and they had long been clamouring for these changes, and the adoption of "the new liberal system." Of course, when government adopted this system, they became its zealous supporters. In Parliament, the Ministers, the violent Whigs, and the Burdettites, form, on almost all important points, one party. Mr Canning, Mr Brougham, Mr Peel, Sir F. Burdett, Mr Robinson, Mr Hobhouse, Sir R. Wilson, &c. &c. fight, side by side, against a feeble Opposition, composed of two or three of the more respectable and honest Whigs, two or three of the staunch Tories, and two or three of the Independents. The Opposition that Mr Hobhouse spoke of in his speech on Reform, consists of men who are the loudest eulogists of the Ministry, who are the most zealous champions of its leading measures, who constantly vote with it against the Opposition I have mentioned, and who, if Mr Tierney may be believed, are the sole means of keeping Mr Canning and his friends in office. I cannot, sir, divine what caused "Westminster's Pride" the Younger, to fall into such a blunder, as to call these men an Opposition.

That such men as the Earl of Liverpool, Mr Canning, and Mr Peel, should be perfectly agreed in opinion on almost all points of foreign and domestic policy with such as Mr Brougham, Sir F. Burdett, and Mr Hobhouse, that the present Ministers should be perfectly agreed in opinion with the violent Whigs and Radicals, in making the most gigantic changes in your laws and systems, forms one of the most extraordinary things that can be found in the history of this nation. I even think it wholly unexampled, when I reflect that this concord exists, and still the new allies of your Ministry have not made the smallest change of opinion. I have the evidence of my senses, sir, to convince me that your Ministers are fu riously supported by those who were so lately the patrons of your revolu tionary mobs-that they are borrow, ing principles and schemes from those whom they so long denounced as seditious visionaries-that they are outrageously praised by the Whig and Revolutionary press-and that all the infidels and republicans in the country are their passionate admirers-and still I can scarcely credit it, I will spare comment; it will be for others

to speak of this as it ought to be spoken of, and to describe the consequences.

I have on a former occasion said, that the leaders of your House of Commons constitute, in effect, your House of Commons. The leaders in this House have thus coalesced, and therefore you have practically-you will soon have cause to curse the day. that gave you it-a unanimous Parliament. The Opposition that I have described, is one in name rather than in reality. Its members are unconnected, and hold different creeds; and those who take the lead are bound hand and foot by former votes and speeches..

Let us now, my dear Friend, look at the component parts and working of this unanimous Parliament—this tremendous Coalition. The Tories are, in so far as regards creed, divided into two parties. The new ones-I give them the name for distinction's sake, for they ought to be called anything rather than Tories-consist, in the main, of what were once called the Wellesley and Grenville parties, and of various people who have indivi dually deserted frem the Whigs. Almost all of them began life as Whigs; many of them have followed politics as a profession; there are few of them who have not, during their lives, reversed their opinions on the most important questions; and the greater part have been on different sides, and only joined the Tories when they obtained office. There is scarcely any difference in creed-if we except Reform-between these new or liberal Tories and the Whigs and Burdettites. I know not how it happens that these Tories resist Reform, unless they do it from the knowledge that their support of it would strip them of office. In regard to consistency, I think, after what they have recently said and done, it would be more consistent in them to advocate than to oppose it. If we except this question of Reform, the new Tories and the old ones differ in almost every other. Their differences relate, not to minor matters, but to those of first-rate importance.

These small, any-side, trading parties, that perpetually flutter between the two great constitutional ones, ought always to be kept in a subordinate situation by the one to which they may for the moment attach themselves

They are so habituated to change, that they cannot exist without it; and a life of coquetry and bargaining makes them intolerably selfish and domineering. Woe to those who trust them! Many of these Whig-and-no-Whig people came over from the Whigs in detachments, only when they could obtain a most exorbitant price for their desertion; and as soon as they came over, they began to labour for the destruction of those whom they had joined. To be merely a part of the Ministry was nothing; they must be in effect the whole Ministry. This was not to be accomplished through the Tories, and therefore they threw themselves for support upon the Whigs and Burdettites. By identifying themselves in opinion with the latter, and obtaining the puffery of the Whig and Radical press, they overawed their timorous, compromising colleagues, and gained the control of the whole Ministry. Putting out of sight the Catholic question, all your Ministers in the House of Commons go with the new Tories. The old Tories in this House have been betrayed; they have no leaders; they are but a number of unconnected individuals, destitute of voice and influence. These petty parties, my worthy sir, although, with the exception of two or three individuals, they are destitute of ability, and although they have no existence out of Parliament, have thus stripped the most powerful party in the nation of parliamentary influence. They pretend to stand at the head of Toryism, merely to deprive it of all weight in your political system. The Whigs are now the omnipotent party in the House of Commons. Your Ministers in this House, while they call themselves Tories, depend for support principally upon the Whigs, and fear opposition principally from the Tories. The Whigs support their new system with enthusiasm; and the old Tories and Independents support it because they can do nothing else. Many of the latter loudly condemn out of the House, what they are constrained by the state of parties to vote for in it. If the Whigs had taken their ground against the new system, it would have been kicked out of Parliament at the opening of the session by an immense majority. If every member had voted solely according to his judgment, Ministers

would have been constantly in a minority on the leading questions.

The case, therefore, stands thus. The only members that your Ministers can regularly calculate upon, are the Tory close-borough ones. The old Tories, and Country Gentlemen, are, in feeling, opposed to them, and to gain these they must gain the Whig leaders and close-borough members. If they gain the latter, the independent part of the House has then no alternative but to vote with them, or to refrain from voting, incapable as it is of making a stand against the oratory of the combined leaders. The Whigs have strangely obtained the office that hitherto has been held by the Country Gentlemen-they now hold the balance-it is for them to decide whether the Ministry shall carry its mea

sures.

This, sir, naturally places your Ministers and public affairs under the dictation of the Whigs. The nation would not endure a Whig Ministry for a week, and yet it oddly happens that it is governed more according to Whig principles than it could be if the Whigs were in office. If the Whigs had been in power, they could not possibly have carried many of their own schemes and innovations, that have been carried by your Tory Ministers. Mr Tierney lately asserted in Parliament, that "the Whigs devised the measures, and the Ministers received the emoluments;" that he had never known Parliament so reluctant to support government as it had been during the session and that, had it not been for the Whigs, the new Tories would long since have been driven from office. When the Country Gentlemen held the balance, they acted only as independent judges; the Whigs, in holding it, act both as party judges and party lawgivers; they must shape as well as sanction the measure.

Your Ministers, my dear sir, show that they are duly acquainted with their situation; their courting and blandishments are chiefly addressed to the Whigs; their measures and speeches are scrupulously shaped to meet the approbation of the latter, and their journals. If they be by chance compelled to dissent from Whig propositions, they do it with all the supplicatory timidity and apologies of humble dependents. The

Country Gentlemen are not looked at; their favour is no longer of consequence; they are in fetters, and must obey the Coalition. If the Whigs show symptoms of hostility, they are met, not with hardy eloquence, but with the melting appeal-"You were the first to recommend these measures, and can you be so cruel as to abandon us?" Your Ministers have thrown out the signal of distress to all the Whigs and Radicals in the kingdom. Mr Canning has called those who dissent from the new system, a Faction; Mr Huskisson has said, that the publications-of course the Whig and Benthamite ones-which have supported this system, deserve highly of their country; Mr Grant has puffed the Edinburgh Review, at the rate of twice in the same speech, and Mr Robinson has repeated the stale slang touching knowledge," with which the Whig and Revolutionary press has sickened the country, and has stated that he cannot conceive how the minds of those who dissent from this slang are constituted.

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That your Ministers, sir, should thus have openly thrown themselves upon Publications which they so long held up as anti-English and revolutionary-which so long showered upon them everything that could wound and blacken and which have so long warred against all that is sacred in the empire-is what could scarcely have been expected from full-grown men of any description. Manhood, sir, in whatever situation it may be placed, can hardly descend to such conduct. For Ministers, who call themselves Tory ones-who owe everything to the Tories-and who profess to represent and stand upon the Toriesto throw these vile and undeserved insults upon the Tories, is a thing wholly without example in the history of your Ministers; and I trust, for the sake of the nation, that it will remain for ever without example. I cannot, however, pity the Tories, if they be such spiritless, servile bondsmen, as to submit to the treatment. If your Ministers be weary of Toryism, let them abandon it like honest men; let them cast away not only the creed, but the office that the creed has given them; let them mingle a little justice to old friends with their astounding magnanimity to old enemies. If they can no longer use their

artillery against the Whigs and Revolutionists, let them spike it, and not employ it to slaughter in cool blood those who have so long fought their battles, and to whom they are indebted for all that they possess.

While the Whigs thus have the Ministers under their dictation in the House of Commons, the majority consists, in a very great degree, of the close-borough members of both sides, I, sir, never was a Reformer, and I am a decided enemy to what is called Parliamentary Reform; but I cannot close my eyes to the fact, that a more terrible curse could not visit the empire than the combining of the closeborough members. The working of the close-borough system has thus far led me to think highly of it. It has brought a vast portion of talent and intelligence into Parliament, which must otherwise have been excluded; and it has been, in my humble judg ment, the chief means of keeping in existence an efficient and constitutional Opposition, of causing the public voice to be heard and listened to in Parliament, and of enabling the Crown and nation always to have a choice before them in regard to public servants and general policy. While I have thus thought it mighty for good, I have believed that its division into two hostile parties that balanced each other, rendered it nearly powerless for evil. From this division, however, has flowed the worth of the system. Without it, you can have no efficient Opposition, you can have no choice of Ministers and policy, your Country Gentlemen can have no control, and the opinion of the nation can have no weight in the legislature. If the closeborough members combine, they must convert the Cabinet into their hereditary possession; they will have the leaders of Parliament, and irresistible influence over the majority. They will place you under an odious oligarchy, and your constitution will work more perniciously than many of the continental despotisms.

At present, sir, your Whig and Tory close-borough members form one party in regard to your new system of policy; and this party, as I have said, composes, to a great extent, the majority in the House of Commons. Instead of the borough interest of the one side neutralising that of the other, and of the vote being decided by the

independent members, you have the borough interest combined into a whole, and rendering the independent members powerless. You have the whole borough interest, moreover, under Whig direction. How, sir, has this worked in the present session? The nation has been almost unanimous in execrating the new system, and Parliament has been almost unanimous in puffing it. Your silk manufacturers were thrown into ruin, chiefly by a change of law; they entreated the House to receive the most important evidence, and where was the Opposition to give weight to their entreaty? The two great parties-the whole of the borough members declared against them-and their prayer was almost unanimously rejected. The whole Scottish people petitioned against the change of currency; and where was the party to give weight to their petition? There was no such party; but there were Whig members in both Houses, who, in their passion for popular rights, had the hardihood to say, that the petitions were not deserving of notice. The men, sir, who have ventured to attack the new system, in opposition to both the Ministers and the Whigs, have been treated in "the People's House" in a manner that would have disgraced a despotism, Your shipowners are petitioners for protection from ruin; and where is the party to support their prayer? The two great parties are combined, and their petitions attract scarcely any notice. The country is dreadfully distressed, and much of this distress has demonstrably been produced by the new system; yet Parliament is all harmony; the causes of the distress are not on any account to be inquired into, or spoken of, and the new system is still to be vigorously pursued. If a member venture to ascribe this distress to the real causes-to the changes and innovations-he is at once coughed down.

It follows from all this, my dear Friend, that your House of Commons scarcely seems to be the House of Commons of Old England. The barbarous gibberish of the new philosophy has expelled from it his Majesty's good old English-the wretched dogmas of the Economists have driven out of it good old English feelings and opinions. Instead of constitutional jealousy of change and innovation, I find in it a rage for them-instead of showVOL. XIX.

ing constitutional attachment to English laws and institutions, I find it asserting that they are little better than a mass of errors and evils. I find it scoffing at the prejudices of your ancestors, instead of honouring and revering them. The only members who are not listened to, and who are scarcely suffered to open their lips, are those who protest against changes, defend your laws, and speak the language of your fathers. This House was distinguished by its anxiety to promote the benefit of England; now it is distinguished by its anxiety to impoverish England. for the benefit of foreign nations. Half a million of people have been thrown into distress by an experiment which originated with the Whig quacks, and this House supports the quacks against the sufferers. Your navy is threatened with ruin by a similar experiment, and this House cleaves to the quacks, and risks the navy; experimental quackery has filled the nation with misery, and still this House is nearly: unanimous in applauding it. The manner, sir, in which various of its leaders speak of your ancestors, ought to make your blood boil. When they deride

the prejudices of our ancestors," they mean your ancestors, and not their own. Their ancestors slumber not in England. I think, sir, that, after what you have done for these men, decency ought to keep them silent on such matters; and that at any rate your House of Commons ought not to join them in heaping insults on the ashes of your departed heroes and sages. The least defensible of the prejudices of your ancestors was worth infinitely more than all the wisdom that these men ever possessed.

When I see, sir, in this House, such a man as Mr Hume exalted into a leader, made the chairman of committees, and suffered to make sweeping changes in your laws-when I see men who are not Euglishmen, trampling upon the ashes of English worthies, railing down your English church, and destroying by wholesale, principles and systems that are more peculiarly English in their origin and operation-I cannot forbear asking uyself-Can this be the House of Commons of Old England? When I see the benches, which heretofore were occupied by the parents of your happiness and grandeur, and from whence the thunders of such men as Pitt smote Whiggisin and Jacobinism to 4 M

the dust, filled by Ministers who adopt the schemes and doctrines of the Whigs and Benthamites, cry up" liberal opinions," and denounce the old principles of the country-when I see this House following disaffected empirics who do not belong to it, voting for the most wild innovations for "liberality's" sake, and making, upon mad theory, the most perilous experiments on all the great interests of the empire-when I see all this, I cannot forbear asking myself again-CAN THIS BE THE HOUSE OF COMMONS OF OLD ENGLAND?

In your present philosophical frenzy, sir, you may call this prejudice. If it be prejudice, I am not ashamed of it; I was taught it by you, and you cannot condemn it without confessing yourself an apostate.

I cannot see where this appalling state of things is to terminate. The new Tories seem to be aware that they have no strength out of Parliament, and they appear to wish to render this union of the borough interests permanent, as a thing essential for their party existence. The Whigs are bound, hand and foot, to the new system, and their only hope of gaining a share of office, arises from their support of the Ministry. I suspect that both are looking forward to a more intimate connexion, and that an effort will soon be made to bring certain of the latter into office. My suspicion may be unjust, but when the new Tories are identifying themselves with the Whigs, and separating themselves from the old Tories in almost all matters of opinion, it is a natural one. I know not how the old Tories are to retain the humble share of official influence that they now possess. They have not a single rising orator. The few young men, not in office, who speak on the Ministerial side, all profess the new Toryism, and they have not talent to be of any value to any party. If the Ministry need recruits, it generally selects them from amidst the young Whigs. Perhaps when an expected retirement or two shall take place, a Whig leader or two will be admitted into the Ministry; then the new Tory and Whig Ministers will rid themselves of old Tory colleagues-then the Whig Ministers will rid themselves of new Tory colleagues-then, the nation will rid itself of a Whig Ministry-and then you will get a

Tory Ministry of the right description.

Out of Parliament, my worthy Friend, there is about as much unanimity as there appears to be within it; but the unanimity of the nation is fiercely opposed to that of Parliament. The coalescing of the leaders has caused a general breaking-up of parties. The Whigs have lost almost every follower, except their mere mercenaries, and they never were so thoroughly contemptible, as a party, as they are at present. As to the new Tories, I cannot discover that they have any party existence out of Parliament; they consist of a few scattered indivi duals, who have neither form nor power as a body. There is not, I think, a single London newspaper, or periodical, putting out of sight the Whig and Radical ones, that can keep itself alive upon their creed: The Tory ones, that advocate their principles in other matters, depend for sale upon opposition to the Catholics. This is decisive, touching their party power. I imagine it to be impossible for them to acquire any strength in England. The Englishman hates milk and water-he cannot endure half-and-half thingsif he enter into politics, he must be for the time a downright Whig or Tory. The Independents-I mean by the term that gigantic portion of the middle and upper classes who think for themselves, have no party interests, and never bind themselves to any party-are decidedly with the old Tories, and are, I believe, more hostile to the policy of Ministers than any other part of the community. The old Tories were never so powerful as they are at present; they have always had much the greater part of the Independents as allies, but now they have them almost to a man; and, in addition, they have been reinforced by an immense number of Whig desert

ers.

The old Tories, sir, have the overwhelming majority, not only in numbers, but in every attribute of potency. They have the strength of the land with them on the Catholic question; and in regard to the new liberal system, they have with them the landed interest-the monied interest-the West India interest-the shipping interest-a large part of the manufacturing interest-and a considerable part of the mercantile interest. I believe