for the absurd object, in a country essentially | to make the house of commons the source of all commercial, of excluding all but the agricultural government, the very head of active authority in interest ;-certainly not of restricting the care of the state." This is, in every point, a gross conthe constitution to the wisdom of the country gen- stitutional error. The king and his ministers tlemen; but for the purpose of securing a house are the "great council of the nation." The parexempt from the actual wants which make cor- liament is simply the guardian of the constituruption easy and acceptable. Property in land tion. The king and his ministers, having in was justly deemed the best standard for this their hands all the questions of policy, the makpurpose, as being the most secure. The sum now ing of war and peace, the greatest of all, with appears small; but three hundred a year, even a every other function of public rule, are the only hundred years ago, was equal to twice the sum government. Whatever body in the state posnow, and was a considerable fortune. The opu- sesses the initiative in public questions, is essenlence of commerce floats and fluctuates, the land- tially the government. The business of the ed property was permanent, and formed a solid house is not to govern, but to guard. Our ancesground of character. The clear intention of the tors had too much the advantage of their poslaw was, that men entirely and permanently above terity, to conceive the monstrous proposition, that personal necessity should alone constitute the the promptitude, secresy, or deliberation essenlegislature. tial to the conduct of an empire, could be found in an open assembly of three hundred, or of six hundred and fifty-eight, more than in an assembly of as many millions. Its office is, therefore, not to originate measures of exigent counsel, but to check their invasions of national liberty; not to tyrannise, by absorbing the whole power of the state, but to stand between the nation and tyranny, let it come from what quarter it will, and with equal vigilance, whether from the cabinet or the multitude. And for this purpose it possesses one branch of power, and but one, the command of the national purse. Without money nothing can be done; and the minister who fails to justify his measure to the house, is thus instantly stopped in his career. It is true that, practically, to prevent subsequent disputes, the opinion of the house is asked in a variety of public affairs before their execution. But this is merely matter of ministerial convenience. The cabinet are not enjoined to make these communications, to ask this advice, to awake these debates. They may act, in the infinite majority of public transactions wholly on their own responsibility. The judgment of the legislature cannot anticipate, it must follow; it cannot prohibit, it can only punish. The king in council is the primary agent, the parliament is only a check on the minister if he comes to them for supplies; or, if he should not, a tribunal to impeach him for his negligence, incapacity, or treason.

But it is asserted that every man has a right by nature to a vote. No more than he has a right by nature to the British constitution, or the empire of China. A province in the moon would be as much the natural result of being born with two arms and two legs. All political rights are conventional. Man, by nature, has a right to nothing but what he can earn by his labour. Society is even so far from giving an enlargement of his natural right in this most essential instance, that it restricts the right. The savage in the wilderness has a right to all that he can hunt, fish, or till. The man of society is narrowed in all those rude privileges, his labour is put under guidance, his products are limited, his enjoyments are ruled, according to the general uses of the community. The whole revolutionary theory on this head is one successive blunder. In fact, when man has once coalesced with his fellow-men, all natural rights are rapidly extinguished. They are exchanged for one of more import than them all, but wholly growing out of his new association, the right of being protected. But this protection argues no right to civil office. On the contrary, society in all instances where wisdom has made the laws, enforces the demand of a qualification. The lawgiver knows that man is not, by nature, fit for power. He demands, therefore, that he shall exhibit his acquired fitness, before power can be entrusted to his hands. Prior to Lord John Russell's bill, that fitness was required in this The true office of parliament being thus defined, country in various shapes, arising from various the only question at all times can be, on which circumstances of life and history; in some in-side the danger of the constitution is most immistances, descent from a line of freemen, in others an apprenticeship of a certain number of years, implying regular habits and approved character; in others, purchase, which implies property, the chief stake required, and wisely required, for the security against the betrayal of trust, a negligence to public interest, or an abuse of power. All these are now merged in one, the ten-pound qualification; too low to constitute property, too high to let in what its authors call natural right; and after thus sinning against both principles, abolishing the whole system of securities derived from location, birth, industry, and character.

The new theory of parliament is equally a blunder. It pronounces the two houses "the great council of the nation, the supreme deliberative assembly, &c.; and its purpose is especially

nent. Two centuries ago, it was menaced most from the throne, and Charles, reigning for eleven years without a parliament, was, though a mild, and even a reluctant despot, a despot in the full sense of the constitution. Yet we see with what terrible energy the power of the populace distended itself, even in those times of hereditary veneration for the throne. Under Charles the constitution slept. Under the parliament it was brought from its slumbers only to be torn to pieces. Under Cromwell it was completely lost to sight, buried, to all human view, in a returnless grave.

Time obliterated the lesson, and popular fears and popular oratory, for the hundred years that followed, could see no enemy but the prerogative. They were in perpetual terror of being crushed

SCOTLAND.

In Scotland, 30 counties return 30 membersthe number of registered voters in 1832 being 33,114; 76 cities and boroughs return 23 members-the number of registered voters in 1832 being 31,332. Total, 53 members, and 64,446

voters.

IRELAND.

by the little pinnacle of power above their heads, while they walked fearlessly on ground every foot of which was charged with the materials of explosion. The French republic at length showed the power of the populace, and the fears of all who were honest in their zeal for the constitution, fixed themselves in that gigantic shape, which starting up from beneath their feet, grew hourly, until its height overtopped all the ancient forms of authority, and menaced universal change. In Ireland, 32 counties return 64 membersThe war saved us. The wisdom of Pitt in that the number of registered voters in 1832 being war raised a barrier, which the proud foot of 60,607; 34 cities and boroughs return 41 memJacobinism dared not overleap. The clamours bers-the number of registered voters in 1832 of conspiracy were extinguished in the magnani- being 31,545. Total, 105 members, and 92,152 mous voice of the nation, called to buckle on its voters. armour, and contend for the final stake of human kind. In that hour of general European difficulty, England, the true Achilles of a more authentic history, and a nobler time, forgetting all her injuries, all the discontents and slights of false friends and jealous rivals, saw nothing but the common cause, grasped the spear and shield, given by a higher than human hand, and springing on the last rampart of Europe, by her single shout restored the victory.

political movements, is constantly employed in speculations on public affairs, and from its habits of trade and manufacture, and its closer state of intercourse and communication, possesses tenfold the applicable power, and political excitability, and condensed force of the remaining population.

Thus in Great Britain, while the members for counties are but 189, the members for cities and boroughs are 364! The case is stronger still with respect to England, the most influential portion of all. There the county members being scarcely more than one-half the members for the towns, or 144 to 227! But even this view hardly shows the extent of the hazard. The population of the counties but slowly increases, while that of the towns is accumulating with hourly raThe point on which the wisdom of Lord John pidity; the county population is, from its nature, Russell's bill turns, is whether England is now nearly stagnant in point of political impulses, in more peril from royal or from popular domina-while the town population is perpetually urged to tion. A mob may be as much a tyrant as the most unbridled despot of Tartary. Whether was the English king or the English populace advancing more rapidly to illegal power? What man in his senses can hesitate to say, that the rapid increase of popular influence during the last twenty-five years has totally thrown the prerogative into the shade; that the true enemy which national freedom had to dread was the sovereignty of the populace; and that the reform bill, by giving that populace an extraordinary addition to its influence over the parliament, has actually to that full extent hazarded the safety of the constitution? If we are to choose between tyrannies, let us have the tyranny of a monarch; the rigid rule of a Peter or a Nicholas, rather than the sanguinary license of a Jacobin Club and a Robespierre; the iron sceptre of a fictitious divine right, rather than the capricious fury of popular passion, cupidity, and revenge, making a law of its will, and the anarchy of the million administering its wrath in the nistralade and the guillotine.

This is the true evil of the coming time, and the unanswerable argument against the measure. We are aware of the crowd of inferior objections urged, and justly urged, against its immediate working, its exclusion of nearly all but men of vast landed property, or furious demagogues, from parliament; thus shutting the doors upon nearly the whole class who once made the lights of the legislature, the Pitts, Burkes, Sheridans, Foxes, and every man who has but knowledge and genius to offer as his claims; its setting up the representation as a prize for the most extravagant popular charlatanry, until no man can enter parliament but with a pledge and without a character; its actually binding parliament down by the resolutions of every election rabble, and transferring all deliberation from parliament to the roarers of the hustings. All are present evils, and of a dark dye; but the great overwhelming evil is to be felt only in the course of years; the utter absorption of the whole power of In England, 40 counties return 144 members-parliament by the population of the towns, estathe number of registered voters in 1832 being 344,564. Cities and boroughs, amounting to 185, return 227 members-the number of registered voters in 1832 being 274,649. Total, 471 members, and 619,213 voters.

The present state of the representation in Great Britain and Ireland will be the clearest evidence of the formidable growth of this new authority.

ENGLAND.

WALES.

In Wales, 12 counties return 15 members-the number of registered voters in 1832 being 25,815; 14 districts of boroughs return 14 members-the number of registered voters in 1832 being 11,309. Total, 29 members, and 37,124 voters.

blishing a direct republican influence as the paramount authority of the house of commons, converting that house into a house of delegates, stripping the constitution on that side of all power, and, through the breach, invading the crown, the peerage, the cabinet, and all the few feeble remaining bulwarks of the monarchy.

Pitt had now evidently taken the lead of the patriotic party. Foiled in his attempt to obtain the reform of the electors, his next effort was to obtain the reform of the representative. This was now to be done only by restraining the term

of his power, and thus compelling him to return | Shelburne already contemplated supremacy. The more frequently to his constituents. On the 17th loose, but powerful genius of Fox, scarcely endurof May, within ten days after his speech on re-ing a rival, disdained to suffer a superior. The form, he powerfully sustained Sawbridge's mo- character of the Marquis of Rockingham, supine tion, for "shortening the duration of parliaments." but estimable, and conciliating yet dignified, reIt was lost by a majority of 149 to 61. Still he strained open jealousies; but his death, in July was not exhausted. Within a month he came 1782, dissolved the cabinet at once, and gave its forward again, in support of Lord Mahon's bill quarrels to the world. for "preventing bribery and expense at elections." This he pronounced to be no innovation, but a restoration of the old constitutional practice and principle. Pitt has been named an apostate for his subsequent resistance to similar measures. But the ground of his change has been already assigned. He was no more an apostate than the man who lights a fire on his empty hearth is an apostate for extinguishing it when a barrel of gunpowder is brought into the room. What was safe in 1780 might be ruinous in 1790. It is observable, in honour of his sincerity, that his adop tion of the subject must be exonerated from all personal motives, by the circumstances of his position. He was not, on the one hand, a factious tribune haranguing for place. He was not, on the other, a falling minister throwing out a lure for popular support. Attached to Lord Shelburne by personal regard, and to the ministry by public views, he was not labouring to float into possession on the wreck of their popularity. Politically hostile to Lord North and the opposition, whom he had strongly contributed to overthrow, he could look for their combination as little as he had reverenced their power. The ministry were in the full tide of their influence. No reverses had shaken them. They stood on a height altogether beyond the desultory shock of a young orator, yet known to the country only by name. Every argument is on the side of the assertion, that in those efforts Pitt was perfectly sincere, that he laboured to achieve a service for his country, and that he had no thought beyond achieving a service for his country.

With

The king instantly renewed the offer of the premiership to Lord Shelburne. It was accepted. Fox and Lord Cavendish angrily threw up their offices. Conway openly charged Fox in the house with disappointed ambition. Fox, thus forced to explain, declared that the motive for his resignation was the appointment of Lord Shelburne as first lord of the treasury, instead of the Duke of Portland, the natural successor of the Marquis of Rockingham in the confidence of the whig party. This acknowledgment brought down a storm of reprobation, in which Pitt led the way. He charged Fox "with hazarding the honour of the government for personal motives, and the safety of the country for pique. the phrase of measures and not men' perpetually on his lips, he had acted on the principle of 'men and not measures.' He had thrown up office to embarrass the minister the moment he found that he could not degrade him, and rather than narrow the extravagance of his ambition, he had abandoned the sincerity of his principles, and when he found that he could not rule the government with unbounded sway, under the mask of another, he adopted the daring resolution of flinging it down and standing forth in the attitude of an assailant." Thus began the open conflict between those two eminent men, which lasted until they were in their graves.

Pitt was now presented to the nation as a minister. The resignation of Fox and Lord John Cavendish made way for new appointments, and Pitt was named chancellor of the exchequer, at twenty-three. Thus, scarcely beyond boyhood, But the position of his antagonist was more he rose at once to the most difficult office of the questionable. That antagonist was Fox. The state, to the conduct of the whole finance of the later worshippers of that remarkable man must empire, and the leadership of the house of comhave looked back with astonishment at the versamons. None of the chief statesmen of the centility of his principles. He boldly pronounced tury had obtained power at his age, nor had obthe bill an attempt to draw an unnatural line of tained it but through the gradations of office. separation between the constituent and the repre- Godolphin, Oxford, Bolingbroke, Walpole, Pelsentative. Was the house to lend itself to a sys-ham, Chatham, North, and Fox, had all served tem for circumscribing the few remaining privileges of the electors? "Nothing could more enhance the natural independence of English electors more than the power of obliging their friends." As to the expenses of the candidates, he "was not fond of recurring to those times when repre- The reign of the Brunswick line was characsentatives were paid for their trouble by those terised by a feature new to English government. they represented. That house was then of little Their predecessors had retained a large portion or no weight in the government of the country. of individual power. The Brunswick reign was And those arguments which referred to such an- the reign of ministers. Realising for the first cient usages could be of no other use than to put time the true theory of the constitution, that all the house in mind of its ancient insignificance." power should be responsible for its acts, the acts On this occasion Pitt succeeded by 60 to 59. But thenceforth originated with those who were peran important clause being rejected in the com-sonally responsible. Thus the hazardous collimittee, the bill was withdrawn.

Pitt's official life was now to begin. The Rockingham cabinet contained jarring elements. The clear, dexterous, and accomplished mind of

in subordinate offices. Pitt alone stood in the foremost rank at his first step, and every subsequent hour of his life justified his sense of his unrivaled talents, and the proud prognostics of his country.

sion of the national feelings with the royal privilege of impunity ceased to exist, and the fall of a cabinet was the substitute for a revolution. Yet the personal inclinations of the monarch must

est expressions, mingled with concern, ended the interview. The character of George III. was so often charged with harshness and impatience, that it is only justice to a sovereign estimable in every point of view, to give a trait which exhibits so much personal urbanity and royal condescension.

always be of high importance, and it was remark late Duke of Dorset, has often sat on the braces ed that during the long reign of George III. in all of the state coach that conveyed him, as lordhis feelings the most constitutional of monarchs, lieutenant of Ireland, to the Parliament House in no cabinet was able to stand its ground against Dublin." The king smiled, and added, "What the personal impressions of the king. The Rock-you say is very reasonable; it shall be so, and ingham cabinet was forced upon him, and it was now let me know what title you choose?" Lord on the point of perishing even before the death of George asked permission to take the title of Sackits premier; it was extinguished within a year. ville, as having been compelled to renounce his The Fox cabinet of 1806 was forced upon him; family name for the estate of Drayton left to him it too was on the point of perishing before the by Lady Betty Germaine. "I quite approve of death of Fox, and it too was extinguished in a that idea," said his majesty, "and if you will year. The king's displeasure against Fox was state to me your title, I shall write it down myamong the most prominent causes of his exclu-self, before we part, and send it directly to the sion during a whole life of the public display of lord chancellor." The king immediately placed great abilities, and unwearied appetite for power. himself at a table, took the pen and ink lying The king's personal respect sustained Pitt against upon it, and having committed the viscounty to the early difficulties of his ministry, successive paper, asked him what barony he chose. Lord majorities in parliament, and the loudest outcry George answered, Bolebrook, in Sussex, as being of party through the nation. His personal at- one of the most ancient estates belonging to his tachment upheld Lord North in his ministry, and family, and contiguous to Buckhurst, the original protected him when out of it. The gentleness peerage conferred by Queen Elizabeth on his anand good-nature, added to the unquestionable in-cestor, the first Duke of Dorset. When the king tegrity of Lord North's character, endeared him had written the name, he rose, and with the kindto the sovereign; and this regard he seems to have extended to the members of his cabinet. A little anecdote exhibits this disposition in its most graceful point of view. Early in the period when the fall of Lord North's ministry was inevitable, the king received Lord George Germaine in his closet for the purpose of giving up the seals of his depart- On the accession of the Fox ministry in 1806, ment. Germaine was a man of elegant manners the caricaturists amused themselves with depictand striking abilities, a powerful debater, and pos- ing the sudden change of the whig costume for sessing great weight in the cabinet. The stain the dress of the levee. The same metamorphose fixed on his character by the battle of Minden, had amused the public fourteen years before. and the sentence of the court-martial which fol- When the house of commons met for the deslowed, had been partially cleared away by his patch of business, on the change of administraparliamentary distinctions, if not still more ad- tion, every eye was turned with wonder to the vantageously by the gradual public acknowledg-treasury bench. Lord North had so long kept ment, that his disobedience on that memorable day possession, that to the rising race of members it had arisen much less from personal timidity than had seemed his by inheritance. But a new tribe from disgust at the arrogance of his German com- were now masters, and it was equally difficult mander. Lord George's resignation of the Ame- and ludicrous to discover the members of the old rican secretaryship was the first direct omen of opposition in the new equipment of office. At the breaking up of the ministry, and the interview that period it was the custom for ministers to atwas marked by unusual emotion on both sides. tend in full dress. On one side Lord North and The king, after expressing his regret for the dis- his friends were scarcely to be recognised in their astrous state of the cabinet, and his sense of Lord opposition dishabille, great coats, frocks, and boots. George's services, asked, "if there was any thing Still more astonishment was excited by the speche could do, to express his sense of them, which tacle of the old file of opposition throwing off their would be agreeable to him."-" Sir," was the an- usual habiliments, and instead of the ancient blue swer, "if your majesty will raise me to the dig- and buff, which often bore signs of long service, nity of the peerage, it will form at once the best and in the instance of Fox, was remarkable for reward to which I can aspire, and the best proof its negligence, flourishing in lace and embroidery ; of your approbation of my past exertions in your with silk, swords, and hair powder. The change affairs." By all means," the king replied, "I was the subject of frequent pleasantry in the think it very proper, and shall do it with pleasure." house, but a remark of Lord Nugent's one night The conversation continued, in the course of which threw it into universal laughter. Just as the new Lord George requested that the creation should be ministry had first made their appearance, it hapof a viscounty, for if raised only to the barony,pened that his lordship's house in town had been "his own secretary, his own lawyer, and his fa- broken into, and robbed of a variety of dresses, ther's page, would all take rank of him." The and among other things many pairs of laced rufking, struck with this curious combination, enquired into the particulars. "The first," said Lord George, "is Lord Walsingham, who was long under-secretary in my office, when Mr. De Grey. The second is Lord Loughborough, who has been always my legal adviser. The third is Lord Amherst, who, when page to my father, the

fles. The particulars were advertised, and the robbery, of course, was generally known. Coming down to the house immediately after the recess, a member who sat next him casually asked, "Whether he had yet made any discovery of the robbers." "Not yet of the robbers, but probably enough of the receivers," said his lordship. The member

enquired again. "I shrewdly suspect," said his | of public duty, to suffer the renewal of influence lordship, glancing at the ministers, "that I now in hands whose misconduct had already brought see some of my ruffles on the treasury bench." the empire into danger; or, with any remaining Fox and Burke were sitting at the moment in their sense of personal honour, to be seen coalescing court dresses opposite to him. The allusion spread with one whose principles he had so constantly instantly, and the house was "in a roar.” and so strongly reprobated; this opinion he fur

This was the era of ministerial change. Shel-ther declared to proceed not from any personal burne was destined to share the fate of his prede-dislike to Lord North, with whom he had never cessors. No example can be stronger, that the had any personal intercourse, but simply from his power of acquiring popular approbation is a talent conviction that a total change of system was nepeculiar and most incommunicable. Shelburne cessary for the safe government of the empire. seemed to possess every quality that could raise It was then determined to apply to Fox, against him to the height of public favour. He was a whom none of those objections lay. An intersingularly accomplished personage, of remarkable view took place accordingly. It was marked by sagacity, promptitude, and force in debate, an ex- the characteristics of the two personages. Pitt cellent general scholar, and fond of sustaining his waited on Fox by appointment. Fox asked at early literature; handsome and dignified in his once whether, in the preposed negotiation, Lord exterior; animated and graceful in society; pow-Shelburne was to remain premier? Pitt answererful and impressive in the house, and continually ed, undoubtedly! Fox hotly replied that nothing reinforcing his acquirements from every source of could induce him to belong to any ministry of literary association and personal study. On the which Lord Shelburne was to be premier. Pitt, foreign relations of England his knowledge was with equal promptitude, retorted, that if that were indisputable. He was conceived to be more in-the case, all further discussion must be waste of timately acquainted with the springs and circum-time, for "he did not come to betray Lord Shelstances of the foreign cabinets than any statesman burne." They parted instantly, and never again in Europe. Altogether he was a fine specimen met under a private roof, for the rest of their lives. of the foremost race of mankind, an accomplished The sword was drawn by both, and it was never English nobleman. No man was more made for sheathed by either. power. A slight, yet curious example of the inconveBut he was not made for popularity. Continu-nience arising from changes in the old arrangeally soliciting it, he uniformly failed. Some un-ments of office, attracted public conversation at accountable suspicion of insincerity attached itself this period. On the king's going to prorogue parto every step of his progress, and while the nation liament, it was indispensable to send the crown forgave in Fox the most frequent and open lapses, and sceptre to Westminster. Burke's reform bill it watched with a jealous eye the decorous life of had suppressed the jewel office. But the suppresa statesman immeasurably his superior in all that sion was so recent, that no new official regulation constitutes a claim to the confidence of a manly had been adopted relative to the conveyance of people. the jewels on public occasions. Egerton, the forThe charges now brought against Lord Shel-mer master of the jewel office, was superseded burne at this crisis turned on his known aversion by the bill. The next resource was an application to acknowledge American independence. It was to the lord steward, and the lord chamberlain. from this argued, that his proposals of peace were But those lords were not satisfied of their power a mask, and that the nation was to depend on to interfere, and would not interfere. The next caprice and contingency for a benefit which the resource was the secretaryship of state, and from general voice pronounced essential. Lee, the ex-him an order to the keeper of the jewels in the solicitor-general, a man of rough manners, but of tower was at length obtained for their transmisconsiderable legal character, openly assailed the sion. Another difficulty now arose. From the government in the house of commons, declaring irregularity of the whole transaction, none of the the premier destitute of common honesty in pub- king's carriages, the customary conveyance, were lic transactions. The sound was caught by the forthcoming, and the secretary was reduced to the populace, and echoed in every shape of contumely, rude expedient of summoning the Bow Street The newspapers were filled with lampoons, and magistrates to his aid. Half a dozen of their conthe shops with caricatures of the new minister. stables, in a couple of hackney coaches, were sent One of the most popular of those pictured libels to the Tower, and in this hazardous style the represented him as Guy Faux, lantern in hand, crown jewels were despatched on their way. All stealing under the treasury to blow up the re- due precautions were taken to conceal the nature sources of the nation. of this valuable convoy, and all was necessary. In England the popular voice must always be Any one of the hundred, or the thousand gangs powerful, and no man was more conscious of its of London plunderers would have easily stripped power than Shelburne. He weathered the storm royalty of its ornaments. The coaches were boldly through the session, but on its close, he driven, with the blinds up, along the outskirts of consulted with his colleagues on the expediency London, re-entering it by Portland Street, and of strengthening the cabinet from the ranks of then hurrying down to Westminster. After the opposition. In this instance, we meet an addi- ceremony, they were reconveyed to the Tower, tional proof of the manliness of Pitt. He in- with the same secresy and rapidity, and fortunstantly gave his decision against any junction ately without any further obstruction. Another with Lord North. He declared, that it was to-Colonel Blood might have made the risk memortally impossible for him, with any remaining sense able.