And purblind eyes are led astray XLVI. 'Mid all the tribes of airy fowl, Nought is so wise as the horned owl: XLVII. To build a temple, more we need than toil, XLVIII. I've known great wits whose wisdom all has lain Edinburgh: Printed by Ballantyne and Hughes, Paul's Work. BLACKWOOD'S EDINBURGH MAGAZINE. No. CCXCIX. SEPTEMBER, 1840. VOL. XLVIII. HINTS FOR THE HUSTINGS. ELECTIONS for Parliament are of continual recurrence. At this moment we believe that the Speaker's warrant is lying ready for the filling up of more than one vacancy. Others will occur in the five months' interval before the next session. It occurs to us that a very useful service would be rendered to many of those having to stand this fiery trial, by suggest ing, from time to time, brief hints and brief memorials, connected with the leading topics which are likely to be disputed on the hustings. There is a process technically called cramming, by which, in English and German universities, a man is prepared for a public examination. This process does not so much aim at endowing the candidate with the requisite knowledge-much of that he must be sup. posed already to have acquired-as at shaping his pre-existing knowledge to meet the sort of questions anticipated, and to travel in the ordinary course of the examination. Something like this we propose to attempt. Writing rapidly, we shall fall far short even of our own conception. But our hasty sketch may avail to furnish a hint, which hereafter at more leisure, either by ourselves or by another, may be more amply developed. I. The first topic which offers itself to our review, is the position in which we Conservatives stand to the first person in the state. An impression has gone abroad, and has been most calumniously improved, that some one or other of our party has used disparaging or insulting expressions in speaking of her Majesty. NO. CCXCIX, VOL. XLVIII. And what of that? Does a great political party stand on so tremulous a libration, that a folly, an absurdity, an explosion of drunken frenzy, if such an excess should ever occur, could affect its tenure of consideration and influence? Is it literally supposed that great political interests, held in keeping for a great people, and confided to a great party, exist so purely on sufferance, and the sufferance of fools, that any noisy drunkard, by proclaiming himself a Conservative, can in one hour, and by one word, damage the Conservative cause or attaint its principles? Why, the Whigs in this matter have the same interest as ourselves. Neither of us could exist for a week, if it were agreed that we should stand on such a hazard. Once for all, blockheads of every degree, understand that no words are ours, no words are Conservative words, until we, the Conservatives, own them-subscribe them-countersign them-adopt them-or in some way accredit them. But at least, then, we own to such insulting words having been uttered on public occasions, though we disown the utterers. Own the words? Not And purblind eyes are led astray XLVI. 'Mid all the tribes of airy fowl, XLVII. To build a temple, more we need than toil, XLVIII. I've known great wits whose wisdom all has lain Edinburgh: Printed by Ballantyne and Hughes, Paul's Work. BLACKWOOD'S EDINBURGH MAGAZINE. No. CCXCIX. SEPTEMBER, 1840. VOL. XLVIII, HINTS FOR THE HUSTINGS. ELECTIONS for Parliament are of continual recurrence. At this moment we believe that the Speaker's warrant is lying ready for the filling up of more than one vacancy. Others will occur in the five months' interval before the next session. It occurs to us that a very useful service would be rendered to many of those having to stand this fiery trial, by suggest ing, from time to time, brief hints and brief memorials, connected with the leading topics which are likely to be disputed on the hustings. There is a process technically called cram. ming, by which, in English and German universities, a man is prepared for a public examination. This process does not so much aim at endowing the candidate with the requisite knowledge-much of that he must be sup. posed already to have acquired-as at shaping his pre-existing knowledge to meet the sort of questions anticipated, and to travel in the ordinary course of the examination. Something like this we propose to attempt. Writing rapidly, we shall fall far short even of our own conception. But our hasty sketch may avail to furnish a hint, which hereafter at more leisure, either by ourselves or by another, may be more amply developed. I. The first topic which offers itself to our review, is the position in which we Conservatives stand to the first person in the state. An impression has gone abroad, and has been most calumniously improved, that some one or other of our party has used disparaging or insulting expressions in speaking of her Majesty. NO. CCXCIX, VOL. XLVIII. And what of that? Does a great political party stand on so tremulous a libration, that a folly, an absurdity, an explosion of drunken frenzy, if such an excess should ever occur, could affect its tenure of consideration and influence? Is it literally supposed that great political interests, held in keeping for a great people, and confided to a great party, exist so purely on sufferance, and the sufferance of fools, that any noisy drunkard, by proclaiming himself a Conservative, can in one hour, and by one word, damage the Conservative cause or attaint its principles? Why, the Whigs in this matter have the same interest as ourselves. Neither of us could exist for a week, if it were agreed that we should stand on such a hazard. Once for all, blockheads of every degree, understand that no words are ours, no words are Conservative words, until we, the Conservatives, own them-subscribe them-countersign them-adopt them-or in some way accredit them. we. But at least, then, we own to such insulting words having been uttered on public occasions, though we disown the utterers. Own the words? Not Never flatter yourselves, Whigs or Whiglings, that we fall so easily into traps baited with falsehoods. Not any Conservatives as having uttered such words, but our enemies as having forged such words, owe an apology, and a most contrite apology, to the nation, as so profoundly interested in her Majesty's personal dignity-which is, philosophically speaking, the national dignity exhibited under a reflex form. The total col T lective grandeur of the nation is concentrated in her Majesty's person. As a personal unity, the majesty of the nation becomes thus capable of functions, becomes the subject and the object of agencies, which could not otherwise be exercised by or towards a scattered multitude. We are all alike concerned in maintaining this reflex majesty. All of us alike, in our several proportions of rank, have an interest of property and participation in the representative dignity which her Majesty holds on our behalf. To suppose a man, therefore, offering a sincere intentional insult to our sovereign lady, is to suppose him erring much more by his understand ing than his will. The personal pretensions of the sovereign absolutely vanish in relation to the representative character with which that sovereign is inalienably clothed. Were the ruling prince the meanest of human beings individually, he is still in a sense far removed from flattery, semper augustus, as a state creature. And it is for ever true, that a man cannot insult that great idea-a constitutional sovereign-without insulting that sovereign's whole nation collectively, and himself, therefore, if he happens to be one of that nation. We need not add, (because all men of honour feel this truth with a loyalty so profound,) that a tenderness of devotion arises to strengthen this constitutional homage from considerations of sex in our present sovereign, This variety of the general case cannot affect the solemnity of our duty towards the reigning prince, cannot make it more or less wicked, more or less foolish, to insult the sovereign; but it makes it more brutal to do so. And that last consideration, viz., the brutality of insulting any person, (even though not a public person,) whose situation is specially defenceless, suggests to us a further "improvement" of the subject, for the special benefit of the Whigs, which we do earnestly beseech every good Conservative not to let slip from his hands unused on the hustings. For ourselves, for our own share in the question, so far as calumny and credulity have ascribed to us Tories any separate share or interest in such a question, we dismiss it easily by this dilemma:-If any man, claiming to be of our party, and generally accredited as such, should scem, or ever has seemed, to utter words disrespectful towards her Majesty now reigning, whom we all love and honour, then he stands in this situation-either from the latitude of words, and from his own unskilful management of words, he has brought himself into suspicion and misconstruction, (a misfortune to which all of us are liable in ourselves, under the double difficulties of language and of reporting;) and in that case he is entitled to a candid indulgence until he has an opportunity of righting himself in public opinion. Every man has the right of explaining his own meaning: no man is to be bound and pledged through life by a slip of his tongue. Either this is his situation, or if it is indeed possible that wilfully and deliberately ke levelled an insult at the sovereign lady of these realms, in that case we Conservatives indignantly repudiate him as a false brother: he is none of ours: he is probably a Whig or Radical in disguise, who has slipped in amongst us in order to betray us. But ours he is not after such an atrocity; and we, as Conservatives, have no more interest or responsibility in him or his subsequent actions, than any one of us has in a swindler who may think proper to counterfeit his name and person at a watering-place. As respects our own liabilities, therefore, we Tories slip our necks out of the halter easily enough. Not so the Whigs. There is a further use to be made of this calumny. It may be turned to good account. There is such a thing as retaliation in this world; and there is an opening made for it in this unhappy calumny of the Whigs, which no Conservative candidate, who happens to be wide awake, will fail to improve. There is a raw in the Whig hide connected with this very case of insolence to princes: let him lay his knout well into it. Tories can talk at our ease on this question of dutiful behaviour to princes. "Our withers are unwrung.' Not so the Whigs. They are sitting on tenterhooks all this time, or making bad worse by shifting about uneasily, like "a hen upon a het girdle," We -for well they know what is coming. They begin by this time to scent from afar what we are after; and bitterly they rue the hour in which, by countenancing malicious fables against the Tories, they have thrown back the recollections of us all in quest of the |