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well-dined orator, into the proof of this very difficult proposition, and shews, as we think, to the satisfaction of fat and lean, the man of strong digestion, and the martyr to constipated bowels, "that it is the incumbent duty of every man, while in the possession of health and strength, to provide, as far as human capacity enables him, against the ills of life." Having gained vantage-ground, he then launches forth into one of the noblest strains to be found in the whole range of our gormandizing eloquence.

"Highly conducive to the attainment of these heart-delighted purposes, are annual dinners similar to the present. Their effects are to enliven and invigorate the generous and patriotic sentiments with which we are animated. Engaged in the righteous cause of benevolence, in fulfilling the new commandment given by the Divine Author of Christianity, That you love one another,' the pleasures of the festiveboard are refined and consecrated; it sheds an almost sanctifying influence over the joy-inspiring bowl, and imparts to our convivial intercourse a charm more than human."

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This is the ne plus ultra-the Land'send-the John-o'-Groat's House-the Ultima Thule the Back-o'-Beyond of the oratory of the Haggis-Bag. To Mr D. Abercromby, indeed, belongs the "Os magna sonaturum." If he eats as he spouts, (and it should be so,) his jawbones must be more destructive than any recorded in history, sacred or profane; and, to use his own words, with a slight and pardonable alteration, he must "exhibit in convivial intercourse a power more than human."

Mr D. Abercromby proceeds to the second head of his address, and holds forth on the amor patriæ of Scotchmen. The promotion of this principle is the second great object of the Liverpool Scottish Club, although it seems to us that is somewhat like carrying coals to Newcastle. "It is," says our Gormandizer," inherent in every man, but peculiarly characteristic of Scotchmen." If so, why club to promote it? Hear the Haggis!

"Never can a Scotchman cease to love the land of his fathers. Wandering on the desert sands of Africa, immersed in the wilds of Canada, or trudging beneath the burning sun of India, his imagination lingers on the hills of his native land, where blooms the red heather and thistle sae green; and, musing on the scenery and friendships of youth, he thinks of the time VOL. XIV.

when, weary with the toils and the journey of life, he shall yet return, and lay his bones with those of his kindred. But we love, and are proud of our country, because it is the land of patriotism, learning, and piety. Can a Caledonian hear the names of Wallace and Bruce, and his breast not

glow with the love of liberty, or thrill with hatred of tyranny? Can he cease to be proud that he is a descendant of those brave Caledonians who for ages hurled defiance from their hills upon the legions of Rome, and the armies of mighty monarchs, and preserved their liberty and independence in the midst of an enslaved world? The learned men which our country has produced, is also another source of the love which we bear to the land of our nativity. A host of historians, poets, philosophers, legislators, &c., might here be mentioned, but with the names of these, every gentleman present is familiar. Above all, the piety and good conduct of our countrymen is calculated, in an eminent degree, to render us proud of the land of our birth, and to make us in love with the place where the establishment of parochial teachers, and the zealous and faithful labours of our ministers, have, under God, produced such happy and pleasant effects."

Mr D. Abercromby has now been hard at it, tooth and nail, snuff and snifter, bubble and squeak, for about a quarter of an hour, or twenty minutes, and yet he is fresh as a twoyear-old, and without a symptom of closing his potato-trap. It is now, we shall suppose, about ten o'clock in the evening, and each member has finished his mutchkin of barley-broo. Symptoms of yawning are exhibited, and an occasional snore calls from the chairman the mandate of "Silence! Silence!" when our Gormandizer exclaims

"Pardon me, gentlemen, for occupying so much of your time, and allow me for a moment to glance at the third object which the Scottish Club may be said to have had in view at its establishment, namely, To preserve from extinction, amidst the evervarying and fantastical fashions of everyday invention, the peculiar and national dress of Scotland, the bonnet blue, the belted plaid, and kilt and trews o' tartan bonnie. A considerable period has elapsed since the government of the time thought it necessary to treat the Highland character with peculiar harshness. A law was passed, and rigidly enforced, to deprive the Highlanders of their arms; and not content with extracting the lion's fangs, they must also take his skin. It was declared penal for the Highlander to appear in his native dress. Gentlemen, what would an Englishman think if a law were promulga K

ted, and put in force at the point of the bayonet, that he should not presume to appear, except in the stays and petticoats of a woman? Would he not feel degraded and insulted? And so did our fathers. Is it not then astonishing, that, thus debased and despised, their fine spirit should flag? It was reserved for the illustrious Chatham to convert, as it were by magic, these very men, who scarce dared to own themselves the subjects of their sovereign, into the loyal and intrepid defenders of their king and country. And how did he accomplish this? How did he rouse the slumbering spirit of the Gael? By associating them in kindred bands; by arming them with their national weapons; by clothing them in their native garb, and by giving them a name to be proud of and to fight for. And well was he rewarded for this liberality in the loyalty and patriotism of a body of men who valued life only as conducive to their country's fame. Cold is the heart that does not warm at the sight of the Highland tartan. It is your desire to preserve this dress indeed; but it is to preserve also along with it the sentiments and recollections of a generous patriotism-to cherish the love of country, and to perpetuate to future ages a remembrance of the glories of the Scottish name."

Never was the case of Kilt versus

Breeches so powerfully pleaded before. But, pray, sir, do you call breeches the dress of a woman, as well as stays and

petticoats? The Highlanders were forbid wearing kilts, and forced to put on breeches. Why the devil should that be likened to forcing Englishmen, at the point of the bayonet, to wear stays and petticoats? Mr Abercromby must have been getting into a state of civilation. But hear the finale.

"If it had not been for the distinction of the Highland dress, the name of Scotland would not have been heard of as the nurse of warriors who fought and triumphed at Maida, and Egypt, and Waterloo; and it is the wish of the Scottish Club to fan those sacred fires which shall hereafter glow in the hearts of the brave, and the free, and the loyal sons of the North, at the recollection of Scotland's heroic deeds, and Scotland's domestic virtues. Such, gentlemen, is an imperfect sketch of the objects which the Scottish Club have in view."

If it had not been for the distinction of the Highland dress! -O Paddy from Cork, with your coat buttoned behind, what do you think of that?

When Mr D. Abercromby comes to Edinburgh, he must favour us with his company at Ambrose's. We, too, belong to the Gormandizing School of Eloquence, and will speak or eat him for a trifle, giving him five minutes start, and seven to four.

THE TORY.

LETTER I.

THE name of Tory was once obnoxious, from its connexion with the dangerous and exploded doctrines of the Stuarts. But time changes the spirit of titles as well as of men. Toryism, in 1823, is the representative of Whiggism in 1688. The tremendous lesson of the French Revolution, has perhaps impressed it with a deeper fear of popular licentiousness, and a more solemn deference for the wisdom of our ancient institutions; it may feel an inferior jealousy of the throne, from a fuller experience of the checks on its power; and a keener alarm at innovation in politics and religion, from the knowledge that it is only preparative to the betrayal of both. But in all that made the great national service of Whiggism in 1688, its manly adherence to the national privileges, its honest love of liberty, its homage to the supremacy of the laws, its vigilance over the con

duct of ministers, its sincere reverence for the Constitution in Church and State, Toryism now stands on the same lofty ground with the spirit of our glorious Revolution.

It will be the purpose of this, and succeeding letters, to place those truths in a clear point of view. The evidence shall be taken, not from surmises, nor from the suspicious statements of party, but from the lips of the individuals themselves, on those most important questions which compel a declaration of opinion. The Peninsular war of 1808 has been the principal test of our day.

In some previous observations under another head, I have detailed the language of the Leader of Opposition, Lord Grey, and proved him, out of his own mouth, to have been altogether incompetent to guide the public mind on that momentous question. I have shewn this chief of Whiggism to

have adopted views, not merely tinged with the ordinary weakness of human judgment, but degraded by utter ignorance of the subject, by a weak prejudice against all that belonged to a manly policy, by an absurd homage for the enemy, and by a miserable powerlessness of feeling with the feelings of England. With Whiggism at the head of affairs, the great Spanish Insurrection would have been extinguished in its own blood, the Continent in chains to this hour, and France, under the Napoleon dynasty, the terror and the tyrant of Europe. If we had peace, it would have been purchased by some wretched humiliation, and it would have been only a hollow truce preparatory to a war of extermination. If we had war, it would have been a lingering and hopeless struggle against power accumulating day by day; war without energy and without end; reluctant, fearful, successless, and desperate. Or, if we are to believe that no man born on the soil of England could thus abuse her cause, what is the alternative? We must decide that the Whigs, in their bitter reprobation of our Peninsular policy, were totally insincere; that they inwardly honoured what they publicly abjured; and that their language was only one of the miserable artifices of party, eager to attract partizans, and, for the sake of a few contemptible votes, to vilify the name, and hazard the fates of their country.

In memorable contrast to those disastrous expositions, I shall give some extracts from the sentiments of the present head of the administration; a man whose integrity, public spirit, and knowledge of government, are honoured beyond panegyric, in the respect and confidence of the nation. In the year 1808, on the first breaking out of the Spanish Insurrection, when the prospects and power of Spain were yet all uncertainty, and France was sitting on the height of a dominion which seemed to defy all resistance and all casualty, Lord Liverpool thus threw down the pledge which he and his fellow-ministers have since so splendidly redeemed.

"With respect to Spain, the people of that country had manifested a spirit and determination to resist the attempts of their invaders, which would have done honour to the most glorious period of their history, and which,

perhaps, were not to be expected under the pressure of such formidable difficulties. Such a scene every man in the House, every man in the country, must hail with the liveliest satisfaction; and what every generous heart must wish should be done in support of so glorious a cause, his Majesty's Ministers would feel it their duty to do. With regard to what information they had received of the designs or the hopes of those brave and resolute men, who, in defence of their country's independence, were exposing themselves to everything which a powerful and sanguinary tyrant could devise or inflict, it could not be expected that he should now unfold it. His Majesty's Ministers were fully sensible of the extreme importance of this event, and he trusted they would be found to act accordingly."-Debate of January 30,

1808.

I give this fragment as an evidence of the early decisiveness of Administration. While those who had insolently and exclusively assumed the name of friends of freedom, were feebly retracting, or culpably resisting, the English Cabinet, with a boldness and sagacity that do them matchless honour, took up the cause of liberty, bound themselves at once to the Spanish cause, and, on the strength of their fidelity to that cause, demanded to be tried before the nation. The trials of this fidelity must not be forgotten. The Spanish cause was, after the first burst of triumph, uniformly disastrous. In two years from the French Invasion, the whole military force of Spain was annihilated; her armies and generals had been trampled like dust under the heels of France, her civil government was in the hands of Napoleon, her revenue was gone, her colonies were in revolt; a French army, greater than the greatest that had broken down martial Germany, had flooded indolent, unwarlike Spain. The roots of regular resistance had been burnt up. The powers of popular resistance were unknown. But the honourable decision of England had been taken; and while Opposition hung their ominous heads over the ruin, and almost triumphed in it as a proof of their prophecy, Ministers renewed their pledge to Spain, and manfully foresaw her victory.

In Lord Liverpool's speech, in the commencement of 1809, this senti

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"All that they were now called upon to do, was to record a public avowal of their determination not to desert that cause, which the government and the country had espoused, and that they would not be so far dismayed by those reverses which had been experienced, and which were from the beginning to be expected, as to renounce that system of support to which both his Majesty and the nation were most solemnly pledged, and in which it was, in consequence of these reverses, even become a more "sacred duty to persevere."

His Lordship's reasoning upon those disheartening results of the first Spanish campaigns, is eminently British. Where Opposition found the ruin of the Peninsular cause, he finds its strength, and invigorates his principle by an appeal to the recollections of all those glorious struggles, in which the spirit of nations persevered and triumphed against oppression.

"Those who inferred that the cause was desperate, from those disasters which had already happened, reasoned upon a most contracted and imperfect view of the relative situation of the parties engaged in the contest. He entreated those who were inclined to despond, to consult the records of history, and to review those instances of nations, who had been compelled to struggle for their independence in circumstances similar to those in which the Spaniards were now placed. There it would be found, that nations, often maintaining the struggle for ten or twenty years, in the course of which they had been almost uniformly worsted in battle, had eventually succeeded, in spite of the triumphs of their adversaries, in securing the object for which they contended. It was difficult to conceive any situation which would warrant better hopes of ultimate success than that of Spain at this day. The people were unanimous in their resist ance to the invader; and it was the only instance since the French revolution, in which a whole people had taken up arms in their own defence. The territory of Spain was as large as that of France within its ancient limits, and the country possessed many local advantages which were extremely favourable to its defence-advantages,

[July, the value of which the Spanish history ought to teach us duly to appre

ciate.

"The cause, in itself, was most interesting to the best feelings of the human mind; it offered the last chance of salvation to the continent of Europe; and, taken in a more contracted point of view, our own immediate security was in some measure involved in its fate. He asked, then, if nothing was to be risked in support of a generous ally? if nothing was to be risked for the re-establishment of the general tranquillity? In fine, if nothing was to be risked for our own safety and independence?"-Debate of June 19,

1809.

On the moving of the address in the chief debate that took place in 1809, Lord Grey had inveighed against administration, on the ground that they had not sufficient reason, in the spirit of Spain, for involving England in its alliance. His Lordship went over the beaten track of "husbanding and preserving our resources," till some great unexpected success should excite our liberality. It was "no sudden ebullition,” (such was this statesman's conception of the rising of Spain,)" that should have led us to depart from our economy." His Majesty's Ministers should have waited to see a regular and vigorous administration established in Spain, as well as a spirit of proper resistance in the people, before they assisted the nation. Or, to give the simple interpretation of opposition wisdom, Ministers should have seen the Spaniards triumphant before they rendered them assistance; France ought to have been repelled before a British trigger was pulled; and the famous proclamation of the 16th of December, 1807, by which the nations made common cause, should have been postponed till it could have been published upon the Pyrenees. Yet, to do justice to Opposition, it should be remembered, that they allowed, "if there was a proper spirit in the people, assistance should not be wholly withheld." I acknowledge the generosity of this allowance; but when I come to ascertain its extent, and find Lord Grey protesting against "lavishing the national resources," or "sending an army," as the very "acmé of madness," I delight myself in imagining the mighty co-operation which withholds both men and money, and

do homage to the liberality of Whiggism. This speech worthily closed with a due bending of the knee before Buonaparte. Commencing with contempt of our ally, it suitably closed with panegyric of Napoleon. "He had all the opposite qualities of Fabius and Marcellus ;" he rivalled " Hannibal in the application of his means, and was exempt from his only fault, that of not improving by his past experience." To this fervour of praise what could lend an additional glow? Lord Grey finds it in the contrasted rashness, levity, and hazard, of Ministers. Napoleon never enters into an enterprize without a calculation of consequences; he never exposes his for tune to risk, on the desperate chance of a distant possibility of success." Such is Lord Grey's penetration into character; so shallow, prejudiced, and feeble, was his estimate of that great military gambler; so little capable was this Whig of seeing human fallibility in the bloodiest enemy of human freedom. The Marquis Wellesley at once pronounced Napoleon to be " a man prone to great hazards, and sure to be ruined by his rashness in the end."

Lord Liverpool's answer to Lord Grey's singular speech was worthy of the man and of the cause.

"The noble Earl (Grey) had censured his Majesty's government for precipitation. He had declared it his opinion, that they ought to have waited to ascertain the probability of the success of patriotism in Spain, before they offered the Spaniards assistance. This was a most extraordinary opinion. What! when the feeling of resistance and oppression was so strong and so general in Spain, would it have been honourable to the British character, had his Majesty's ministers told the gallant Spaniards, We will not give you aid, while you are most in want of it, while your efforts at emancipation are in their infancy; but we will defer our assistance till you are in full strength, and need it not. Had such been the language of his Majesty's ministers, they would have indeed deserved the reprobation of every man in the country."

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Having thus cleared up the principle of the co-operation, he rapidly refutes the charge of rash expectation.

"His Majesty's ministers, in embarking in that cause, were not so weak, so improvident, so foolish, as

to expect that the first efforts of the Spanish people, contending with such an enemy, would be crowned with unqualified success; that no discomfitures, no disasters, no reverses, would retard and embarrass the early and crude operations of undisciplined bravery, when brought down into the open plain to contend with the superior discipline, the superior strength, and the superior generalship, of such a power as France. No! Weak as the noble Earl might suppose ministers, they were not yet guilty of calculating with certainty upon impossibilities. They did not expect that such a cause as the cause of Spain, to be fought for with such an enemy as the Ruler of France, could be determined in one campaign."

He then turns to the proof from history, that national resistance contains the sure seeds of triumph.

"I cannot feel lukewarm in my hope, that the efforts of Spain will be crowned with ultimate success. When your lordships consider the great popular revolutions that have occurred, have they ultimately succeeded without great vicissitudes? Switzerland and Holland are instances of this; but, above all, America. In that fatal contest with America, we had gained every battle, we had taken every town which we had besieged, until the capture of General Burgoyne, and yet the Americans ultimately succeeded in the arduous contest. In the present important struggle, do not the extent and nature of the country afford a hope of success? Does not its population forbid despair?"

He then turns, with brief but vigorous sarcasm, to the pluckless policy of the Whig year.

"The noble Earl (Grey) concluded his speech with a censure on the conduct of his Majesty's ministers. The noble Earl may not approve of our measures; so neither do I approve of his counsels. I do not approve of those sublime operations in Egypt, at Buenos-Ayres, at Constantinople, and other places, that emanated from the wisdom of those with whom the noble Earl had been used to act."

He then closes with a lofty and feeling peroration on the motives of British sympathy and Spanish resist

ance.

"Upon the whole, I have the satisfaction, in common with the rest of

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