themselves pledged, by every obliga tion that can bind the human conscience. But will the exigencies of the country wait for this courtier-like bargain of conscience for conscience? Are there not questions of the mightiest importance pressing at this moInent for decision?

But are we to be told that the Cabinet has its proportion of Tory Ministers sufficient to prevent any immediate public misfortune; that if Lord A. be a notorious organ of the lowest liberalism, Lord B. will raise his voice at the table against overthrowing the constitution; that if Lord C. be the public assailant of the Church, the avowed advocate of every sectarian insult, the chosen delegate of Popish petitions; Lord D. is an honest man, who makes a speech against Popery once a-year; or that if Mr Such-a-one be a notorious disciple of the giddiest school of the giddiest politics, a new Turgot, trained to office in some revolutionary club, and inflated with systems, contemptuous of every maxim of British trade, he is safely balanced by some Tory, who thinks Turgot the quack that he was? How much are we bettered by this? Or, are men of common sense to be told that, the true use of a Cabinet is for one half of the members to be spies and antagonists of the other that national strength is to be found in ministerial disunion, and that our only hope against public undoing, is the hope that the Cabinet will never agree upon any one question whatever? But even this miserable chance cannot be left to us long. The high places of power are already in the hands of Whiggism; Toryism already disowns its representatives in the Cabinet, as degraded by the Coalition, and sustaining a feeble underpart, equally adverse to public interests, and personal dignity. Whiggism is already pushing its retainers into the peerage, sapping the indolent vigour of the righteous cause, and labouring to turn into apostates those who could condescend to be, under any circumstance, allies.

The English nation have seen this whole procedure with the scorn that affects honest men at the sight of the basest treachery. They are indignant at the helplessness, ignorance, and mean tergiversation, that characterise the Cabinet; they feel themselves degraded before Europe, by the extra

ordinary spectacle which their Govern ment presents at this hour; a substitute administration, a provisional, experimental cabinet, a deputy-assistance-ship of power; a wretched system of trickery, and shifting in all points, men and measures alike, all feeble, poor, and contradictory.

The parentage of this provisional system was suitable to the character of the unhappy individual by whom it was produced. But this piece of political ambidexterity was intended by him to continue only for the moment. Like Falstaff, he brought his ragged regiment only to save appearances, and be peppered. He would have scorned to march with them through Coventry. His compact with his politicians was plain; their places were, like soup tickets, to be valid only for a day. With what face the proposal was made, is below serious speculation; but the genius of caricature never dipped his pencil in richer burlesque than that scene of unsubstantial glories.

"You," says the Premier to one, "have for thirty years retired from public life to the administration of the farm yard, to still the storms of ves➡ tries, and sit the dispenser of law to clowns-You shall be Secretary of State-But observe, it is but for a week." To another. "You have been rambling through the coffee-houses and coteries of the Continent, since your failure in public life; and know infinitely less of England and her po litics, than of the Palais Royal-You shall have the Home Department. But I will not allow you to have it above ten days." To a third. "Nature made you for a clerkship, and into that you must sink at last-You shall have the Treasury. But a fortnight is the very utmost of your tenure." To all. "I am engaged in the despe rate attempt to patch up a Government for this time; you must be my patches. I mean to make an attack on public honour and national security, you must be my forlorn hope, to receive the first fire of public indigna tion, and fill up with your worthlessness the ditch, that I must pass at the head of other men to the plunder of the Constitution."

If Mr Canning had survived, he would long ago have either broken up this Provisional Government and com pleted his Cabinet, or retired. For

SO

even his subtlety was manliness and plain dealing to the system of his successors; more dignified even his craftiness, than that system which unites all that is mean in political duplicity, with all that is rash in public hazard, in which black and white are mingled, that we cannot distinguish the one from the other. We say, rather than be eternally disgusted with this coward hypocrisy, let us have a plain, avowed Whig Administration. Let us see the Colonies abandoned to the hands of an Ami des noirs. The Foreign Secretaryship given up to a worn-out Jacobin, publicly proscribed by foreign courts. The army given up to the Queen's Commander-in-chief, and something or other found for that babbling Empiric, that surprising Philosopher, who, with the basest eagerness for the most paltry distinction of place, is repelled by the bitter consciousness, that to bring him into office would blast his party; and is content to lurk and lie by, in the dastard hope, that he may yet steal into, what they dare not give, nor he seize.

Let us examine for a moment the working of such an Administration, or even of one in which Whiggism should possess the majority, on our foreign relations. England seems to have been designed by Providence for the protectress and arbiter of the continental kingdoms: her physical disunion from the continent has formed her moral bond: unfitted to make European conquests, she can wisely desire no territory beyond the Channel: within that great fortification she is secure : thus, at once unassailing and unas sailable, she stands on somewhat of the splendid impunity of a superior being, unsuspected of evil, and vigorous only to serve the general interests of mankind. But the predominance of Whiggism extinguishes the noble character of benevolent power, and summons up in its place a fierce revolutionary shape, threatening every throne of Europe. Our best allies already shrink from the overbearing liberalism of the British Government. What confidence can they repose in a Cabinet recruited from their libellers? The speeches of the Whig party are before them, running over with insults, individual and national. What sovereign has not been held up to contempt by the habitual sarcasm and

vulgar railing of the men, whom we are now to suppose controlling every part of our intercourse with foreign courts? What foreign diplomatist has not found his departure followed by a burst of safe sneering and poltroon ridicule from them? What foreign incendiary, (however notoriously the tool of Jacobinism,)—what lurking conspirator against the quiet of his native government, (no matter how notoriously his career had been one of treachery and blood,)-has failed to ask and receive the protection of our Liberals? With what aversion and surprise must every Sovereign that would not bare his throat to the revolutionary sword, have heard the doctrines of a Jacobin club thus promulgated from the lips of a British Minister?

"The next war to be kindled in Europe, if it spread beyond the narrow limits of Spain and Portugal, will be a war of a most tremendous character-8 war, not merely of conflicting armies, but of conflicting opinions: England will see under her banner, arrayed for the contest, all the discontented and restless

spirits of the age-all those who, whether justly or unjustly, are dissatisfied with the present state of their own country. There exists a power to be wielded by Great Britain more tremendous than was ever, perhaps, put into action within the memory of mankind."

By whom were these fatal doctrines cheered? from whose books were they taken? They were the very words of Whiggism, applauded by that faction alone, and thus publicly pronounced as the purchase of its assistance in overthrowing the natural polity of England. The palliatives which accompanied these fierce declarations, were the language of the man; the substantial threats belonged to the party whom he courted-they were the very echo of the old revolutionary uproar against kings, the rabble-cry of Guerre aux palais! revived to head the manifesto of a Liberal Coalition. The true and sole purpose was that alliance: the modern Æolus was no more disposed than the ancient to let loose his tempests without a price :"connubio jungam stabili propriamque dicabo" was the agreement; and for the loan of the storm, he was to lead to the altar the reluctant blushes of the most modest of factions.

England is not merely a mighty

depository of the peace of nations, but the highest earthly guardian of the purest form of religion. She has hitherto held the shield over Protestantism throughout the world; and how vast an extent of bloodshed and misery she may have prevented, how many fetters she may have condemned to rust, how many dungeons to decay, they may imagine who have traced the old fury of persecution, while yet unchecked by this great protectress. But with what eyes would Protestant Europe behold the British legislature under the guidance of a set of shallow sciolists, whose tenderness for Popery is but a symptom of their contempt for religion? With what feelings could she approach a Cabinet filled with Whigs, in some great day of trial and suffering, which may not be far off, and which such a revolution in the established policy of this country may very probably hasten ?

Their home policy is still more palpably vicious: here they almost scorn disguise, and scarcely hesitate to avow, in distinct words, that they have three great objects of hostility,-the Peerage, the Church, and the Crown.

The House of Lords is more than a showy receptacle for the higher portion of the commonwealth, or a stately instrument of the prerogative: it is an integral and essential member of the body of our freedom. The democratic party of the constitution is regulated, and held in salutary awe, by the higher senate. But slightly interposing in the immediate popular effervescence, it gives time for wisdom to take the place of passion. It is impossible to calculate the value of that quiet which the existence of the Peerage secures to the public mind of this country on all occasions of new emergency, on every stirring of any untried perilous question. It extinguishes the necessity of that continual nervousness which is essential to public safety in a democracy. Instead of being compelled to perpetual watching round every corner of the horizon for the banners of the enemy, instead of being condemned to a harassing vigilance, the relaxation of which might be death, we can lay aside our arms in the incomparable security that, while this great guardian of the constitution stands in our front, we cannot be taken by surprise. We have the consciousness that no important change

can be attempted, without having undergone the revision of a council, removed equally from popular rashness, and dishonourable submission to power; and the result has been national tranquillity, to an extent and under circumstances which foreigners can never contemplate without wonder. The most extraordinary popular effervescences, the most violent concussions of party, measures that would overwhelm the governments of the continent with the force of an earthquake, are heard of here with scarcely a disturbance of the ordinary pursuits of men. The most menacing shapes of public evil move on our left and on our right, yet we scarcely lift our eyes from our natural labours to ask whence they came, or whither they go. The necessary work of life feels no interruption, and the empire proceeds in the path of opulence and power, calm in the consciousness that the evil will be repelled without any extraordinary interference. Who, for example, can doubt that the general quiet of the country, during the discussions of the Roman Catholic Question, has arisen from the belief that it could never pass the Lords? There are, even by the admission of the Whigs, thousands and tens of thousands of the highest, purest, and most accomplished minds in this country, who devoutly believe that the passing of that question, under any shape which it has hitherto assumed, would be national ruin. There are many, we cannot doubt, who would die martyrs at the stake rather than see Protestantism polluted by Popery, as a sharer in the government of the Church of England. There are many, bred up in the school of the true and ancient Whiggism, who would feel this to be the first blow at the constitution, an únatoneable violation of that freedom, which, once offended, flies, and leaves a nation without a hope or a virtue. Yet of this multitude, mighty, determined, and, we venture to say, absolutely irresistible, how few have stirred? The mere idle rumour of a change in the opinion of the Upper House during the last session of Parliament, which, in a moment, covered its table with petitions, might teach the most conceited tamperer with the feelings of the nation, what would be the effect if such a rumour were true. There can be no theory more incontestable,

than that to the general security as to this and every other great question, inspired by the House of Lords, we owe, that the country is not, in every hour of every session, convulsed through all its provinces with conflicting opinions, maddened with partisanship, and torn asunder between men looking for relief from a condition of miserable and ruinous anxiety to the fatal composure of an absolute monarchy, and others inflamed into the worse insanity of a Jacobin revolution. Yet to break down this power, and humiliate the character of the House of Lords; to represent their services as a mere incumbrance; to hold them up as a body to the derision and contempt of the populace,-is the favourite and eternal aim of Whiggism.

The hostility of the Whigs against the Church is still more virulent and contemptuous; but this is a subject too extensive for us to enter on now. The overthrow of the Church of England is the daily theme of their subordinate organs. Speeches, pamphlets, poems, reviews, romances, every form in which a pen, studious of evil, can hope to shake or seduce the people, all are called on and enlisted in a warfare, the first object of which is to triumph over the Established Church :-need we ask what are its ultimate expectations?

Their hostility against the Crown has been personal and rancorous in the basest degree. The private slander, the public insult, libel, caricature, the eternal scoff at monarchy, were their habitual instruments through the long period of exile. And yet they could sink themselves lower than even these foul arts had placed them. The career of treacherous sycophancy-remained behind. It is only the rep tilism of faction that can at once feed on the dust, and sting the foot on whose dust it feeds. We speak of things notorious. All men have seen, with disgust immeasurable, the fierceness of their opposition succeeded by the meanest submission of office-the rebel stimulant contrasted with the slavish compromise-every commonplace of faction suddenly sunk into abject silence. On this infinitely repulsive and humiliating subject, we disdain to say more.

Loss of principle often betrays the

mind into a loss of sense; therefore we need scarcely wonder to find the Whigs attempting to vindicate coalitions. The Revolution, say they, was effected by a coalition; the Seven Years' War was carried on by a coalition! Agreed;-but if the highest national emergencies alone can be brought, even by such apologists as those, to justify the connexion of men previously opposed in politics, must we not ask what national emergency six months ago transferred the whole body of Whiggism to the footstool of the man whose life had been spent in spurning them? No one denies that between the principal personages on the two sides the fiercest public wrath had been deepened by the bitterest personal offence.

Every one admits that the Prime Minister had always and openly declared his most solemn adherence to the constitution, against what is called Reform; to the principle of tests against sectarian aggression; and that he had even added to his repugnancies the pledge not to suffer the Roman Catholic bill to have the influence of his Cabinet; that the Whigs, on the other hand, had declared their most solemn conviction that the Minister, whoever he might be, who should dare to refuse these concessions, all and each of them, must be utterly incapable of government, utterly barred from the confidence of honest men-in plain opposition language, either a fool or a rogue; that the country must continue on the verge of ruin till all these concessions had been made; that the Roman Catholic question, in particular, could not be deferred a single year, or a single month, without the most imminent hazard of a general rebellion in Ireland, and the consequent abscission of that Island from the empire; over and above all, that they had pledged themselves, man by man, in this belief to live and die—and that all men who maintained a different set of opinions must be either dolts or traitors, or a compound of both. Yet at the beck and wreathed smile of the Premier, the whole troop, with this declaration fresh upon their lips, marched across the house, and placed themselves under his orders, leaving their noisy herds of ragged suitors out of doors to blank astonishment-every more intelligent adherent of their sect