practically, against the description of men, (subject, I admit, to human infirmities, and not without exceptions,) who at this present moment constitute the legislative body? Including in their number the whole host of boroughmongers?' I see no ground of exclusion. Why, sir,' cried Pen, raising his voice, as was his father's practice, when he supposed an assertion might be mistaken for a paradox; why, sir, I have no hesitation in saying, that the objects, abstractedly considered, for which parliaments are constituted, would be fully accomplished, if the electors of Northumberland were to choose representatives for London, or those of Westminster to return members for Cornwall. All local interests, by the spirit of the English constitution,--which is, after all, the depositary and the aggregate of the good sense and sound experience of successive generations,--are to merge, and

must be made to merge, in the general in terest of the whole; as each individual in society must necessarily sacrifice a portion of his independence to secure the liberty of all.' Cuom, cuom, now,' interrupted the grazier, that would be a strange soit, howsomever; a caunt consent to that by no manner o' means. I maun chuse my oune parliament, man, cuom what wull • I don't know where the deuce the gentleman is running,' cried the stranger. I run at nothing, sir,' answered Pen. I have asserted, and do assert again, that the mere mode of election is a matter of comparative indifference; I say comparative, so long as the property of the country is duly represented; so long as the representatives of that property, in some shape or another, are sent to parliament. As to the qualities and principles of men, they will differ as much after your projected reforms as before, and will so continue to do until human nature itself be reformed. Common safety is the real bond of political union; and those who possess property, individually, will be most anxious to preserve proper. ty, upon the whole.' Why is property,' demanded his opponent why is property to be the only thing represented? Simply because property is the first thing to be secured upon a permanent basis; for without this, liberty can be nothing but licen

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tiousness.' And so the rich are everlastingly to grind the poor? How that follows, I am at a loss to conceive,' replied Pen, who began to grow warm in his subject, unless you conclude government under every form to be a tyranny.' Pretty near the mark,' retorted the stranger. Then we need argue no further, sir,' cried Pen, starting upon his legs; if you understand the force of your inference, you are the advocate of pure anarchy; and none but a madman will reason from such premises.' I mean---I mean no such thing, sir; it is you that are the madman, I think. Sir!' exclaimed Pen. mean no offence, sir; but when you talk of the electors of Westminster electing members for Cornwall, and at a sweep get rid of the glorious franchise of' Psha, sir! you confound hypothesis with argument. I never meant to recommend such a measure, but to illustrate my opinion that even such a mode of election would be more consonant with the first principles of the constitution than your bewildering chimera of universal suffrage.' Right is right, sir; every man has a right to vote for representatives in parliament.' Pray, sir, may I ask where you find this right ? In the constitution.' In the clouds! Shew me, sir, something more tangible; shew it me in the practice of the constitution. It needs no shewing; it is among the first rights of man.' So is eating his brother, if he be strong enough to slaugh. ter him; if not, he must submit to be eaten

himself. And so, in the only instance of these rights being literally reduced to practice in later times, universal suffrage appears to have been the harbinger of universal slaughter, where the constituents and their free-chosen representatives were alternately victims and butchers.'

"Why should the same excesses follow from a reform in this country? Because the same causes will generally produce the same effects; because, in the present me ment, the cause is advocated upon the same principles, appeals to the same dangerous passions of man, and opens the same means of gratifying them; because, erroneous as was the principle upon which those men acted, many good, honest, and patriotic individuals, were sincere in their adoption of them. Whereas there is not one, no, sir, not one, among the present leaders of popular delusion, who does not anticipate general havoc and destruction, which the others never contemplated; who does not look to revolution when he cries REFORM? They only hoped to effect reform, when they found themselves plunged in REVOLUTION.' It is'nt fair, sir, to stigmatize, in this sweeping manner, thousands of your countrymen. I would say the same if they were my brothers, and merited it as truly,' answered Pen, coolly.

"The short of the matter, then, is, sir,' said the stranger, you would have no reform at all.' I object to reform no where, sir,' replied Pen, when it is necessary; but I must be convinced of its necessity by better arguments than I have heard to night, before I give my voice to so hazardous an experiment.' Necessity! why, hav'nt you yourself admitted the fact, that seats in parliament are bought and sold; and what have you urged in defence of it?

moonshine--an opinion” · Moonshine,--my opinion, sir! Are you aware

-No offence, no offence intended; but opinions are but opinions, and, as you yourself observed just now, cannot weigh against facts.' Facts! true; but you must call your facts by their right names.

They are still facts, call them as we will; but let that pass. I only ask you, sir, why a few great overgrown landholders are to mo nopolize all power, and grind down the great mass of the people, as if they were mere slaves of the soil? I should rather ask you to prove your fact, before I can be called upon to account for it.' Who are our law-makers, but those imperious lords who combine to rivet our chains ?' They may be law-makers, without either imposing chains or rivetting them; but, perhaps, by this pretty figure of speech, you design to represent the laws altogether

The laws in these hands I certainly do

Then, sir, we understand each other. You would prove that anarchy is preferable to any regular form of government, and it