Imágenes de páginas
PDF
EPUB

REVIEWS AND MISCELLANIES.

ENGLISH REVOLUTION OF 1832.

THE same act which threw down the bulwarks of the Constitution, to enable Papists to enter the assembly of British Legislators, also transferred the ruling power from the king to the mob. The Tory ministers of the Crown did that which they had ever contended to be wrong, because they feared civil war. The Papists clamoured for that which their rulers thought it improper to grant them, but they obtained it nevertheless by their importunities: hence other people were instructed that they had only to tread in the steps of the Papists, in order to gain any object they pleased. The demagogues learned from the example of Mr. O'Connell the power of combination, and Political Unions have been the result. It is needless, therefore, for the Tories to charge the Whigs with having abandoned the government of the country, and given it up into the hands of lawless factions. The Whigs have indeed carried the principle still farther into action; and they were the original advisers, and subsequent defenders, of the steps in which the Tories have trodden but both parties are equally to blame: both seem equally conscious of it; for both are equally averse to acknowledge the original mischief, and charge the other with being the authors of it.

in

:

It is necessary to bear this point well and continually in mind, every consideration of present political and ecclesiastical conditions; and the necessity for reiterating it arises from there being so many parties interested in keeping it in the back ground. Many of the Religious Periodicals, for example, who are now the loudest in their clamours against the Reform Bill, were the most strenuous advocates of Popish Emancipation. Every writer who attempts to interpret the present state of the country without this measure for his pole star, is at sea without chart or compass: he may make, amidst much blundering, a fortunate hit now and then, which will enable him to advance some way when blasts and currents are in his favour; but he has no means of steering in darkness against wind and tide, with a certain know. ledge of the result. The Christian Observer and the Record often contain well-written remarks on political occurrences; but they want the only thing needful, a clear insight into the religious standing of the nation.

Having used the terms Whig and Tory, and wishing to look upon human events as God Himself would look upon them; as we should see them if we were fully informed with His mind,

[blocks in formation]

and by His Spirit, and as we shall be when the present heaven and earth have been rolled away as a scroll; it is perhaps requisite to define those terms. The constitution of this country was a mixed monarchy; that is, a government in which the subjects were united with the king in carrying on certain of its functions. Some persons would naturally have a bias to one part of this mixed form, and some to the opposite: some would lean chiefly to that part which was more immediately kingly; while some would incline to that which was more immediately popular: but the warmest admirer of the former never dreamed of making it absolute, to the exclusion of the popular; nor did the most vehement partizan of the latter wish to exclude the monarch and convert the government into a republic. Thus the contests between the two parties were always confined to the special application to particular occasions of principles on which both were agreed, and between certain limits which neither imagined it possible to transgress.

Every body politic, every nation, every order of society, contains at its lowest base a certain number of persons abandoned to violent and lawless pursuits,-murderers, drunkards, idle, dissolute, revolutionists, disturbers of public peace, lovers of disorder and confusion, &c.-which it is equally the duty of all governments, under whatever form they may be constituted, to repress and keep down. The numbers of such persons may be greater or less at one period or another, arising principally from the ease with which mere animal enjoyments are procured. The moment these are interfered with, and the quantity of the food of such people diminished, they would betake themselves to plunder if it were not for the coercion of the government. With such persons, therefore, no rulers ought ever to parley: they are to be kept at arm's-length, and to be ruled only by force. The amount and special application of that coercion is indeed a matter of discretion, on which different individuals will form different opinions; but never, until the present day, was it seen that men calling themselves, and executing the functions of, statesmen supposed it was possible to govern those classes by yielding to their clamours, by giving up a part of that whole which they demanded in order to coax them into permitting the remaining part of the public institutions to rest undisturbed. On all subjects there are certain points of which it is happily said in French, Cela va sans dire; points so obvious, that they are taken for granted. In arguing on a religious doctrine, for example, it is assumed that the antagonist believes in the inspiration of the Scriptures in like manner, the incorruption of a judge, the courage of a soldier, the chastity of a woman, the truth of a man's word, are taken on both sides as unquestionable. Thus, in all questions of government, both Whig and Tory in England,

Federalist and Anti-Federalist in America, Monarchist, Oligarchist, and Republican, have ever assumed that for a government to do any thing with revolutionary factions but keep them down by main force of some sort or other, was such a breach of all the first principles of self-preservation, such a violation of the ends for which all forms of government in civilized society are constituted, such treachery of the highest kind, high-treason against the very existence of the state, that it was never thought possible to be committed.

The Tories had the whole conduct of the war, from the breaking out of the French Revolution to its termination at Waterloo. The Whigs foretold nothing but defeat and disaster. The continual victories with which, as Nelson said in his despatch giving an account of the battle of the Nile, "God had been pleased to bless his Majesty's arms," were received with cold indifference, if not with something worse, by the Whigs: they found their predictions falsified, and felt the mortification of convicted false prophets: until, at the conclusion of the peace, from having been a very powerful party, they were reduced to absolute insignificance. Since both they and the revolutionists agreed in the point of censuring every act of the king's government, the Tories often unjustly charged them with being identified; but there is no reason to believe, and very good proof of the reverse, that up to the hour of their assuming the reins of government, in 1830, there was no real union between them.

It is not to be denied that the country was in a very disturbed state at that time; but it is foreign to the proper subject of these remarks, and also not calculated for this Journal, to discuss the cause of those disturbances, or the remedy for them. It is sufficient to shew that they had no connection whatever, direct or indirect, with the subject of Reform; and this on the best of all evidence, that of the Whigs themselves. So completely dead was the feeling of the country to the subject, that Lord John Russell, and others, assigned that deadness as the reason for not pressing the subject, a few years before they came into office, with the same ardour that they had formerly done. No sooner, however, had they come into office, than they bound up their own political existence, the word of the king, and the peace of the empire, with a particular Bill, called for the Reform of the representation of the House of Commons,' but virtually for the lodging of the whole power of the state, and consequently the government of the country, in an assembly of delegates of the people.

This bill was so unexpected by the most violent of the Whigs, that many of them refused to support it; others declared that at its first announcement they were seized with a trembling over their whole frames; while the Revolutionists, from one end of

the country to the other, openly acknowledged, that, if carried, it would place power in their hands far beyond any measure which they had ever dreamed it possible to carry. One of the most able and consistent of this class, who had been for many years the intimate friend of Horne Tooke and Jeremy Bentham, who had been one of the principal movers in all the most violent election committees in Westminster, and who is the chief organ of the delegates from the operatives and political unions throughout Great Britain, declared, in the presence of the writer of this article, that the bill went much beyond any thing that he had ever heard discussed in the most furious meetings of the "Friends of the People" and the " Corresponding Societies" in the years 1794 and 1797; that in his opinion it would produce a far greater change in all the institutions of the land than was effected by the Reformation and the Revolution of 1688 combined; that, though he had been one of the hottest arguers for ultra reform all his life, he could not contemplate the operations of this bill without terror. Cobbett, Carlile, Hunt, all the journals which advocate the conversion of this country into a republic, were clamorous in its favour. American writers, as well as French, all declared-some with joy, and some with regret, but all agreed in the fact that the bill ought to be entitled 'a Bill for the overthrow of the Monarchy of England, and its conversion into a Republic.' But the most extraordinary feature of the transaction is, that by far the most powerful and eloquent arguments against the principles now advocated by the Ministers are to be found, not in the speeches and writings of their opponents, but in the works of these Ministers themselves. Lord John Russell, Lord Brougham; Lord Grey, Lord Melbourne, Lord Goderich, Mr. Charles Grant, Lord Palmerston, Sir James Macintosh, have all contended against the very principles which are now embodied in this bill.

The essentials of a monarchy, whether absolute or limited, consists in its being a government by prescription: the Bill sets aside all prescriptions. The necessary result is universal suffrage, and the abolition of all privileged classes. A national church has not a single argument to support it: there must be no prescription in creeds and formularies, any more than in other things. Thus, supposing that we did not perceive, either by the light of Revelation or political foresight, that the ruin of the country must follow this measure; nay, supposing we were amongst its greatest admirers; still it is indisputable that this bill is but the first of a series of measures, whether these measures shall be characterised as wise or foolish. Besides, every one, who mixes at all in the society of Members of Parliament, knows that there is not one, among all the supporters of the measure, who has not in private expressed his alarm and dislike at it.

To those amongst our readers who can descry all that is now going on in the fates of the anti-typical Tyre, we direct the following extract from the Times of 29th March, as a comment upon the words, "Thy rowers have brought thee into deep waters." Lord Grey has himself put the empire into such a state, that he must carry the Reform Bill, or be responsible for all but his country's irretrievable ruin.

We may talk and speculate for ever upon the causes that have led to our present situation, but no one has yet been able to offer a solution that is satisfactory even to him who has propounded it. Sir John Walsh, Frazer's Magazine, and the Quarterly Review, all avow their inability to solve the enigma. Nothing but a judicial infatuation at the hand of God will do it. No event in history accords so literally with the denunciations in Holy Writ against the land that has been most favoured of God, which are fulfilled at the Second Advent of the Lord.

The necessary downfall of the Church of Ireland, in consequence of the passing of this bill, has been honestly avowed by the Papists to be one of its chief recommendations in their eyes. The Bishop of Exeter, in a speech of extraordinary power and effect against it, shewed how this is necessarily brought about. When the army which had conquered Ireland, and kept it in subjection under Elizabeth, was withdrawn by James, he erected the Protestant corporations of the principal towns, as the necessary machinery by which Protestant ascendancy both political and ecclesiastical was to be maintained, and by which it has been maintained to the present day. This bill destroys these Protestant corporations: it therefore destroys the only machinery by which Protestant ascendancy has been maintained; while it not only provides no substitute, but throws all power into the hands of the Papists.

The necessary ruin of the Church of England must arise also from the power to injure her conferred by this bill upon her enemies. It is said that she has survived the affections of the people; which is no doubt true in a great degree; and whatever regard for her remains, resides in the aristocracy, or in the agricultural population, while the whole strength of Dissent lies amongst the middling classes. Since, therefore, power is taken from the aristocracy, and not given to the lowest classes in the country, but given to all the lowest and middling classes in the towns, it is transferred from those who love to those who hate her: and it does not need the spirit of prophecy to foretel the issue.

While this course is pursuing by the Whigs, the Tories are in vain labouring to preserve the carcase in the forms and appearance of life after the spirit is fled. The country stood in its testimony for Jesus against the Popish, Greek, and Moham

« AnteriorContinuar »