character, must be aware that the mass of the people, however cold, circumstantial and unexciteable in the general tenor of their lives, are subject to sudden fevers of excitement upon public matters, which almost periodically recur, as though they were necessary to carry off the secretions of the mind, which in more free and communicative tempers are never suffered to accumulate. In this state, no nation under the sun is more violent, more unfeeling, and more unjust than the English; but considering their general calm good sense, we may well compound for these occasional out-bursts of harsh unreasonableness. In one of these explosions of long digested discontent, caused by such neglect as we have described, the ignorant, slavish, and shameless parliament was elected, which passed the reform bill. There can be little doubt, that John Bull became ashamed of this parliament and its gross servility to the minister ;-the House of Commons, which in one night-nay, within the same half-hour, came to precisely opposite decisions, upon precisely the same grounds, in order to comply with the will of the government, was not such as even Reformers' zeal could bear with patience after a little reflection; and so evident was the disfavour into which that house had fallen with a large portion of the public, that it was calculated by most of the Conservatives in England, and feared by many of those attached to the government, that a great re-action would take place in the new elections, and that a great accession would be made to the Conservative strength in the House of Commons. In this it appears that both parties reckoned erroneously; and to the great astonishment of even the most experienced, the English people, who had been so violently excited at the preceding election, neither recoiled from their headlong folly into Conservative caution, nor went forward into the extreme of radicalism, as had been expected. It seems that they were too obstinately bent on carrying into practical effect the experiment of the reform bill, to do the one, and had too much conteinpt for the persons who put themselves before the world as radical leaders, to do the other. Throughout the kingdom they have elected members, chiefly because of their connexion

with the reform measure, both within and without the House of Parliament, but chiefly the latter, at least in the new constituencies. It may seem, that this is inconsistent with what we have just said of the disfavour into which the reform-bill parliament appeared to have fallen with the country, but there can be no doubt that the facts were, or appeared to be, as we have described them; and we can only account for the apparent inconsistency, upon the supposition, that however disgusted many of the people were with the shameless servility of the members of that parliameut, they were more willing to give them another trial under the new system, than to fall into the seeming contradiction of giving those who were opposed to the creation of the new franchises, the first benefit of their exercise.

By the new constituencies, however, the men elected have been, as we have already said, those who had bestirred themselves in their respective neighbourhoods about the reform bill, and who possessed local influence with a class of people who, until now, had no power of conferring any thing beyond local respect and distinction. The rich banker, or the great brewer, or the extensive attorney of the district, was a considerable person in his own neighbourhood, and never thought of being more-the operation of the reform act is, to send such men, with all their local prejudices, and all their ignorance of enlarged political questions, into parliament, to deliberate and decide upon affairs which they have little chance of ever understanding in their full bearings, and which they will not, and cannot help viewing with reference merely to their effect upon some local matter, that has fallen within the range of their experience. If it be said that, after all, these are no worse than the crowd of foolish, fashionable young gentlemen, the connexions of borough patrons, who for the honour of the thing, and the agreeable privilege of franking their own letters, were brought into parliament, we answer, that we fear they are, because these young gentlemen never pretended to do more than follow the leading of able and experienced politicians, whereas our provincial heroes full of their legislatorial consequence, and eager to exhibit their parliamentary abilities to the world in

general, and their constituents in particular, will not be content without doing something in their own way, and, of course, in nine cases out of ten, doing mischief, or at the least, impeding the progress of the public business.

But there are other men of a much worse stamp than these, who have, we fear, got into parliament under the new system, in much greater numbers than they ever did before-we mean the active, cunning knaves who are desirous to make a "good thing" of the situation they have arrived at by pretended patriotism:-trading politicians who, by intrigue and industry, flattery and lies, have wriggled themselves into parliament, and will use their voices and their votes to promote their own emolument solely. These are men who, in public matters, have no conscience, beyond a keen sense of what is for their own interest; and who are only safe from voting against their conviction, by a happy ignorance upon the public and general effects of any measure whatever. The secret service money, and all the minor employments in the gift of the minister, are the prey to which these sharp-eyed, keen-scented senators will direct their attention; and it will not be their fault if corruption do not thrive more in a reformed parliament than it ever did before.

With such materials as these making up, what is called by the public prints at present, the ministerial strength of the House of Commons, it will be easily seen that the ministers can have nothing like an assured confidence of the regular support of a body so constituted. They must make up their minds to continual checks and defeats, or to continual study of the temper of the majority, and passive obedience to its decrees. There is also, yet, a third course, which such ministers as we have now, may not scruple to resort to, that of overruling the House of Commons from without, by the excitement of popular clamour in favour of revolutionary measures. There is, indeed, but too much reason to fear that the readiness for revolutionary changes within, will be quite enough even for ministerial purposes; but it is just possible, that the ministry, thwarted in some of their plans, from which they cannot retreat, may think fit to appear once more to the multitudinous rabble against the sense of one of the Houses

of Parliament, if not of both; for there are among the members of the present government, men, who from furious illtemper, or dull, dogged obstinacy, or extreme self-conceit, would not hesitate to urge matters to any extremity whatever, rather than lose their consequence and their salaries, as ministers, or their power, as influencers of the legislative, and managers of the executive business of the country.

So far as we can at present anticipate, no attempt to proceed further with revolution, under the name of "parliamentary reform," will be successful during the ensuing session. We do not believe, that either vote by ballot, or a shortening of the duration of parliaments, would find a majority in the new House of Commons. The latter question would probably meet with a more favourable reception than the former-there is a growing disposition among the ministerial reformers to put on an appearance of great reasonableness, and to take a mean between extremes. If the government is pressed with much vehemence on the question of making parliaments triennial, we think it likely a compromise would be made between the present law, and that proposed, and that quinquennial parliaments would be admitted by the minister. But, for the present, the finality of the reform of parliament measure, will probably be maintained by the minister, and the majority of the House of Commons, notwithstanding the violent demands of a hundred radicals.

If, however, in the single particular of popular representation, which has already been revolutionized with so little wisdom, and so much fraud, there may be expected some check to the march of desperate innovation, there is, we fear, no hope, that in any thing else, the eager and conceited spirit of the time will be defeated or controled. The church will be first assailed, and its venerable establishment, if not pulled to the ground, will be shaken through all its walls and buttresses; the tongue and hand of violence will be lifted up against it, and reason too, or rather that which pretends to be reason, the demonstrative power exercised in a hard and heartless spirit of humanly considered utilitarianism, will be used to wage war against the nobler feelings, which make dear to men the venerable and magnificent

institutions connected with the religion of the country. That the cause of strife between the people and the clergy, and the wretched anxieties regarding secular affairs, to which the latter are made liable in the present temper of the nation, should be taken away, is certainly most desirable; but we fear that the same power which has been active in causing and promoting the existence of that temper, will have too much concern in determining upon the remedy. There is no right spirit for a church reform at present in the legislature; it is not for huckstering political economists, to pull to pieces and re-arrange these institutions, the dignity of which they cannot feel, and the value of which they cannot appreciate. The narrow-minded, cold, worldly calculators, who talk much about the progress of intellect and the march of mind, because they themselves have made progress, and marched to a position which, if sense, and honour, and integrity, had been necessary to it, they never could have attained, would fain destroy, as ridiculous conceits, or mere impostures of antiquity, the aids which political institutions have supplied to the growth and maintenance of those things which have a higher aim and wider scope, than mere national utility or social convenience. In the noble and affecting language of Edmund Burke, we may say now, as he did of a former time, and of a national spirit not much differing from that which now threatens us with moral degradation and political ruin "All the pleasing illusions which made power gentle, and obedience liberal, which harmonized the different shades of life, and which, by a bland assimilation, incorporated into politics the sentiments which beautify and soften private society, are to be dissolved by this new conquering empire of light and reason. All the decent drapery of life is to be rudely torn off -all the superadded ideas furnished from the wardrobe of a moral imagination, which the heart owns, and the understanding ratifies, as necessary to cover the defects of our naked shivering nature, and to raise it to dignity in our own estimation, are to be exploded, as a ridiculous, absurd, and antiquated fashion."

We really do not see before us, upon the most sober view of the case, any

thing but a series of ignorant, presumptuous, mischievous innovations, under the name of "judicious reforms," beginning with the church and going on through every great institution of the nation, which our new-fangled, conceited rulers and legislators will set down as wrong, because they were not arranged according to the superior lights of modern wisdom. Our colonies are likely to be sacrificed to spurious liberalism on the subject of Negro slavery, and our commercial institutions, our agriculture, and the manufactures, which depend upon legislative protection against foreign competition, will, in all probability, be sacrificed to the dogmas of political economists. The English manufacturers in cotton, who, by the reform bill, have obtained such a preponderance in the representation, will take care of themselves, and, if they can, will secure cheap production and a foreign market, heedless that in doing so they bring ruin on every other interest in the country. How well they are, in a moral point of view, deserving of especial favour at the nation's hand, may be judged of from the evidence elicited by Mr. Sadler's committee, respecting their treatment of the thousands of children in their factories, who are destroyed body and soul, by toil and tyranny, and the depravity occasioned in the promiscuous intercourse of such multitudes without any moral governor, at their tender years.

We look to the House of Lords for protection against the evil tendencies of the lower house; but how can we now look to it with confidence? Where is the proud independence-the deliberative strength-the lofty dignity of that great assembly, which held the balance between the impetuosity of the commons, and the immorality of the crown, so long as the integrity of the British constitution yet existed? They are gone: the Whig government, leaguing with the popular violence, has destroyed that proud security of the British people. The House of Lords now deliberates with the twoedged sword of prerogative and popular fury, suspended over it by a thread, ready to be snapped at the first indication of effective opposition to the will of a revolutionary government. The ministers, who pretend a zeal for liberty, and the traitors in

We scarcely think it a departure from our proper limits in hazarding a few observations on the highest legal functionaries in the land. We do not approach the subject in a spirit of uncandid or presumptuous criticism, much less from the unworthy motive of attracting curiosity by ill-natured and impertinent discussion. It is one of the best principles of a free press, to scrutinize public characters, be they ever so exalted, with unshrinking courage; evincing, nevertheless, a suitable respect for the individual whose pretensions are investigated, and preserving a strict adherence to the truth. Excessive flattery is as much to be shunned as violent abuse; the one injures and the other degrades the author more than the object of it. There is no branch of our constitution which we contemplate with more delight than the judicial department: the system is almost perfect in theory, although it has sometimes been defiled in practice. The British judge is independent alike of the sovereign who appoints him, and of the people over whose lives and properties he presides; were it otherwise, so long as the supreme magistrates held their situations at the will of the crown, removable at pleasure, fear might render them venal, profligate, and base; ready to truckle to the power on whose breath they depended, and expecting fresh promotion by infamous compliance. Whatever hopes the Bench may now entertain, there is but little to affect their fears; and we think it would be an improvement on the present system, if the first appointment of the judge was final, without a chance of translation or advancement. The most difficult and delicate duty which the government is called upon to exercise in the disposal of its patronage, consists in the selection of the judges of the land, because experience has proved that the most mischievous and melancholy results have followed, and ever will follow, from prostituting the Bench to favouritism and the spirit of faction: nor can it be doubted for a moment that

such an administration incurs an awful responsibilty, and merits the hatred of all honest men, which places on the Bench imbecility and ignorance, in preference to knowledge and integrity. It is not that the corrupt and hesitating judge startles and disgusts the public by some act of barefaced and enormous turpitude, or of reckless subserviency to the powers that be: it is in the thousand instances which occur between man and man in the daily administration of justice, that the incalculable mischief is done. Here folly, caprice, incapacity, and prejudice may work their will, to the prevention of justice and the ruin of the suitor. Who has ever travelled the circuit, and witnessed the almost absolute power which a single judge exercises over property, liberty, and life, that must not tremble at the idea of authority so vast being consigned to insufficient hands? How dreadful the notion of a man's life being sacrificed to a whim, or his property lost by a jester; and the initiated know how fatal it is to the cause, for even a prejudice to cross the mind of the judge at a critical moment. These considerations surely should be enough to induce any wise government to evince their love of humanity and justice, by appointing to the Bench men above suspicion, of large understandings, of uncompromising integrity, and competent knowledge, and whose character and fitness for business the public have stamped by their confidence and support.

But if the Bar, as a working profession, has been improved within the last thirty years, so the constitution of the Bench has been changed materially for the better. We can assert, without fear and without flattery, that there are some as able men now upon the Irish Bench as ever adorned the judicial station: men who were distinguished not merely as plodding, safe, and careful practitioners, but for the ample measure of their natural genius; for the strength and grasp of their intellect; for depth of knowledge, accompanied with pow