now is prepared to guard, if need be, at the point of the sword ready, on unendurable indignity, to leap from the scabbard, yet unwilling to be stained with the blood of the base, although spouting from the veins of traitors and rebels, all sweltering with

venom.

But the same ruffian attacks—not confined to words-will be made again on the Peers-the same that Lord Althorp probably meant to allude to, when t'other day he spoke so gingerly about the freedom of discussion in a free country on a great national question like that of Reform. Some violence was not to be wondered at.

But other violence ought to be put down and punished-for it is shameful to the Government. Some of its members have encouraged such outrages, and may erelong themselves become victims to their own mob. Here is a powerful extract to that purpose.

"Is it upon these pretences that their Lordships are next told, that if they rejected this Bill through the fear of being thought afraid, the people of England would hate them?' But what if they rejected the Bill, not through fear of being thought afraid, but through the wise and statesmanlike fear of its dreadful and revolutionary consequences? It is not in the nature of the people of England to hate those men, who, acting upon their principles, and maintaining their own honour, do that which in their consciences they believe to be for the interests of their common country. It is a strange argument for the Chancellor of England to predict the hatred of the people of England as likely to fall on the heads of such men. It is not the argument of peace; nor will I so far be a libeller of the people of England as to admit that the prediction is one of truth. But if the hatred of the people of England is to be predicted, it is not difficult to foresee upon what class of men it will fall. It will fall on those who, knowing their duty, have not dared to perform it; on men who have timidly shrunk from an avowal of their opinions and the maintenance of their principles, and who, thinking to avoid present obloquy, or purchase ignominious rest, will find peace poorly promoted by timorous practices, and hatred little alleviated by being mingled with contempt. It will fall on magistrates who have allowed the laws to slumber which it was their duty to awaken, and to administer with energy as

well as with humanity, for the protection of the lives and properties of their fellow-citizens. It will fall on legislators

who have temporized with their consciences, and withheld their votes, and thought, if haply they could think it, that the question of a nation's government was one on which the makers of its laws might shun the responsibility of decision. It will fall on all those who, in whatever station of life, have given their support and countenance, whether of passive acquiescence or of energetic aid, to schemes of fraud, hypocrisy, delusion, and violence-on members of Parliament-members of a high deliberative council, bound by every consideration of duty, of conscience, and of honour; of duty to their country, their own characters, and their God, to reflect on all the difficulties, and perpend all the objections, and anxiously and carefully to deliberate, to the utmost of their power, on any measure upon which, as lawgivers, they might be called upon to decide, and who, nevertheless, on this, the most important measure which ever was submitted to the vigilant eye of any legislature, without any consideration of their solemn duty, or, if considering it, utterly disregarding it and setting it aside, pledged themselves, in the face of noisy multitudes, not to examine, and sift, and scrutinize, not to weigh nicely, and balance accurately, and separating the bad from the good, if haply good were to be found, to eschew the one, and give effect to the other, but to vote blindly and resolutely for the whole, and no alteration of the most unrighteous measure which was ever invented by the spirit of party for the beguiling of a free people.

"I did not use the word hatred; but if it be to be used, these are they on whom it will fall. It will fall also on the Ministers of the King; men, whose first duty being to support the laws, and protect the property, and maintain the rights of the liege subjects of the King their mas ter, have proposed a measure to the Parliament, which strikes directly at the root of all law, violates the sacred rights of property, and breaks down and tramples upon long-used privileges, not only without any adequate recompense, either of public or of private advantage, but with open scorn and contumely to those who are thus at once robbed and insulted, and the most imminent peril to the peace and security of the common weal. who talk of prop erty, and yet disregard titles confirmed by a use of centuries, and sanctioned by the solemn decisions of the ablest judges of the law-who plead for the right of all who pay taxes to an equal

Men

ciples of all society and all government, for a brief and unhonoured season of an insecure and tottering power. They saw that the cause of peace, and order, and property, and religion, and law, was the cause of England; but that it was a cause which could only be defended by a union of the old governments of Europe. They saw that the spirit which had levelled temple and tower, would never rest while an altar remained undesecrated, or a legitimate throne existed for a temptation to its cupidity. They saw that to this spirit, law was an insult, and property crime. They therefore laid the great foundations of a work, which had for its object the preservation of the peace of Europe, by the suppression of democratic violence, and the maintenance of the happiness of the nations, by a firm opposition to all tyrannies, whether of mobs or of despots. It was, indeed, a holy work, but it was undertaken in no romantic mood, nor prosecuted on any abstract principles of vague and theoretic policy. It was not commenced, till, in the words of the father of his people, the Assembly, then exercising the powers of government in France, had, without previous notice, directed acts of hostility to be committed against the persons and property of his Majesty's subjects, in breach of the law of nations, and of the most positive stipulations of treaty, and had since, on the most groundless pretences, declared war against his Majesty and the United Provinces.' It was then that England drew the sword which she sheathed on the evening of Waterloo. The chief spirits had, indeed, passed away. Burke and Pitt were laid low; but they did not leave their places destitute, nor their principles unasserted and Perceval, and Castlereagh, and Liverpool, and Canning, rising up and following, alas! in too rapid a succession, and working by the lines traced by those master-builders, filled up the prophetic sketch of the great edifice of England's glory. There are yet other names, which should be added to the list of those who have realized the visions of Burke, and the hopes of England's chosen minister. But they still live and I have a foolish antipathy against writing the praises of an existing generation. Englishmen know in whom they have

:

"And now, let it not be thought, that at the time when England was arming in defence of her own people and the rights of good government, she had no internal enemies to contend with, or that there were no Zoilitish critics of her own happy constitution, who vied with the Jacobins of Paris in vilifying her institutions, and bringing false accusations against her parliaments. No; the work of preserving the Government and liberties of England was done in defiance of domestic as well as of foreign fees. Then, too, were there Parliamentary Reformers; and Mr Grey was their youthful leader; then, too, were corresponding societies; and Mr Grey was their faithful correspondent; then, too, were there clubs, and unions, and associations of Friends of the People, and the prime minister of England did not correspond with them; but Mr Grey was the boon companion of the sots and drunkards of unmixed liberty, which is unmitigated madness, and the foreman of the Helotism of their democratic revelries, and their humble organ in the Commons' House of Parliament.

trusted, and in whom their confidence has not been misplaced. They know to whose arm they are indebted for their national existence and they will still look with hope, as well as with gratitude, to that brave man,

Cui Laurus æternos honores Dalmatico peperit triumpho.'

"But that House of Commons had not so learned their duty as to quail before mobs and newspapers; nor so read the book of the English constitution, as to suppose that a French model was the properest die for the re-casting of the institutions of Great Britain. The Russells, and the Greys, and the Lennoxes, still hallooed on the rabble of Manchester, and Derby, and Palace Yard; but Burke wrote, and Pitt frowned them out of countenance, and preserved their properties and their titles in spite of their principles and their friends. It is good to recur once more to the testimony of a King, than whom, it is no disparagement to his successors to say, that none ever better understood the true interests of his country, nor pursued them with a steadier faith. He was addressing his Parliament previously to its prorogation in June, 1793, and immediately after Mr Grey's motion for referring the Reform petitions to a committee of the House of Commons had been rejected by a majority of 241. And he thus addressed them :

holders, and therefore it was wickedness or madness in him to go Recorder to Bristol! The silly charge is false. He argued against the principle of the Bill, with great eloquence and learning, occasionally enlivening his main argument with the humanest merriment, which those matchless masters of the facete, the radical reporters and paragraph-men, called buffoonery-too coarse for their delicate and fastidious taste, accustomed as it is to the utmost polish of repartee, and the most exquisite refinement of satire. But Sir Charles Wetherell insulted nobody-no class of bodies; and the accusation is altogether a lie. Things have come to a pretty pass, when a few harmless jokes are said to be sufficient to justify criminals in murdering judges; yet what else in effect was said by almost all the ministerial papers, while Ministers themselves were mute? Thieves, robbers, incendiaries, ravishers, and murderers, resolved to dismember Sir Charles, because they could not endure the thought that the L.10 householders of Bristol should occasionally have been the object of his witticisms in Parliament! This is Cinna the poet-" tear him to pieces for his bad verses." This is Charley Wetherell -the wit-tear him to pieces for his bad jokes ; and this mob-law seemed reasonable to the Press! Why, the Lord Chancellor scatters round the woolsack his flowers of wit in great profusionsome of them rather prickly, like nettles or thistles; but the Press complains not of his being sometimes more witty than wise-more humorous than decorous; nor have we seen cursed and bann'd as ma

lignant, the union in him of the two characters of politician and judge. But the sensitive shopkeepers of Bristol must on no account be sneezed or sneered at by her Recorder. He must speak of them at all times and places with the profoundest respect, or lay his account, on his first visit, to be torn to pieces by their friends, the thieves and thimble-men, during an illumination got up to celebrate his

murder. Before such base sentiments could be uttered by the many hundreds of thousands who blamed Sir Charles for merely doing his duty, in spite of the friends and relatives of the wretched culprits whom he was

about to try, a revolution, one is almost tempted to say, must have taken place in the English mind. And we allude to such disgusting debasement now, because it was of a piece with the conduct of the same people towards the Peers, who were said richly to deserve any maltreatment they might meet with from the mob, in their persons or their property, whether the rabble might attempt to strike from his horse with stones one of our most distinguished cavalry officers, who had often charged the French in Spain, or to fling one of their noble benefactors over a bridge, or to set hall or castle on fire-so that it were but insult and injury to an Opposition

Peer.

And what, then, is the danger of again rejecting the Bill-the danger to the Peers? None but such as they have already despised-encountered-overcome-and even that much mitigated; for whatever may be the case with respect to the opinions (opinions!) of the populace on the Bill, there assuredly has been reaction of manly feeling, where it was not utterly extinct; courage, the characteristic quality of Englishmen, restored and revived, has shamed cruelty and cowardice out of countenance; and men are seen putting off the brute, even among the rabble of the radicals. The excitements of the press are getting stale and vapid; even the most senseless are becoming sick of the repetition of the same sounds, " full of noise and fury, signifying nothing;" the better informed, who are generally the better disposed, have been becoming more and more indignant at the cutting and shuffling of the cards in the hands of the revolutionists, who are afraid to play the game of their own choosing; and to a large and powerful body of Reformers, THE EDUCATED RADICALS, the Ministry are now objects of scorn and contempt. The populace are not now for the Bill, the whole Bill, and nothing but the Bill; and as for the people, the great majority of the people are against it, as has been proved elsewhere in this number of our work.

The fear may be great-and it is so among the pluckless-but the danger is small-and what if it were formidable, what would that matter