the greatness and the wealth of the country. A statesman, if he has any principle and patriotism at all, must know and feel that it is his duty to administer such laws only as in his sober and sound judgment are calculated to promote the welfare of his country; and it may, therefore, be assumed as a general principle, that such measures as are passed by a majority of the legislature are such as the collective wisdom of parliament has deemed best adapted to accomplish that end. It is believed to have always been more or less the aim and study of the different governments of Great Britain, since the time of Elizabeth, to advance the interests and prosperity of commerce. The position and resources of England rendered this an obvious and important source of political, as well as of social, greatness and power. Such facilities, therefore, have always been granted, and such restrictions imposed, as appeared best calculated and most desirable for promoting the commercial prosperity of the kingdom. The result of this uniform progressive policy has been that the country has gradually but steadily advanced to a degree of greatness, power, and importance in the scale of nations, exceeding anything that has ever existed in the world. The inventive genius of man, however, travels infinitely faster than the steadily revolving wheels of commercial industry and of honest enterprise; and had governments been driven by that force of imagination which some classes of society have exhibited, it is questionable whether the greatness and the power of Britain would not have been long ago for ever engulphed in irretrievable ruin.

It is well for a great country when those men are to be found at the helm of the state, who, by the exercise of sound wisdom and experience, can steer through the surging billows of popular commotion, without hazarding either the safety of the ship or the lives of the crew; but by keeping steadily in a course of progressive advancement, corresponding to, but not outrunning, the developement of general experience, pursue a voyage alike safe and beneficial to all. It is well when wisdom, seated in authority, can lay a restraining hand upon thoughtlessness and error, and peacefully rebuke the indulgence of those excesses that would lead only to anarchy and ruin. Great and rapid as has been the advance of trade and commerce in Britain, and magnificent as is the spectacle which she now presents of wealth, power, and influence among the other nations of the world, there are hundreds and thousands of her inhabitants ready to gainsay this mighty truth, and to fulminate the thunderbolts of discontent and revolution upon the executive government, because the wheels of trade do not revolve with the rapidity they desire; because every honest and salutary restriction upon commerce,

domestic and foreign, is not at once and for ever, without thought or compensation, thrown to the winds; because every poor man is not supplied with an abundance of food; and because money, as in the days of Solomon, is not as plentiful as the stones in our streets. Each man looks around his own fireside, or his own workshop, and because he sees not that abundance, nor enjoys that constant demand for his labour, which his selfishness or his avarice would desire, he is ready to tax the executive government as the authors and promoters of his misery. He knows nothing of the principles of trade, and perhaps thinks less, but becomes a willing instrument in the hand of every demagogue whose interest and ambition may be served by filling his mind with vague, undefinable, and absurd ideas that the government can make the trade of the country prosperous or adverse at pleasure; that it can make money scarce or abundant-men rich or poor, miserable or happy, at will. The same views, with various modifications, extend into higher classes of society; so that whatever may be the natural facilities or impediments to trade-whatever may be the prosperous or adverse condition of other countries-whatever may have been the rates or principles, if any, by which production was regulated-the government are held to be the authors of all commercial, as well as political misery. If manufactures are depressed, the government is to blame, because certain restrictions exist in respect to agricultural produce; if agriculture is depressed, it is because it is not sufficiently protected from foreign competition; if the general trade of the country is deranged, it is because the currency is unsound, and the government will not issue inconvertible paper. Thus the government is always at fault when there is any derangement in the trade, commerce, and agriculture of the country. Nay, one class will combine themselves into an association for the futile purpose of endeavouring to persuade every other class, and convince even the government, that some great interest in the country ought to be broken down and destroyed. Such, for instance, is the AntiCorn-Law League, chiefly composed of the manufacturing classes, who, because their own trade has been overdone and become depressed, vainly attempt, by the force of numbers and false reasoning, to assure the public that trade will never be improved until the corn laws are abolished. Their mode of argument is not the most consistent, but it may be taken as a specimen of the means by which particular sections of the community will often wickedly attempt to accomplish their own selfish ends. The Anti-Corn-Law League assure the people, that if a free trade in corn is established, bread will be cheap and wages high. They inform the masters that wages will be low, and manufactures con

sequently cheaper. They represent to the manufacturers that the landlords and farmers are taxing the country to the extent of many millions annually; and they endeavour to mystify the landlords and farmers into the belief that foreign corn cannot be imported cheaper than it is grown, and that free trade in corn will infallibly benefit the landed interest.

Although it is too much the practice in our own, and in many other countries, to throw all the blame of commercial and political adversity upon the government, and to overlook what are in reality the great and active natural causes of such changes, it would be idle to suppose that governments must never deserve censure. It would be alike foolish and erroneous to contend that the affairs of a nation may not be mismanaged, as well as the affairs of a household; and that the general interests of commerce may not be neglected, as well as the private interests of a merchant. At the same time it ought to be borne in remembrance, that every branch of our commercial industry is liable to be affected by causes which are amply sufficient of themslves to derange the entire trade of the country without the interference of the legislature; and that to such influences no counteracting measures can be applied by government.

As regards influence and responsibility in commercial as well as in political matters, governments may be ignorant, negligent, or wilfully perverse, obstinate, and incapable. The capacity and adequate qualifications of men for official and political stations are seldom accurately known, and must indeed remain in some measure doubtful, until they have been fairly and fully tested; until the nation has had ample and sufficient opportunity to form a cool and dispassionate judgment respecting them. The professions of some statesmen when out of office are always more or less profuse-more or less unbounded, extravagant, and adapted to entrap the understanding, confound the reason, and excite the most glowing visions of future greatness and prosperity in the event of their being intrusted with power. The affairs of government, however, if honestly and diligently attended to, if entered upon with a sincere determination to investigate and advance, by every possible means, the general interests of society, are found not to hold out nor realize to official characters such important and pleasant seats of mere sinecures, which many clever men, contemplating them at a distance, fondly but ignorantly imagine. It is one thing to look at the glitter, the trappings, and the imposing array of steeds, carriages, and attendants, with which the affairs of a nation, like the mere onward procession of a state coach, are conducted; and quite another and a much less enticing and delightful exercise, to hold the reins of government; to

wield the whip of power, influence and patronage; and to curb, control, and successfully guide in a smooth, even, prosperous, and triumphant course, those varied, conflicting, and ever restless and contending interests which compose the individual materials of the aggregate mass of society.

Thus when the Whigs came into power, under the emblazoned and wide-spread banner of "Reform, Retrenchment, Peace," the world, as if by enchantment, rushed headlong after the lurid, glowing, but evanescent meteor, as it flaunted pompously before their enraptured gaze, and shouted with long, loud, and increasing voice for Grey, Russell, and Reform. The Reform Bill was to have been a complete, perfect, and absolute cure and preventative of all disorders in the state, social and political, and thenceforward Englishmen were to behold nothing in the constitution and character of their country but what was fair to look upon, lovely in its moral excellence, ennobling and awe-inspiring in the grandeur, dignity, and independence of its political perfection. But that measure, however honourable, upright, and well-intentioned may have been its projectors, evoked with fearful celerity, from the vast unfathomed deep of society, from the chaotic mass of countless thousands that had not before heard the loud call of senatorial privilege, a gaunt and terrible spirit, representing millions of unprivileged beings, which stood up mighty in the strength with which it was invested by the fears of its creators, and demanded with loud and undaunted fortitude, the concession of rights, privileges, and immunities that must have undermined for ever all the social and political greatness of the empire. Earl Grey shrunk abashed, rebuked, and confounded before his own Frankenstein, and retiring to meditate in solitude upon the uncertainty and dangerous nature of the elements that surround all human greatness, left to his unhappy colleagues and successors the unenviable and impracticable task of carrying out his various intentions, and of supporting, as their imbecility would best enable them, such measures as they considered calculated to promote the interests and the welfare of their country.

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The whole tenor of their policy, during the ten years that the Whigs remained in office, exercised the most mischievous, the most injurious, and, but for their timely removal, must have cipitated the most disastrous consequences upon the country at large. The steady and regular retrogression of affairs at home and abroad; the unsettling of commercial questions; the disturbing of political relations; and the incessant tossing, turning, and throwing about, without any apparent aim, object, or advantages, every thing sacred and profane, civil and political, relating to the social, moral, and national character and interests

of the people-tended to stamp the entire Whig government with an indelible mark of imbecility, and the want of any defined plan or motive in administering the affairs of the country. As might be expected, in the absence of sound tact, talents, and capacity for carrying on with success the onerous business of the executive departments of the state, the nation was gradually visited and encumbered with so great an amount of difficulties and suffering, that the longer toleration of a Whig ministry was impossible.

The following extract from the clever pamphlet entitled Thoughts on Traits of the Ministerial Policy, affords a fair idea of the state of affairs at home and abroad, when the Whigs were compelled to relinquish office in 1841:

"In the autumn of 1841 Sir Robert Peel entered office, at a period of distress and distraction which, on the representation of the men who for several years had held the administration of public business, stood altogether unexampled in the annals of this empire. The statement of Mr. Baring, the Whig finance minister, presented a gloomy prospect; the condition of large multitudes of the people was more gloomy still. The external markets of the world had been closing against the productions of British industry, and the home demand was scarcely more promising. Misery, fearful and widely extended, pervaded the great seats of manufacturing enterprise; deep despondency had been the general impression at home, while our relations with foreign states stood on the most critical and precarious footing.

"Year after year had passed, and year after year the financial deficiency-the unfavourable disproportion between the revenue and expenditure-had become more startling; the total deficit, for a period of ten years, amounting to the enormous sum of ten millions sterling. Without for the moment referring to the wisdom of a policy which flung away large sources of revenue with one hand, while it went on swelling expenses with the other, it is well to bear in mind that the expedients' resorted to by Mr. Baring, such as increasing the dead weight of assessed taxes, and of other imposts that press directly upon the material comforts of the middle and humble classes, had most miserably failed. So far from equalising the outgoings and incomings, they did not even mitigate the proportion of the discrepancy. We had wars impending, and wars in actual course of prosecution. There was the expedition of horrors north-west of India-there was the questionable contest with the Emperor of China-France, the most prominent power of the European continent, had been literally arming against us. In America, the long-rankling dispute on the boundary had festered into a threatened rupture. Give all praise for dexterity' to Lord Palmerston's conduct of our diplomatic correspondence with these two great powers-award to his lordship the most ample eulogy that may be earned by verbal cleverness,' by smartness of repartee, and much exercitation in routine ceremonial,-admit all this, and there still remains the mournful truth, that however smart and salient might have