paralytic old age of the Jacobite party, that the tal laws of the country, who had attacked the evil was completely at an end. The Whigs rights of its greatest corporations, who had looked to Holland; the High Tories to France. The former concluded the Barrier Treaty; some of the latter entreated the court of Versailles to send an expedition to England. Many men who, however erroneous their political notions might be, were unquestionably honourable in private life, accepted money without scruple from the foreign powers favourable to the Pretender. Never was there less of national feeling among the higher orders, than during the reign of Charles the Second. That prince, on the one side, thought it better to be the deputy of an absolute king, than the king of a free people. Algernon Sydney, on the other hand, would gladly have aided France in all her ambitious schemes, and have seen England reduced to the condition of a province, in the wild hope that a foreign despot would assist him to establish his darling republic. The king took the money of France to assist him in the enterprise which he meditated against the liberty of his subjects, with as little scruple as Frederic of Prussia or Alexander of Russia accepted our subsidies in time of war. The leaders of the Opposition no more thought themselves disgraced by the presents of Louis, than a gentleman of our own time thinks himself disgraced by the liberality of a powerful and wealthy member of his party who pays his election bill. The money which the king received from France had been largely employed to corrupt members of Parliament. The enemies of the court might think it fair, or even absolutely necessary, to encounter bribery with bribery. Thus they took the French gratuities, the needy among them for their own use, the rich probably for the general purposes of the party, without any scruple. If we compare their conduct, not with that of English statesmen in our own time, but with that of persons in those foreign countries which are now situated as England then was, we shall probably see reason to abate something of the severity of censure with which it has been the fashion to visit those proceedings. Yet, when every allowance is made, the transaction is sufficiently offensive. It is satisfactory to find that Lord Russel stands free from any imputation of personal participation in the spoil. An age, so miserably poor in all the moral qualities which render public characters respectable, can ill spare the credit which it derives from a man, not indeed conspicuous for talents or knowledge, but honest even in his errors, respectable in every relation of life, rationally pious, steadily and placidly brave. The great improvement which took place in our breed of public men is principally to be ascribed to the Revolution. Yet that memorable event, in a great measure, took its character from the very vices which it was the means of reforming. It was, assuredly, a hapry revolution, and a useful revolution; but it was not, what it has often been called, a glorious revolution. William, and William alone, derived glory from it. The transaction was, in almost every part, discreditable to England. That a tvrant, who had violated the fundamen begun to persecute the established religion of the state, who had never respected the law either in his superstition or in his revenge, could not be pulled down without the aid of a foreign army, is a circumstance not very grateful to our national pride. Yet this is the least degrading part of the story. The shameless insincerity, the warm assurances of general support which James received down to the moment of general desertion, indicate a meanness of spirit and a looseness of morali ty most disgraceful to the age. That the enterprise succeeded, at least that it succeeded without bloodshed or commotion, was principally owing to an act of ungrateful perfidy, such as no soldier had ever before committed, and to those monstrous fictions respecting the birth of the Prince of Wales, which persons of the highest rank were not ashamed to circulate. In all the proceedings of the Convention, in the conference particularly, we see that littleness of mind which is the chief characteristic of the times. The resolutions on which the two Houses at last agreed were as bad as any resolutions for so excellent a purpose could be. Their feeble and contradictory language was evidently intended to save the credit of the Tories, who were ashamed to name what they were not ashamed to do. Through the whole transaction, no commanding talents were displayed by any Englishman; no extraordinary risks were run; no sacrifices were made, except the sacrifice which Churchill made of honour, and Anne of natural affection. It was in some sense fortunate, as we have already said, for the Church of England, that the Reformation in this country was effected by men who cared little about religion. And, in the same manner, it was fortunate for our civil government that the Revolution was in a great measure effected by men who cared little about their political principles. At such a crisis, splendid talents and strong passions might have done more harm than good. There was far greater reason to fear that too much would be attempted, and that violent move ments would produce an equally violent reaction, than that too little would be done in the way of change. But narrowness of intellect and flexibility of principles, though they may be serviceable, can never be respectable. If in the Revolution itself there was little that can properly be called glorious, there was still less in the events which followed. In a church which had as one man declared the doctrine of resistance unchristian, only four hundred persons refused to take the oath of allegiance to a government founded on resistance! In the preceding generation, both the Episcopal and the Presbyterian clergy, rather than concede points of conscience not more important, had resigned their livings by thousands. The churchmen, at the time of the Revolution, justified their conduct by all those profli gate sophisms which are ca.led jesuitical, and which are commonly reckoned among the pe culiar sins of Popery; but which in fact are everywhere the anodyLes employed by minds rather subtle than strong, to quiet those internal twinges which they cannot but feel, and which they will not obey. As their oath was in the teeth of their principles, so was their conduct in the teeth of their oath. Their constant machinations against the government to which they had sworn fidelity, brought a reproach on their order, and on Christianity itself. A distinguished churchman has not scrupled to say, that the rapid increase of infidelity at that time was principally produced by the disgust, which the faithless conduct of his brethren excited, in men not sufficiently candid or judicious, to discern the beauties of the system amidst the vices of its ministers. But the reproach was not confined to the church. In every political party, in the cabinet itself, duplicity and perfidy abounded. The very men whom William loaded with benefits, and in whom he reposed most confidence, with his seals of office in their hands, kept up a correspondence with the exiled family. Oxford, Carmarthen, and Shrewsbury were guilty of this odious treachery. Even Devonshire is not altogether free from suspicion. It may well be conceived that at such a time such a nature as that of Marlborough would riot in the very luxury of baseness. His former treason, thoroughly furnished with all that makes infamy exquisite, placed him indeed under the disadvantage which attends every artist from the time that he produces a masterpiece. Yet his second great stroke may excite wonder, even in those who appreciate all the merit of the first. Lest his admirers should be able to say that at the time of the Revolution he had betrayed his king from any other than selfish motives, he proceeded to betray his country. He sent intelligence to the French court of a secret expedition intended to attack Brest. The consequence was that the expedition failed, and that eight hundred British soldiers lost their lives from the abandoned villany of a British general. Yet this man has been canonized by so many eminent writers, that to speak of him as he deserves may seem scarcely decent. To us he seems to be the very San Ciappelletto of the political calendar. The reign of William the Third, as Mr. Hallam happily says, was the nadir of the national prosperity. It was also the nadir of the national character. During that period was gathered in the rank harvest of vices sown during thirty years of licentiousness and confusion; but it was also the seed-time of great virtues. The press was emancipated from the censorship soon after the Revolution, and the government fell immediately under the censorship of the ress. Statesmen had a scrutiny to endure wich was every day becoming more and more severe. The extreme violence of opinions abated. The Whigs learned moderation in office; the Tories learned the principles of liberty in opposition. The parties almost constantly approximated, often met, sometimes erossed each other. There were occasional bursts of violence; but from the time of the Revolution those bursts were constantly becoming less and less terrible. The severities with which the Tories, at the close of the reign of Anne, treated some of those who had directed public affairs during the war of the Grand Alliance, and the retaliatory measures of the Whigs after the accession of the house of Ha nover, cannot be justified; but they were by no means in the style of the infuriated parties whose alternate murders had disgraced our history towards the close of the reign of Charles the Second. At the fall of Walpole far greater moderation was displayed. And from that time it has been the practice-a practice not strict ly according to the theory of our constitution but still most salutary-to consider the loss of office and the public disapprobation as punish ments sufficient for errors in the administration not imputable to personal corruption. Nothing, we believe, has contributed more than this le nity to raise the character of public men. Ambition is of itself a game sufficiently hazardous and sufficiently deep to inflame the passions, without adding property, life, and liberty to the stake. Where the play runs so desperately high as in the seventeenth century, honour is at an end. Statesmen, instead of being as they should be, at once mild and steady, are at once ferocious and inconsistent. The axe is forever before their eyes. A popular outcry sometimes unnerves them, and sometimes makes them desperate; it drives them to unworthy compliances, or to measures of vengeance as cruel as those which they have reason to expect. A minister in our times need not fear either to be firm or to be merciful. Our old policy in this respect was as absurd as that of the king in the Eastern Tales, who proclaimed that any physician who pleased might come to court and prescribe for his disease, but that if the remedies failed the adventurer should lose his head. It is easy to conceive how many able men would refuse to undertake the cure on such conditions; how much the sense of extreme danger would confuse the perceptions and cloud the intellect of the practitioner at the very crisis which most called for self-possession, and how strong his temptation would be, if he found that he had committed a blunder, to escape the consequences of it by poi soning his patient. But in fact it would have been impossible, since the Revolution, to punish any minister for the general course of his policy with the slightest semblance of justice; for since that time no minister has been able to pursue any general course of policy without the approba tion of the Parliament. The most important effects of that great change were, as Mr. Hallam has most truly said and most ably shown, those which it indirectly produced. Thenceforward it became the interest of the executive govern. ment to protect those very doctrines which an executive government is in general inclined to persecute. The sovereign, the ministers, the courtiers, at last even the universities and the clergy, were changed into advocates of the right of resistance. In the theory of the Whigs, in the situation of the Tories, the common interest of all public men, the Partia mentary constitution of the country found per fect security. The power of the House of Commons, in particular, has been steadily on the increase. By the practice of granting sup plies for short terms, and appropriating them | purchased so dearly, was on every side exto particular services, it has rendered its approbation as necessary in practice to all the measures of the executive government as it is in theory to a legislative act. Mr. Hallam appears to have begun with the reign of Henry the Seventh, as the period at which what is called modern history, in contradistinction to the history of the middle ages, is generally supposed to commence. He has stopped at the accession of George the Third, "from unwillingness," as he says, "to excite the prejudices of modern politics, especially those connected with personal character." These two eras, we think, deserved the distinction on other grounds. Our remote posterity, when looking back on our history in that comprehensive manner in which remote posterity alone can without much danger of error look back on it, will probably observe those points with peculiar interest. They are, if we mistake not, the beginning and the end of an entire and separate chapter in our annals. The period which lies between them is a perfect cycle, a great year of the public mind. In the reign of Henry the Seventh, all the political differences which had agitated England since the Norman conquest seemed to be set at rest. The long and fierce struggle between the crown and the barons had terminated. The grievances which had produced the rebellions of Tyler and Cade had disappeared. Villanage was scarcely known. The two royal houses whose conflicting claims had long convulsed the kingdom were at length united. The claimants whose pretensions, just or unjust, had disturbed the new settlement were overthrown. In religion there was no open dissent, and probably very little secret heresy. The old subjects of contention, in short, had vanished; those which were to succeed had not yet appeared.. tolled and worshipped. Even those distinctions of party, which must almost always be found in a free state, could scarcely be traced. The two great bodies which from the time of the Revolution had been gradually tending to approximation, were now united in emulous support of that splendid administration which smote to the dust both the branches of the house of Bourbon. The great battle for our ecclesiastical and civil polity had been fought and won. The wounds had been healed. The victors and the vanquished were rejoicing together. Every person acquainted with the political writers of the last generation will recollect the terms in which they generally speak of that time. It was a glimpse of a golden age of union and glory-a short interval of rest which had been preceded by centuries of agitation, and which centuries of agitation were destined to follow. How soon faction again began to ferment, is well known. In the Letters of Junius, in Burke's Thoughts on the Cause of the Discon tents, and in many other writings of less merit, the violent dissensions, which speedily convulsed the country, are imputed to the system of favouritism which George the Third introduced, to the influence of Bute, or the profli gacy of those who called themselves the king's friends. With all deference to the eminent writers to whom we have referred, we may venture to say that they lived too near the events of which they treated, to judge of them correctly. The schism which was then ap pearing in the nation, and which has been from that time almost constantly widening, had little in common with those which had divided it during the reigns of the Tudors and the Stuarts. The symptoms of popular feeling, indeed, will always in a great measure be the same; but the principle which excited tha feeling was here new. The support which Soon, however, new principles were an- was given to Wilkes, the clamour for reform nounced; principles which were destined to during the American war, the disaffected conkeep England during two centuries and a half duct of large classes of people at the time of in a state of commotion. The Reformation the French Revolution, no more resembled the divided the people into two great parties. The opposition which had been offered to the goProtestants were victorious. They again sub-vernment of Charles the Second, than that opdivided themselves. Political systems were position resembled the contest between the engrafted on theological doctrines. The mu- Roses. tual animosities of the two parties gradually In the political as in the natural body, a senemerged into the light of public life. First sation is often referred to a part widely differcame conflicts in Parliament; then civil war; ent from that in which it really resides. A then revolutions upon revolutions, each at- man, whose leg is cut off, fancies that he feels tended by its appurtenance of proscriptions, a pain in his toe. And in the same manner the and persecutions, and tests; each followed by people, in the earlier part of the late reign, sinsevere measures on the part of the conquer- cerely attributed their discontent to grievances ors; each exciting a deadly and festering ha- which had been effectually lopped off. They tred in the conquered. During the reign of imagined that the prerogative was too strong George the Second things were evidently tend- for the constitution, that the principles of the ing to repose. At the close of it the nation | Revolution were abandoned, and the system of had completed the great revolution which com- the Stuarts restored. Every impartial man menced in the early part of the sixteenth cen- must now acknowledge that these charges tury, and was again at rest. The fury of sects had died away. The Catholics themselves practically enjoyed toleration; and more than toleration they did not yet venture even to desire. Jacobitism was a mere name. Nobody was left to fight for that wretched cause, and very few to drink for it. The constitution, were groundless. The proceedings of the government with respect to the Middlesex election would have been contemplated with delight by the first generation of Whigs. They would have thought it a splendid triumph of the cause of liberty, that the King and the Lords should resign to the House of Commons a portion of their legislative power, and allow | tion in former days used to be the envy of the it to incapacitate without their consent. This, world; it was the pattern for politicians; the indeed, Mr. Burke clearly perceived. "When theme of the eloquent; the meditation of the the House of Commons," says he, " in an en- philosopher in every part of the world.-As to deavour to obtain new advantages at the ex- Englishmen, it was their pride, their consola pense of the other orders of the state, for the tion. By it they lived, and for it they were benefit of the commons at large, have pursued ready to die. Its defects, if it had any, were strong measures, if it were not just, it was at partly covered by partiality, and partly borne least natural, that the constituents should con- by prudence. Now all its excellencies are nive at all their proceedings; because we our- forgot, its faults are forcibly dragged into day, selves were ultimately to profit. But when this exaggerated by every artifice of misrepresentasubmission is urged to us in a contest between tion. It is despised and rejected of men; and the representatives and ourselves, and where no- every device and invention of ingenuity or thing can be put into their scale which is not idleness is set up in opposition, or in prefertaken from ours, they fancy us to be children ence to it." We neither adopt nor condemn when they tell us that they are our representa- the language of reprobation which the great tives, our own flesh and blood, and that all the orator here employs. We call him only as stripes they give us are for our good." These witness to the fact. That the revolution of sentences contain, in fact, the whole explana- public feeling which he described was then in tion of the mystery. The conflict of the seven-progress is indisputable; and it is equally inteenth century was maintained by the Parliament against the crown. The conflict which commenced in the middle of the eighteenth century, which still remains undecided, and in which our children and grandchildren will probably be called to act or suffer, is between a large portion of the people on the one side, and the crown and the Parliament united on the other. disputable, we think, that it is in progress still. To investigate and classify the cause of so great a change, would require far more thought, and far more space, than we at present have to bestow. But some of them are obvious. During the contest which the Parliament carried on against the Stuarts, it had only to check and complain. It has since had to govern. As an attacking body, it could select its points of atThe privileges of the House of Commons, tack, and it naturally chose those on which it those privileges which, in 1642, all London was likely to receive public support. As a rose in arms to defend, which the people con- ruling body, it has neither the same liberty of sidered as synonymous with their own liberties, choice, nor the same interest to gratify the and in comparison with which they took no people. With the power of an executive goaccount of the most precious and sacred prin- vernment, it has drawn to itself some of the ciples of English jurisprudence, have now be- vices and all the unpopularity of an executive come nearly as odious as the rigours of mar government. On the House of Commons, tial law. That power of committing, which above all, possessed as it is of the public purse, the people anciently loved to see the House of and consequently of the public sword, the naCommons exercise, is now, at least, when em- tion throws all the blame of an ill-conducted ployed against libellers, the most unpopular war, of a blundering negotiation, of a disgracepower in the constitution. If the Commons ful treaty, of an embarrassing commercial crisis. were to suffer the Lords to amend money-bills, The delays of the Court of Chancery, the miswe do not believe that the people would care conduct of a judge at Van Diemen's land, any one straw about the matter. If they were to thing, in short, which in any part of the admi suffer the Lords even to originate money-bills,nistration any person feels as a grievance, is we doubt whether such a surrender of their attributed to the tyranny, or at least to the constitutional rights would excite half so negligence, of that all-powerful body. Private much dissatisfaction as the exclusion of individuals pester it with their wrongs and strangers from a single important discussion. claims. A merchant appeals to it from the courts The gallery in which the reporters sit has be- of Rio Janeiro or St. Petersburg. A painter, come a fourth estate of the realm. The pub-who can find nobody to buy the acre of spoiled lication of the debates, a practice which seemed to the most liberal statesmen of the old school full of danger to the great safeguards of public liberty, is now regarded by many persons as a safeguard, tantamount, and more than tantamount, to all the rest together. canvass, which he calls an historical picture, pours into its sympathizing ear the whole story of his debts and his jealousies. Anciently the Parliament resembled a member of opposition, from whom no places are expected, who is not required to confer favours and propose meaBurke, in a speech on parliamentary reform, sures, but merely to watch and censure; and which is the more remarkable because it was who may, therefore, unless he is grossly injudelivered long before the French Revolution, dicious, be popular with the great body of the has described, in striking language, the change community. The Parliament now resembles in public feeling of which we speak. "It sug- the same person put into office, surrounded by gests melancholy reflections,' says he, "in petitioners, whom twenty times his patronage consequence of the strange course we have would not satisfy, stunned with complaints, long held, that we are now no longer quarrel- buried in memorials, compelled by the duties ing about the character, or about the conduct of his station to bring forward measures simi of men, or the tenour of measures; but we lar to those which he was formerly accustomed are grown out of humour with the English to observe and to check, and perpetuaily en constitution itself; this is become the object of countered by objections similar to those which the animosity of Englishmen. This constitu- it was formerly his business to raise. VOL. I.-13 I Perhaps it may be laid down as a general on the subject is loud and vehement. But it rule, that a legislative assembly, not constituted seems to us that, during the remissions, the on democratic principles, cannot be popular feeling gathers strength, and that every suc long after it ceases to be weak. Its zeal for cessive burst is more violent than that which what the people, rightly or wrongly, conceive preceded it. The public attention may be for to be their interest, its sympathy with their a time diverted to the Catholic claims or the mutable and violent passions, are merely the mercantile code; but it is probable that at no effects of the particular circumstances in which very distant period, perhaps in the lifetime of it is placed. As long as it depends for exist- the present generation, all other questions will ence on the public favour, it will employ all merge in that which is, in a certain degree, the means in its power to conciliate that favour. connected with them all. While this is the case, defects in its constituAlready we seem to ourselves to perceive tion are of little consequence. But as the close the signs of unquiet times, the vague presenti. union of such a body with the nation is the ment of something great and strange which effect of an identity of interest, not essential, pervades the community; the restless and turbut accidental, it is in some measure dissolved bid hopes of those who have every thing to from the time at which the danger which pro-gain, the dimly-hinted forebodings of those wh duced it ceases to exist. have every thing to lose. Many indications Hence, before the Revolution, the question might be mentioned, in themselves indeed as of parliamentary reform was of very little im-insignificant as straws; but even the direction portance. The friends of liberty had no very of a straw, to borrow the illustration of Bacon, ardent wish for it. The strongest Tories saw will show from what quarter the hurricane is no objections to it. It is remarkable that Cla-setting in. rendon loudly applauds the changes which A great statesman might, by judicious and Cromwell introduced, changes far stronger timely reformations, by reconciling the two than the Whigs of the present day would in great branches of the natural aristocracy, the general approve. There is no reason to think, capitalists and the landowners, by so widening however, that the reform effected by Cromwell the base of the government as to interest in its made any great difference in the conduct of defence the whole of the middling class, that the Parliament. Indeed, if the House of Com- brave, honest, and sound-hearted class, which mons had, during the reign of Charles the Se-is as anxious for the maintenance of order and cond, been elected by universal suffrage, or if all the seats had been put up to sale, as in the French Parliaments, it would, we suspect, have acted very much as it did. We know how strongly the Parliament of Paris exerted itself in favour of the people on many important occasions; and the reason is evident. Though it did not emanate from the people, its whole consequence depended on the support of the people. From the time of the Revolution the House of Commons was gradually becoming what it now is a great council of state, containing many members chosen freely by the people, and many others anxious to acquire the favour of the people; but, on the whole, aristocratical in its temper and interest. It is very far from being an illiberal and stupid oli-a more excellent way. Time is bringing around garchy; but it is equally far from being an another crisis analogous to that which occurred express image of the general feeling. It is in the seventeenth century. We stand in a influenced by the opinion of the people, and situation similar to that in which our ancestors influenced powerfully, but slowly and circuit- stood under the reign of James the First. It ously. Instead of outrunning the public mind, will soon again be necessary to reform, that as before the Revolution it frequently did, it we may preserve; to save the fundamental now follows with slow steps and at a wide principles of the constitution, by alterations in distance. It is therefore necessarily unpopu- the subordinate parts. It will then be possible, lar; and the more so, because the good which as it was possible two hundred years ago, to it produces is much less evident to common protect vested rights, to secure every useful perception than the evil which it inflicts. It institution—every institution endeared by anbears the blame of all the mischief which is tiquity and noble associations; and, at the done, or supposed to be done, by its authority same time, to introduce into the system imor by its connivance. It does not get the provements harmonizing with the original credit, on the other hand, of having pre-plan. It remains to be seen whether two hunvented those innumerable abuses which do dred years have made us wiser. not exist solely because the House of Commons exists. A large part of the nation is certainly desirous of a reform in the representative system. How large that part may be, and how strong its desires on the subject may be, it is difficult to say. It is only at intervals that the clamour the security of property as it is hostile to corruption and oppression, succeed in averting a struggle to which no rational friend of liberty or of law can look forward without great ap. prehensions. There are those who will be contented with nothing but demolition; and there are those who shrink from all repair. There are innovators who long for a President and a National Convention; and there are bigots who, while cities larger and richer than the capitals of many great kingdoms are calling out for representatives to watch over their interests, select some hackneyed jobber in boroughs, some peer of the narrowest and smallest mind, as the fittest depositary of a forfeited franchise. Between these extremes there lies We know of no great revolution which might not have been prevented by compromise early and graciously made. Firmness is a grea virtue in public affairs, but it has its proper sphere. Conspiracies and insurrections in which mall minorities are engaged, the outbreakings of popular violence unconnected |