EXTRACTS FROM VARIOUS AUTHORS, ON THE ENGLISH CON

STITUTION IN CHURCH AND STATE; ON PARLIAMENTARY
REFORM, PUBLIC ECONOMY, &c. WITH SOME REMARKS.

Of the eminent and enlightened persons whose opinions are here stated, it is hardly necessary to observe, that they were at least equal in talent, knowledge, and wisdom to the actors in the French revolution, the members of the defunct British corresponding societies, and the political unionists and agitators of the present day. The sentiments of such men are surely entitled to some attention.*

It may be said that these observations are out of season, and that the time for making them is past. That a great change has been made in the constitution of the House of Commons is true; and it is equally true, that it has hitherto proved a palpable failure; for it is generally admitted and complained of, that so great a waste of time, and so much blundering legislation have never been known, as took place in the two last sessions of parliament. Indeed, Lord Grey at the famous Edinburgh dinner, which he thought it comported with the dignity of a king's minister to attend, publicly acknowledged the incompetence and unfitness of several of those who were returned by the new-electors. And of so little value has the enlarged right of sufferage been considered, that many thousand persons who might qualify themselves to vote by paying a shilling for the registry, have not thought it worth while to do so. There have been few greater delusions produced on the public mind, than that by which a party has been enabled to pass the Reform Act.

However, what has been done, cannot easily be undone; but the progress of mischievous innovations, may perhaps be arrested, Changes have been suggested in our venerable Church Establishment. Some persoms have proposed its separation from the civil state, or rather its annihilation. Alterations have

likewise been more than hinted at in the constitution of the

* The incomparable work of Blackstone is so generally known, that it is not here quoted. The high opinion which Mr. Fox entertained of Blackstone may be seen in Trotter's Life of that statesman.

House of Peers, or in more formal and correct language, the Lords Spiritual and Temporal, who form two estates of the realm. These, it is conceived, would be ruinous and destructive innovations. To avert so great a calamity, the Editor of these pages is desirous of contributing his feeble, but well meant endeavours, and with that view he humbly offers what follows.

ON THE CONSTITUTION, IN CHURCH AND STATE.

Lord Bolingbroke's Opinion.

The following sentiments of the great Bolingbroke, who, if there ever was a man that thought and wrote freely, and without any narrow or illiberal prejudice (at least in favour of religion) was one, are well worth attention.

"They who talk of liberty in Britain, on any other principles than those of the British Constitution, talk impertinently at best, and much charity is required to believe no worse of them."

"Some men there are, the pests of society I think them, who pretend a great regard to religion in general, but who take every opportunity of declaiming publicly against that system of religion, or at least against that Church Establishment which is received in Britain: just so, the men of whom I have been speaking, affect a great regard to liberty in general; but they dislike so much the system of liberty established in Britain, that they are incessant in their endeavours to puzzle the plainest thing in the world, and to refine and distinguish away the life and strength of our Constitution, in favour of the little, present, momentary turns, which they are retained to serve What now would be the consequence, if all these endeavours should succeed? I am persuaded that the great philosophers, divines, lawyers and politicians, who exert them, have not yet prepared and agreed upon the plans of a new religion, and of a new constitution in Church and State: we should find ourselves therefore, without any form of religion or civil government. The first set of these missionaries would take off all the restraints of religion from the governed; and the latter set would

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remove, or render ineffectual, all the limitations and controuls which liberty hath presented to those that govern, and disjoint the whole frame of our Constitution. Entire dissolution of manners, confusion, anarchy, or perhaps, absolute monarchy, would follow; for it is possible, nay probable, that in such a state as this, and amidst such a rout of lawless savages, men would choose this government, absurd as it is, rather than have no government at all."-Dissertation upon Parties.

Mr. Fox's Opinion of the Constitution.

That eminent man, Mr. Fox, who very much admired the first new constitution established, or rather proposed in France; pronouncing it "one of the noblest fabrics of human wisdom," so far from disapproving of the constitution of this country, stated in the House of Commons as his decided opinion, "that every simple form of government, whether monarchy, aristocracy or democracy, was essentially bad; and that there could be no complete system of government without a mixture of the three. That so far from being an enemy to aristocracy, there was no man in that House who considered a proper and well regulated aristocracy, such as formed a part of the British Constitution, more essential to the formation of a good government than he did; that a certain degree of aristocracy was absolutely necessary, as a poise between the prerogative of the Crown acting against the rights of the people; and the influence and liberty of the people acting against the monarchial power; and that such a mixture, operating as a check upon each other, as they did in this country, was the best constitution in the world."-Speech on the Quebec Bill, Sept. 1792. Another report represents him as saying, that the English Constitution was that happy practicable equipoise which has all the efficacy of monarchy, and all the liberty of republicanism, moderating the despotism of the one, and the licentiousness of the other. Parl. Hist. vol. 2. p. 288.

Mr. Fox, as a politician was often violent and impetuous, which induced Mr. Windham (once his intimate friend) to make

the severe charge against Mr. Fox, (which he felt most acutely) of being "a pander to the base passions of the populace ;"* He was too easily persuaded by his party, being oftener led than a leader; yet the writer of this has had many opportunities of seeing by his letters, that privately he quite disapproved of many things which he did not publicly condemn; and there were several persons of his party in whom he had no confidence. He was at heart a very kind and benevolent man; and therefore, though he thought highly of the constitution first projected by the French National Assembly, he abhorred the cruelties perpetrated by the bloodhounds that subsequently governed, and he pronounced the death of the king to be a most foul murder. Indeed, in this opinion his party in general concurred; for when the account of that horrid event was known here, he and the members of both houses of parliament appeared in mourning, with the exception of Mr. Grey; and that might have happened from inadvertence.

After Mr. Fox's visit to Paris during the short peace, he formed a very different opinion of the First Consul and the French, from that which he had previously entertained. And subsequently when Napoleon had made himself Emperor, Mr. Fox openly condemned his arbitrary and unjustifiable conduct in making and unmaking† sovereign princes, and transferring their territories and subjects, like cattle, from one to another. The writer remembers to have heard Sir Samuel Romilly in the Court of Chancery, when Lord Erskine was Chancellor, "travel out of the Record" (and Sir Samuel seldom digressed) to speak for half an hour in reprobating the tyranny of the Gallic despot.

* Some of Mr. Fox's familiar Letters contained critical remarks. The Writer saw one, in which Mr. Fox found fault with the word relatives for relations, and in another he said he was not a great admirer of Junius. That writer makes but little mention of Mr. Fox, or Lord Holland, his father. In one letter he calls Mr. Fox, a pretty black boy. The following anecdote may be relied on: Dr. Horsley having preached a Sermon for the benefit of the Charity for the Deaf and Dumb, a gentleman after the service, mentioned that Mr. Fox had a natural son who was deaf and dumb, upon which the Doctor observed, "it would have been well, if the father also had been deaf and dumb."

†They have ceased to reign, was one of Buonaparte's laconic phrases.

Mr. Horne Tooke's Opinion on the English Constitution.

Mr. Horne Tooke who was a man of great acuteness and knowledge, but who seldom spoke favourably of men or things, and who was occasionally, in politics, what is sometimes called a Trimmer, observed, that "Some persons doubt, whether we ever had any constitution: and some have ventured to deny it. But their position is not true. They are mistaken. We had a good and a glorious constitution; and we still have a constitution in the books. But some honest and well meaning men, who know nothing of the constitution in the books, and who judge only from what they see, deny that we have a constitution." "But, I believe, that if rational, dispassionate and experienced men, were at liberty coolly to begin again, they would form exactly such a constitution as that which we have a right to. I believe they would by choice, and wisely, again establish hereditary Kings and hereditary Lords."-Speech on the trial of Mr. Fox's action against him, in 1792, in the Court of King's Bench.

MR. HUME'S OPINION OF MONARCHIAL AND REPUBLICAN

GOVERNMENTS.

This great philosopher, who was emphatically a Free-thinker, or, to use a new Frenchified term, a Liberal, says, "I would frankly declare, that though liberty be preferable to slavery in almost every case; yet I should rather wish to see an absolute monarch than a republic in this Island. For let us consider what kind of republic we have reason to expect. There is no doubt that a popular government may be imagined more perfect than even our present Constitution. But what reason have we to expect that such a government would be established? If a single person acquire power enough to take our Constitution to pieces and to put it up again, he is an absolute monarch; and we have already had an instance sufficient to convince us that he will not resign his power; and the House of Commons must be the only legislature in such a government. The inconveni