followed by some kind of alarm, that some kind of mischief might come to some people, if the bill was accepted as altered, so that measure was lost altogether."

In this easy style of contempt his Lordship treats the puzzled effrontery of the Premier, and the trembling mystifications of the small Home Secretary. He then pounces on the "grand measure" by which they are to go down to history:

"An unqualified submission, however, to the same power which had dictated those Corporation Bill changes, was made when the Tithe Bill came on the carpet."

After deriding this abandonment of the "Appropriation," which he terms the only merit the bill could ever boast (so much for his opinion of the grand measure in its present state), he declares that its only effect was, to supply, however involuntarily,

"A new prop for the Irish Church at the heavy cost of the people of this country, while some of those who made us pay for it, avowed that we were only throwing good money after bad, for nothing could save the building from tumbling down."

And this nonentity of Ministerial functions he assigns, and justly assigns, as a reason, for his not going to tell the Scottish people how little they had gained under the present Administration. Every syllable is applicable to every part and parcel of her Majesty's dominions.

any

But how are we to account for a power, sustained without one of the qualifications that belong to legitimate ascendancy? How is it, that authority, which was once to be won only by the vigour of public talent, is now delegated to acknowledged weakness? How is it that the citadel, which was once to be stormed only by the heart and heroism of the noblest order of mankind, is now possessed by a race of dwarfishness and decrepitude? And how is this, too, in a day when the general intelligence, manliness, and honour of England, have yet given no signs of decay? If "Babylon the Great" was to be the predicted haunt of the robber and the mendicant, the nest of the snake and the dwelling of the obscure birdit was not while its halls were crowded with the steps of the mighty, and the wealth of the world flowed into its treasure chambers.

But we have the truest and the most dispiriting of all solutions, in the words of one fully master of the problem. The only instrument by which men of mean abilities can hope for power, is the degradation of the public heart to their own level. At how early a period Lord John Russell was cognizant of the grand WhigRadical secret, we are to judge from that "History," which he wrote in the days when he could lose nothing by telling the truth, and therefore told it; and when he never expected to gain anything by telling the contrary, and therefore did not tell it.

"A Minister," says Lord John's book, "especially if he has been long in office, may have so engaged and corrupted the great proprietors of

boroughs; may have so distributed honours, ribands, and offices; may have so obliged the principal Members of the House of Commons, by providing for their principal friends and relations in the Customs, the Excise, or the Colonies; may have so fettered every public man of weight and influence, by the ties of private interest, that, at last, his Cabinet shall be enabled to say to their Sovereign-however pernicious our measures may be, and however unpopular our persons, you must maintain us in power, for we can command a majority in the House of Commons, though our conduct and our acts are offensive to the country, and disgusting to your Majesty."*

We ask, in what species of self-denial has this opinion been followed? In the first instance, we have no less than 124 Members of Parliament, about one half of whom hold actual places under the Cabinet, and the remainder have had places given to their relatives. And even those are only the more prominent class. Besides, we have the more secret, and probably still more dangerous, influence, arising from the enormous increase of the Commissions. Of those we state but a few :

-

...

Ireland, too, has had a handsome provision-this being Mr.

O'Connell's especial farm-yard for his papist-patronage live-stock.

Board of Education Commission

Boundary Survey ditto...

Railway ditto

Law Expenses

£50,000
7,000
12,700

Even this is but a part. At home, the patronage of the three Secretaries of State has been accumulating from year to year, until it exerts a temptation applicable to three-fourths of the community, a temptation which, in any other country than where the press keeps watch upon public men, and some moral feeling still exists, would be absolutely irrresistible. Is there nothing in this to make the man who loves his country tremble? "The British Constitution will perish," said the great Montesquieu, in the spirit of fatal foresight, "when the Legislative shall become more corrupt than the Executive." And this system is one of the most rancorous evils which grow from the power of men of mean abilities. Eager for the profits of place, and conscious that they cannot demand them by public ability, they habitually adopt intrigue. The man of acknowledged eloquence, vividness of genius, and depth of public wisdom, dis

"Essay on the English Government," 427.

dains to use the tools for which he has no necessity: he will not use the spade to burrow his way through the ground, while he can wield the sword to assault the battlements. A self-degraded Ministry assumes servility as self-preservation: and, unable to obtain honours by the judgment of the empire, filches them by the connivance of a faction. Can any man, of common acquaintance with the operations of the human mind, believe, that if the present Cabinet felt that they could dispense with O'Connell, they would not rejoice to fling him back to his native obscurity? An hour would not elapse before they consigned him to flounder for life in that vulgarity of vileness, for which he was made. But it is this miserable and conscious mediocrity, which makes the Cabinet but another joint of the tail-a purse for the chief beggar, a wretched dependent on a faction, which has the savageness, the appetite, and the treachery of the brute. "Their poverty, but not their will, consents." We shall venture to say that there is not an individual in England who more utterly loathes the very sound of O'Connell's voice, than Lord Melbourne-not one who more instinctively shrinks at his very tread, than Lord John Russell. But they cannot shut the Treasury door upon him-they dare not. A footman who knows that a syllable of remonstrance against the most insolent command of an insolent master, would strip him of his livery and turn him into the street, could not exhibit a more groveling submission. The Agitator is at this hour going through Ireland, on an open peregrination to throw the only act of their Session, the Tithe Regulation, into utter scorn. He is haranguing the rabble by thousands, on the helpless weakness of the WhigRadical Cabinet. With one hand, alluring all that is corruptible in the country, by pointing to the Judgeships and Commissionerships which he has extorted from them to lavish on his creatures; with the other, he appeals to all that is furious, by pointing to that banner which his poltroonery will never raise. Yet what attempt has been made on the part of his loathing and frightened coadjutors, to check the insolence of this progress? Not the slightest. He is essential to their existence. They have adopted the saving finance of the Roman; and, disgusted as they may feel, must make no objection to the origin of the coin that gives them bread. But let this system be carried on for a few years longer, and it will be quoted as authority against all public virtue. Artifice, servility, and tergiversation will be ranked as the natural means of public honours; and the last stage of political distemper, like the last stage of bodily disease, will exhibit its virulence, by filling every organ of life with an insect and reptile swarm, till all festers into the grave. "Quemque suæ rapiunt scelerata in prælia causæ.

Hos polluta domus, legesque in pace timendæ ;
Hos ferro fugienda fames, mundique ruinæ."

544

General Literature.

The Opening of the Sealed Book in the Apocalypse shown to be a Symbol of a future Republication of the Old Testament. By RICHARD NEWTON ADAMS, D.D., Fellow of Sidney Sussex College, and Lady Margaret's Preacher in the University of Cambridge. London: Parker. 1838.

THIS is a very singular work, and one which has a considerable resemblance to the ideas, in which Mr. Gresswell has indulged. Origen is the earliest authority that is quoted.

In part, we believe our author's idea to be correct; and the Cherubic imagery, which is in the vision, naturally leads us to interpret this particular portion of the Apocalypse with reference to the future restoration of the Jews. In which case the Sealed Book will evidently be the Old Testament, which predicted the Messiah, typified him, and specified the characteristics of his advent, which book experience has proved to be sealed to the Jews. Consequently, as it will be unsealed by Christ, the Lion of the tribe of Judah, the root of David, each a prophetic title of the Messiah, at which event the same Cherubic imagery is introduced, and the same four-and-twenty elders, probably the twelve Patriarchs and the twelve Christian Apostles, are described joining in adoration to the Lamb, we must suppose, that this unsealing of it denotes the conviction and conversion of the House of Israel, as to its hidden meaning, as to the truth of Christ having been their predicted Messiah. The passages of the Old Testament, by which Dr. Adams supports his opinion, are forcible; on the commentaries we place but little reliance. One of the strongest we conceive to be Daniel's prophecy of the seventy weeks, in which mention of sealing up the vision and prophecy, and anointing the Most Holy, is made. In other parts of this Prophet the sealing of the book is enjoined. The connection, in which the mention of the Most Holy stands with the sealing of the vision and prophecy, or with the sealing of the book, forces us to turn our eyes to the perverse refusal of the Jews to acknowledge the evidences, which their Scriptures contained, when Christ appeared-an obstinacy, in which they have persisted to this day.

But since Josephus says, that the books preserved in the Temple, among which was the authentic copy of the Old Testament, were not destroyed in the flames, but taken to Rome, Dr. Adams appears, in this circumstance, to recognise the sealing of the book, as if it were placed by Titus under the seal of Rome. He has ingeniously observed on the passage in the 12th chapter of the Prophet, which, in connection with the sealing promises, stated, that he shall stand in his lot at the end of the days, that his predictions have been

subjected to a two-fold seal. For they not only lay under the same, as the other books of the Old Testament; but when Origen revised the Septuagint, in the book of Daniel alone he abandoned the Septuagint, and resorted to the comparatively modern version of Theodotion. Nor has this alone befallen the writer; but he has been degraded by the Jews from his prophetic character, and placed among the hagiographists.

We scarcely agree with Dr. Adams in his notion, that the meaning of the Sealed Book was, "that the authentic copy of the book was withdrawn from the world at the destruction of Jerusalem, and sealed up under the custody of Rome." Josephus says, that the spoils taken from the Temple were placed by Vespasian in the Temple of Peace, but that the Law and purple veils of the Holy Place were preserved in the Imperial Palace. From this passage (B. I., 1. 7, c. 5, § 7,) it would appear that the Law or the Pentateuch was alone taken to Rome; but as there are other passages in Josephus which assert the same transmission of the other sacred books to Rome, what he here says of the Law must be understood of all. It might indeed be shown, that or voμos, was used occasionally for the whole canons. The Temple of Peace, in which were the Jewish spoils, was destroyed by fire in the reign of the Emperor Commodus; but the spoils were preserved. They were removed by Genseric from Rome to Carthage, and by Belisarius from Carthage to Constantinople. According to Procopius they were afterwards sent to the Christian Churches at Jerusalem; but whether they reached their destination, or were lost at sea, no one knows. It, however, seems probable, from the enumeration of the things sent, that the sacred books were not among them. Nor does it appear that they formed a part of the triumphal spoil of Belisarius. Our author nevertheless thinks, that only the Law was deposited in the Imperial Palace--the other sacred books having been, by the permission of Titus, in the possession of Josephus, but that, during the composition of his work, he had access to the copy in the Imperial Palace. He conjectures, that the Lateran was the palace in which the Jewish Pentateuch was deposited, because there has been found, on a brass plate, the decree of the Senate, which conferred the empire on Vespasian, which seems to identify this Palace as that Emperor's property. Since then, after Constantine's conversion to Christianity, this palace became the official residence of the Roman Bishop, the treasures which it contained probably became transferred to the modern palace on the Vatican-Hill, and this authentic copy may be among the unexplored and almost countless treasures of the Pontifical Library. The inference from which plainly is, that the authentic copy will be discovered when God shall think fit to bring it to light, and that it will be powerfully operative in converting the Jews.