a retreat the adventurers into the shades of Downing-street. Had the ministers been men of ordinary nerve, they might have been forced into submission by the violence of the clamour, although sensible of its injustice; the fabric might have tumbled from the shock of the explosion, though secure against the skill of the engineer. But they stood unintimidated, and their conduct has been justified by the result. The British nation seldom perseveres in error: its mistakes rather arise from sudden fits than from continuous habits, and the evils that it brings upon itself are thus violent, but not durable. The struggle of cherished prejudice, the delusion of erroneous system, and the dread of appearing inconsistent, actuated a vast number, which was still further exceeded by those whom want of opportunity debarred from correct information, and those whose blundering intellects are incapable of comprehending, though they are permitted to judge, the projects that burst from genius; but experience of the beneficial effects of the Duke of Wellington's administration gradually allayed the tumult of opposition. Men, finding that their previous opinion had been too hastily formed, and that measures were brought forward which they did not anticipate, suspended their judgment; and the union of all the finest qualities of a statesman since elicited in our premier, combining a perception quick to discover evil, and a resource fertile in its remedy, directed by patriotic firmness, and acting with masterly decision, has made his adversaries waver in their opposition, at the same time that it has fulfilled all that his most sanguine friends could hope, and much more than they could have expected. Considering the subject dispassionately, without adulation to those in power, and with the highest respect for the great talents possessed by many who are not in office, we think that it will be impossible to select two statesmen, now living, who would more ably occupy the posts held by our present premier and secretary for the home department; we mention these alone, because they undeniably give the pervading colour to the administration. So much brilliant panegyric has been poured upon the former by men of all parties, that we might be more suspected of party feeling if we withheld, than if we bestowed, our tribute of admiration. His Grace declared in his place in Parliament, that the resignation of his former office, (the Commandership-in-Chief,) so congenial to the habits of his whole life, and the assumption of an employment in a great measure new to him, and for many reasons distasteful, By the bye, it is a singular coincidence that it was on the 15th of June, 1215, that our barons commenced that conference at Runnymede, which terminated on the 19th, with the signature of the Magna Charta ; and just six centuries afterwards, on the 15th of June, 1815, commenced those conferences which terminated at Waterloo on the 18th, so happily for Europe, and so gloriously for England. was the greatest sacrifice that he was ever called upon to make. We have never heard his bitterest enemies doubt his word, therefore we have no hesitation in taking the fact for granted and with such an example before them, surely some glowing feelings should arise in the breasts of his opponents, even in this cold age. It is one thing, like Curtius leaping into the chasm, to dare death for our country, when assembled thousands are around to madden us with their applause; it is another thing, and, in our opinion, a much more patriotic deed, silently and in secret to pursue the wearying detail of that minister's life, who, contrary to his inclination, entering office from principle, fulfils its tedious labours as a duty, and, stemming the billows of unkind fortune, dedicates himself wholly to the public good. Such men have a positive right to expect the candour and confidence of their countrymen, and their memory should outlive the decay of their statues. Yet such a man have we found, hunted by obloquy, the target of malice; not only subjected to the violence of an ignorant mob, but exposed to the wilful misrepresentations of the interested, and the shameless opposition of the factious. Let us turn from so disgusting a picture. The whole tenour of Mr. Peel's political life disposes us to view him with esteem. Unlike the minions of faction, who have wriggled themselves into office, he was never a violent partisan, but has always pursued a firm, yet mild and temperate course. Notwithstanding the clamour raised by his recent policy on the Catholic question, we think that there has seldom been a minister to whom all parties would so explicitly point as an honest man. He took office when it became him, he acted as became him when he was in office, and he resigned office when it became him. There was no mean truckling to obtain power, nor was there any discontented repining when opposed to ministers. His measures for the improvement of our code are a practica! refutation to those who would set him down as a mere minister of routine, and not as an enlightened statesman. Of him we may justly exclaim with the Grecian chief Αἲ γὰρ Τοιοῦτοι δέκα μοι συμφράδμονες ειέν. *- IIIAD β. 371. To those who follow Burke in the opinion that we must look from measures to men, and gather from the character of our ministers what is likely to be the nature of their policy, we sincerely hope that the above reflections will be sufficient to show, that they have no excuses on this ground for forming themselves into factious combinations. But let us advance. Let us inquire what is the difference, or rather, if there be any difference, to divide the members on the right and left of the speaker's chair, or of the woolsack. Oh, would the Gods in love to Greece decree We need scarcely remark that the old badges of Whig and Tory, are now as inappropriate as would be those of Guelph and Ghibbeline; we are no more separated by the differences of the former, than the Italians now are by those of the latter. The divisions of legitimate party were gradually fading away, when the French Revolution recalled them into existence, and the diversity of opinion on vital questions, kept them definite till the termination of the war. Till that period there was a struggle of mind against mind displaying prodigies of giant strength, and the contests of the present day, when brought into comparison, merely resemble the skirmishes of the Greeks and Trojans, after the gods had left the fight. Since 1815, party spirit has sometimes flagged, and sometimes shown itself in sudden and violent bursts; the causes of its existence have been gradually diminishing; the repeal of religious disabilities deprived it of its last apparent support, and if it still live on, it must be by means of foul and unsound subsistence. During the agitation of the Catholic question the case was different; the bone of contention was then palpable and obvious, though much unnecessary snarling was vented in its discussion; but now, when that question is allowed to be irrevocably determined, we believe it to be impossible to show any reason for a division into parties. Let us remember, that when the "Whigs," (so they are still called) took office under Mr. Canning, the difference of opinion on this question was the main ground on which the "Tories" separated themselves from his administration. But now that the removal of Catholic disabilities has annihilated the validity of any division on this account, if the old axiom be true, that "things that are equal to the same thing are equal to one another," then it cannot be denied that no organised opposition to the present administration can be justified. Such opposition must proceed from a "personal party," not from a "party of principle ;" it would merit no confidence, it must be stigmatised as factious. Since the assembling of Parliament, the conduct of parties has justified the sanguine anticipations of the friends of united councils. Lord Darlington has acknowledged that the principles of the present administration are not at variance with those of the Whigs; and Mr. Brougham declared that if his voting against the Address could have any influence in embarassing ministers, he would rather vote in opposition to his judgment than concur in a purpose so prejudicial to the interests of the country. The latter, indeed, (our English Briareus, who seems to possess a hundred hands with which he executes the schemes of his fifty heads), has been mainly instrumental in effecting the beneficial revolution now taking place in the system of party government. His friends in general have followed his wise example, and the session promises a degree of unanimity unparallelled in our parliamentary history. Imperfections must be looked for in all concerns where men are agents; but in the present instance the blemishes are too incon siderable to attract much attention, the friction too unimportant seriously to retard the machine. On looking at the component parts of the minorities in the divisions, we cannot but recal the old maxim that "the exception proves the rule." With every credit for the rectitude of their intentions, the regular oppositionists are mostly just the men who would be cumbersome as friends, and who are innoxious as opponents; men who make some shew in the easy art of finding fault, but who would resemble Antæus in the grasp of Hercules, if they were elevated from their alma mater, the opposition benches. The present state of our country certainly demands the collective wisdom of her statesmen, and it may with confidence be hoped that her maternal cries will not pass unheeded by her sons. Let those sons but combine with fraternal cordiality, and Great Britain, despising alike the pitiful sneers of the weak, and the bullying vaunts of the powerful, may bid defiance to her keenest foes, and, secure in her united strength, can never recede from her position as the first of nations. ART. III.-Narrative of the War in Germany and France in 1813 London: THE Marquess of Londonderry has shewn great good sense, we think, in throwing off that yoke of authorship under whose embarrassments it was his bad fortune to have produced his first work to the world. He certainly gained from the tutelage to which he had submitted, not a few of those advantages of decoration which writers in general are anxious to grace their style withal; he derived from it an ease, a fluency, and energy of diction which we readily admit do not intrinsically belong to the noble Marquess; and what we especially miss in the present narrative, is that order of arrangement, by which chronology as well as lucidness are most abundantly provided for, and which certainly was not wanting in the narrative of the Peninsular war. But "rude am I in speech," is that sort of appeal which, in love or literature, will resolve the most obdurate of hearts, when it proceeds from the lips of a soldier, who, if he even did shew any great skill in the set phrase of peace, upon either occasion, would, perhaps, thereby only demonstrate how much less profitably than a military man might be, he had been employed. The art of bookmaking may be quite tolerable and useful, when applied to works of imagination and amusement; but the sacred interests of history should be exempted from all profane interference. A witness who is to attest the truth of what he saw, before the tribunal of posterity, should not be tampered with; no prompting should be permitted in his case; and no interpolation of the evidence, so much as allowed to be suspected. Besides, what a disastrous blow to all our sympathies, when reading over the affecting story of a battle in which our countrymen fought, we discover that it is the lamentation of a professional author, instead of the genuine affliction of the ostensible writer, that engages us! Our firmness has unquestionably been sometimes put to the test by the pathetic description of a General of Division; nay, a tender-hearted ensign has beguiled us of a genuine tear by the details of a letter, written on the field of battle:" but as for the simulated sorrows of a bookwright, as he mourns over the ravages of war, we can only compare them to the abstract countenance of woe which an undertaker is so well able to put on just as the funeral begins to 66 move. The very artlessness which is betrayed throughout this volume, the absence of all those fruits of literary discipline which it shews, furnish what is to us, even in such a shape, a rather agreeable proof of the integrity of the narrative; and thus, in this sense, the very weakness which we might complain of in the writer, becomes the chief strength of the historian. What Lord Londonderry himself says upon this point must not be omitted. In reference,' he observes in his advertisement, to my former Narrative of the Peninsular War, I stated very explicitly the obligation I was under to a gentleman for the arranging of my letters, and thus aiding my first attempts in submitting them to the press. In the present case, I have no such statement to make. The work, such as it is, is written and compiled wholly by a soldier, not by an author; and whatever the amount of its deficiencies may prove to be, I must take them upon myself.'-p. vii. After such a declaration from such a quarter, confirmed as it is by internal evidence in the work itself, we proceed to the Narrative with a degree of satisfaction and a sense of security respecting the genuiness of the story, which, we confess, had nigh abandoned us on the perusal of the former production. Perhaps it is not such a fault as all readers will be disposed to condemn in Lord Londonderry, that he has failed to give to this history that sort of interest which is calculated to recommend it to general readers. The book may be fairly said to be little more than a tame register of military manoeuvres, or, in fact, than a military despatch in quarto transmitted to Downing-street. There is no attempt whatever at breaking up the grave and solemn march of the technical history, by either popularising the account of an action, or blending with its details some striking incident or another, (many of which must usually occur amidst the scenes of war,) which might serve to awaken general curiosity. The work may, therefore, be said, in this sense, rather to furnish the materials for history, than to be a history itself. We have also to complain of the too great proneness of Lord Londonderry to conceal facts, and altogether modify his narrative, lest he should trespass beyond the bounds of official confidence. |