WHAT IS A REVOLUTION? THERE is no country perhaps where the truth in political matters is to be discovered with such difficulty as in England. The freedom of the press, which, in the drier topics of literature and science, is the real source of accuracy and knowledge, here diverts or obstructs our view by the constant misrepresentation of party feeling. The nature of our constitution, indeed, makes every political point a ground of general attachment to one side or the other it is not merely that the leader of a party in the Houses of Parliament, or even his friends, maintain the struggle; but his friends also have their friends, they theirs, and so on through a long descending list of eager and active combatants: these too generally increasing in acrimony in proportion as they are farther removed from the original scene of action; each man's zeal being mixed up with some private and personal feeling that ties him individually to the cause. grounds his political creed on the tenets of his acquaintances or relations, another (and that by no means an uncommon case) on the hereditary sentiments of his family. For, are there indeed in any line of life that write, or speak, or think, according to abstract ideas of right or wrong, or that feel themselves calm and wholly disinterested on any material political question? One Nor does this peculiarity of our countrymen, though originating in the turn given to us by our form of government, limit itself to matters strictly speaking political. Every subject in England becomes in one way or other a party question; at no time is a single new proposition admitted without the most violent, it might almost be said, interested discussion; and each new scheme that is brought forward, divides for a while the public mind. Whether a religious society shall distribute Bibles with or without the Common Prayer Book, whether children shall be inoculated for the small pox, or undergo vaccination, are questions in which every man in the country takes a part one way or other: nay, even the price of admission to a theatre becomes an object of riot with some, and with the rest, of eager and passionate debate. Newspapers and reviews are speedily enlisted on both sides. Those who do not think for themselves let these writers furnish them with their queue: they are then armed as their neighbours, and come forth boldly to the war of words. Such then is, by the very nature of our constitution, the peculiar irritability of the public mind in this country. But at a moment when, to further this temperament, the minds of the higher classes are at once stimulated and unsettled by the rapid and encyclopædi cal modes of gaining general sketches of universal knowledge; while among the lower a new mode of education has put it in the power of every man, even the poorest in the realm, to read, and think, and reason—may we not justly be led to inquire what alteration is under these circumstances produced in our condition? Should we not ask, what means have we yet devised to direct the new energies that will henceforth be developed amongst us? or what powers of government have we provided, that can keep pace with these advancements of the age? what means to satisfy the host of inquirers daily increasing in number as in intellectual strength? We have arrived too at a point of elevation hitherto unknown in the civilised world, and one that calls for our utmost circumspection. While our population is already too numerous for our occasions, our machinery and inventions are daily encroaching on the legitimate province of honest industry. While imperfections have insensibly crept into our establishments at home, the long continued exertions of a war of twenty years, have forced the commercial and the monied world to a state precarious and insecure. And we observe with dismay, that while our press enjoys a freedom from control unknown elsewhere, our huge and unwieldy metropolis has grown to a size that exceeds by nearly one half, the capital of any other European state. Certain measures are applicable to certain times and circumstances; but when we reflect seriously on our condition, we can appeal to no maxims of experience applicable to such a state of things. We have an unknown world before us. We see no tract or trace of others, and to direct the helm of state under these circumstances, is to undertake a task hitherto uncommitted to the hand of man. VOL. XIV. Pam. NO. XXVII. D It may be urged that this has, for the most part, arisen from the common order of things: and we can readily believe, that from the moment when a free constitution was our's, we were destined to make a progress beyond the rest of the world in knowledge, activity, wealth, and power. And it will readily be conceded too, that from the moment when the art of printing was displayed to our forefathers, it was in fact decreed, that a day should come when knowledge would be communicated to every one, even the lowest orders of the civilised world. This may be. Nature however will not do all : she requires artificial assistance to prune and trim on occasion, as well as to foster and to aid. The age of luxuriance, if unrestrained, is but the forerunner of decay. In the first place then, since the benefits of general education are extended to all, let us inquire what sort of political instructors the common people, or in other words, the numerical majority of the nation, are likely to meet with: they doubtless need some, and, unless I am mistaken, every step made, and every advancement any how gained, has in this country a tendency finally political. They have instructors however. There are a numerous set of writers who publish popular journals at a cheap rate, attainable to the poorest individual, and these are almost all produced on that leisure day-Sunday. They treat almost wholly of political matters, or if any extraneous subjects are introduced towards the conclusion, they appear only as secondary to the chief object. They are all writers on one side in politics, as will soon be seen there is now, I believe, no opposition to them in any quarter; one or two attempts having been made, but soon failing for want of due support. Cobbett's two-penny Register is the first of this description, but there are also many others; a few quotations from which shall be introduced for the sake of illustration, and in order to show to that part of society who have hitherto neglected to look after these men, or, perhaps, too confident in appearances of present security, disdained to regard these attempts, what sort of language it is they employ, and what are really their aims and intentions. The first quotation is on a familiar subject; and shall be taken from a weekly paper called the Gorgon, which is circulated at the cheap rate of one penny each number. "There, however, remains one resource for people in the country. It is not to petition the House of Commons, nor the House of Lords, nor the Regent-no; we have had enough of that folly already: do not go there to be laughed at: you might as well bay the moon.' What we recommend is-RESISTANCE.-Yes: unite and resist manfully. Who are they that would humbug you out of your rights and property?" June 6, 1818. The next quotation is from Sherwin's Political Register. Price two-pence. "The approaching dissolution of this infamous assembly, cannot afford us the least hope of obtaining a more just or liberal one, whilst they have the means of constituting a majority by their own nomination; therefore I should be sorry to hear that any person, who might wish to reform that House, should either waste his time or his substance in returning any of those members who compose what is termed the Whig Party, or Opposition; as experience has taught us that those men are as inimical to the interests of the people as the other party; and I have no hesitation in asserting that our enemies would be deterred from pursuing those stretches of power, were they only opposed by the voice of the people out of that house, rather than by a systematic opposition to every act either liberal or illiberal, by men, who may be fairly considered as hired for that purpose only." March 14, 1818. "In the last number of the Register I gave a brief description of the characters of the members of that House, which insultingly forces its decrees upon the public under the title of legislation." Sherwin's Political Register. Feb. 13, 1819. After endeavouring to degrade the existing government, the next step is to persuade the people at large that they are themselves the fittest to supply their places. The next quotation is from the Edinburgh Reflector. "But while men are indifferent to the politics of their rulers, and unambitious to possess a rank as men in the state, the progress of this cause will not be so rapid as many sanguinely suppose. Nothing can be more ludicrous than to hear people boasting of their country, of the name of Briton, of their freedom and their glory, when these same persons are probably no more entitled to call themselves free, than the veriest slaves in the Seraglio of the Grand Turk." No. X. Sept. 1818. In similar style the Black Dwarf expresses himself on the subject of some act of parliament lately passed: "The poor may well wish to be legislators for themselves, when such legislation disgraces the statute book. In that junta of St. Stephen's, there was no one who saw the iniquity of such a proceeding-or if there were one, the complaisance which even good men agree to pay to knaves in that assembly, stifled the voice of justice in embryo." June 6, 1818. Price 4d. On another occasion, the existence of the monarchy is threatened in direct terms; and rebellion is called (in the words of La Fayette) |