under the irresistible aspect of an unbroken phalanx. A nearer inspection becomes necessary to scatter such impressions to the four winds of heaven. It will then however soon be seen, that there exist three sorts of adherents to the old orthodox sentiments of Lords Eldon and Liverpool. These may be called the political, the ecclesiastical, and the miscellaneous Tories. Sir Robert Peel rules nominally over all,-but actually over the first. Lord Stanley and Sir James Graham have joined him, as seceders from liberalism, gifted with many talents, few followers, but with unbounded bitterness against their former colleagues. The political Conservatives fight like the condottieri of ancient days for plunder, rank, and power. Their watch-words are specious generalities, empty of sense, yet full of sound. The grand moving principle of this section is a perfect nasus cereus,--a nose of wax, excellent to hook upon as a feature of the face,--but capable of being turned towards either ear, at the pleasure of the honest wearer. A stranger dropt from the moon, through his parachute taking a direction adverse to the lunar regions, might stray into the gallery of the House of Commons while the representative for Tamworth discourses about freedom, the blessings of constitutions, or the rights of subjects, and get thoroughly convinced that Sir Robert must have been the veritable father and defender of the Reform Bill, the patriot above all other patriots, contending to the death for municipalities and suffrages. No power could make such a spectator believe, contrary to what he would deem the evidence of his senses, that the orator in question resisted the repeal of the Test and Corporation Acts, the abolition of rotten boroughs, the granting fair corporations to eight millions of people in Ireland, or a plan for national education in which one sect was not to have every thing exactly its own way. True also it is, that could this miller and his men have the machinery of the state once more under their control, they would make such concessions for keeping themselves in office, as would frighten all the friends of the Reformation Society into epileptic fits. Sir James Graham acknowledged in the house, four or five months ago, that had the Queen received toryism into her bosom, Ireland would not on that account have been subjected to a vice-regal government founded upon orange principles; since, as he justly observed, the time was gone by for all such attempts. This remarkable admission was no doubt thrown out, as a cake of honey, to quiet the Emerald Isle, in case the hypothesis should be realized; nor would ten persons in that country afford any credit to it, looking back upon past conduct, and recent professions elsewhere. Yet we nevertheless conceive, that what the right honourable member for Pembroke adduced, may be quite correct after all. The creed of the Carlton Club comprises both text and commentary; so that by a most magical process, what

ever expediency might require, would find support from one or the other. The political Conservatives have always a set of pledges, with double tongues, which can be construed to mean not only what common people take it for granted they do mean, or ought to mean, but something amounting to the exact contrary. They intend to fall always upon their feet, like cats hurled from the tops of houses; and their frequent success in this way astonishes the natives of the land. It is only when nature happens to exert some unlucky law of gravitation, that lookers-on are vastly amused, and themselves grievously disappointed.

Then there are the ecclesiastical Conservatives, amongst whom sincere honour and honesty are engrafted upon such prejudices that both the former are neutralized. The gardening process is precisely reversed amongst this class of politicians; for instead of the slips sweetening the crab-tree, its acrimony overcomes the engraftments, and renders even the fruit of virtues sour. Thus their prejudices never dissolve or ripen into principles, but their principles ferment, effervesce, and presently acidulate into the most bitter prejudices. These are the men who rant and rave at Exeter Hall,-who take the chair at Reformation, Factory, and Anti-Education meetings,-who present petitions for repealing the Catholic Emancipation Bill,-who deliver orations and harangues against political Dissenters,-being all the while, with exquisite inconsistency, themselves members of a political Church, impatient of having its foot removed from the necks of nonconformists. These are men wearing the most respectable exterior imaginable. Opposed to religious freedom they most certainly are; but they carry their opposition like the left-handed dagger of Ehud, which had two edges of a cubit in length, girded under his raiment, upon his right thigh! We appeal without fear to a certain self-styled evangelical newspaper, of melancholy notoriety, for proofs and illustrations as to the correctness of this portrait. They have evidently very little opinion of that orthodoxy or soundness, imagined by some others to be inherent in the Coryphæus of Toryism. They can never forget the year 1829, when the Orange of Ireland was unceremoniously left in the kennel without its Peel! We well remember, that at least one of their company supposed that he had discovered the apocalyptic number of the Beast in the name or title of the Duke of Wellington! As to the question of slavery alone, some of them have acted the part of really faithful and independent legislators. Let them have all the credit, wherever it has been deserved. Few members of parliament enjoy more personal respect than Sir Robert Inglis. He always seems to say what he means, and to mean what he says. His opinions and language moreover represent the University of Oxford with great accuracy. He stands out as an individual of sixty years since,' rather than as a living contem

porary. Perhaps the same may be said with regard to the member for East Kent; an English country gentleman, who has yet to learn that Christianity involves the law of a new commandment, so that as our Saviour condescended to love us, we ought also to love one another. The miscellaneous Conservatives we consider to be a class of senatorial veterans, like the gallant member for Lincoln; personages important in the estimation of no one but themselves. Each of them fosters some single, puny, or insulated project,--such for instance as the abolition of all duty upon insurances; an object very laudable in itself, did there exist the slightest chance of its achievement by Colonel Sibthorp.

No one however is more constant in sounding the trumpet of attack against the Ministerialists. These, as a close compact band of united warriors, are dwindling every day. Lord Morpeth, indeed, avowed at the close of an able speech in vindication of their Irish policy, that they would exist no longer upon sufferance while yet the whole world is asking upon what else they can possibly survive. Their worn-out soubriquet of Whigs no longer misleads any one. Their ranks are becoming fine by degrees, and beautifully less. Deserters from them file away to the right or to the left; developing themselves as either Conservatives or Liberals. Like the man who would neither eat nor drink until he had copied out the Bible, their reputation is wasting into a skeleton, while they are sticking close to the dead letter of their reform bill,-to the absurd megrim of finality,— with an obstinacy which has already brought death to their elbow. Not that the simile applies to any thing else about them, except their character. With regard to the good things and substantialities of this life, we perceive no shadow of a symptom betokening either overmuch study of the Scriptures,-or inconvenient abstinence from pleasure,-or any tendencies towards personal self-sacrifice. We sometimes are almost tempted to wish, that a touch of starvation might just arouse them from that trance of inactivity and blindness to their own interests, which is not less inimical to their future fame, than it is at present perilous to their country. Never since the Revolution, had a cabinet such noble opportunities for being useful so thrust into their hands. Oliver Goldsmith divides mankind into two classes,-those born with a silver spoon in their mouths, -and those with a wooden ladle. But our ministers form a sort of tertium quid,- a perverse set of spoiled children, who can be taught nothing beyond the miserable art of throwing their silver spoons away! Their statesmanship, whenever any is displayed by themselves or their thick and thin parliamentary supporters, amounts to nothing more than trickery and tergiversation. There lived a famous archbishop, minister to Henry the Seventh, who had a fashion of treating his fellow

subjects, which he termed using his fork. For instance, in all matters of royal benevolences, he gave notice that such and such sums were required, and must be raised for the service of his master. If persons, living in comfortable circumstances, intreated that his majesty would respect their rights, and spare the sheep of his pasture, the prelate reminded them of their handsome raiment, their well-furnished houses, and their luxurious habits, indicative of considerable ability for contributing towards the exchequer or if those, in a state of apparent depression, preferred the same prayer, he insisted upon their having hidden hoards, augmented by their frugality and parsimony, which thereby must the more enable them to manifest their pecuniary loyalty. This kind of argument was styled the fork of Archbishop Morton; for he was sure to impale his victims upon one prong or the other. Our ministers are in many respects the Mortonians of their age. The people are told, if they vigorously demand political privileges, that they are clamorous in the midst of too many comforts, and therefore nothing will be conceded or if they abstain from positive agitation, they are then informed, that they evidently want nothing, and therefore of redress they shall get nothing! The imprudence of using such treacherous weapons lies here; namely, in encouraging the very notion which good rulers should wish to allay, that a pressure from without can alone obtain social ameliorations. It was on discussing Mr. Duncombe's resolutions that Mr. Wakley talked about the tightness ' of the screw being necessary to make either government or parliament yield any thing.' What else can be expected, when the Premier thus explained his ideas of the business of the country, in answer to a review of the session taken by Lord Lyndhurst?

'I must beg to remind the noble and learned lord, that the business of the country is not properly the passing of laws; that parliament has much to do besides the passing of laws and the making new enactments; that they had something else to do besides introducing new laws, and amending those which were faulty and defective; and that although many bills may not have passed into laws, and many more may have been left unconsidered, yet it could not be said that the business of the country had been left unconducted; because the passing of bills and laws was only a subsidiary and incidental duty of parliament: the principal duty of parliament was to consider the estimates for the public service, and to retrench what was superfluous; to correct what was amiss, and to assist the crown with those supplies and subsidies which it thinks it right and necessary to afford.'

We pass over the blundering tautology of this precious specimen of aristocratic eloquence, after the most approved fashion of Mrs. Malaprop, just to remind the reader how excellently Vis

count Melbourne would have served the purposes of our Plantagenet and Tudor princes. True enough it is, that granting supplies formed a main feature of the matter, when civilization was a few centuries younger than it is at present. But as has been well observed, since parliament has outgrown its infancy, legislation must constitute its principal occupation. And not only so, but what with the complicated enactments of the 'statute-book, and the complicated relations of society, it is 'mainly through the forms of legislation, that the business of the 'country can be efficiently conducted.'

Much wrath may be forgiven the Radicals, when the prime minister of a country like ours is heard to propound such theories upon governmental administration. It is difficult to define with precision the limits and numbers of this parliamentary section. All radicals are liberals; whilst all liberals are not radicals. Their compactness and disposable forces will augment just as patience wears out. Household suffrage, at least triennial parliaments, and above all the ballot, form the principal ingredients of their creed. For the last of these reforms, it is consolatory to reflect, that about 250 members feel pledged, under the philosophical auspices of the greatest among the metropolitan representatives. The names of Grote, Hume, Villiers, and many more like them, will retain an eminent place, if we mistake not, in the future pages of our history. Notwithstanding a few ebullitions of bad temper, with some occasional eccentricities of conduct, combatant after combatant is coming over to their party. In the late ministerial crisis, they manifested a moderation of demand, erring perhaps on that side: yet the small amount of good flowing from the labours of the session to the nation has accrued from their efforts alone. They are also rising in estimation out of doors; whilst the frequent expression of their sentiments, within the House, quickens the lukewarmness of some, and checks apostacy in others, amongst the ministerialists. The accession of the members for Waterford and Tipperary to office, although in subordinate capacities, just shows that administration, whilst not moving at more than a snail's pace, is yet not positively at a stand still. We are quite aware that the leaders, in both chambers, would recede rather than advance, had they any real choice in the matter. But time, and events, and the diffusion of knowledge, a combination of cheers and jeers from friends and foes, and the very ground on which they stand, preclude any open or avowed retrogression. They may be, and are miserable apothecaries to the body politic: yet the Radicals will take care that the witty quotation of Lord Lurgan shall not be always applicable: Hic venditur narcoticum, emeticum, et omne quod exit in um, præter remedium! That remedy must be sought for, where only it is to be found,-in bringing the parliamentary mind into