DA 
 1844 
 
 UC-NRLF 
 
 $B 751 13a 
 
ft 
 
 WHAT IS TO BE DONE? 
 
 PAST, PRESENT, AND FUTURE. 
 
 YE SHALL KNOW THEM BY THEIR FRUITS. 
 
 SECOND EDITION. 
 
 LONDON: 
 
 JAMES RIDGWAY, PICCADILLY. 
 
 1844. 
 
\A/5 
 
 EXCHANGE 
 
CONTENTS. 
 
 Present Prospects 1 
 
 Principles and Proceedings of former Whig and 
 
 Tory Governments 3 
 
 Principles and Performances of the Whig or 
 
 Reform Government 11 
 
 Principles and Proceedings of the Tory or Re- 
 pressive Government . . . . .34 
 
 Remedies 91 
 
 4 
 
 ivi203519 
 
WHAT IS TO BE DONE? 
 
 PAST, PRESENT, AND FUTURE. 
 
 r ' 
 
 Present Prospects. 
 
 On the 8th of last July, Sir James Graham, the 
 Cabinet Minister, charged most especially with the 
 safety and domestic peace of the three kingdoms, 
 declared in his place in Parliament, " We are 
 ^* arrived at no ordinary crisis. The national safety, 
 ** as well as our position in the scale of the nations 
 " of the world, is at hazard." 
 
 Subsequent events have confirmed instead of 
 weakening this most humiliating confession. In 
 Ireland rebellion still hangs suspended by a thread, 
 and in England want of employment and conse- 
 quent pauperism are yearly increasing, incendiarism 
 is reviving, leagues and counter- associations are 
 formed or forming ; class is arrayed against class, 
 and already we have had two insurrections within 
 
two years. With such prospects before and around 
 us, it behoves the country to pause and consider well 
 before it allows itself to be committed in the ensuing 
 session of Parliament to proceedings which, instead 
 of diminishing, may add to the hazards to which 
 the national safety is thus confessedly reduced. A 
 large reserve force of pensioners was granted 
 last session, and there are indications that this year 
 our military forces at home may be increased, that 
 the militia will be called out or prepared, and that 
 the laws, for what is officially called the preserva- 
 tion of order, will be made more stringent and severe. 
 Now, before these and other similar demands are 
 made, let us examine the policy we have lately been 
 pursuing, in order to ascertain whether it is in itself 
 most conducive to public order and contentment, or 
 wliether it may not, in some degree, be provocative 
 of the very disorders it is asking for additional 
 powers to quell. But, to pursue this enquiry with 
 profit, we must mark first what have been the 
 cause and the course of the events and proceedings 
 that have led to our present dangerous state of 
 affairs, — what are the directing tendencies and wants 
 of the present times, and how far they are in accord- 
 ance with the principles and practices of one or 
 other of the two great parties, which, under various 
 sectional names, have long divided, and alternately 
 or mutually directed public opinion and affairs in 
 this country. This will lead us a little further 
 back, and indeed the whole subject requires much 
 
more time arid space than the brief sketch we are 
 about to submit, can pretend to. All, therefore, 
 that we now propose is by a hasty and necessarily 
 imperfect review o'f comparatively recent trans- 
 actions to awaken attention and point out subjects 
 for candid and earnest consideration, by which it is 
 hoped the public may, in this critical state of affairs, 
 be enabled to judge for itself what policy of govern- 
 ment, and which code of principles are best adapted 
 in the present day to secure the tranquillity, the 
 concord, and the prosperity of the British Empire, 
 which our rulers tell us is now *' at hazard.'* In 
 short, what is to be done ? 
 
 PaiNCIPLES AND PROCEEDINGS OF FORMER WHIGf 
 
 AND Tory CSovernments. 
 
 It will be useful first to distinguish the charac- 
 teristics of the two great parties and principles of 
 government, which divide the suflPrages of the 
 countr}\ But it would be mere sophistry to fix the 
 policy of either party, to any one epoch, and then 
 pedantically require that it should follow its very 
 letter at widely remote times, and under totally dif- 
 ferent circumstances. This is the folly or th6 
 hypocrisy of those who prate of being modern- 
 antique Somers- Whigs, or refurbished Bolingbroke- 
 Tori«s. No ! all that common sense and honesty 
 
 A 2 
 
require, is that a party should continue to apply to 
 the rising exigencies of the times in which it finds 
 itself, the practical spirit of those principles upon 
 which it rests. Sufficient unto'the day is the appli- 
 cation thereof. 
 
 Now we take the leading tendencies of Whigs and 
 Tories to be Democracy and Aristocracy, both how- 
 ever subject always to Monarchy. Not that we 
 hold Whigs to be democrats, or Tories upholders 
 of despotism ; but we take, that your Whig, look- 
 ing to the gradual approximation to perfectibility 
 in the human race, regards Democracy as the 
 ultimate best social institution for mankind, when 
 arrived at a remote stage of great moral advance- 
 ment ; and he, therefore, promotes all those political 
 reforms and extensions of popular rights which tend 
 towards it, in so far, and no farther, than as they are 
 on a par with the moral and social advancement of 
 the people to whom and for whom they are applied. 
 And, as a necessary consequence, he advocates their 
 moral and social instruction. This we hold to be 
 the true basis of Whiggism. On the other hand 
 Tories, looking on Aristocracy, or the rule by 
 privileged classes, as the best possible modifica- 
 tion of regal government, object to all changes 
 that tend to lessen their authority, however much 
 required by the advanced state of civilization 
 out of which they arise ; and they do resist them, 
 until the people, taking advantage of adventi- 
 tious circumstances, call for them with a voice 
 
and an accord that cannot be refused. Then, 
 finding the immediate danger of further resistance 
 greater than the prospective danger of the right 
 demanded, the Tory gives way, — concedes. But 
 while thus opposed to the advance of the political 
 liberty or power of the people, he is willing to 
 bestow on them, so long as they are submissive, 
 all the protection and advantages of easy govern* 
 ment and physical enjoyment. The basis of his 
 principles is, keep things as they are, — avoid all 
 change, whether for better or for worse, until 
 forced. The one party seems best adapted for 
 administrative, the other for progressive, times : the 
 one looks to the Lords, the other to the Commons. 
 These are the dry, abstract characteristics of the 
 two parties ; but, in a country like this, where 
 independence of opinion and action have so long 
 existed, they will necessarily suffer infinite modifi- 
 cations, which now leaning to one side, now to the 
 other ; give the preponderance, now to Whig, now 
 to Tory. Where resistance to all change has long 
 existed, patience, exhausted, will lean to the side of 
 the Whigs ; where change has been going on too 
 rapidly, alarm, excited, will strengthen the Tories ; 
 where change has been abruptly checked, disap- 
 pointment, vexed, will overthrow or overrule those 
 who have checked it. A very little reflection will 
 apply these observations to recent and earlier times. 
 Thus the old Whig party wore itself out during 
 the reigns of the two first Georges. Having bravely 
 
resisted the Stuarts, it corrupted itself by long; 
 possession of power ; and, doing nothing for the 
 advancement of the people, it fell by dereliction 
 of its own first principles. Governing as Tories, 
 it was necessarily and justly displaced by Tories. 
 Then, opening with Wilkes, and ending with 
 O'Connell, began the long Tory rule of resistance 
 to all reforms and extensions of popular rights. We 
 find them opposing concession to the American 
 discontents and losing America, — opposing the 
 independence of the Irish parliament,— opposing the 
 reform of government in France in 1793, and so 
 waging a twenty years' continental war. They 
 opposed the emancipation of the Catholics in all 
 the stages of their release from the penal code, — 
 they opposed the abolition of the slave trade and of 
 slavery, — they defended all the severities of Our 
 criminal law, — they resisted reductions of taxa- 
 tion, — they discountenanced the education of the 
 people, and set their faces and their votes against 
 all dissent in religious matters, — and, from the 
 first declaration of Lord Chatham to the last speech 
 of Lord Grey, they opposed all parliamentary re- 
 form. A long war, the alarm created by the 
 atrocities of the French revolution, and great parlia- 
 mentary influence, enabled them to offer a long 
 protracted resistance, but time, peace, and public 
 opinion carried every one of these, and other great 
 questions, against them. 
 
 In 1 8^7j this great resisting party at length broke 
 
7 
 
 up. For some while there had been indications of a 
 liberal tendency amongst many of its most intelligent 
 leaders. Attempting to rule on the principles of their 
 opponents, they undermined their own power, by 
 offending the mass of their supporters ; and on the 
 death of Lord Liverpool, when Mr. Canning was 
 placed at the head of affairs, the discontent broke 
 outf The old Tories, with Sir Robert Peel and the 
 Duke of Wellington at their head, seceded,—^ 
 protesting they could not serve under a Govern^ 
 ment, whose chief was favourable to the emancipg,- 
 tion of the Catholics. Ireland was Sir Robert Peel's 
 difficulty then as now. Mr. Cannipg, therefore, 
 moving with the great middle party, which had now 
 changed from modified Toryism, to modified Whig- 
 gism, allied himself with the Whigsi, and would 
 have carried out an enlightened policy, but his 
 premature death, and the persevering opposition 
 of his former colleagues, broke up his adminis- 
 tration. For the fluent incapacity of Lord Ripon 
 who succeeded him for a few months, had no strength 
 to contend with difficulties. He retired frightened 
 at the sound himself had not even made ; and the 
 old Tories returned, but pot entire. The Duke of 
 Wellington and Peel were still at their head, but 
 they managed to weed some of their Ultras, and 
 to win back the greater part of the Canningites, to- 
 gether with some loose Whigs : and thus was 
 formed the first of the new school of resistance, by 
 means of compromise Governments. 
 
The Duke of Wellington was at its head ; his 
 administration was honest, but his policy was 
 wretched. He entirely misunderstood public opinion 
 at home, and strange to say, our foreign policy 
 was never so little respected or so unsuccessful. 
 We were once more at the heels of the Holy 
 alliance ; yet Russia, not the less, advanced to 
 Adrianople, and seized the keys of the Darda- 
 nelles ; while Dom Miguel, instructed by Austria, 
 laughed at us in Portugal, and plundered our 
 merchants. The unhappy Spanish patriots from 
 Terceira, ,were driven from our shores at Ply- 
 mouth, to conciliate Spanish despotism, and to 
 frustrate English sympathies. For discontent was 
 increasing; petitions for Parliamentary and other 
 needful Reforms were presented, only to be un- 
 heeded ; and the Roman Catholics saw plainly 
 there was no hope for emancipation, but from in- 
 creased agitation. 
 
 The more liberal members of the Cabinet, the 
 Canningites, cheated of their expectation of a 
 liberal policy, retired on the East Retford ques- 
 tion. And the old Tory Anti-Catholic party 
 under the command of the Duke of Wellington 
 and Sir Robert Peel, was left to measure its 
 strength with public opinion. They were beaten 
 and driven from pillar to post, refusing, conced- 
 ing, evading, repressing, exciting, resigning, — 
 there has seldom been such a no-government as 
 that which existed from 1828 to 1830. 
 
That which Mr. Canning and the liberal party 
 might have granted with honour, and which would 
 from them have been received with gratitude, was 
 wrung from the Duke of Wellington and the Tories, 
 on the bitterest and most dangerous, not to say, de- 
 grading, compulsion. Not one of those ministers 
 who had hitherto opposed Catholic Emancipation, 
 and now voted for it, pretended that he did so upon 
 conviction of its abstract justice or utility ; on the 
 contrary, one and all, declared they submitted to it 
 only as to the lesser evil, and to avoid hideous con- 
 sequences in Ireland and in the army, to which 
 they darkly alluded. One victory of Agitation so 
 won, paved the way for other, and more dangerous 
 attempts. Swing lit his fires in England threatening 
 a servile war, and in Ireland within less than a year 
 after this humiliation of the Government, the Re- 
 peal agitation commenced. In December 1829, Mr. 
 O'Connell at Clondalken, stated his intention to 
 form a Repeal society, and in the following month 
 he first organized it, under the name of the Parlia- 
 mentary Intelligence Office to promote the Repeal 
 of the Union. Neither the Duke of Northumber- 
 land at Dublin, nor the government in England, 
 so recently vanquished, had the energy or the 
 moral strength to check in its weak bud this 
 first systematic agitation of Repeal. In fact the 
 Government was paralyzed 5 it had deserted its 
 leading principles, and was now doggedly contend- 
 ing, now quibbling and equivocating on Penryn and 
 
10 
 
 East Retford, until it closed its ignominious career, 
 with the Duke of Wellington's blistering declara- 
 tion, that the wit of man could not devise a more 
 perfect form of Representative Government than 
 the Rotten borough nomination system. This 
 wise saw and modern instance, was its death- 
 spng. The Tories were out within a fortnight after 
 its utterance ; and Lord Grey and the Whigs 
 came in. 
 
 Thus ended the Duke of Wellington's and Sir 
 Robert Peel's first experiment of an expediency 
 government. It came in with a high character and 
 professed principles, it went out without either the 
 one or the other. Its first principle was to resist 
 Roman Catholic and Protestant Dissent, and it was 
 conquered by both ; its next object was to coun- 
 teract Parliamentary Reform, and it rendered it 
 only the more certain and more extensive. 
 
 Do we attribute fraud or want of energy to 
 H Government, which so signally broke faith ? On 
 the contrary, we think it shewed both sense and 
 courage in giving way. But it was guilty of an 
 ignorance of public opinion, and blinded by its 
 own party repressive principles it could not com- 
 prehend the justice of the claims and rights it 
 opposed. It, therefore, mischievously thwarted 
 and destroyed Mr. Canning's and the Whigs' liberal 
 policy, in order to supersede it by a repressive 
 government against that which manifestly was, and 
 which so soon proved itself to be, too strong for 
 
11 
 
 curbing. This is the blame due to the Government 
 of 1829, and as we pursue our subject we may see 
 cause to repeat the same strictures. 
 
 Principles and Performances of the Whig or 
 Reform Governments. 
 
 The change of Ministers checked the discontent* 
 and when peace, retrenchment, and reform were 
 heard to be the watch w^ords of the new Government, 
 there was a truce. Let us see what they will do, 
 was the general cry. For there was no great trust 
 in the Whigs, they were nearly unknown as official 
 ItoOn, and their party, since the days of Chatham, 
 bas seldom been popular, and shut out for nearly 
 sixty years from all official patronage, they had few 
 opportunities of serving friends and creating clients. 
 The last two generations have, in fact, been fattened 
 and ennobled by the Tories. The people too had 
 of late seen public professions so utterly disregarded, 
 that they naturally put little faith in the Whig pro- 
 raises. They received as so many fine words their 
 theory that it was the duty of all governpients to 
 promote the education and self-control of the 
 people, their civil, moral, and religious knowledge, 
 dn order to give them more freedom, and to extend 
 .that freedom as the privilege of increased and 
 the incitement to increasing knowledge and virtue. 
 But these principles were, nevertheless, steadily 
 applied by the Whigs to the Reform Bill, and 
 
12 
 
 are to be traced in all their other great measures. 
 They found the self-government, the education, 
 and religious restraints of the bulk of the people, 
 and more especially of the middle classes greatly 
 beyond their restricted liberties and privileges ; 
 and they sought to adjust this discrepancy by puri- 
 fying and extending the elective franchise. This 
 was done so liberally, frankly, and impartially, that 
 it won the acclamation of the country, and the Whigs 
 suddenly became abundantly popular. They carried 
 all before them at the elections, and the Reform Bill 
 became the law of the land. Then came their trial. 
 They had to work their new machine and to bring 
 up all the institutions of the country to a level with 
 its extended representative powers. There were 
 some few who did not see the necessity for such 
 adjustment, others who seeing it yet alarmed by the 
 recent struggles for the Reform Bill, were content to 
 advance only a few of our institutions, and to advance 
 those few far less than was necessary. Others, 
 again, were for pushing on too far. Unity of 
 purpose was lost, and in its stead came dissension. 
 Public acclamation fell off, and within two years 
 after the passing of the Reform Bill, the Whigs 
 were losing their popularity. 
 
 Then, suddenly, came the second reaction ministry 
 of Sir Robert Peel and the Duke of Wellington, who, 
 with no sufficient constitutional grounds dissolved one 
 Parliament, and continued for three months to hold 
 office in another, although constantly in a minority 
 
13 
 
 from the first day of their opening it to the moment 
 of their resignation. Had they been more successful 
 in the elections, Reform and the Reform Act would 
 have been overthrown or perverted for years ; as it 
 was, by the temporary possession of the Government 
 during the elections, and during the divisions 
 amongst the Liberals, they succeeded in thinning 
 the Whig ranks ; and Lord Melbourne returned to 
 office with a much reduced majority, yet still not- 
 withstanding this, and the dead weight in the Lords 
 against him, he succeeded in carrying out his many 
 reforms. He followed in the footsteps of his former 
 Government and of Lord Grey's, and history will 
 mark with wonder and applause the great measures 
 which the Whig party carried in less than eleven 
 years' possession of office— measures for the advance- 
 ment andsecurity of Religion, Education, Human- 
 ity, and Liberty, greater than have been carried 
 during the whole period that has elapsed between 
 the revolution of 1688 and their accession in 1830. 
 And in minor matters, they reduced taxation, abated 
 monopolies, and extended trade, commerce, and 
 manufactures. It may be worth while to recall 
 some of these facts, for amidst political turmoils, 
 the public memory is short, and its gratitude 
 shorter still. They illustrate also the temper of the 
 times. 
 
 But before naming these reforms we must guard 
 against the attempts the Tories are constantly 
 making to separate Lord Grey's from Lord Mel* 
 
1^ 
 
 bourne's Government ; affecting now to mix theml 
 selves up with and claim credit for the first, as if 
 they had not more strenuously and bitterly opposed 
 Lord Grey than even Lord Melbourne. But be* 
 cause two of their present leaders were active 
 speakers, but in no degree leaders under the 
 Whigs, they seek to pass them off as the living 
 representatives of Lord Grey's, and to discard Lord 
 Melbourne's as an altered Government. This is 
 in keeping with some other of their pretensions, to 
 accredit which, they and all the world must first 
 forget it was from Lord Grey's Government that 
 Lord Stanley and Sir James Graham seceded, and 
 that too upon a cardinal point of Irish policy 
 adopted by Lord Grey, and since followed up by 
 Lord Melbourne — and, moreover, that it was 
 against Lord Greys Government that Lord Stan- 
 ley made his too well known thimble-rig speech. 
 Lord Stanley and Sir James Graham carried with 
 them in their secession not enough followers to 
 fill the six insides of the ** Derby Dilly," for the 
 great Whig party continued essentially the same 
 as before, in both Houses of Parliament, in all 
 its old principles, and with all its old followers 
 in the country ; and so it remains unchanged to 
 this day. The falling off at the elections in 18354 
 was of those who had temporarily joined the Whig 
 ranks at the time of the Reform Bill, from various 
 motives. Of course, in all parties there will be 
 from time to time changes of sid« and opinions. 
 
15 
 
 (perfectly consci<3ntious) by individuals, but tbese 
 individuals can be no more said to carry their 
 abandoned party and principles with them, however 
 much they may fancy so, than the man who sail- 
 ing down a river moves, because he fancies he sees 
 moving the land he is leaving behind. It would 
 seem needless to proVe the connection of two Go- 
 vernments by one and the same party, and by 
 nearly all the same pei'sons ; but the contrary 
 has been so unblushingly asserted, that it is per- 
 haps useful to make these remarks before recording 
 the great deeds of the Reform Government. 
 
 For the advancement of Religion, they provided a 
 greater number of parishes, with resident ministers, 
 effecting this by abolishing the sinful abuse of plura- 
 lities, and by increasing at the same time the value 
 of the poorer livings, by applying to them the funds 
 of sinecure prebendaries and canonries. They re- 
 moved a fruitful source of discord between the 
 minister and his parishioner, by the commutation of 
 tithes. And they guarded the political indepen- 
 dence of the Bishops, by restraining translations, 
 and equalizing the revenues of the greater number 
 of their Sees. 
 
 By the Marriage Act, after guarding all due 
 legal observances, they relieved our clergy from the 
 painful office of enforcing the Marriage Service 
 of the Church of England, on those who dissented 
 from it ; leaving all Dissenters whatsoever to per- 
 
16 
 
 form their marriage rites in their own churches 
 according to the forms and rituals of their own 
 persuasions. 
 
 By the partial reform of the Church in Ireland, 
 they reduced the preposterous number of six-and- 
 twenty Bishops and Archbishops, with flocks not 
 even half so numerous in the aggregate, as the 
 single flock of the Bishop of London. The funds 
 of the reduced sees, were applied to ecclesiastical 
 purposes, and many parishes were apportioned 
 better; and the abuse of unions of Parishes 
 abolished. 
 
 Yet the Whigs have been accused of undermining 
 the Irish Church ; which when they received it from 
 the Tories was really in danger, being unable to 
 collect its tithes, even with all the support of law 
 proceedings and military assistance. But when the 
 Whigs left ofiice there was not a shilling of tithe 
 in arrear, nor a single tithe grievance. Perhaps 
 some of those, who so largely indulged in the 
 luxury of denouncing the Whig Government as 
 destructive of the Church, will, after looking at 
 the present state of Ireland, have the candour to 
 calculate and announce the probable amount of 
 Irish tithes, that would have been collected under 
 the conservative Government of Sir Robert Peel in 
 1843, if it had not been for the Irish Tithe Act of 
 the destructive Government of Lord Melbourne, 
 in 1836. 
 
It 
 
 In matters of Education, the Whigs carried a 
 permanent provision upon a comprehensive plan, for 
 the education of every Irish child without distinction 
 of sect, and without compromise of religious opinion. 
 The Tory and High Church parties sought to raise 
 the country against this charitable and Christian 
 measure, by shouting mutilation of the Word of 
 God, when Scripture extracts, (far more full than 
 those of Mrs. Trimmer's Abridgment, which they 
 themselves were actually using in their own Eng- 
 lish National Schools), were proposed to be the 
 school reading books of the Irish. And there is 
 still a party, from amongst which Sir Robert Peel 
 has unfortunately thought fit to select his Irish 
 Bishops, which is even now pursuing the same 
 course. Its present leader, the Bishop of Down and 
 Connor, so late as December, 1841, denounced in a 
 sermon this national education, which is superin- 
 tended by his Metropolitan, the Archbishop of 
 Dublin, as little better than inculcating Deism or 
 Mahometism. But these sinister attempts have all 
 failed, for the Irish National Schools have gone on 
 steadily increasing in numbers, utility, and accept- 
 ance with the public, until in 1842, they amounted 
 to 2,721, instructing 819,792 children of all per- 
 suasions; and training also 199 male and female 
 teachers during the year ; while 200 additional 
 schools, capable of admitting 25,793 more scholars 
 were erecting. So that, at this moment, there are 
 nearly 350,000 of the rising generation in Ireland, 
 
18 
 
 bringing up to religious, moral, industrious, and 
 mental acquirements, under this Whig institution. 
 
 A comprehensive measure of national education, 
 was also attempted by the Whigs to be applied to 
 England, but the growing strength of the Tory 
 party overthrew it. The House of Lords actually 
 addressed the throne against it ; and the cause of 
 national education in England, in consequence, yet 
 lingers as a bone of bitter party and religious conten- 
 tion. But the Whigs not the less paved the way for 
 the advancement of sound instruction amongst the 
 people. One of Lord Althorp's earliest applica- 
 tions was for an annual grant of £30,000 per year, 
 in aid of monies that might be raised by private 
 bodies, for the erection of School-houses under the 
 National and the British and Foreign School Socie- 
 ties. Lord John Russell carried it further, by raising 
 the grant to £50,000., and constituting a responsible 
 Board of Education. Also with a view to obtain- 
 ing information, and securing an adequate perform- 
 ance of the School Duties, he instituted in 1839, 
 a systematic inspection of all the schools that 
 accepted pecuniary assistance. And, to provide 
 aofainst the lamentable want of intelligent school- 
 masters, he proposed to establish a model school 
 for them, in which religious as well as general in- 
 struction, moral training, and habits of industry 
 should be kept closely in view. Sad and strange to 
 say, a bigoted party-cry was raised against even 
 these proposals ; and the model-school fell before 
 
19 
 
 the party-opposition of Noble Lords, and Right 
 Reverend Prelates. 
 
 In the cause of Humanity. 
 
 Slavery, throughout all the British dominions, was 
 abolished by the same Whigs, who, in 1806, 
 abolished the Slave Trade. 
 
 They reformed the sanguinary abominations of 
 our penal code. It is most satisfactory to them and 
 to all friends of humanity, to know that the sen- 
 tence and execution of death has been removed from 
 twenty-five out of the thirty-one heads under which 
 Sir Robert Peel collected capital offences in 1827. 
 In illustration of this reform, we may state that if 
 the ofi*ences which were tried in England last year had 
 been tried under Sir Robert Peel's acts, there would 
 have been no less than 2172 persons sentenced to 
 death, instead of which there were only eighty, and 
 of these eighty but ten were executed. And it is 
 still more satisfactory to know, that in proportion 
 to the general progress of crime, there has been a 
 decrease instead of an increase of those offences, 
 whose severe sentences have been mitigated ; while 
 also of these offences when tried there have been a 
 far greater number of convictions, proving thereby 
 that the mitigated law is in harmony with the feel- 
 ings of the judges, the bar, and the jury. In further 
 proof of the humane saving of life, and additional 
 security from violence effected by the Whigs, we 
 subjoin the following extract from official returns ; — 
 
€0 
 
 During the four years, between 1820 and 1 824, 
 
 under Tory ascendancy, there were executed 
 
 no less than 362 persons, being at the rate of 90 per annum. 
 Between 1824 and 1828, under Tory decline, 
 
 229 persons, or ..... 57 per annum. 
 
 Between 1832 and 1836, a^terthe first Whig 
 
 mitigations, 135 persons, or ... 34 per annum. 
 Between 1838 and 1842, after the full operation 
 
 of Whig mitigation, 36 persons, or . . 9 per annum. 
 
 And taking the average number of persons com- 
 mitted for murder, we find for the 
 
 Five years ending 1818 . . 440 persons. 
 1836 . . 413 
 1842 . . 351 
 
 Being a decrease of murder to the extent of 
 29 per cent, upon a population increased by 30 per 
 cent. Surely it is no small triumph to have re- 
 duced the executing of man by his fellow man 
 from 90 and 57 per annum to 9 ; and at the 
 same time to have steadily and greatly diminished 
 the crime of murder itself. 
 
 Despite the whining or the turgid abuse of mis- 
 taken or hypocritical philanthropists, the Whigs 
 may glory also in the name of humanity for having 
 reformed the Poor Laws, which had become the 
 very hot-bed of idleness, corruption, oppression, and 
 destitution. In the days of the old Law, there 
 was no public eye to search out and expose the gross 
 and abandoned profligacy reeking in the old work- 
 houses, by the almost promiscuous intermixture of 
 the sexes, there was no exposure of the grasping 
 
91 
 
 flinty-heartedness that half-starved and flogged the 
 defenceless inmates of one poor-house, or the corrupt 
 profusion that stuiFed them in another, out of the 
 public rates ; leaving them " to lollop and roll upon 
 their beds after dinner when they were tired of 
 doing nothing," or to laugh at the poor drudges of 
 industrious laborers who, outside of the favored 
 work-house, were barely earning by the sweat of 
 their brows, a crust of bread and precarious exist- 
 ence, — there was scanty notice of the teeming pros- 
 titutes who raised a decent annuity out of the rising 
 number of their illegitimate children, — or of the 
 rate-paying fathers, who actually claimed and re- 
 ceived a drawback from their own rates to cover 
 the parish allowance for such children of their 
 daughters, — and there is fainter recollection of 
 how the farmers paid some large half of the wages 
 of their laborers out of the parish rates, and how 
 thriving overseers, who had cottages to let, or retail 
 shops in want of customers, found benefit from the 
 notoriously monstrous though now forgotten mal- 
 administration of the old Poor Laws. 
 
 Undoubtedly, the reformed Poor Law is not per- 
 fect ; there may be, there must be in all human 
 legislation many errors to correct, but none, except 
 the most hypocritical or prejudiced, can for a 
 moment deny that it is an immense improvement 
 upon the old anomalous gangrene that was eating 
 into the heart of the country. There must ne- 
 cessarily, in a Poor Law, be much that has both 
 
tiie appearance and the reality of hardness, if not of 
 harshness, for while it is a provision on the one 
 hand for the stricken and the desolate, it must on 
 the other offer a check to the idle and the dissolute. 
 There is a set of shabby, cheat- the-devil people, who, 
 loath to part with their own money, and having once 
 paid their rates, are wont to persuade their con- 
 sciences that a Poor Law should be the be-all and end- 
 all of their charity, that in fact there should be no 
 other claimants upon their charitable time and bounty 
 than the rate collector. They are for paying tithe 
 of mint and cummin, and nothing more. But the 
 Poor Law was never meant for any such cruel 
 purpose as to supersede private charity. It would 
 be a curse instead of a blessing if it did. Its pur- 
 pose is to save and sustain those whom none else 
 either can or does sustain. But the sinking indus- 
 trious laborer, who has been long and honorably 
 known, the decayed struggling artizan, the overbur- 
 thened family, the sick, the maimed, the halt, even 
 the improvident, all these and endless other cases, 
 should be sought out by the diligent and open hand 
 of charity, and relieved, before the doors of the 
 poor-house are thought of. 
 
 It is a crying shame and offence, how little of ac- 
 tive, searching, ministering, personal charity, there 
 is amongst us, especially in our towns ; and until the 
 high and the rich shall see fit themselves to search 
 out amongst the poor, to know and be known by 
 them, thus to give an impulse to the middle classes 
 
^3 
 
 below them, and so to knit, and to bring into cha- 
 ritable intercourse and support all the cords of 
 society, the present Poor Law can never be said to 
 have had a fair trial. Till this be done, liberally 
 and systematically, the rich of this world can have 
 no right to lay their heads upon their pillows and 
 fancy they are charitable, because they give mere 
 money ; bare alms -giving and charity are very 
 different things ; the one without due inquiry often 
 fosters idleness and imposition, the other never yet 
 failed of its heavenly office of doing good. 
 
 All Poor Laws are in fact but the supplement 
 of a nation's charity, and when that falls short, 
 does not fill its measure, then neither the present 
 nor any other Poor Law can sufficiently fulfil both. 
 And there will be as there now is, misery, starvation 
 and death in the land ; but the stern accountability 
 rests, not with the Poor Law, but with those hun- 
 dreds of thousands, be they in high or middle classes, 
 who neglect one of the first of christian duties. As 
 it is the Poor Law which the Whigs with true 
 patriotism did not fear to reform, although formerly 
 decried and misrepresented, for election purposes, 
 by some of the Tories, is now praised, defended and 
 adopted in its fullest extent by them when in power, 
 and after its success. 
 
 During all the various debates attending its in- 
 troduction and passing. Sir Robert Peel, although 
 so recently Home Secretary, and speaking daily upon 
 all other subjects, never uttered one word upon the 
 Poor Law, except once for a few minutes in Com- 
 
24 
 
 mittee on an unimportant clause. Was this pru- 
 dence or shabbiness ? 
 
 Retrenchment was a Whig pledge. One of 
 their earliest acts, on their accession to office, was 
 to reduce their own salaries.* They also abolished 
 above 1,200 useless or sinecure places, with salaries 
 amounting to nearly 500,000/. a year, and above 
 200,000/. more was saved in the Colonies. They 
 thus saved the country half a million, — and half 
 a million, be it remembered, spent by all their pre- 
 decessors in jobbing, patronage, and corruption. No 
 wonder which party made itself enemies ! They 
 also reformed the Pension List ; and, on the acces- 
 sion of her present Majesty, they put an effectual 
 bar to the old system of quartering on it the needy 
 or spendthrift hangers-on of the Court and the 
 Government. For they passed an act, limiting the 
 annual pensions to 1,200/., and directed that they 
 should be granted only for recorded services ren- 
 dered to the sovereign, the country, or to literature, 
 art, or science. 
 
 In general expenditure they effected also great re- 
 ductions. They found the total expenditure of the 
 Empire, in 1829, amounted to 54,223,412/. They 
 reduced this, in 1835, to 48,787,638/. ; being a saving 
 of nearly five millions and a half on an expenditure 
 of some twenty millions a year, for the fixed charges 
 exceeded twenty-nine millions. It is true, that the 
 
 * One of the earliest of the Tories, was to allow Lord Ellen- 
 borough to draw £12,000. a-year for a sinecure, while in the 
 receipt of 3630,000. in India. 
 
«5 
 
 revolt in Canada, brought on by years of Tory 
 neglect and misgovernment, — that the armaments 
 resulting from the diiferences with France on the 
 Levant question, and the unavoidable war in China, 
 (which has, however, paid itself,) caused a great in- 
 crease of expense ; but so thriftily had the Whigs 
 managed the establishments of the country, that 
 actually, in 1840, when all these causes of expense 
 were in full activity, our expenditure was only 
 53,444,053/., being nearly a million less than it 
 was in 1829, under the Duke of Wellington, in a 
 time of comparative tranquillity ! 
 
 And we may here refer to those financial de- 
 ficits, concerning which so large a handle has been 
 made. If we take the accounts of the revenue and 
 expenditure from 1831 to 1842, both years inclusive, 
 we shall find that the total excess, in prosperous 
 years, of revenue above expenditure, was 7*487, 030Z.; 
 and in other years, of expenditure above revenue, 
 6,956,492/. ; leaving a surplus balance of 530,538/. 
 It is to be noted, that in this account is included 
 the large deficit for 1841, which was made out by 
 the present government against the Whigs, after 
 they left office, and in which 400,000/. for the 
 year's expenses in China was charged, while no 
 credit was given for the Chinese indemnity. There 
 was also a charge of 150,000/. for Chinese ex- 
 penses in 1840. But these have been repaid ; and, 
 therefore, these two sums should be recredited to 
 the Whigs and would make the true balance of sur- 
 
2& 
 
 plus revenue, under their whole administration, 
 exceed a million, notwithstanding their reduction 
 of seven millions a year of taxes. 
 
 For, during their administration, they reduced 
 TAXES amounting to 11,495,100/., and imposed 
 others estimated at 3,727,600/., leaving a balance 
 of taxes remitted, exceeding seven millions a year ; 
 and as the greater part of these remissions were 
 made soon after they took office, the country must 
 have been relieved by them, during their adminis- 
 tration of affairs, to the extent of from fifty to sixty 
 millions ; and it is to be remembered, that, during this 
 time, also, theypaid the twenty millions compensation 
 to the slave-holders, thus increasing the annual 
 charge on their revenue to nearly three-quarters of 
 a million. The country will be glad to see the 
 Tories taking off, instead of putting on, fifty or sixty 
 millions of taxes in eleven years, and leave such a 
 balance in their favour at the end. 
 
 For the abatement of Monopolies. They opened 
 the trade to China, hitherto the closest of all 
 monopolies, they facilitated the trade with India, 
 reduced the secret exclusiveness of the Bank 
 Charter, and gave power for the formation of Joint 
 Stock Banking Companies in the metropolis, as well 
 as in the provinces. 
 
 Substantially they promoted Trade, Manufac- 
 tures, and Agriculture, by giving them freer 
 vents ; and by reducing taxes which pressed on the 
 industrial energies of the country. The duties on 
 
27 
 
 cottons, coals, candles, soap, farming stock, hus- 
 bandry horses, salt, glass, slates, tiles, marine in- 
 surances, houses, and above 400 other articles of 
 more or less importance in manufactures^ were 
 either greatly reduced or entirely repealed. And 
 last, though far from least, all the written com- 
 munications of the country were set free by the 
 memorable Penny Postage, — the example of the 
 beneficial effects of which are now producing Post- 
 Office reforms throughout Europe. A strong evi- 
 dence of the wisdom of this reduction of an exorbitant 
 duty, is to be found in the fact that while all other 
 sources of revenue have been falling away, the Post- 
 Office revenue, after its first reduction has, notwith- 
 standing many additional heavy charges, continued, 
 with scarcely a quarter's exception, to increase. 
 
 The result of Whig administration upon the 
 prosperity of general aflPairs, notwithstanding the 
 quasi bankruptcy of the United States and the bad 
 home harvests in 1839 and 1840, maybe best proved 
 by contrasting the returns of our Exports and Im- 
 ports, taken in round numbers of millions, for 
 averages of three years, beginning from the close of 
 the Tory administration, thus — 
 
 Exports. 
 
 Imports. 
 
 Declared 
 Value. Official 
 In Millions. Value. 
 
 Declared 
 Official 
 Value. 
 
 Average of 3 years, ending in 1829 ^6 .. 48 
 
 . . 42 
 
 1836 48 . . 79 
 
 . . 49 
 
 " 1841 52 . . 98 
 
 . . M 
 
28 
 
 This is solid evidence of the result of good 
 government — of the natural consequences of re- 
 duced taxation — of confirmed tranquillity, and of 
 enlarged vents for industry. Sixteen millions value 
 added to our exports attest the attention paid to 
 commerce, and two-and-twenty millions added to 
 our imports, prove the thriving activity of our home 
 markets and manufactures. 
 
 In the cause of Liberty, the Whigs passed the 
 Reform Act, which needs no comment now, but 
 which in the high days of Toryism it was almost 
 sedition to debate outside the walls of Parliament, 
 and which both Sir Robert Peel and the Duke of 
 Wellington denounced over and over again as the 
 destruction of the constitution of the country. 
 
 The Whigs re-invigorated and re-enfranchised the 
 old worn-out municipalities of the three kingdoms, 
 reviving, and spreading the active principle of re- 
 presentative government throughout our institutions. 
 Abroad they upheld the cause of freedom in 
 France, Belgium, Spain, and Portugal ; and suc- 
 cessfully too, notwithstanding repeated Tory re- 
 proaches and motions of censure. Moreover, they 
 maintained the peace of Europe, without conces- 
 sions, and with increase of influence. 
 
 But notwithstanding all these beneficial acts, sup- 
 plying the neglects and deficiencies of seventy years' 
 Tory rule, coupled too with diminishing agitation 
 in Ireland, and the cure of all sour and disloyal 
 feelings amongst the middle classes in England, the 
 
Whig Government gradually lost ground. Two 
 powerful privileged bodies opposed it, the Clergy * 
 and the Lords. The one misrepresented or misun- 
 derstood its policy, for shutting its eyes to its in- 
 valuable Church Reforms, it did not shrink from 
 pointing it out with untiring zeal and acrimony to 
 its parishioners, and its congregations, as hostile to 
 the religion and institutions of the country ; and the 
 other exercised its uncontrolled majority by damag- 
 ing, defeating, or delaying, almost every measure 
 which the Ministers sent up from the Commons. The 
 Government thus stigmatized by the Clergy, and 
 impeded by the Lords, persisted in bringing forward 
 its measures, trusting that their intrinsic value would 
 ultimately work their way, and teach the public to 
 see through and resent such unfair and undue 
 opposition. But they were mistaken, the public 
 fell off from them even more, and adhered still more 
 to the Lords, because they did not pass measures 
 which those very Lords would not allow them to 
 pass. And the Lords thus began to constitute 
 themselves the paramount estate of the kingdom. 
 It is remarkable, that within a few years after the 
 passing of that Reform Act, which was supposed 
 to trench too much on their authority, the very 
 Ministry which passed it should have been over- 
 ruled, coerced, and defeated by them. But it is not 
 
 * We here use the word Clergy as distinguished from the 
 Church, with which it is too frequently and for artful purposes 
 confounded. 
 
30 
 
 the less true. The Lords undeniably broke up the 
 Liberal Government. Other causes may have con- 
 tributed to its fall, but they would have been inade- 
 quate without the annulling power, the veto of the 
 Lords, exercised with a persevering subtlety that kept 
 just within the bounds of arresting the routine of 
 administration. 
 
 This exhibits the Lords in the possession of a 
 power justly subject to jealousy, and is worth a 
 little investigation. In the first place, then, it is 
 probable, that public opinion would have revolted 
 from the exercise of such rejecting powers, had 
 not public opinion itself been perverted. John Bull 
 allowed himself to be cajoled into a belief, that a 
 Government which had done, and was doing more 
 than has been done, since the days of Luther, for 
 the advancement of truly religious sentiments, and 
 for the permanent and useful services of a Christian 
 ministry, (as contra-distinguished from one of plu- 
 ralities, state patronage, and sinecures,) was actually 
 ready and willing to sacrifice the established 
 Church, and to set up the Pope, or the goddess of 
 Reason in its stead. Under this delusion he was 
 blind to the encroachments of the Lords. Again, 
 the Whig ministers had unwisely drafted from the 
 Commons into the Lords, some fifty or sixty of their 
 most influential supporters : removing them from 
 one House, where their weight was most important, 
 to another, where it was neutralized, and where 
 there is always the danger of sympathies being 
 
31 
 
 enlisted in favour of more recent associations. And 
 removed from parliamentary elections, these wealthy 
 commoners left vacancies, which there was seldom 
 any liberal candidate, of equal calibre, to fill up ; 
 and, accordingly, the representation fell either to 
 men of inferior note, or to opponents. Again, ex- 
 perience has proved, that although some individual 
 Peers lost invidious nominations in the Commons, 
 which exasperated public opinion, yet, on the whole, 
 their order has gained in less offensive influence 
 over elections, and most especially in the counties, 
 and sub-divisions of counties. 
 
 These are some of the causes that have enabled 
 the Lords to exercise an extent of irresponsible con- 
 trol over the Commons, the Crown, and the Execu- 
 tive, which, if it should threaten to be permanent, 
 would lead to a most dangerous struggle. But 
 there are signs of public opinion recovering from 
 its blind adulation, and this with the weight of 
 the independent constituencies of the great towns 
 of the empire, may gradually restore a portion of ita 
 constitutional authority to the Commons. But it 
 is a subject of regret, and it may be a cause of much 
 strife, that the authors of the Reform Act, unad- 
 visably gave such unchecked influence to the great 
 land-holders in the counties, and played into the un- 
 English (if we may so use the word,) vanity of a 
 number of English country gentlemen, who could 
 not sleep in peace till they had put gilded coronets on 
 their heads. But the solid substance of the Reform 
 
Act, the representative principle which it at once 
 acknowledges and embodies, will, we trust, carry us 
 through. But that principle is now on its trial, and 
 will have a hard struggle. We wish it success for 
 many reasons ; for if it be beaten now, it will return 
 bye and bye, with redoubled force and success 
 against those who can succeed, only for a season. 
 The spirit of the Reform Act requires, and we shall 
 soon see whether its present powers are strong 
 enough to work out the equal admission of all classes, 
 and all creeds, to the civil and religious rights of 
 citizens, a just apportionment of taxation upon all, 
 according to their means, and an abolition of all 
 monopolies, and all special protections. These are 
 the objects which are at the bottom of almost all 
 present political discussions ; hitherto they have 
 been resisted by class interests and privileges, which 
 have found their strong-hold in the Lords ; so that 
 there is again revived and involved in them, the 
 organic question of whether this country is to be 
 ruled in the sense of its people, through its repre- 
 sentatives, and under the modified control of the 
 Peers and the Crown ; or whether the House of 
 Lords is, as before the Reform Bill, to govern the 
 country under the modified acquiescence of the 
 Crown and the Commons. At present we are under 
 the rule of the Lords; the Duke of Wellington 
 is their chief, and Sir Robert Peel their minister ; 
 and we proceed now to see what they have done, 
 are doing, and are likelv to do. 
 
33 
 
 When the Whigs left office in the autumn of 1 841, 
 there had been three successive bad harvests,* there 
 had been a great monetary convulsion in the United 
 States, (our greatest customer), and the Post Office 
 duties had been reduced to the amount of a 
 million. To counteract the effect of these draw- 
 backs on the Exchequer, an additional 10 per 
 cent, was imposed on the Customs, Excise, and 
 Taxes. This met with the approbation even of Sir 
 Robert Peel ; but like all over-onerous taxation it 
 not the less failed, for there was a heavy deficiency 
 the following year. This might partly be attri- 
 buted to the extraordinary expenses in the Medi- 
 terranean, Canada, and China, but which were all 
 apparently drawing to a close. Still this was uncer- 
 tain, and in the meanwhile it was mischievous to 
 go on with deficiencies. The failure of the additional 
 10 per cent, to produce any thing like a revenue 
 equivalent to its ratio, was an indication that it 
 would be worse than useless to burden the country, in 
 its then depressed state, with heavier taxes. It was 
 clear our whole system of taxation required revision 
 and reform. The statements and facts contained in 
 the report of the Committee upon our Import duties 
 had produced a great effect on the public mind. It 
 is well known that the Exchequer often derives a 
 benefit by the reduction of excessive duties upon 
 
 * The increased cost of grain in each of the three years, 
 ending in 1839, 1840, and 1841, as compared with 1835, has 
 been estimated at not less than 20 millions. 
 
34 
 
 articles of large consumption, and it is still better 
 known that the country always does. And in the 
 Suffering state to which the industrious and more 
 especially the manufacturing interests were re- 
 fluced by adventitious circumstances, aggravated by 
 mischievous fiscal laws, it was clear some stimulus 
 or change was necessary to revive and strengthen it, 
 otherwise severer suffering, such as afterwards 
 came on, was to be expected. Under these circum- 
 stances the Whigs undertook financial reform, and 
 brought forth their celebrated budget, proposing 
 an enlarged importation of sugar, corn, and timber, 
 by the reduction of all protecting duties to a fixed 
 and moderate rate. This was their coup de grace; 
 it raised a tempest of protected interests against 
 them, which, joining with the Tory opposition, left 
 them in minority in their own parliament, and on a 
 dissolution gave their opponents a majority, ranging 
 from 80 to 100. 
 
 Principles and Proceedings of the Tory or 
 Repressive Government. 
 
 The Tories came in. The principles and pro- 
 mises of their government were resistance to all 
 change, and the maintenance of all existing laws, 
 privileges, protections, immunities,* and institutions, 
 subject only to the usual puff redress of all proved 
 abuses. Sir Robert Peel and his party had espe- 
 cially denounced the influence which Mr. O'Connell 
 exercised in Ireland, and they were so far pledged to 
 
85 
 
 reduce it. They had censured the object of the war 
 in China, and despaired of its success ; they had 
 pronounced against all wars in India, and objected 
 generally to the foreign policy of the Whigs. They 
 most especially pledged themselves to uphold the 
 Corn Law, and above all the Sliding scale. " Who 
 has defended the Corn Law more consistently than 
 I have ?" indignantly exclaimed Sir Robert Peel, 
 when taxed by Mr. Handley with a lurking inten- 
 tion to change it. Another most emphatic pledge 
 was, against allowing any deficiency in the Exche- 
 quer. This was their programme, the bill of fare 
 of the third reaction ministry. 
 
 A ministry which had been preparing for years, 
 and was now at length constructed by the all expe- 
 rienced state-craft of Sir Robert Peel, which was 
 strengthened by the energy and high character of 
 the Duke of Wellington, which had enlisted under 
 its banners the altered polities but eminent talents, 
 of Lord Stanley and Sir James Graham ; and which; 
 in all its departments, was well Supplied with able 
 members ; which united within its circle all the 
 leading names or representatives of the great Tory 
 families ; which was Worshipped by the clergy, and 
 supported by the agricultural and Colonial interests 
 almost universally; which carried with it a very 
 large proportion of the professional, the trading, 
 and mercantile comraunitieSi and that non-descriptj 
 but weighty, body that gives its vote tb what 
 it considers a strong and permanent government, 
 c 2 
 
36 
 
 In fact, nearly the whole country, weary of the 
 checkmated efforts of the Whigs, and deluded by 
 incessant misrepresentations, looked to this power- 
 ful and promising ministry to extricate it from all 
 difficulties and dangers, real or imaginary. This 
 was its support out of doors, and within the two 
 Houses, many of the greatest speakers were enlisted 
 in its service, or in its defence. Within the memory 
 of man, there never was, seemingly, so strong a 
 ministry ; nor person so exalted as Sir Robert 
 Peel. This was in September, 1841. — What is he? 
 what is his ministry now ? Precisely that which 
 some few, those who remembered the course of the 
 Duke of Wellington's reaction ministry of 1828, 
 expected. He is hampered and defeated in the 
 very abundance of his numbers, by the impractica- 
 bility of his position. He can neither advance, stand 
 still, nor retreat without giving offence. He has 
 again misunderstood, and miscalculated public opi- 
 nion. Because it was comparatively quiet under 
 the Whigs, he thought it was stagnant ; but no 
 sooner has he embarked his ministry, than he feels 
 its current. If he sincerely wished to retard pro- 
 gress, his place was in opposition where he could 
 apply the drag-chain, but in office, now-a-days, he is 
 necessarily carried on. For the schoolmaster is 
 abroad. Not the mere machine that teaches 
 alphabets, — useful though he be, —but the great 
 moral instructor that is daily, hourly raising the 
 tone of the nation, and inculcating respect from 
 
87 
 
 man to man. This is the source of the power 
 which is undermining the present, as it under- 
 mined the former reaction ministry, by compelling 
 it, as the price of existence, to act contrary to its 
 principles. It destroyed the stout Duke of Wel- 
 lington's ministry in three years, making it a bye- 
 word for change of purpose ; and in two years, it has 
 prostrated Sir Robert Peel's power and character. 
 
 We are no enemies of Sir Robert Peel. We are 
 well aware of his many domestic virtues, we fully 
 admit his adroit talent in debate, his steady appli- 
 cation to business, and his general abilities as a 
 statesman, he is also exempt from jobbing, and plain 
 in^ habits. But with all this, he is only a second rate 
 man. Mr. Canning called him the sublime of medi- 
 ocrity ; and there is much of truth in the sarcasm. 
 He has originated nothing, except the London 
 police ; no speech of his has ever lived beyond the 
 day, no sayings of his are quoted, or remembered 
 for their wit, or their wisdom ; all about him, like 
 his person, is common-place, second hand, well got 
 up. It is especially to be remarked, that in every 
 great question that has been mooted since he came 
 into public life, he has been behind-hand ; one of 
 the latest to see and acknowledge its fitness, or 
 value, and not unfrequently a strenuous opponent of 
 it to the last. 
 
 He began by opposing Mr. Horner's celebrated 
 resolutions on the currency ; he ended, by himself 
 carrying the return to cash payments ; he opposed 
 
3H 
 
 Sir Samuel Romilly's humane attempts to simplify: 
 our Criminal Laws, and to mitigate their revolting 
 severity ; and then, many years later, he took 
 some hesitating steps in the same direction, hut 
 satisfied or alarmed with a few digests, he left 
 its revolting severities untouched and unrebuked. 
 He taunted Mr. Canning, in 1827, with his ina- 
 bility to resist the abolition of the Test and Cor- 
 poration Act, and was himself, under the compulsion 
 of Lord John Russell, no later than the following 
 year when Secretary of State, an example of the 
 very inability he denounced ; for the first twenty 
 years of his political life, he was the uncompromising 
 opponent of Catholic Emancipation, suddenly he 
 opened the sessions of 1829 with an unrestricted 
 Emancipation bill. In 1826 he approved of edu- 
 cating the Irish Protestant and Catholic children 
 together, and of giving them Scripture extracts as 
 school books— in 1832 he disapproved— in 1835 he 
 re-approved — and in 1842 he united both opinions 
 by approving in words, and discouraging by deeds, 
 this system. Again in 1815 he defended, in 
 1838 he denounced, and in 1842 he imposed ail 
 Income Tax. These are no small errors or changes 
 for a statesman, priding himself on his conf^erva- 
 tism, to have committed in less than one half of 
 Lord Grey's honored and unchanging political life. 
 Again, as indications of ignorance of constitutional 
 rights and popular feelings. Sir Robert Peel opposed 
 Parliamentary Reform in every stage ; he opposed 
 
39 
 
 the Corporations Reform ; he opposed the re-; 
 form of the Irish Church, he opposed the Irish, 
 and has marred the English National Education ; 
 and again, on all the early Slavery debates, wheij 
 the battle was won by the emancipators step by 
 step, and session after session, where was Sir Robert 
 Peel's voice, and where was his vote ? 
 
 Thus, all the great leading measures which have 
 been advocated and carried since he came into 
 public life, have been opposed and mistaken by him 
 for sources of mischief; while now, ninety-nine 
 people out of a hundred, (and himself amongst 
 them) hail them as great advances in the paths 
 of liberty, justice, and humanity. These facts, and 
 they are undeniable, are the elements by which his 
 character and statesmanship are to be judged. 
 
 They lead to a general distrust in his politics. 
 Unfortunately, also, they have led him to distrust 
 himself; finding there is scarcely any one political 
 principle upon which he has remained consistent, he 
 is haunted by visions of change, and has therefore 
 acquired a habit of shrouding himself upon nearly 
 all questions, even the most trivial, in such an at- 
 mosphere, such a fog of generalities, qualifications 
 and reservations, that no one can tell what he would 
 be at. 
 
 The only two subjects to which at present he pai^ 
 be said to be firmly pledged, are Anti-repeal and 
 the Sliding scale, and from one. of these two Jhe 
 will recede before he is two years older. His anti- 
 
40 
 
 deficiency pledge is already cracked. All this is 
 mischievous ; it unsettles men's minds, it leads to a 
 distrust in public integrity, and tempts public men 
 into a jargon of Jesuitism wherein truth suffers ; 
 wherein plain straight- forward truth is paltered with, 
 and equivocation bears the palm from manly honor. 
 This is one of the worst signs of the times : and 
 the sooner it is amended the better. We are far 
 from accusing Sir Robert Peel of deliberately 
 paltering with truth ; we believe him to be in pri- 
 vate life a man of unblemished honor and integrity ; 
 but he has been in a false position throughout his 
 whole public career. The tone of his knowledge, of 
 his early associations, and of his natural tenden- 
 cies, so far as they can be gathered, is practical, 
 modern and progressive ; yet circumstances or 
 ambition having thrown him, at his outset, 
 amongst the very antipodes of these, he has never 
 had the fortitude to disentangle himself from 
 them, nor the hypocrisy quite to belie them. The 
 consequence is, that his public life has been a course 
 of paltering, shifting, patching and repatching. He 
 is the very Balaam of politicians, called upon to 
 denounce one set of political opinions, he ends ge- 
 nerally by adopting and blessing them. 
 
 The agricultural kings of Moab little thought, 
 during the elections of 1841, when they called him 
 to a high place to bless their wheat and their short 
 horns, that he would so soon take up bis reduced 
 scale and his tariff to confound their expectations, 
 
41 
 
 and make them eat their own wofds, and vote against 
 their own motions. And they have not got the 
 worst of him yet. 
 
 This has been a long digression ; but it will thro^ 
 light on our inquiries ; for knowing our man we 
 may the better estimate his measures ; and we pro- 
 ceed, therefore, by an examination of what he has 
 done since his return to office, to speculate on what 
 he will do, and on what he may be compelled to da. 
 
 He came back to Downing Street with great ex- 
 pectations, and his first measure was a prudent 
 one ; but so blundered in its details as to be nearly 
 a failure in the money market. He funded five 
 millions in order to pay off and disencumber himself 
 of all and more than all the old scores and deficien- 
 cies of his predecessors. 
 
 For even here, he took an unfair advantage. 
 He kept out of sight the Chinese indemnity, of 
 which there was even then assurance of its being 
 obtained, and by so doing he damaged his oppo- 
 nents by making their deficiency appear larger than 
 it justly was ; while he secured, for the credit of his 
 own government, the whole amount of that indem- 
 nity. And it came most opportunely, serving to 
 screen the untoward size of his own deficits. Hav- 
 ing got this money vote, he prorogued Parliament in 
 the midst of national distress, and took six months 
 for consideration. The result was the Income Tax 
 and the Tariff ; with a financial exposition and budget 
 most highly lauded at the time, but whose estimates 
 
and workings have proved more fallacious than 
 those of any budget yet on record. 
 
 There is no need now to wade through the In- 
 come Tax, the Tariff and the Budget discussions. 
 It is sufficient to mark the spirit with which these 
 measures were proposed, and the results which they 
 have produced. 
 
 In the first place, for the Income Tax. Sir 
 Robert Peel belonged to the Government which, at 
 the peace, sought to continue this war tax. 'Twas 
 then said, let it be " for a short time, — only a very 
 short time." So. copying this example, he said in 
 1842, **Take it for five years, perhaps only for three.'* 
 The old Tories had not been caught in so shallow a 
 trap, but joined the Whigs in kicking out and de- 
 stroying all records of the tax they hated. Modern 
 Tories, more docile, believed, or affected to be- 
 lieve in the three or five years. But who now, 
 at the end of nearly two, will tell us we are one 
 iota nearer the end of the Income Tax, than we 
 were when it was first imposed— for perhaps only 
 three years ! I 
 
 The plea for its imposition was that we were 
 actually at war, in China and in India ! ! As if 
 those were the kind of wars contemplated as justify- 
 ing the imposition of what is admitted to be a war 
 tax, " for a time of extreme necessity." But even 
 the Indian and the Chinese wars are ended. The 
 one has paid its own expenses, and the cost of the 
 other has been defrayed by the East India Com- 
 
48 
 
 p^ny. But are we therefore nearer the end of pur 
 Tax ? Another plea was that it was to cover our 
 financial deficiency. But did it ? Its immediate 
 operation was to increase the deficiency it was pro- 
 posed to remedy : and to aggravate the distress of 
 of the already distressed. Within the memory of 
 man there has not been such a winter of misery, 
 bankruptcy, and financial distress as that which 
 followed its imposition. Like a great wen, it 
 sucked up all the various supplies of our usual 
 sources of revenue. Although the harvest was 
 considered to be so abundant, that public thanks- 
 givings were ordered to be returned for its bless- 
 ings ; yet, in every one of the branches of our 
 revenue, save and except the reformed Post Office, 
 there was a great falling off*. A falling ofi^, too, 
 be it remembered, from branches of revenue aU 
 ready unprecedently fallen away. What else could 
 have caused this, but the voracious suction of the 
 Income Tax ? The total deficiency amounted to 
 no less than 2,400,000/., being, even under the most 
 favourable aspect, 250,000/. greater than the much 
 reproached deficit of the Whigs in 1841. But it 
 was, in fact, still greater ; for Sir Robert Peel took 
 credit for 511,000/. received from China, which 
 h^,d nothing whatever to do with his revenue ; and 
 the true deficiency was, therefore, 2,911,000/. Nay, 
 it was more even by his own calculations, for, in his 
 revenue sheet, there was a credit for 1,300,000/. for 
 corn duties ; whereas corn formed no item whatever 
 
4* 
 
 in his estimates. This would raise the deficiency to 
 the enormous sura of 4,21 1,000/. for the first year 
 of the imposition of that panacea for the cure of 
 ail deficits — the Income Tax. It is true, that 
 since the arrears have been collected, this de- 
 ficiency has been diminished, — the tax yielding 
 5,100,000/., instead of the 3,771,000/. at which Sir 
 Robert Peel placed it. But this in no degree di- 
 minishes,— on the contrary, it enforces the proof of 
 its unwholesome influence on our accustomed sources 
 of revenue. And herein it bids fair to supersede 
 much of their operation, and so to insinuate and fix 
 itself, as an established tax, on our financial system. 
 A tax, be it remembered, by which the possessors of 
 casual, precarious, mercantile, and professional in- 
 comes, worth only from five to ten years' purchase, 
 pay as much, and are ten times as much vexed and 
 harassed by its schedules and collection, as those 
 who hold permanent incomes and estates worth more 
 than thirty years' purchase. In other words, the 
 precarious incomes of the productive classes are taxed 
 from three to six times as much as those of the idle 
 and independent. And this injustice seems, for the 
 present, likely to last. Still, if it be any comfort to 
 the tax-payers, they may have Sir Robert Peel's con- 
 demnation of his own tax ; for, in the debate on the 
 budget, in April, 1833, he said, — 
 
 " The Noble Lord had done well, not to bring in an Income 
 or a Property Tax. Nothing but a case of extreme necessity 
 could justify Parliament in subjecting the people of this country, 
 
45 
 
 in a time of peace, to the inquisitorial process which must be 
 resorted to, in order to render that impost productive : and 
 to have recourse to such a machinery, for the purpose of raising 
 two or three per cent., would he most unwise. Such a tax was 
 a great resource in time of necessity ; and, therefore, he was 
 unwilling, by establishing the offensive inquisition with which it 
 must be accompanied, to create such an odium against it, as 
 might render it almost impracticable to resort to it in time of 
 extreme necessity. The application of the tax to Ireland, would 
 be attended with extreme difficulty. He really believed that 
 this circumstance formed the main obstacle to the establishment 
 of the tax. It hardly could be contended, that if a Property 
 Tax were established, Ireland should be exempted from its opera- 
 tion. He wished to see Ireland as much favoured as possible, 
 consistently with justice ; but to impose a Property Tax upon 
 England and Scotland, and to exempt Ireland from its opera- 
 tion, would, in his opinion, however unpopular that opinion 
 might be, be exceedingly unjust." 
 
 Now this is a deliberate opinion on a great finan- 
 cial question, which involves no change of cir- 
 cumstances, and with which Sir Robert Peel had 
 been conversant during his whole political life, 
 and therefore, unless it be a forgery, (but it stares 
 one in the face in Hansard), either he declared, in 
 April, 1833, as his opinion, that which he knew 
 was not his opinion, — or, in March, 1842, he 
 proposed that which he believed to be '' unjustifi- 
 ble," in its imposition, "most unwise," in its rate, 
 and *' exceedingly unjust" in its exemptions. His 
 only escape, — and would it be an escape? — from 
 this damaging dilemma, would be, to acknowledge 
 that he has no fixed opinion even upon such dry 
 matters as finance. If we pursue this speech fur- 
 
46 
 
 ther, we shall find him, in 1833, declaring, that "it 
 " would diminish the funds at present appointed for 
 '*the encouragement of industry and promotion of 
 " labour, and it would ultimately be found, that 
 " this tax did not affect the person who paid it, so 
 "much as the labourer, by diminishing his means 
 " of employment ;" and yet, in 1842, the same person 
 declares that he is supporting the depressed industry 
 of the country, and most especially the artisans and 
 labourers, by imposing this very same tax, which he 
 then discovers would press only on the rich. And 
 to make the countermarch on this Income Tax 
 complete he taxed the funded property of foreigners, 
 having before solemnly declared that to do so would 
 be a violation of national faith and honour. 
 
 All this is painfully illustrative of Sir Robert 
 Peel's fleeting political character. Who can wonder 
 that nobody trusts him ? It is not easy to see into 
 any one's heart, and least of all, into his ; but^ 
 bred up in the receipt and defence of the Income 
 Tax, it is most probable that, at the bottom of his 
 heart he admires it, and that he put forth his con- 
 demnation of it in 1833, partly to damage his 
 political opponents, by raising a suspicion that they 
 were contemplating its imposition, partly to fish 
 popularity, but, mainly, to sound his way, as to 
 imposing it at some future time. 
 
 But, although Ireland did escape '* exceedingly 
 unjustly" from an income tax that might have 
 yielded a million, (if she had been caught she would 
 
47 
 
 have strenuously helped us to shake it off,) yfet 
 she was teazed and injured hy a pretended sub- 
 stitute, — an additional duty on spirits,— that has 
 paid nothing ; less than nothing. Lord Monteagle 
 and others, well acquainted with Ireland, vainly 
 warned Sir Robert Peel, that this substitute would 
 be prolific only of smuggling. He would not heed 
 them ; and so, instead of getting the 250,000/., at 
 which he placed his estimate, he actually lost about 
 7000Z., for the Irish spirit duty yielded 7,700/. less 
 than before this additional duty was imposed. But 
 what was lost in money has been made up in crime. 
 By a printed return, it appears, that this ill-judged 
 measure more than doubled the offences against the 
 excise laws in one year. 
 
 
 Smugglers 
 detected. 
 
 Smugglers 
 prosecuted. 
 
 Smugglers 
 imprisoned. 
 
 There were in the year 
 
 
 
 
 And in April, 1842 
 
 881 . 
 
 . 317 . 
 
 . 84 
 
 April, 1843 
 
 . 1895 . 
 
 . 664 . 
 
 . 368 
 
 Happy finance ! -a positive loss to the revenue, 
 the whole estimate swamped, crime more that! 
 doubled, and four times as mstny smugglers impri- 
 soned ! This was too bad, — and, accordingly, the 
 additional duty was abandoned ; but not until after 
 two or three irresistible exposures of its mischief 
 and inefficacy. And so Ireland now laughs at 
 Income Tax, Spirit Duty, and Ministers ! 
 
 Next comes the consideration of the Corn Laws 
 AND Tariff. It is not unlikely that Sir Robert 
 
48 
 
 Peel was led to the adoption of the Income Tax by 
 the Corn Laws ; for, as he had opposed the great 
 Whig plan of raising the revenue by reducing the 
 mischievous excess of duties, he had no other 
 alternative than the high pressure of searching per- 
 sonal taxation. Still he had no easy game to play 
 with his Corn-Law supporters. He was bound to 
 uphold their monopoly, not perhaps so much by a 
 regard for his own pledges, as by the significant 
 declaration of one of their leaders, the Duke of Rich- 
 mond, that as the agricultural party had turned out 
 the late, so w^ould they turn out the present 
 Ministers, if they did not support the landed in- 
 terest. This was coarse, but to the point. — On 
 the other hand, he could not shut his eyes to the 
 plain fact, which even his prosperous elections did 
 not conceal, that something must be conceded to 
 the public leaning towards Free Trade. And, 
 accordingly, he set himself to work to reconcile, to 
 mix up the oil and vinegar of free trade and 
 monopoly. He bethought himself for a while, and 
 then, if not with the ability of a statesman, certainly 
 with the cleverness of an artist, he threw in his grains 
 of mustard, a little dust to blind people's eyes ; and 
 the oil and the vinegar coalesced, and made a very 
 showy temporary paste. He saw that it was neces- 
 sary, by some apparent changes, to alarm the' more 
 ignorant monopolists up to a certain point, in order 
 to persuade the rest of the community, that important 
 reductions were actually taking place. Itwasneces- 
 
49 
 
 sary also to talk very free-tradishly, in order to act 
 very little so — to have plenty of the abstract, and 
 little or none of the concrete ; — and finally it was 
 necessary to make a great show of mighty reforms 
 on very little and weak matters, in order to cover a 
 mere show of very little reforms upon very great and 
 powerful matters. All this was concocted and per- 
 formed by Sir Robert Peel and Mr. Gladstone with 
 consummate dexterity. Herr Dobbler and the 
 Wizard of the North could not have exceeded them. 
 
 The operation commenced by pouncing upon 
 750 trifling articles, beginning with jackasses, and 
 ending in zinc ; the whole revenue from which 
 amounted to no more than £270,000., being at the 
 rate of 360/. a-piece. The duties upon these were 
 either repealed or greatly lowered ; and this was 
 called national relief ! ! and extravagant merit 
 claimed for it. 
 
 One of the main grounds for this claim, and one 
 of the prepared masks, behind which the Corn-Laws 
 were to be covered, was the admission of foreign 
 cattle and foreign meat at a moderate fixed duty. 
 The landed interest stood aghast at visions of the 
 invasion of their markets by fat and lean cattle and 
 kine from all quarters of the world. This was 
 precisely that which for their own interests Sir 
 Robert Peel most desired ; and following out this 
 desire, he had the effrontery (for it can be called by 
 no other name,) to tell the economists that people 
 would save their income tax by the reduction of 
 
 D 
 
50 
 
 their expenses consequent upon his Tariff; and then, 
 fearful lest his agriculturists should think him in 
 earnest, and in their visions lose, as some of them did 
 lose, all sense of restraint; with an aside more 
 worthy of an actor than a minister ; he just let drop 
 the information that few cattle and little meat 
 could or would come in under this income-tax- 
 saving-Tariff ! He was right enough, and he knew 
 it. The returns give 422 oxen — 154 cows— 93 
 sheep— and 142 pigs, with 470 cwt. of beef — 1414 
 of pork — and 2191 hams, as the total admission 
 in all the ports of the kingdom for the first six 
 months in the year — being not enough for one 
 morning's breakfast for London alone. But the 
 temporary object was gained ; the country thought 
 great things were doing, and felt doubly assured 
 when it saw so many agricultural wry faces. 
 
 And so the Corn-Law slipped through much 
 easier than might have been expected; but even 
 here it was thought expedient to effect a change. 
 Sir Robert Peel, therefore, undertook to do in 1842 
 that which in i 839 he declared he would not do — 
 "put into the lottery of legislation with the faint 
 hope of drawing a better corn-law ;" — but we must 
 do him the justice to say he contrived so to alter 
 it as to leave the result nearly the same as ever to 
 his landed supporters. The average price of 
 wheat under the late Law, during the whole period 
 of its existence, since 1828, was stated by him to be 
 about 56 shillings the quarter ; and on introducing 
 
51 
 
 his new law, he declared that its object was to keep 
 corn at from 54 to 58 shillings the quarter. The 
 alteration consisted, in fact, in little more than taking 
 off extravagant rates of duty, which never came into 
 operation, and brought therefore needless odium on 
 the cause of protection. The far-famed sliding 
 scale was also relieved from those desperate plunges 
 of three and four shillings at each shilling varia- 
 tion of price, which seemed formed for the express 
 purpose of provoking gambling speculations ; being 
 placed at the very pivots where importation was 
 most likely to take place. But though these wild 
 jumps, which were too wild to be of any use to the 
 landed interest, were abandoned, the sliding scale 
 itself was solemnly upheld. And why ? For any 
 facility that it affords to regular and sufficient im- 
 portation, or to the gradual sale, or to steadi- 
 ness of the price of grain? No, no. No one 
 now in the face of the facts that have been pro- 
 duced of late years, affects to assert, or at least to 
 prove this. Why then was it maintained ? Palpably 
 and clearly, because its one shilling fall in duty, 
 consequent upon the one shilling rise in the price 
 of grain, gives a double action, multiplies the ten- 
 dency to keep up and raise prices. Instead of one 
 shilling profit upon each successive rise of one 
 shilling in price, as in all other merchandize, we 
 here have two shillings ; one for price, one for duty ; 
 and hence a double temptation to sellers to hold back 
 their corn, and so to force up its price. This is the 
 
 D 2 
 
52 
 
 real clue to the affection of the KnatchbuUs to the 
 otherwise outrageously silly sliding scale. It gives 
 them in fact, just one hundred per cent, permanent 
 premium for a rise in price of the article in which 
 they deal ; no wonder, therefore, they stick by it. 
 
 But adroitly as Sir Robert Peel steered the Corn 
 Law gentry through their immediate dangers, they 
 are far from satisfied with his pilotage. They distrust 
 the very cleverness of his pretences and admis- 
 sions, and he seems to be in no love with their 
 obstinate dulness. When the squires and he, and 
 their Corn Laws, are all thrown out together, 
 they with Tony Lumpkin, will retort upon him, — 
 ** By the Laws, Sir Robert, it was your own 
 cleverness, and not our stupidity that did the busi- 
 ness. You were so nice and so busy with your 
 Shake-bags and your Goose-greens, that we thought 
 you could not be making believe." 
 
 We do not think he was making believe, his 
 Tariff bags and political economy were perhaps 
 tolerably sincere. It was at the elections he was 
 making believe, when he was wheedling the mono- 
 polists, and coaxing the Duke of Buckingham into 
 his Cabinet ; and then when he had served his pur- 
 poses, turning him out with a blue riband round his 
 neck ticketed " sold," like a prize ox at a cattle 
 show. Had he manfully stood up, and resisted all 
 protective and Corn-Law concessions, as indeed he 
 was virtually if not literally pledged to do, he 
 might, or he might not, have succeeded j but now. 
 
53 
 
 he has, as Lord John Russell aptly remarked, un- 
 settled every thing and settled nothing. He acts 
 as the teazer upon public opinion. His " No" is 
 too coy to be trusted, and his reluctant "Yes" 
 seldom goes far enough to produce a lasting 
 settlement. As now in Corn, notwithstanding his 
 " No," he has set the barn door ajar, and admitted 
 the justice of principles, which henceforth cannot fail 
 to throw it open. The crisis of the battle is won, and 
 every one sees it is a question now of time only, and 
 the Corn Law party seeing this, owe him no thanks 
 for what they consider his hollow defence. 
 
 His present object seems to be an attempt at 
 compromise ; an endeavour to set up a kind of half 
 way smuggling house, between Protection and Free 
 Trade. To substitute a colonial ring fence for 
 the old crumbling wall of strictly English protection. 
 And behind this he thinks he can defend both him- 
 self and the monopolists. He tried it in many of the 
 minor articles of his tariff. He enforced it in the 
 timber duties at a cost to the revenue of £676,000. 
 and to the dissatisfaction of all parties, even to 
 the Canadians whom he professed to be serving, 
 while in fact he was serving only the ends of this new 
 scheme of evasion. Last session it was tried again, 
 with the Canada Corn Bill, in which (like the 
 Cattle Tariff,) the song to the one side of the House 
 was, see how largely we promise, and to the other, 
 mark how little it will perform. 
 
 But it is not by subterfuges like these that the 
 
54 
 
 great question of the reduction of duties on articles 
 of prime necessity and importance, is to be staved off. 
 It is quite right that the colonies should be suppor- 
 ted, but it is quite wrong that they should be sup- 
 ported to the detriment of the mother country, and 
 especially when what is called the support of the 
 colony means too frequently not the support of its 
 people but the special support of some favored 
 and powerful clique or interest there and in the 
 mother country. 
 
 One thing is clear, Sir Robert Peel's principles 
 and his practice are at variance. On the 11th 
 March 1842 he declared that the import duties on 
 raw materials should not (scarcely in any case) ex- 
 ceed 5 per cent, that on partially manufactured 
 articles they should not exceed 12 per cent, and on 
 complete manufactures that the maximum duty 
 should be 20 per cent. Now corn is a raw mate- 
 rial, just as much as cotton, yet corn pays by his 
 own act, in direct contradiction to his own princi- 
 ples, seventeen shillings duty on its average price, 
 (as assumed by him) of from ^5 to 5Qs, the quar- 
 ter. That is to say, above 30 per cent, duty ; being 
 10 per cent, more than his maximum duty, upon 
 completely manufactured articles, and 25 per cent, 
 more than his just established rate of duty upon 
 the class of articles to which corn belongs. In the 
 case of colonial sugar the contradiction is still more 
 glaring, and in that of foreign sugar, and foreign 
 timber and coffee, extravagantly so. Why are all 
 
55 
 
 these excluded from the operation of his so formally 
 and so recently declared principles ? If we ask 
 his parliamentary whippers-in, they will wink their 
 eyes and laugh. But just men, without distinc- 
 tion of party, will mark that he does not mete 
 the same measure to the strong that he does to 
 the weak ; that he can let in comparatively free 
 trade upon seven hundred and fifty minor articles, 
 upon the protection of some of which many poor 
 and defenceless artizans mav have lived : but that 
 he can closely shut it out from some few articles the 
 cheapness of which are of prime import to the coun- 
 try, and to the poor especially, hut by the dearness 
 of which some rich and powerful classes become, 
 or think they may become, more rich and more 
 powerful. When they consider this, and hear how 
 glibly he. Sir James Graham, and Mr. Gladstone 
 can say, " there is now no great difference of opinion 
 on the principles of free trade," — " that true poli- 
 tical wisdom is to buy in the cheapest, and sell at 
 the dearest market," and " that the principles of 
 free trade are the principles of common sense ;" 
 they will turn round and ask him whether the 
 principles of justice are not also the principles of 
 common sense. 
 
 We shall say very little of the Foreign Policy 
 of the present government, because apparently there 
 has been little or no change from that which their 
 predecessors followed, and which the Tory party 
 then constantly condemned. 
 
56 
 
 The Louis Philippe who in the days of Tory op- 
 position was an usurper, and the mock king of the 
 barricades, is now a sage monarch, to whom their 
 Ministers conduct (and wisely) their Queen to pay 
 a visit of honor. The Belgian monarchy, and 
 by far the wisest and best king in Europe, whom 
 the Tories facetiously used to call the king of the 
 Protocols, have also been distinguished by the 
 same royal honor, — Lord Aberdeen, who accom- 
 panied her Majesty, possibly forgetting his diversion 
 in favor of Holland in 1832. 
 
 Don Carlos, who in the heyday of Tory opposi- 
 tion was a lawful sovereign fighting for his crown, is 
 now, in the new creed, deservedly, a prisoner at 
 Bourges. — Espartero, who in Tory eyes was a traitor 
 in 1841, became, in 1843, in the language of Sir 
 Robert Peel, the head of the best government that 
 Spain has yet enjoyed ; and he to whom it was an 
 outrage upon the honor of our knighthood for the 
 Whigs to send the Grand Cross of the Bath, was 
 justly, though not very consistently under Tory ad- 
 vice, an honored guest at Windsor in his adversity. 
 
 Lord Aberdeen, in his good will towards the con- 
 stitutional government of Donna Maria, has probably 
 forgotten also his old friend and tormentor, Dom 
 Miguel, but there yet remains the record of Mr. 
 Courtenay's motion in February 1832. 
 
 Towards the great Northern Powers precisely the 
 came policy is maintained as under the Whigs. 
 
The same views are professed at Constantinople upon 
 Turkish, Syrian and Egyptian affairs. 
 
 Wars in India were declared by Tories in opposi- 
 tion to be abominable, in power they have multiplied 
 and are multiplying them. Acquisitions of terri- 
 tory beyond the Indus were neither made nor con- 
 templated by Lord Auckland, but a charge to that 
 effect was by implication most unbecomingly raised 
 against him by his Tory successor, in a public 
 proclamation, and ere the ink which wrote that pro- 
 clamation was dry, the hero of Somnauth, without 
 much care for justice or geography, annexed Scinde 
 to the British possessions in India. 
 
 The war in China was declared by Sir James 
 Graham, in his motion on the subject, to be hopeless, 
 and by Mr. Gladstone to be atrociously wicked ; 
 while both propositions were rather insinuated than 
 asserted by Sir Robert Peel. The Duke of Wel- 
 lington alone spoke out, and in a manly, straight- 
 forward tone totally dissented from his whining 
 factious colleagues. But now forsooth, after success, 
 the Tories claim credit for the war they condemned, 
 and are steadily following up the Whig policy in 
 China, and adopting the officers, Gough, Parker and 
 Pottinger, whom they selected. 
 
 Regarding the United States there has been little 
 difference of opinion, and the Tories have credit for 
 having settled, by pretty liberal concessions, the Boun- 
 dary question, their own ancient legacy to the Whigs, 
 and which they had been vainly hammering at from 
 
58 
 
 the Treaty of Ghent to the year 1830, and which, 
 had their commissioner, Mr. Goulburn, done his 
 duty at Ghent, would have never been raised. 
 
 There is, however, one marked difference in the 
 foreign diplomacy of the present and of the late 
 Government. The one succeeded and the other 
 has failed. The Whigs re-opened the Dardanelles, 
 which the Tories had permitted Russia to command ; 
 they succeeded also in Portugal, Belgium, Spain, and 
 in the resolute settlement of the Levant question. 
 While their successors have already heen foiled by 
 France in Spain, and by Russia on the Danube. 
 The Whigs also carried treaties of commerce for the 
 extension of our trade, not to mention the unlock- 
 ing and setting open the door for our manufactures 
 to 300,000,000 Chinese customers ; whereas, it so 
 happens that the Tories have failed in every one of 
 their efforts to make commercial treaties, and most 
 especially in Brazil, which already, under the Tariff 
 now about to close, consumes five millions of our 
 produce, and which would take off double that 
 amount. But now France is fast superseding us 
 there, in consequence of our Government, for the 
 sake of the votes of the Colonial sugar interests, re- 
 fusing to admit Brazilian sugar at a fair duty ; affect- 
 ing to screen this injustice beneath the hypocritical 
 pretence of abhorring to encourage slavery by taking 
 Brazilian slave sugar, while in the same breath it 
 boasts of its imports of Brazilian slave coffee. 
 With Portugal, too, its lingering failure of success, 
 
59 
 
 has thrown the wine and other trades into much 
 difficulty and suspense. And, for old party friend- 
 ship's sake, the king of Hanover is permitted to 
 cripple our trade with the Elbe by his unjust 
 Stadt duties. It is thus that this Government 
 fails in one of its first duties ; and it has, moreover, 
 suffered no less than six hostile Tariffs to pass 
 during its two and a half years' possession of office. 
 
 This has hitherto been the substance of Sir 
 Robert Peel's performances as a minister ; all his 
 other attempts have been failures. We used to hear 
 much of Lord Melbourne's do-nothing sessions, but 
 there was then a substantial impediment in the 
 Lords. Whereas now his successor, with both 
 Houses at his command, closed last session with 
 every one of his measures foiled, still-born, or with- 
 drawn ; with the solitary, needless, and mischievous 
 exception of the Irish Arms Bill. 
 
 The Ecclesiastical Courts Bill was given up; so also 
 the Registration of Deeds Bill. The Law Reform, so 
 pompously mentioned in the Royal Speech, came to 
 nothing. The pledge made in 1 842, that an amended 
 Poor- Law Bill should be introduced in 1843, and on 
 the faith of which the Poor-Law Commission was 
 then continued, was either forgotten or disregarded. 
 And the Education, or as it was masked under the 
 name of the Factories Bill, was thrown up and de- 
 feated by the energy and indignation of the dis- 
 senting interests of all classes. 
 
 This Education Bill deserves some few com- 
 
60 
 
 ments. There has long been a party jealous of the 
 education of the people, seeing clearly enough that 
 it leads almost necessarily to their participation in 
 power. For a long time, therefore, they opposed and 
 sneered at all efforts to educate them, expending 
 their small wit upon literary hewers of wood, 
 and drawers of water ; but when they found that 
 general education was largely taken up by the 
 more enlightened and humane classes, as well as 
 by the Dissenters, they changed their opinions, and 
 from opponents became patrons, seeking to neutra- 
 lize and turn to their own uses that which could no 
 longer be entirely prevented. They sought to 
 make the little education they suffered rather than 
 promoted, formal, proselyting, and exclusive. In 
 their national schools, which they placed under the 
 direction of the Clergy of the Established Church, 
 the education given has seldom gone beyond a little 
 bad reading and writing, and learning the Church 
 Catechism by rote rather than by heart. All 
 schemes for a liberal and comprehensive national 
 education, whether in England or in Ireland, have 
 met with the untiring opposition of this party. Their 
 constant war-cry is ^^rreligion,*' varied according to 
 the circumstances of the case, whether it be *^ muti- 
 lation of the Word of God," " infidelity," " social- 
 ism," it matters not ; the key-note is always the 
 same, " irreligion," — *'you do not make sufficient 
 provision that the people shall be educated religi- 
 ously." This is their approved and standing objection 
 
61 
 
 to all proposals; as if there was something inherently 
 irreligious or immoral in education itself. But 
 when pushed for an explanation of this standing 
 ohjection, it is found, underneath two or three fold- 
 ings, to have little more to do with essential reli- 
 gion than this, that you do not hand over the educa- 
 tion of the people to the exclusive control of the 
 clergy of the Church of England ; and knowing 
 this to he impracticable, even were it desirable, 
 the objection at bottom means neither more nor less 
 than that there shall be no comprehensive fruitful 
 education at all. A better body of clergy does not 
 exist, probably, than the clergy of the Church of 
 England ; but they are not the only good body of 
 Christian clergymen ; and so long as there are 
 other persuasions, and other clergy, all (even the 
 so called most dissimilar) agreeing in the great 
 fundamentals of Christianity, we must, if we intend 
 an Education scheme to be anything but a mere 
 stumbling block of offence, so form it in the spirit 
 of Christian charity that none may be offended — 
 none predominate. The school-house should be a 
 common centre, in which all that is believed in com- 
 mon should be inculcated, — in which the great trunk 
 of religious and charitable feelings should grow 
 up, while the twining and the direction of the 
 branches — the special instruction of the special per- 
 suasion — is left to the fathers' and mothers' home 
 and to their ministers. 
 
 Sir Robert Peel's government owed a large debt 
 
62 
 
 to this over-zealous party, and to their High Church 
 and Puseyite clergy, and he paid it in full by his 
 Education Bill. We can easily believe that he, 
 Lord Wharncliffe, and others, would have willingly 
 proposed a less illiberal bill, if they dared. But 
 having raised and worked the Church cry in oppo- 
 sition, they are now punished in office, by finding 
 an Ultra Priesthood party cramping and over- 
 ruling them. One fruit was this Education, or 
 Factories Bill. Beneath some thin disguises, it 
 practically gave over to the control of the clergy of 
 the Church of England, the education of all the 
 factory children, although the greater part, probably 
 two-thirds, of their parents are Dissenters, and are 
 in the habit of sending their children to their own 
 schools. In fact, the aim, or at least the working 
 of the bill, would have been to supersede the Dis- 
 senters' schools ; no wonder, therefore, that the 
 Dissenters rose against it, almost to a man. It is 
 needless to go into its details, now that it is aban- 
 doned ; but the same parties are still active and in- 
 fluential, and it behoves all those who appreciate the 
 inestimable worth of religious liberty, and true 
 Christian charity (for toleration is an insolent word,) 
 to be on their guard. That this caution is not 
 needless, may be gathered from the suspicious cir- 
 cumstance that this Bill was aimed specially at 
 the districts, which are the best educated, but in 
 which education is chiefly in the hands of the Dis- 
 senters. While no change of education was pro- 
 posed for the much less educated agricultural dis- 
 
63 
 
 tricts and cathedral towns, where it is mainly in 
 the hands of the Clergy. Take Dorsetshire, for 
 instance, or even Westminster, where the proportion 
 of Sunday scholars to population is as one to thirty- 
 four ; whereas, in Yorkshire, Lancashire, Cheshire, 
 and Derbyshire, it is as one to six. 
 
 The introduction of this bill seriously injured the 
 Government ; and its defeat, for its withdrawal was 
 a defeat, was the first exhibition of the weakness of 
 mere numerical majorities in both Houses, when 
 opposed by strong convictions. 
 
 We come now to Sir Robert Peel's Home 
 Government. In 1841, he found the three king- 
 doms suffering great distress, but tranquil — more 
 tranquil than they had been for years : how infi- 
 nitely more tranquil than they had been in old Tory 
 times of suspensions of the Habeas Corpus Act, 
 gagging bills, Cato-street conspiracies, and Man- 
 chester onslaughts ; or of the later Peel and Welling- 
 ton times of Catholic associations, Repeal commence- 
 ments, Tithe wars, Swing fires, and Hunt demon- 
 strations : how much more quiet, even than when 
 he undertook his intrusive ministry of 1834. In 
 fact, from 1831 to 1841, the three kingdoms 
 were gradually tranquillizing. Of course, there 
 were ebbs and flows, and the attempted Tory 
 reaction did not diminish them. Habits cannot 
 be put down in a day, or a year, as by a ma- 
 gician's wand, and disturbances will necessarily 
 break out again and again ; but as these become 
 
64 
 
 less and less frequent, and are lees and less extensive 
 and violent, we may j adge of their general subsidence. 
 Examined by this test, it will be seen how much 
 more tranquil the country became during the ten 
 years of Whig rule, even, notwithstanding the great 
 organic changes that were made. 
 
 Few examples can afford a stronger illustration of 
 the altered bearing of the people after seven years of 
 Whig rule, than the admirable demeanor of the 
 millions congregated in and about London on the 
 occasion of the Queen's coronation, contrasted with 
 their state in 1830, when, after a long Tory domi- 
 nation, even the Duke of Wellington did not dare 
 to take the popular William the Fourth through the 
 streets of the city, to dine at Guildhall, on his 
 accession. 
 
 The return of the same party to power, seems to 
 have brought back the same turbulent and insur- 
 rectionary spirit, and even incendiarism is relight- 
 ing its torches. The country, in fact, is fast losing 
 its good temper. There is amongst us a manly love 
 of fair play, and a dogged scorn of shuffling, greater 
 even than our hatred of violence. And this feeling 
 the present Government has awakened. Its first 
 quarrel was with the Chartists. 
 
 Chartism is the natural exponent of hardship and 
 discontent in a free country, and under some name 
 or other always will exist in a greater or less degree 
 of excitement and extension. After the summer of 
 1839, it was clear the Whigs could not last much 
 
65 
 
 longer, and the expectation of change roused the 
 Chartists. They thought they might get something 
 by it, and the Tories having a keen eye to the elec- 
 tions, and seeing they should get something by them, 
 began tampering with them as they had long done 
 with the anti-poor law declaimers, many of whom 
 are also Chartists. When the dissolution came, they 
 had the first-fruits of their speculation in the inflam- 
 matory support of these questionable allies. As soon 
 as they were in oftice they turned their backs on them 
 both. The poor law was adopted, continued, and ex- 
 tended. And the Chartists were told to go and be — 
 quiet : but thus cheated, they went and — combined. 
 Still a winter of unprecedented suffering was borne 
 by them and their starving companions with unex- 
 ampled fortitude and forbearance. But when the 
 spring came, and summer too came, and passed 
 away, bringing no relief beyond a little warmth, 
 and leaving them without hope, they lost patience. 
 The Stafibrdshire colliers were the first to break 
 out. These were gradually followed by others ; 
 and the country saw with shame a very dangerous 
 insurrection spread throughout the whole length and 
 breadth of the manufacturing districts, from Aber- 
 deen to the Potteries. We all remember the outcries 
 raised by the Tories on the occasion of the casual 
 riots at Bristol, at Birmingham, and Monmouth. 
 They spoke as if the country could never be safe, as 
 if jio honest man could sleep in his bed, while Lord 
 Grey or Lord Melbourne was at the head of affairs, 
 
66 
 
 and yet these were breaches of the peace, confined to 
 single spots, and were not allowed to spread, being 
 quelled almost as soon as heard of. But during the 
 whole month of September, 1842, our very manufac- 
 turing existence was at stake. We know not what 
 means there were for obtaining previous information 
 of the plans of the Chartists ; but we do know that 
 the disturbances were confined for some time to Staf- 
 fordshire, and that no sufficient measures of con- 
 ciliation or repression were applied to stop them 
 there, nor any additional precautions taken to 
 guard against them elsewhere. Finally the mili- 
 tary were poured in, and the temper of the Char- 
 tists proved much less destructive than might have 
 been expected. 
 
 This was the first insurrection under the Conser- 
 vative government, and was of a more dangerous 
 and extensive nature than any that has occurred in 
 England for the last fifty years. The second fol- 
 lowed within less than six months, and has as yet 
 been less extensive, but greatly more obstinate ; for 
 now for nearly a year the southern counties of 
 Wales have been exposed to organized bands, that 
 with open violence have eluded and defied extinction. 
 Once or twice they have held forth dangerous temp- 
 tations for a second Chartist co-operative rising, 
 which if combined with the monster demonstrations 
 in Ireland, might go far to shake the stability of 
 the empire. That we have hitherto escaped such a 
 catastrophe is in no degree due, either to the fore- 
 
67 
 
 sight or to the energy of the Government, which 
 for months was content to trust to chance and to a 
 " Times " reporter for counsel and information. 
 Finally, a commission has been appointed to inquire 
 into the grievances of the Welch farmers and peasan- 
 try. We trust it may allay them. For we confess we 
 like not the long smouldering fires and banded de- 
 fiances of Rebecca, and fear lest the evil example of 
 a rural war spread to other parts ; and the country 
 be taught by experience that the way to obtain com- 
 missions of inquiry, and redress of grievances, is by 
 violence and incendiarism. 'Twere better to ex- 
 amine the disease and apply the remedy before the 
 fever breaks out. But this is not Tory practice, 
 whose nostruni is, leave things alone. 
 
 Another symptom of the disease of Sir Robert 
 Peel's government is to be found in the spreading 
 power and organization of an immense Anti-Corn 
 Law League, embracing the whole area of the 
 country, raising first fifty and now a hundred thou- 
 sand pounds, and carrying with it a strong weight of 
 popular favour even in its effbrts to interfere with the 
 ordinary working of Parliamentary elections. When 
 steady, wealthy firms, from all the great seats of our 
 manufacturing districts, and whose members are 
 usually glad to keep aloof from the turmoil of 
 politics and elections, embark in such a league as 
 this, and when year after year it goes on increasing 
 in funds, in numbers, in respectability, and in its 
 acceptance with the public, we may be certain that 
 
 E 2 
 
68 
 
 it has mucli reason and justice on its side, and the 
 Government that has provoked its growth has been 
 in error. 
 
 Thus much for the preservation of the peace 
 in England. In Scotland there has been less of 
 riot ; but a destructive schism has been consum- 
 mated in one of the purest and most meritorious 
 of Churches. This is no place to enter into the 
 Scotch Church disputes ; but this we know, that 
 Lord Aberdeen frequently taunted Lord Melbourne 
 with not settling them, when he knew that Lord 
 Melbourne was powerless for such a purpose in 
 the Lords ; and that Lord Aberdeen, with some- 
 thing of an Irish misconception of time, brought 
 in a bill last session to heal the dispute after the 
 great secession and schism had been effected. 
 
 But if the reaction Ministrj^ in two years' govern- 
 ment, has been illustrated by schism in Scotland and 
 two insurrections in England, what shall be said of 
 its success in Ireland. Sir Robert Peel was for 
 once no false prophet, when he declared in 1839, 
 speaking of his accession to office, " Ireland will be 
 my difficulty." And he was more candid than 
 usual, when, on May last, he confessed, " Ireland 
 was tranquil two years ago (under the Whigs) and 
 is now most disturbed.'' This was a painful confes- 
 sion, and a strong but tardy testimony to the good 
 fruits of that government of his predecessors, which 
 he had so perseveringly thwarted and denounced. 
 But the fact was undeniable ; and denial no longer 
 
69 
 
 so needful. What proof, indeed, of increasing tran- 
 quillity can be stronger, than the diminution from 
 year to year of troops stationed in Ireland, from 
 24,000 in 1833, to 15,000 in 1840,and only 13,447 
 in 1841. 
 
 Or if we take the reported evidence of fourteen 
 Irish agents, largely connected with the sale and 
 management of land throughout Ireland, who de- 
 clared that since 1835, great improvements and 
 investments had taken place in Irish property, and 
 that it had risen jive years purchase in value. But 
 what is its condition now ? Who will buy land ? 
 Who will lend money on mortgage ? Who will 
 invest capital in improvements there now ? Hear a 
 description of it. 
 
 ** A dreadful commotion distracts the public mind 
 " in Ireland — a feverish agitation, and unnatural 
 *' excitement prevail to a degree scarcely credible 
 *' throughout the entire country — social intercourse 
 ** is poisoned there in its very springs — family is 
 '* divided against family, and man against his neigh- 
 " hour. In a word, the bands of social life are 
 * * almost dissevered — the fountains of public justice 
 " are corrupted — the spirit of discord walks openly 
 " abroad, and an army of physical force is marshalled 
 *' in defiance of all law to the imminent danger of the 
 " public peace." 
 
 Is this a faithful description ? If it is, it is pro- 
 phetic, for it is Sir Robert Peel's own picture of the 
 state of Ireland, under his own government, not in 
 1843, but in 1828. Let him compare that picture 
 
70 
 
 with the tranquillized state of Ireland under Lord 
 Normanby, or Lord Forteseue, and blush for the 
 calumnies he sanctioned in Parliament against their 
 governments. Let him compare the thriving and 
 friendly state of Ireland in 1841, with that to which 
 he has again reduced it in 1843, and then ask him- 
 self, where are the fruits of his conservatism, his 
 boasted statesmanship and good government. Let 
 us hear too the deliberate opinion of by far the 
 ablest supporter of his government amongst the 
 journals, and at the same time by far the bitterest 
 opponent of the Whigs. The ** Times" says on the 
 8th or 9th of May :— 
 
 Never, we really believe, did any Viceroy — certainly not any 
 Conservative Viceroy — enter upon the Government of that country 
 with such favourable dispositions on the part of all classes of the 
 people, or with such singular opportunities of doing good. The 
 population was paving the way to habits of industry and fore- 
 thought. O'Connell had dwindled down into a mere doting 
 driveller — a man of maces and gold chains— comparatively power- 
 less in Ireland f and in England almost forgotten. The Repeal 
 doctrines and Repeal associations were heard of only to be laughed 
 at everywhere as a transparent fallacy, resorted to for the purpose 
 of keeping up the "rent." In Lord de Grey and Lord Eliott, 
 personally, the greatest confidence was felt and expressed by 
 all whose support appeared to be important for any practical 
 purpose. 
 
 Such were the advantages under which that Government, which 
 is now menaced with nothing less than actual insurrection, 
 assumed office in Ireland. In two years they have contrived 
 so to govern the country, that, for the first time, the masses of 
 the people are beginning to make formidable demonstrations in 
 favour of the merely Irish principle of separation from Great 
 Britain. O'Connell, who was then a dotard, is now a giant 
 
71 
 
 again. A people labouring under unexampled distress send in 
 their ^600. a week to the Repeal Fund, contributing generally 
 in the inverse ratio of their means. The rabble of Repealers is 
 joined by respectable and well-intentioned persons, and an insig- 
 nificant faction has become a powerful party. In all this there 
 is neither Whiggery nor Radicalism ^ no pursuit of Roman Ca- 
 tholic as opposed to Protestant interests; — it aims at being, and 
 almost threatens to become, a national movement. 
 
 Lord Eliott too, the highest authority on Irish 
 matters, admitted, on the 24th of June, ** that in 
 consequence of the tranquillity of Ireland,'' on the 
 accession of the Government he had reduced eight 
 stipendiary magistrates. But most of these are now 
 restored or replaced, and instead of the 13,447 
 troops, having comparatively nothing to do, we 
 have, besides a large reserve force of pensioners, 
 above 30,000 disciplined troops, busily employed in 
 fortifying their stations, cutting loop-holes in their 
 barracks, laying in stores of provisions and ammu- 
 nition to stand a siege, fortifying Dublin Castle, 
 marching to church armed, and laden with 60 rounds 
 of ball cartridge each ; supported too, by a fleet hover- 
 ing around the coast, war steamers in every bay and 
 gun-boats on the lakes. In fact, all the precautions 
 are taken that the Duke of Wellington would think 
 necessary in an enemy's country — and that country 
 against which these forces are now directed is his 
 own* — is ours, — is, or ought to be, as much a part 
 
 * It is deeply to be regretted, that from the day of his advance- 
 ment the Duke of Wellington has never revisited his native 
 country; never mentioned it with affection, nor that we can 
 remember, ever publicly acknowledged it as his own. Had he 
 
7S 
 
 and parcel of the kingdom, as Wales, or Yorkshire, 
 or Middlesex. Martial law has not yet been pro- 
 claimed ; but it is undeniable that Ireland is at this 
 moment held much less by law and by allegiance than 
 by military force. Do we blame these precautions ? 
 No, certainly not, in the state to which Ireland is 
 now brought. And into what a state is it brought ! 
 Converted into a huge garrison or prepared battle- 
 field ; and all the rays of prosperity that were open- 
 ing on it, and reflected on England not three years 
 ago, now blighted and blackened. And whom have 
 we to thank for this ? Surely not solely Mr. O'Con- 
 nell and the repealers. No ; there may be faction 
 with a solemn face and sanctimonious protestations 
 quite as mischievous as with coarse and blustering 
 ^ violence. But in the state in which the Irish now 
 are, we are glad for their sakes, as well as for the 
 general security of the empire, that there is so 
 powerful a military force so ably stationed and 
 commanded, as to render hopeless, and thereby im- 
 probable, any great national outbreak. 
 
 But it is not by an outbreak or open violence that 
 the Irish leaders look to gain their ends, but by 
 wearing out in detail, and by passive resistance. 
 How would this mighty military force, backed by 
 all the courts of law, and searching acts of parlia- 
 ment, be able to collect Saxon taxes and anti- 
 chosen to take Ireland by the hand, how much good might not 
 this truly great and powerful man have effected ; how much, 
 even of bitter envy and animosity might he have soothed, had he 
 worn his glory as an Irishman. 
 
73 
 
 repealer's rent from hundreds of thousands, or a 
 million or two of defaulters, should affairs be driven 
 on by reciprocal pride and resistance to such a pass 
 as passive non-payment ? And how long would small 
 anti-repeal resident landlords be able to withstand 
 such a repeal argument. And how would the Eng- 
 lish Exchequer like reimbursing the loyal resistors 
 from year to year ? 
 
 We all remember the million advanced to the 
 Irish clergy in lieu of their uncollectable tithes, and 
 how the tithe war under combined civil and military 
 powers miserably failed. Or now, how would this 
 army in Ireland act efficiently if it were for months 
 harassed in detail, worn out by perpetual marchings 
 and countermarch ings, in remote and difficult dis- 
 tricts ; called out to put down paltry riots and 
 breaches of the peace, sometimes real, and far more 
 frequently fictitious, reported for the express purpose 
 of throwing ridicule on the soldiers, and creating 
 dissatisfaction amongst them ? Even on a small scale 
 Rebecca and her daughters for months foiled both a 
 military and a civil force. And again, how long 
 would our soldiers and officers like waging a war 
 upon the cabin : passing through the whole calami- 
 tous circle of distraints, seizures, hangings, burn- 
 ings, famine, pestilence ? And how long would this 
 country bear it? Let us also consider, as it is not 
 humane, so neither is it prudent to run further risks 
 with neighbouring and kindred millions, for revolt 
 is catching ; and should it cross the channel, there 
 are even now seeds of mischief not unsown. It were 
 
74 
 
 sheerest folly and cowardice to shut our eyes to 
 these and similar considerations. Let not therefore 
 "fine old English country gentlemen," who sit at 
 home at ease, think that a word of command, a 
 sic volo, sic jubeo, will settle this matter. Let them 
 not be too eager to drive the repealers to desperate 
 measures, to the creating mischief for mischiefs 
 sake, trusting to chance, — and there are many 
 awkward things that chance might throw up, abroad 
 as well as at home, — to aid them in their revolt. 
 Let them remember there are above two millions'^ of 
 V Irish paupers, destitute of nearly all the appliances 
 that render existence desirable, who, having there- 
 fore little or nothing to lose, have as little to fear, 
 and something to hope from a general disturbance. 
 The very occupation of disturbance is attractive 
 to their desperate objectless thoughts. There is 
 at least another million, very little removed above 
 these two millions, and acted upon, therefore, though 
 less strongly, by the same temptations. Given this 
 uneasy multitude, this mass of suffering life, what 
 mischief might it not commit in any country. But make 
 it Irish — the nation of all others the most reckless of 
 consequences, and the most inflammable, and add to 
 it the bitter infusion of religious fanaticism, (to make 
 it lasting), and then say what mischief might it not 
 produce ! ! and how carefully ought it not to be 
 watched and sheltered from dangerous influences, 
 and yet you talk of putting it down, quelling it, dis- 
 
 * The Poor Law Commissioners state that there are 2,385,000 
 destitute persons in Ireland. 
 
15 
 
 persing it, with as many holiday and lady terms as 
 you would whip a truant school boy. 
 
 You centre it all in Mr. O'Connell, and when you 
 have poured out a torrent of abuse upon him, you 
 fancy you have done great things and settled the 
 matter, but this is sheer folly, or worse than folly, 
 — dishonest evasion. Masses do not rise at the 
 call of one man. It requires years and breadth of 
 suffering before its murmurs find a voice, and that 
 voice an echo. Mr. O'Connell is but this echo. 
 In himself, able and eloquent and experienced 
 though he be, he is as nothing, it is in the 
 masses of Ireland that the heart of the disease lies, 
 and there it must be softened and cured. However 
 much it may startle some, we think those who have 
 most considered national discontents in a free coun- 
 try, and who wish to see freedom preserved, will 
 rejoice that there is a Mr. O'Connell, a man of 
 substance and vigor, with far-spread relations and 
 having much to lose by disorder, who can for a time 
 stand between us and an angry people. 
 
 This then is the altered state of Ireland, and the 
 charge against Sir Robert Peel and his party is, that 
 he and they, quite as much as Mr. O'Connell, have 
 caused it. In the debate on Mr. O'Brien's motion, 
 he said, 
 
 ** What has my Ministry done to justify or excuse 
 " this state of affairs in Ireland ? What are our acts 
 ** of oppression ; wherein have we misgoverned or 
 " perverted the law, or oppressed the Catholics ?"~-If 
 
76 
 
 the whole charge were included within these narrow 
 limits, it might not easily be substantiated. For it is 
 not a few isolated offences committed within a brief 
 space, but a course of injurious and oppressive treat- 
 ment, persisted in for years, that alienates a whole 
 people, and wearing out their endurance, sets them 
 at issue with peace and authority. Therefore know- 
 ing this full well, Sir Robert Peel in his defence 
 cunningly and instinctively kept it out of sight. 
 He knows as well as any man, better than most 
 men, for he has already struggled against and been 
 defeated by it — the great mass of Irish misery, dis- 
 content, and inflammability which we have been 
 describing. For nineteen years of his life he set 
 his face against it. For six years as Irish Secretary, 
 he brought in arms bills — bills for the better, that is 
 more bitter, execution of the laws — gave power to 
 Courts of Magistrates to dispense with trials by 
 jury — opposed tithe commutation — tithe amendment 
 bills — voted and declaimed against Catholic Eman- 
 cipation — and went so far as to declare in Parlia- 
 ment ** that the only fault of the Orange Societies 
 *' was their exuberance of loyalty." As Home Secre- 
 tary he pursued the same course ; yet still, despite 
 all these legislative enactments and coercions he 
 found Irish discontent growing even faster than his 
 official growth, and strengthening more than his 
 Parliamentary strength. We have cited his descrip- 
 tion of the nearly savage state to which this 
 vigorous government of his reduced, and in which 
 
77 
 
 it kept Ireland. But when things arrived at a 
 crisis, when the measure of endurance was full to 
 the brim, ere the last drop made the waters of bit- 
 terness overflow, he had the prudence to give way \ 
 and the Emancipation Act was passed. 
 
 Now this was either an accomplished fact whence 
 a new policy was to flow, or it was an accomplished 
 dead letter — a mere subterfuge and expedient. 
 Either the Catholics were to be treated thereafter 
 on a footing of perfect equality with the Protestants, 
 in all official employments and patronage, (save 
 the offices specially excepted) and in all civil 
 immunities and franchises, or the compact was 
 broken, and Emancipation practically not yet 
 passed. Sir Robert Peel will of course declare 
 that he passed the act in all sincerity, and with a 
 determination to fulfil it. If this be so, it is un- 
 fortunate for himself, and for both England and 
 Ireland, that he did not act up to his determination. 
 For soon finding himself in opposition, old Anti- 
 Catholic associations returned upon him; or party 
 spirit blinded him to the obvious results of the 
 course he then adopted of making the Anti-Catholic 
 and An ti- Irish feeling, already too prevalent in Eng- 
 land, the immediate stepping-stone to his reconcilia- 
 tion with the English Tories, and to his proximate 
 return to power. The revolt of Ireland has been 
 the inheritance of his ambition, and the dismember- 
 ment of the empire may be its reversion. 
 
 He must have seen, as no one could well avoid 
 
78 
 
 seeing, that the utmost forbearance and gentleness 
 towards the inflamed Catholics, were necessary to 
 calm them down after their victory, leaving indivi- 
 dual excesses to be repressed with a firm hand ; 
 and that it was imperative both in honour and in 
 policy, to give clear and practical proofs of the 
 working and following out of the Emancipation Act. 
 Instead of which he and his party, with two or three 
 honourable exceptions, took their stand upon the old 
 Orange Anti-Catholic grounds. This gained them 
 friends in England, and accordingly they redoubled 
 their attacks upon the policy that was soothing the 
 irritabilitv, and even winnino^ the afi*ections of the 
 Irish — Was not a little further exclusion from office 
 worth purchasing, at the golden prospect of seeing 
 Ireland really united to England ? Were not the 
 reforms and the administration that were applied to 
 Ireland by the Whigs, such as necessarily flowed 
 from the Emancipation and Reform acts, and such 
 as she would inevitably either sooner and thankfully 
 receive from friends, or later wrench by violence and 
 disturbance from opponents. But these sober reflec- 
 tions were thrown aside ; the Church cry was up ; 
 now was the time to take advantage of it ; and so down 
 with the ministry supported by the Irish members, 
 away with the O'Connell-ridden government ! This 
 was their tactic, and these their cries ; and they suc- 
 ceeded. And they who did this now ask, What have 
 we done ? The Irish can answer them fully and in 
 detail. They can say, You urged on the Coercion Bill ; 
 
79 
 
 you opposed our Reform Bill, and specially on anti- 
 Catholic grounds j you endeavoured, after England 
 and Scotland were freed from their corrupt skeleton 
 corporations, to fix ours upon us as *' strongholds of 
 Protestantism ;" you protested against the national 
 education of our children, except upon terms that 
 would have excluded every Catholic ; you opposed 
 the curtailment of your over-grown and nearly sine- 
 cure Church, for the sake of keeping up sentinels, 
 as you said, on the Catholics ; and you opposed even 
 releasing the Catholics from the Church cess ; you 
 clamoured against the appointment of Catholics to 
 some, even of the lowest, situations in the ministry ; 
 and when a Roman Catholic gentleman, one of the 
 most eloquent members of the House of Commons, 
 was made a Privy Councillor, some of your party 
 spoke of it as a breach of the Constitution ; and 
 your Queen's coronation oath began to be questioned. 
 Others more violent, and amongst them beneficed 
 clergymen, at public dinners and meetings, went 
 so far as to reflect on the Queen herself, for the sup- 
 port she gave her Catholic subjects ; and did you 
 rebuke them for this indecency ? On the contrary, 
 you countenanced them, and some were promoted 
 almost immediately afterwards ? Your leading party 
 newspaper denounced our priests as " surpliced 
 ruffians," while your present Lord Chancellor has not 
 only called but legislated against us as aliens. After 
 the elections in 1837, you. formed a Spottiswoode 
 association, of wealthy persons having generally no 
 connection with Ireland, to raise a fund with which 
 
80 
 
 to oppress and intimidate our members, by en- 
 couraging and defraying the expense of indiscri- 
 minate petitions against their returns. Following 
 up this attempt to crush our representatives, one of 
 your now leading Cabinet Ministers denounced 
 our constituencies as masses of personation, cor- 
 ruption and perjury ; and thereon, with reckless 
 party violence thrust forward a registration bill, 
 which in defiance of all justice and remonstrance» 
 he declared would admit of no delay, and which 
 would in fact have half disfranchised Ireland. He 
 and you would have carried it too, but for the dis- 
 solution of Parliament. Yet now you yourselves 
 confess that this was a mere party move, and that it 
 certainly would have greatly diminished the already 
 diminishing numbers of our constituents, and that 
 instead of admitting of no delay, your cry, at the 
 end of three years, is that still further delay is ne- 
 cessary. Thus it is you treat us, and then with 
 folded arms and solemn face, say, What have we 
 done ? We have told you. And we tell you further 
 that thus it is repealers are made, and Mr. O'Con- 
 nelPs hands played into by rendering it now almost 
 impossible for any party to satisfy Ireland without 
 incensing England, or to please England without 
 driving Ireland to the verge, or within the verge, 
 of rebellion. 
 
 If you ask us Why we distrust your still? our 
 answer is. Because we see nothing in you changed. 
 You cannot easily turn 350,000 children out of their 
 schools, and repeal the Education, the Emancipa- 
 
SI 
 
 tlon, the Reform, and the Municipal Acts. But by 
 your official power and patronage you can do much to 
 neutralize or pervert them. You can select all your 
 judges, and bishops, and magistrates, from those 
 amongst your party, who are most notorious for 
 their opposition not only to the passing of those Acts, 
 but to the working of them after they are passed. You 
 can swamp our municipal magistracies, under a 
 pretence of keeping up a balance of parties.* And 
 even now with the repeal movement, threatening the 
 disruption of the empire, your Government cannot 
 conquer its habit of sneering and insulting. Your 
 Home Secretary can go out of his way on an impor- 
 tant debate, so to speak of the Emancipation Act 
 and of the Catholics, as to be obliged the next 
 day to explain, he did not quite mean to accuse 
 them of perjury. And your papers taking up the 
 cue, redouble and exaggerate these insults. Whoop- 
 ing for insurrection, inflaming excitement, and 
 chuckling over warlike preparations with the appe- 
 tite of Owhyhee, rather than the assumed civiliza- 
 tion of England. 
 
 Hear your especial ministerial organ, the Herald, 
 speak of the priests so late as the 23rd of September, 
 
 * Sir James Graham has done the same also in England, 
 under the same pretence, nominating shoals of additional borough 
 magistrates where none were wanted, except for party purposes. 
 What an outcry would not the country have heard, and justly, 
 had the Whigs attempted to counterbalance the Tory magiS' 
 trades in all the counties by like arbitrary nominations. 
 
 F 
 
8^ 
 
 when several of the most highly influential and re- 
 spectable amongst them had not yet declared for re- 
 peal. By way of retaining them, it says, " The fire- 
 ** brands let loose by Samson were mild scourges com- 
 " pared with the incendiaries who are now vomited 
 " forth from Maynooth, to convey desolation through 
 '' the land." Or take a sketch of the whole nation, 
 from the Times, November 27th. *' There is no 
 ** extremity of rashness — no excess (unhappily) of 
 *' crime — no enormity of falsehood by which a 
 *' race so restless, so sanguine, and so shallow, have 
 " ever at any time been deterred, or shocked, or 
 ** awakened to a sense of duty, or of rational or 
 " moral truth. Their political idolatry is no less 
 '* blind than their superstition." And a few days 
 later it calls them Thugs, '* Irish Thugs." 
 
 We ask any dispassionate man, we care not of 
 what party, whether it is in deeds and terms and 
 tones like these from Ministers and a ministerial 
 press, (we could cite volumes of like or worse abuse 
 from all their papers) that an excited priesthood 
 and an angry people are to be won back to the ways 
 of peace ? or the English taught to regard Ireland 
 and Irish affairs with feelings of humane and 
 Christian forbearance ? It is not enough to answer 
 that the leaders disavow or explain these things 
 away. They are repeated too perseveringly for 
 such an excuse. And the Irish, like the rest of the 
 the world, say : ** like master, like man ;" the party 
 and ministerial press that so violently and unre- 
 
83 
 
 mittingly abuse us, cannot but be doing that which 
 is acceptable to their leaders and ministers. 
 
 If these facts are true, and who is there that 
 calmly reviewing the past, and honestly accepting 
 the Emancipation Act as a reality, can or will deny 
 them, then it necessarily follows that Sir Robert 
 Peel and his party have, by their direct and indirect 
 proceedings, during the last fourteen years, done 
 quite as much as Mr. O'Connell and his agitators 
 towards fomenting and embittering the present in- 
 surrectionary movement in Ireland. 
 
 Let us now examine how they have encountered 
 this monster of their own ambitious nursing. The 
 excitement did not assume a definite form until 
 last Easter, when the first monster meeting began, 
 — ^just fourteen years after the origin of Repeal 
 under the Duke of Wellington's government in 
 1 829. As the Duke of Wellington neglected to nip 
 it in its bud, so Sir Robert Peel let pass the first great 
 physical demonstration, They probably were right 
 in both cases ; but in neither case did they act 
 according to the declared and received principles of 
 their government, and they would strongly have 
 blamed any opponents who neglected what they then 
 neglected, At Easter there were clearly two me- 
 thods of treatment. Either to attempt to arrest 
 the movement at once by a firm but temperate hand; 
 or to suffer it to wear itself out for want of food to 
 feed on, or if it waxed stronger, to wait for some 
 distinct overt act that would place its leaders palpably 
 
 '"''■" F 2 ^ 
 
84 
 
 within the operation of the laws. The Government 
 seems to have vacillated hetween both these methods. 
 First it affected the waiting system, and let the mon- 
 ster meetings go on, while a little interlude was pre- 
 paring. For on an incidental notice inParliament, Sir 
 Robert Peel went out of his way to make use of his 
 Sovereign's name with regard to Repeal, paraphrasing 
 a message of William the I Vth's under the Whigs, 
 but omitting the clause respecting the redress of 
 wrongs, which, to say the least, was disingenuous 
 and mischievous. The use made of the Queen's 
 name was, it seems, designed for a covered and cha- 
 racteristic attack upon the Repealers. For, on the 
 strength of the words then used, the Irish Lord 
 Chancellor opened a masked paper battery, and pro- 
 ceeded to supersede all magistrates who attended 
 Repeal meetings, while at the same time he carefully 
 abstained from declaring them illegal. This fillip 
 set up the monster meetings and the Repeal rent. 
 The one began to be counted by hundreds of thou- 
 sands of persons : and the other rose from hundreds 
 to thousands of pounds. The language, too, used, 
 became more violent, the organization more regular, 
 and the priesthood gave signs of joining as a body. 
 
 This excitement reacted on England, and there 
 were long debates in Parliament on Irish matters. 
 The Government would promise nothing but an 
 impartial administration of the laws, and proposed 
 nothing but the renewal, with very much increased 
 severities, of the Irish Arms Bill, which had practi- 
 
85 
 
 cally become nearly a dead letter, and which is 
 now being used by Irish Tory magistrates, as 
 might have been foreseen, for party purposes. 
 Later in the session a bill was passed for form- 
 ing the military pensioners, in case of need, into 
 an army of reserve. The session closed, and 
 the monster meetings went on unchecked, from 
 Connemara to Tara Hill, Mullaghmast and Clon- 
 tarf. No, not Clontarf. But the Repeal rent was 
 beginning to fall off a little ; notwithstanding a 
 superabundance of declarations, manifestoes, denun- 
 ciations of Saxons, and subordinate meetings. For 
 the heartiest things will wear out ; and the most 
 admiring audience tire at last of the same thing. 
 And so it was with the Saxon denunciations and 
 monster meetings. Even Mr. O'Conneirs wonderful 
 versatility began to grow thread bare for the want — 
 of the next step. But to take this neither suited his 
 objects nor his disposition. Yet it was difficult to 
 stand still amidst such tumultuous waters — to say 
 unto them thus far and no further. There were signs 
 of ripening impatience, dissatisfaction and insubordi- 
 nation in his camp and his cabinet. He complained 
 at Lis more that even some of his priests were going 
 too fast — that he who had hitherto been the exciter, 
 must become, henceforth, the restrainer, — there were 
 parishes erased from the Repeal rolls for quarrelling 
 with policemen; there were members violently 
 expelled from the council and ranks of Repeal for 
 making motions against rent. What next? and 
 when ? and why not now ? were querulously asked 
 
86 
 
 knd not easily answered. The Government began 
 to stand a fair chance of reaping the benefit of 
 its able preparations against danger, coupled with 
 jthe wise abstinence since the recess from all direct 
 oifence to the repealers. Opinion was growing 
 towards it ; and Mr. O'Connell and his followers, 
 vexed by their own big words, were nearly stalemated. 
 The next move and they might be in check. In the 
 midst of this dilemma, not seeing his way clearly 
 and safely before him ; loath to advance and with" 
 out an excuse for receding — when all looked blank, 
 dangerous, and perplexed. 
 
 Nee Deus intersit, msi dignus vindice nodus 
 Incident, 
 
 Mr. O'Connell found relief where, perhaps, he 
 all along calculated upon finding it. Lord de Grey 
 and the Government rushed in, knocked over the 
 chess board, and the stalemate was saved. 
 
 Advantages were never more foolishly thrown 
 away, and a frightful effusion of blood was nevei* 
 more weakly and wantonly risked than by the 
 headlong anti-Clontarf proclamation. 
 
 The old proverb says, *a miss is as good as a mile.* 
 And as all went oflf peaceably at Clontarf, we shall 
 probably hear little more of it. But had strife there 
 began, and blood once been shed, who shall say where 
 it would have ended* — It would have been as the 
 pouring out of waters, — and every drop should have 
 been visited on the heads of those, who, on Satur- 
 day evening, issued an unexpected proclamation 
 against the monster meeting of the following morri- 
 
S7 
 
 ing. Thus as it were entrapping some hundreds of 
 thousands of highly excited individuals, who, without 
 let, or stay, or prohibition, had been accustomed for 
 months to attend similar meetings, and who had a 
 right therefore to believe them legal, and many of 
 whom were then actually on their way to Clontarf. 
 Upon every principle of common humanity, if not 
 of liberty and fair play, most especial care should 
 have been taken to warn those misguided men, long 
 before hand, of the consequences of their conduct. 
 But nothing of this kind was done or thought of. 
 
 Again, what so undignified or so uncalled for as 
 a Lord-Lieutenant, expected in Yorkshire to drill 
 his hussars, suddenly and without any new feature 
 whatever in the course of repeal, being packed off by 
 Government, with a foul copy proclamation, stuffed 
 into his breeches pocket, and steamed away to 
 Dublin, to arrive on the Thursday night, to pass all 
 Friday haggling with his council, and then, on the 
 Saturday evening, to come forth with a proclamation 
 declaring those meetings illegal, which had hitherto 
 been treated as not illegal, and especially a meet- 
 ing which it was now physically impossible to 
 prevent from more or less forming. And once 
 assembled, in the temper in which it would then 
 have met, the commonest accident, a mere quarrel, 
 or chance medley, would have ruined all. 
 
 It was Mr. O'Connell and the repeal leaders, 
 and not the Government, that did the Government 
 duty by instantly and indefatigably warning, far and 
 wide, tens, and twenties, and fifties of thousandjs 
 
88 
 
 from attending that meeting ; and to* their strenu- 
 ous exertions, prolonged through the whole night, 
 and following morning, we are indebted, most pro^ 
 bably, for preservation from a cruel shedding of 
 blood, and the outburst of a ferocious and vindictive 
 rebellion. 
 
 But at all events Mr. O'Connell owed the Go- 
 vernment a good turn for having got him out of bis 
 monster meeting difficulties, and he thus repaid 
 them by saving them from the fearful consequences of 
 their precipitant folly. Nothing could exceed the 
 unblushing ability with which he covered his own 
 too rapid advance by the false move of the 
 Government. He instantly did that which he 
 had long been desiring to do — anchored. Thus 
 far he had advanced the Repeal movement, and 
 he was enabled now, without in the least retreating, 
 and without in the least compromising his onward 
 character as a leader to say — *' For the present, 
 no further." Rapidly and effectually he brought 
 his ship to an anchor, under the the lee of the 
 Government proclamation -, and he has now time 
 and authority again to attend to its internal 
 organization for a future move — to watch the 
 course of events — and to accustom the public mind 
 to the existence of the advanced stage of his impe- 
 rium in imperio. 
 
 The present Ministers are not likely again to have 
 
 * One of them, the Rev. Mr. Tyrrel, since indicted for sedi- 
 tion, and since dead, is said to have caught his death illness 
 \y his exertions during that perilous night. 
 
89 
 
 the good chance that their Clontarf proclamation 
 threw away. At Easter they neglected to act on 
 their own assumed vigorous principles of putting 
 down the repeal demonstrations with a resolute 
 hand ; and in the autumn, they wanted the compre- 
 hension to understand, or the firmness to wait for, 
 the results of the passive policy into which they 
 were much more forced than willing to enter. One 
 fault begets another. Having forbidden the Clontarf 
 meeting by the bare commands of Government, it 
 became necessary to fortify its proceedings by the 
 authority of law ; and hence the legal proceedings 
 against Mr. O'Connell and the Repealers. But, as 
 the prohibition of the meeting rested on no special 
 grounds, but on cumulative presumptions, so the 
 indictment against the Repealers could stand only on 
 the same indefinite basis. And so the Government 
 by its petulant impatience has engaged itself in legal 
 proceedings, of which no one can see the end, but 
 of which many immediate and remote mischiefs are 
 but too apparent. 
 
 In the first place, constructive sedition is as 
 foreign to our notions of fair play as the exploded 
 doctrine of constructive treason. Yet it constitutes 
 the very essence of the charges preferred against the 
 Repealers, with the further objection that all which 
 they are charged with saying and doing, they said 
 and did openly and unchecked at the time by the 
 authorities. There is an insidiousness in thus ac- 
 cumulating offences and fattening them for punish- 
 ment, against which fair play and justice revolt. 
 
m 
 
 Then again, will Irish excitement be calmed (except 
 through sheer weariness) by instituting trials of the 
 leaders of that excitement, not upon clear single 
 points, the bearing and the conviction upon which 
 all could comprehend, but upon indictments running 
 over a period of eight months, referring to proceed- 
 ings which may require as many thousand witnesses, 
 and composed of eleven counts, the very first of which 
 covers fifty-five closely printed folio pages. The 
 monster meetings are aptly met by monster indict- 
 ments. The nearest resemblance to it is the old 
 Tory green bag full of cumulative charges raked up 
 against Queen Caroline. 
 
 Further also, the Government has, greatly for the 
 present advantage of Mr. O'Connell and Repeal, re- 
 moved the site and the centre of its agitation, from 
 the bleak and dangerous hill side, to the secure and 
 far speaking four courts of Dublin. From their 
 halls, Mr. O'Connell, with his powerful array 
 of legal assistants, will be able to work out his 
 Irish questions ; and after holding up the Govern- 
 ment to derision for two months, will probably send 
 it to Parliament with defeat. A conviction would 
 probably be even more disastrous than an acquittal. 
 
 In the present state of the Irish mind, would the 
 Government venture to imprison Mr. O'Connell ? 
 How would it meet the emergency that might thence 
 arise ? And what justification would it have for 
 precipitating or risking it ? And yet how feeble 
 would it show, if, after all its preparations, it dared 
 not imprison him. It lost its best chance of escape 
 
91 
 
 when the efi*ors and bewilderment of its law officers 
 nearly quashed the proceedings ; and its hope now 
 is that the Jury may never agree. Indeed it would 
 he no easy matter for any twelve persons to agree 
 upon a detailed histofy of eight months of Irish pro-- 
 ceedings, and upon the hearing of which the Govern^ 
 ment itself was for eight months divided, or at least 
 undecided. And so now the hest ministerial hope 
 is, as indeed the bewildering charges seem pur- 
 posely framed to secure its fulfilment, that there shall 
 he no verdict. For then there would be a pretext 
 raised for the old favourite practice of coming to Par- 
 liament to ask for extraordinary powers to do what is 
 called, vindicate the law and strengthen the hands of 
 Government. Meanwhile these proceedings have, 
 like the attack upon the magistrates, rallied the repeal 
 rent ; and the prosecution, by giving Mr. O'Connell 
 the appearance, rather than the reality, of being per- 
 secuted, has raised his own special fund — the 
 O'Connell rent—from £15,000. to above £25,000. 
 And when the trial is over, if it ever will be over — 
 what then ? how much nearer shall we he to the 
 settlement of Ireland ? What's to be done ? 
 
 Remedies. 
 
 These are questions much more easily asked than 
 answered. But having now examined the course of 
 the Government, both as it regards the empire at 
 large, and more especially Ireland, and having had 
 the easy task of finding much to blame, we will 
 attempt the far more difficult one of suggesting re- 
 
92 
 
 medies. To begin with Ireland. We cannot com- 
 mence better than by quoting the following extract, 
 from an old address to the people of England and 
 Ireland, which was signed by some of the most in- 
 fluential, most experienced, and most respected Irish 
 resident landlords : it was headed by the Duke of 
 Leinster, and declared, — 
 
 ** The great mass of the people in Great Britain 
 ** is Protestant ; in Ireland, Roman Catholic. 
 " Whoever therefore, attempts to set Protestants 
 " against Roman Catholics, labours in effect to set 
 '* Great Britain against Ireland, and by consequence, 
 *' Ireland against Great Britain." 
 
 These are truisms to which all will readily 
 enough assent in words, but to which, as we have 
 seen, the present Ministers, whether in oflSce or in 
 opposition, have unfortunately very little attended 
 in deeds ; and hence the disastrous, or to say the 
 least, erroneous state of affairs in Ireland. Now 
 one of tbe best cures for error is a departure from 
 it — but in the right direction. And if the wrong 
 direction has been the setting Catholics and Pro- 
 testants against one another, then its reverse, the 
 bringing them together and reconciling them, will 
 probably be the right. Substituting, in fact, for 
 bigotr}^ a respect for each other's religion — for 
 coercion and hostility, concession and friendship — 
 and for exclusion, inclusion, that is a frank partici- 
 pation in all rights, benefits, and advantages. This 
 was tried by the Whigs, and so far as it was suffered 
 by the Tories to be applied, was successful. Let 
 
93 
 
 then the Tories now try ft ; as the only safe policy 
 by which, carried out in all practical sincerity, and 
 not with mere lip phrase, any Government can hope 
 hereafter to maintain permanent peace in Ireland. 
 
 But to come to closer particulars ; and first for 
 the Church. The Church and the Priests, the 
 question of questions. Now there is an old text in 
 our copy books, which is appropriate to this subject, 
 *' Be just and fear not ;" we all have often written it 
 out in somewhat scrawled German text, let us now, 
 ere it be too late, write it out fairly and honestly 
 in our Statute books. Let us do this, and place beside 
 it the holy caution, of *' not to do to another that 
 which we would not that other should do unto us ;" 
 and guided by these two plainest and best of rules, 
 which are as true in politics as in private life, and fol- 
 lowing them out honestly in all their consequences, we 
 may yet right ourselves, and be perhaps the happier 
 and more prosperous for our troubles. But if pre- 
 suming to be more wise, and more just, that is, more 
 subtle, than justice and wisdom themselves, we 
 think fit to deal in expediencies, qualifications, 
 reservations, and the whole army of ifs, and ands, 
 and buts, which are nothing more than the cobwebs 
 in which spider injustice and selfishness love to 
 lie hid, we shall waste our time, lose our tempers, and 
 perhaps too, lose Ireland. Once more then, be just 
 and fear not, and learn to do to Ireland, as you 
 would that Ireland should do to you, were you Ca- 
 tholic Ireland, and Ireland Protestant England, 
 But to do this eiFectually requires the calming 
 
94 
 
 down of many angry feelings, the humbling of 
 pride, the setting aside deep-rooted prejudices or 
 predilections, and the resigning the direction of 
 spiritual affairs to higher authority than man's, or 
 man's short-sighted policy. 
 
 When we have weighed these thoughts, we may 
 ask, whether we believe, that if the Irish Roman 
 Catholic priests, had an assured, and permanent 
 position, and were to a certain degree indepen- 
 dent of their flocks, they would not teach and 
 control them with more effect, — that men of more 
 general information, more liberal sentiments, and 
 of higher station, would not enter the priesthood, 
 and that the whole tone and feeling of the Irish 
 Catholics would not be raised ? Who would not an- 
 swer ? Certainly. Then if this be so, is it not also 
 most desirable ? again we must answer, certainly. 
 What, or who then prevents it ? Ourselves — Eng- 
 land — Parliament — the Lords and Commons of 
 England. But if we of Protestant England belonged 
 to some powerful Catholic state, that had appro- 
 priated our national religious endowments, and 
 we were so poor that we could with difficulty 
 maintain out of our destitution, a dependant and 
 ill- educated clergy ; should we not desire that such 
 Catholic state should provide funds to assist in the 
 endowment of our ministries, and the education of 
 our clergy, without at all interfering with the inde- 
 pendence of our Church ? Undoubtedly we should 
 in our calmer moments. Is it not therefore our 
 duty so to do by the Irish Catholics, as we, if w^ 
 
95 
 
 were French Protestants, should wish the French 
 Government to do by us ; and as, in fact, the French 
 Government does by its Protestants. We may regret 
 that the Irish Catholics are not Protestants, as Ca- 
 tholics regret that Protestants are not Catholics ; but 
 these regrets are not to prevent either of us from 
 fulfilling the higher duties of justice and mercy^ 
 which require, that we should do all in our power to 
 relieve the wants and enlighten the darkness of our 
 neighbours. But we have already admitted, that we 
 should relieve their wants and enlighten their dark^ 
 ness, by promoting the education and independence 
 of their clergy. Therefore upon the plain princi- 
 ples of Christian charity, and of doing to our neigh- 
 bours as we would that they should do unto us, — - 
 it becomes our bounden duty to relieve and en- 
 lighten them. 
 
 If it be objected by some, that we should thereby 
 be fostering error by educating it. We reply, — who 
 made us the judges and correctors of error ? Let us 
 do good, and be content, humbly to look to that 
 good which is in all ! Was not the heathen cen- 
 turion commended, who built a synagogue for what 
 he believed to be the mistaken worship of the Jews, 
 and most highly distinguished too on the report 
 of this act of charity, by the miracle performed 
 forthwith upon his servant ? Let us go and do 
 likewise. And, if the Catholics be in error, are 
 not their errors likely to diminish, by enlighten- 
 ment, and by the example of our charity? Is not 
 
96 
 
 enlightenment the very test hy which we desire 
 that our own profession should he tried? Also, 
 if all Christian sects have failed to convert one 
 another by violence, compulsion, jealousy, and ex- 
 clusion, — which have produced only hypocrisy, 
 hatred, and wars, — is it not worth while trying what 
 a little love and forbearance will do ? And, after all, 
 so long as there are different phases of the human 
 mind, so long will truth strike them under different 
 angles, and reflect different rays of light, — dif- 
 ferent persuasions, — which are probably all wisely 
 permitted and prolonged, for the exercise of our 
 inquiries, our faith, and, above all, our charity. 
 
 We have placed this matter, of the support of the 
 Irish Catholic Church, on these high grounds of 
 Christian justice, because we wish to separate it 
 from all party expediency and temporizing measures. 
 But for those who choose to take it up, and ex- 
 amine it in a mere worldly and political point of 
 view, let us ask, Who is there that does not at once 
 see the inestimable social benefit that would accrue 
 from uniting the Catholic priesthood in bonds of 
 amity and mutual favours with the laws and the 
 constitution, and from enabling them, on future oc- 
 casions, to withstand popular delusions, or at least to 
 act on their own conscientious convictions, by reliev- 
 ing them from a dependance for their subsistence on 
 popular pay. 
 
 We have no thought of recommending the coarse 
 and insolent proposal of buying over the priests. 
 
97) 
 
 and making them stipendiaries, were they base 
 enough (which they are in no degree) to sell their 
 holy offices for messes of pottage. We should gain 
 nothing by such a transaction ; we should but da- 
 mage both ourselves and them by corruption. No ! 
 — that good fruits may come of it, we must give as 
 they must receive, purely and independently. On 
 such terms we hope and trust the Irish Catholic 
 Clergy and community may even yet, on reflection, 
 be brought gradually to acquiesce in reconciliation, 
 recognition, and assistance. The amount of pecu- 
 niary assistance, and the terms of raising, securing, 
 and appropriating it, — the co-operating aid of the 
 Catholics themselves, and of Catholic land, — the 
 establishing glebe-houses, and the enlargement and 
 re-organization of Maynooth, and other minor 
 points are all questions of detail, into which it would 
 be needless and premature yet to enter. 
 
 Taking the subject in its very lowest sense, as a 
 mere matter of pounds, shillings, and pence, who 
 will not now agree that it would be cheap and 
 prudent to expend half a million, or a million, in 
 raising and reconciling a nation, now united to our 
 own, and possessing a population much larger than 
 that with which, little more than a century ago, we 
 humbled Louis XIV. Would not this be better 
 economy than interrupting all national improve- 
 ment, and hazarding millions on the coarse and 
 vulgar charges of horse and foot artillery, brigades 
 of cavalry, divisions of infantry, squadrons of ships, 
 
m 
 
 flotillas of steam- boats, intrenchments, and fortified 
 houses and barracks, bristling the whole country, 
 with all the costly and barbarous array of the worst 
 possible tenure by which a kingdom can be held, — 
 a tenure in which humanity, liberty, civilization, and 
 religion all harden and suffer. 
 
 There would be many difficulties, of course, on 
 the one side and on the other, attending the settle- 
 ment of this great question, but they would be found 
 to be only difficulties, many of which would vanish, 
 and all sensibly diminish, whenever the matter was 
 taken up, as Catholic Emancipation at last was, in 
 good earnest. 
 
 Catholic France pays and recognizes the ministers 
 of its Protestant subjects, and at this moment has a 
 Protestant Prime Minister. 
 
 So also does Catholic Austria. 
 
 Protestant Prussia pays and recognizes the minis- 
 ters of her Catholic subjects. And let us think how 
 tyrannical, intolerant, and insane, we should call 
 Prussia, were she to treat and denounce the religion 
 and priests of her Rhenish, as we treat and denounce 
 the religion and priests of our Irish dominions. 
 
 In Saxony a Catholic king rules popularly over 
 Protestants, respecting their religion and its privi- 
 leges. 
 
 In Belgium a Protestant king rules popularly 
 over Catholics, respecting their religion and its 
 privileges. 
 
 Throughout Germany and Switzerland, Protes- 
 
99 
 
 tants and Catholics, Catholics and Protestants 
 live together in Christian harmony, with mutual 
 respect for each other's creeds, offices and endow- 
 ments. 
 
 Shall all these, and other good examples which 
 we might cite from the best and most civilized por- 
 tions of Europe, be thrown away upon England ? 
 Will she prefer imitating the exclusive bigotry of 
 Spain, Portugal, and the Italian States ? 
 
 Mr. Pitt and Lord Grenville wished to pay 
 the Catholic priests; Lord Castlereagh desired 
 it ; and at last even the High Church Quar- 
 terly Review has discovered that an endowment 
 for the Catholic priests should have attended 
 the Emancipation Act, and that the Emancipation 
 Act should have attended the Union. The mis- 
 fortune is, that Conservative anti-progress anti- 
 reform authorities are in these matters wise only 
 after the event, — after mischief has instructed them. 
 But even this would be worth much if they would 
 act up to their new conversions. For although it is 
 sadly late — three and forty embittering years too 
 late — yet let us hope it is not too late, and that the 
 redress and relief which Protestant England, at 
 length seeing her error, shall offer, in all sincerity 
 and without restriction, will, by Catholic Ireland be 
 accepted with honour and cemented by good faith 
 and good will. 
 
 Another pressing matter is the consideration of 
 Irish tenancy, and of the duties as well as of the 
 
 G 2 
 
100 
 
 fights of Irish landlords. But happily there is now 
 less occasion to enforce this subject, since there 
 seems to he a general disposition to meet it dispas- 
 sionately, and the Government has issued a com- 
 mission for collecting information against the meeting 
 of Parliament. We should have been better pleased 
 vk^ith this commission if, instead of being composed 
 exclusively of Irish landlords, there had boen asso- 
 ciated with them some independent persons practi- 
 cally acquainted with the letting, working, and 
 profits of farms and small tenements in Eng- 
 land and Scotland. What we want is a true state 
 of the case as to rents, tenures, and modes of getting 
 a livelihood out of the land. Whereas, now we 
 much fear we shall have a rather ponderous eclogue 
 on the excellencies of Irish landlords indited and 
 published by — Irish landlords. But be the result 
 what it may, no legislative enactments on this 
 subject can be of any substantial avail, until peace 
 and confidence have been restored between the now 
 almost severed classes of Irish social life. To 
 any relief that may be proposed for the Irish tenants, 
 cottiers, and farmers, we should remember that, in 
 addition to the reconciling effects of a settlement of 
 the Irish Catholic Church, there would be also the 
 substantial assistance flowing from the many sums of 
 money which then might be turned to improvements 
 or comforts, but which go now to the payment of 
 Church dues and Repeal Rent. 
 
 Next comes the Franchise. We are not going 
 
101 
 
 into the vexed question of the Irish Registration, 
 concerning which the members of the present 
 Government now confess the factiousness of their 
 former conduct. But, whatever consideration may- 
 be due to the candor of this confession, it is 
 hardly sufficient for Ireland, that upon the strength 
 of it, the Government should, from session to 
 session, neglect to reform a registration which all 
 allow to be inefficient. In fact, this seems to be 
 just one of those cases of admitted abuse which 
 Sir Robert Peel has been talking of reforming 
 for these last ten years, but which he has never 
 yet been so fortunate as to hit upon an opportunity 
 of catching. But in handling it, he must not forget 
 the qualification itself, for so long as Mr. O'Connell 
 can with truth, declare that 680,000 Welchmen have 
 ten or twelve times more agricultural constituents, 
 than 720,000 inhabitants of the county of Cork, and 
 more than seven times as many members ; that the 
 West Riding of Yorkshire alone possesses more con- 
 stituents than the eight principal agricultural coun- 
 ties of Ireland ; and that the franchise of Ireland 
 goes on yearly diminishing while that of England 
 and Scotland goes on increasing ; * he will, in the 
 
 * By a printed return it appears, that the total constituency 
 of Ireland, in 1843, was only 109,945, and that it had decreased 
 since 1837 to the extent of 14,332, being nearly 12 per cent, 
 in six years ; while on the contrary, in England, Scotland, and 
 Wales, the constituencies, with the exception of Scotch boroughs, 
 have been and continue steadily increasing. 
 
102 
 
 opinion of all those who honestly supported, or 
 now acquiesce in the principles of J;he Reform Bill, 
 have a manifest case of abuse ; and one, therefore, 
 which so far affords grounds for his complaints of 
 injustice and partiality. In fact, the franchise should 
 not be dependent, as it now is, on a lease to be 
 granted, or more frequently refused, by a superior 
 landlord, who thus establishes, as he fancies, an 
 authority over the vote which it is in his power to 
 create or prevent. 
 
 The following tables will throw some light on the 
 subject of representation. 
 
 
 Members 
 
 Electors. 
 
 Population. 
 
 r Counties . . 
 England < Borouglis . . 
 C Universities 
 
 144 
 
 323 
 
 4 
 
 435,350 
 301,966 
 
 9,115,611 
 
 5,879,527 
 
 ^^•-- ^SrS^;: 
 
 15 
 14 
 
 31,898 
 11,128 
 
 680,147 
 231,456 
 
 scox™^— -:; 
 
 30 
 23 
 
 41,885 
 30,043 
 
 1,367,985 
 962,199 
 
 r Counties . . . 
 Ireland ^ Boroughs . . 
 t Universities 
 
 64 
 
 39 
 
 2 
 
 63,389 
 46,556 
 
 7,379,583 
 804,705 
 
 England 
 Wales . 
 Scotland 
 and 
 
 Members. 
 
 571 
 29 
 53 
 
 105 
 
 Electors. 
 
 737,316 
 43,026 
 71,928 
 
 109,945 
 
 Population. 
 
 14,995,138 ~) 
 911,098 > 
 2,020,184 3 
 8,175,238 
 
 Revenue. 
 
 £47,402,000 
 £4,102,000 
 
 These, then, are amongst the principal subjects 
 
103 
 
 of complaint in Ireland ; and we have endeavoured 
 to show, generally, the principle and the practice 
 that should be adopted in their treatment, if we 
 wish to maintain the Union, by that which alone can 
 consolidate it, — mutual good will and fair play. 
 Martial force and coercive laws may enchain the 
 Irish for awhile — perhaps for ever. We may con- 
 quer by rousing and letting loose the old Orange 
 spirit of the north, which it was the peaceful 
 triumph of twelve years to allay. We may rein- 
 force it by feeding the national rivalries and secta- 
 rian prejudices of England and Scotland ; and 
 backing these by a well appointed armed force, 
 and vigilant w^ar administration, we may keep down 
 the Repealers and the Catholics — may make seven 
 millions of fellow creatures, and fellow subjects, 
 fear, obey, and — hate us. But this would be a 
 costly and dangerous process, and interminable ; 
 for we should find, as we have found, that it was 
 ever to do over and over again — an encore without 
 applause and without a benefit. 
 
 But at all events, the ministers themselves know 
 now the dangers, the difficulties and the temper 
 of Ireland, and they have had ample occasions 
 to compare the consequences of their own Irish 
 policy, with that of their predecessors. We do not 
 blame them for pausing last Session. It would 
 have been unwise, suddenly and in the heat of 
 parliamentary warfare to have come forward 
 
104 
 
 with large changes of policy, or even with definite 
 promises. They have taken active and able mea- 
 sures for putting Ireland in a state of undoubted 
 defence, and in so doing they are quite right. 
 For, however willing, nay, anxious we are to con» 
 cede with frank and open hands to Irish wrongs, 
 and to listen even patiently to Irish invectives, we 
 have no maudlin thoughts of allowing ourselves to 
 be bullied and dictated to as defenceless. There- 
 fore, if Sir Robert Peel and his colleagues, seeing 
 the error of their former ways, will meet Parlia- 
 ment with substantial and comprehensive measures 
 of relief for Ireland, we will forget the past, 
 and join heart and hand in resisting seditious 
 repeal cries. For independent of English inte- 
 rests, we love and value Ireland and the Irish, 
 both Catholic and Protestant, far too well, not 
 to be willing to strain every nerve to avert 
 from them the greater affliction, that repeal would 
 bring to them, than even to us. But if on the 
 other hand ministers meet the coming session, as 
 they closed the last, with their arms raised and their 
 tongues tied, trusting to chance and to force — 
 willing to wound and yet afraid to strike ; their 
 rule in this country will be as short as it has hitherto 
 been disastrous. 
 
 We have treated of Irish affairs first, both on 
 account of their importance and urgency. Happily 
 the general grievances of the empire are less critical, 
 
105 
 
 and may be less dangerously committed to the 
 wholesome operation of time and public opinion. 
 Still they are very heavy. They may be summed up 
 in one heavy word — Pauperism. There is an eat- 
 ing sore of squalid poverty, destitution, and want 
 of employment, spreading and growing into our 
 very vitals, amidst all the glitter, and pomp, and 
 circumstance of extravagant wealth and supera- 
 bundant production. The two extremes of society 
 are yearly growing wider asunder. In our highly 
 artificial, not to say civilized stage of society, 
 the hideous normal law or curse of mankind, 
 is working its course as palpably as among the 
 American squatters and the red Indians. The 
 powerful and the strong are swallowing up the weak. 
 Every day the great capitalist and the overgrown 
 landlord are amassing, consolidating, joining house 
 to house, laying field to field, and there is none to 
 stay them. The same process is going on through 
 all the links of society successively, until it reaches 
 the very lowest, where it necessarily ends, yielding 
 its additional quota to the already over-full ranks of 
 destitution. But it is only when in excess, that this 
 law becomes ruinous. Under moderate operation it 
 is even advantageous to society by stimulating indus- 
 try and carefulness, but with us it has grown into a 
 passion for accumulation, a worship of it. A wealthy 
 man now-a-days is ashamed of going into the next 
 world unless he can leave behind him, a million of 
 
106 
 
 money in this. Our institutions associations and 
 habits favour the rich, and therefore accumulation. 
 Our law sanctions and enacts the concentration of 
 wealth. If a man marry without settlements, and 
 die intestate, leaving behind him ten children, and a 
 real estate of ten thousand a year, nine of those chil- 
 dren become by the law of the land paupers ; they 
 cannot take a single acre, and the one eldest receives 
 the whole ten thousand a year. This is clearly le- 
 galizing the principle that wealth should concentrate, 
 not diffuse itself. It can be counteracted only by 
 the special and formal acts of the individual. But 
 the individual has received his bias in favor of con- 
 centration from his earliest youth, from example, 
 and from this sanction and tendency of the law. 
 In fact he grows to think all that he leaves to his 
 younger children is so much taken, almost robbed 
 from his eldest son. And so from one generation 
 to another, we grow up unconsciously in an atmo- 
 sphere of accumulation, habitually worshipping 
 wealth, and almost universally struggling after it, 
 as the one great object of life. 
 
 All this creates an increase of and disregard for 
 the poor. The pressing upward causes a shoving 
 downward, so that few, very few rise, while far too 
 many sink. Give to the strongest, is our creed, 
 and its practice is embedded in all our companies, 
 monopolies, privileges and protections. We say, 
 let the class or the individual from rich become 
 
107 
 
 richer, and explain to the many they will gain most 
 by the crumbs that fall from the superabundance of 
 the great one's riches and success. And so the many 
 are overtopped — stifled — pauperized — shut out. 
 For in the glare of an almost incredible national 
 wealth, our institutions, the breadth of our land, our 
 commerce, our manufactures, the handles and staples 
 of our industry, are becoming too narrow for us. 
 We have not room enough. On the one hand, con- 
 centration, accumulation, monopoly, protection, 
 call it what you will, shuts out many. On the 
 other, population, moving onwards like fate, and 
 unfolding its ample breast, throws forth every year 
 more and more hands and mouths to be provided 
 for. At the rate of the last ten years, we, in Eng- 
 land and Wales alone, are increasing our numbers, 
 at the rate of more than one every third minute,— 
 between three and four-and-twenty in the hour, — 
 560 in the day, — and above two millions at the 
 end of ten years. And how are all these hungry 
 competitors, constantly crowding upon us, and upon 
 our already redundant pauperism, to be fed and 
 to be employed ? Emigration may do something, — 
 nay, much ; but it neither can, nor ought, to go to 
 the root of the disease. For we have no hesitation in 
 believing, that, under arrangements and administra- 
 tion, proper to its advanced stage, and its peculiar 
 circumstances and advantages, this country would 
 support a population even much greater than that 
 which it now nearly starves. 
 
108 
 
 Without counting Scotland, or — the hot-bed of 
 pauperism — Ireland, let us remember, nearly a 
 million and a half (1,429,356) paupers received 
 relief in England last year, being an increase of 
 130,308 above 1841, which increased by 100,000 
 over 1840. Thus, year by year, is pauperism spread- 
 ing, and eating inwards and upwards. For just 
 above these increasing paupers, there is, perhaps, a 
 million, — certainly, more than half a million, earn- 
 ing a half-starved existence upon precarious employ- 
 ment, or living by plunder and sin.* Thus, at the 
 lowest calculation, every seventh or eighth indi- 
 vidual out of our English population of sixteen 
 millions, is either a pauper, or on the verge of 
 pauperism. Shall we take, as a specimen of our 
 labourers, men of Dorsetshire existing on from five 
 to seven shillings a week, with grown up brothers 
 and sisters, father and mother, all huddled in the 
 same bed-room, with the wind and the rain of 
 winter beating in upon them ? Or, under the very 
 eyes of all London, the wretched Bethnal Green 
 population? Or the shilling a dozen makers of 
 shirts ? And if we go a little higher than these, 
 the smaller farmers (of South Wales, for instance,) 
 and the little tradesmen, we shall find them strug- 
 gling hard to beat back poverty and the poor-house 
 from their doors. Even much higher up, there is a 
 
 * There were 31,309 committals last year in England, being au 
 increase of nearly 12 percent, over 1841, which, as in pauperism, 
 increased over 1840. 
 
109 
 
 tension, a pressure, and an over-crowding of every 
 avenue, nay, alley of employment. And yet, at the top 
 all is glitter and gold to satiety. The man of ten 
 thousand a year has the presumption to call himself 
 poor, because he is jostled by others who have their 
 twenty — thirty— forty — fifty — a hundred— a hun- 
 dred and fifty thousand a year, while above two 
 millions around them in England, and double that 
 number in Ireland and Scotland, are starving, or 
 paupers, or pauperizing. 
 
 How long will this continue before it reaches our 
 liberties, our domestic tranquillity, and our financial 
 abilities — until some great convulsion sweep all 
 away — or some practical reform amend it. As clear 
 as the sun at noon day, there must be something radi- 
 cally wrong in the institutions, laws or habits that 
 do not cure even if they do not produce this grow- 
 ing disease. Already there is a sensation of general 
 uneasiness and discontent. Amongst many, it is 
 embodying itself in Chartism, Trades-Unions, Radi- 
 calism, Rebeccaism, Leagues, National Association, 
 and Repeal, all in different voices, crying out for the 
 same thing, " Room to live," — " A fair day's wages, 
 for a fair day's work,'' — " And relief from the pres- 
 sure from above." 
 
 For the last ten or twenty years, these voices 
 have made themselves faintly heard, and have, from 
 time to time, been answered by partial reliefs. In 
 1831, it was thought the great panacea was found. 
 
110 
 
 and the people hailed with universal acclamation, 
 the Reform Bill — as the cure for all evils. They 
 mistook the means for the end, the pump for the 
 water at the bottom of the well. And quarrelling, 
 therefore, with the pump, and with those who made 
 it for them, many went away and would not work it. 
 Consequently, although they obtained some few fur- 
 ther organic reforms, with a reduction of taxes, — 
 which, giving a spur to industry, did, for a time, 
 check pauperism, —yet they lost free trade reforms, 
 with the abatement of protections and excessive 
 duties on all articles of prime consumption. Re- 
 forms which would, probably, have averted, certainly 
 would have mitigated, the distress and increasing 
 pauperism that returned with the bad seasons of 
 1839, 1840, and 1841. 
 
 We have seen how the Whigs made a bold 
 attempt at national relief, by proposing these re- 
 forms, but the country was deceived then, and mis- 
 understood them, allowing the protected and ac- 
 cumulating interests to gain, what they called, 
 a great victory. A victory which has added, and 
 is adding, to the numbers of our paupers and un- 
 employed hands. But public attention is at length 
 roused, and the way to relief having been firmly 
 pointed out, the great victory remains bootless 
 in the hands of those who won it. Their power- 
 ful legislative majority is tamed before the enormous 
 numerical majority of want of food, and want of 
 
Ill 
 
 employment, that is arraying itself against them. 
 They perceive this, and the anti-monopoly cry is 
 forcing a hearing from those who fancied they were 
 met together to crush it. Herein they shew their 
 wisdom and good feeling, and prohably, even this 
 Parliament will not close without commencing an 
 unselfish reform of our social laws, and of the 
 partial imposition of our taxes; —releasing trade 
 and industry from all shackles, monopolies, pro- 
 tections, and impositions whatever, except such as 
 are clearly and absolutely necessary for the support 
 of the revenue. 
 
 This is the reform and the relief that the country 
 ijow requires : and this involves all the questions 
 of Corn-Laws, Sugar Duties, Timber Duties, and 
 Tariffs, so reduced as to make this country the quasi 
 free mart of the world, and everything in it as cheap 
 as possible. And to promote so desirable an object, 
 it even would submit to the payment of a substan- 
 tial property-tax, provided always that it wsisjustlt/ 
 apportioned, that is, according to the real and in- 
 trinsic value of each man's means. 
 
 We are not now going into the Corn-Law, or 
 any other special protection law discussion. We 
 will not even say another word on the preposte- 
 rous and wicked absurdities of the now almost 
 universally abandoned Sliding-scale. Our war 
 is with the whole system, which is stinting, 
 pauperizing, and demoralizing us — setting class 
 
112 
 
 against class. Even already there are signs of 
 tenants distrusting and severing from their land- 
 lords — Look at Wales, look at the ill concealed 
 alarm shewn by speakers at agricultural meetings, 
 and look at the once more threatening incendiary 
 fires. 
 
 But there is one other subject connected with 
 pauperism and the miserable state of our lower 
 orders, Education, which must not be forgotten. 
 The Government must not shelter itself from fur- 
 ther efforts by its failure of last session, but in- 
 structed and rebuked by its abortive but mischievous 
 attempt to turn so holy a thing as National Education 
 to party and proselyting purposes, it must do its duty, 
 and redeem its error by proposing a sound, prac- 
 tical, and religious education, fit for, and accept- 
 able to, the whole community. And bye and bye, 
 when this has worked its way among rising genera- 
 tions, some of the mischiefs of our pauperism will be 
 abated by the decreasing number of improvident 
 marriages, and by increasing providence and do- 
 mestic comfort and industry after marriage. 
 
 Emigration, too, requires further attention. For, 
 although in 1842 it carried off some 128,000 per- 
 sons, being about half of the annual increase of our 
 population, yet, in consequence of mismanagement, 
 or misgovernment in the colonies, more than half of 
 this number went not to our own colonies, but to 
 the United States. 
 
 Further alterations, too, in the state of our poor. 
 
113 
 
 must bfe effect^ll 'by gesneral ariil scientffic sairiafory 
 regulations, — -by the introduction into diir Union 
 Houses, and amongst tlie poor generally, of a system 
 of rewards, — atid the whole theory and practice 
 i*6specting crime anil punishment, require rigid and 
 experienced revision. 
 
 But there is one consideration, far above niere 
 piarty wrangling, and independent of all Govern- 
 ments, but which we ca;nnot resist once more refer- 
 ring to,— and that is, that the people in this country 
 should bestir themselves, and multiply their charity 
 towards the poor, not only by meire generous gifts, but 
 also by all, frdtn the highest to the lowest, giving fe 
 them that which is tti6i*e valuable far, — that which, 
 like mercy, is twice blest,— the comfort and support 
 of their personal intercourse and instruction — 
 visiting, advising, soothing, and making the igno- 
 rant, the afflicted, and desolate, feel that they are 
 Aol despised, comfortless, and alone in the world. 
 Such proceedings would bring together, in mutual 
 pursuits and kindly regards, all classes, and knit 
 together many links that are now dangerously 
 loose. It would be fulfilling, too, a bounden duty, 
 and aid much in wiping off the reproach of above 
 four millions of recorded neglected paupers in 
 Great Britain and Ireland. 
 
 All these points bear upon the canker, pauperism ; 
 but they are subordinate to the one great question 
 of emancipation from all those protections and re- 
 strictions, which by cramping trade, diminish wages, 
 
 H 
 
114 
 
 rendering at the same time food, with all the neces- 
 saries and little comforts of life, too expensive be- 
 cause too scarce for the poor. 
 
 Of this reform, Lord Spencer, the highest autho- 
 rity on agricultural affairs, referring more especially 
 to free trade in corn, said, lately at Northampton, 
 ** / believe it would he of the most essential import- 
 ance to the welfare of the country — it would raise the 
 wages and increase the employment of the people" 
 And that is precisely what the country wants, — it 
 wants to turn its paupers into independent labourers. 
 
 We have now nearly done. We have endeavoured to 
 discuss, with calmness and candour, the present and 
 past state of affairs, and to investigate the effect on 
 them of the principles and practice of the great Whig 
 and Tory parties. We leave the public to draw their 
 own inferences, secure, that facts are stubborn things, 
 and will, in the long run, have their weight. We 
 have shewn what are the principles, and what have 
 been the performances, of the Whigs, — how far they 
 have been consonant to each other, — and how far, 
 agreeing mainly with the desires and wants of the 
 country, they have, when in activity, tranquillized 
 both England and Ireland. We have also shewn what 
 are the principles, and what has been the practice, of 
 the Tories ; and how, whenever, more especially of 
 late years, they have attempted to carry their princi- 
 ples into practice, they have produced discontent, 
 sedition, and partial insurrections. 
 
 That this is no exaggeration or misstatement, is 
 
115 
 
 proved by the tranquil state of both England and 
 Ireland, for the ten years between 1831 and 1841. 
 And after examining this tranquillizing period, let 
 those who still doubt the results of Tory principles in 
 inactivity, recall the state of England and Ireland 
 in 18^9 and 1843, the two extremities of this tran- 
 quil Whig period. If for Swing and South Eng- 
 land, they read Rebecca and South Wales ; if 
 for Catholic Emancipation, Repeal Association ; 
 if for Hunt and his associates, they substitute 
 O'Connor and the Chartists ; if for broken anti- 
 Catholic pledges, they write, broken pro-Corn Law 
 assurances ; and if the nusquam tuta fides of 18'^9, 
 be translated into the almost universal distrust of 
 1843 ; what difference will they find between the 
 results of Sir Robert Peel's Government and the 
 Duke of Wellington's, except that the one having 
 risked, gave way, and so preserved Ireland, while 
 the other has as yet only endangered it again. 
 
 Like causes produce like effects. Both Govern- 
 ments were ruling contrary to the wants and desires 
 of the people, and singular to say, both were sup- 
 ported by large majorities in the two Houses of Par- 
 liament, and were yet in both cases powerless to resist 
 and mischievous in resisting. 
 
 We are afraid of being tedious, yet we cannot 
 refrain from carrying on this contrast of Whig 
 tranquillity and Tory disturbance, to a recapitulation 
 of their ministerial performances ; and here the two 
 principles of stand still ** stare super antiquas vlas^" 
 
 H "2 
 
116 
 
 and of advance in their direction, will be still more 
 strongly brought out. 
 
 The only Tory Reforms that we have beejn able 
 of discover after a diligent search through half a 
 century, are the establishment of the London Police, 
 and a formal but useful digest of Criminal Laws in 
 1827 ; ^OY both Catholic Emancipation, and the Re- 
 peal of Test and Corporation Acts, were forced on 
 and carried by the Whigs against the will of the Tory 
 party. Whereas the Abolition of Slavery — Par- 
 liamentary fleform— Municipal Reform — the esta- 
 blishment of National Education in Ireland and its 
 commencement in England — English and Irish 
 Church Reforms — Punishment of Death Reforms — 
 Poor Law Reform — Postage Reform — Law Reforms 
 — Pension List Reforms — Abolition of Sinecures — 
 Diminution of Placemen and Patronage — Reduc- 
 tion of seven millions of Taxes, yet still marking on 
 the whole a balance of surplus revenue over expen- 
 diture — and an attempted Taxation Reform, in- 
 volving the abolition of all monopolies and protec- 
 tions, these sufficiently attest the sincerity and vigor 
 of the Whigs during ten years official application 
 of their principles — and by these the country was 
 tranquillized, for its wants and necessities were 
 consulted and relieved. 
 
 There is a just pride in belonging to a party 
 which has effected all these great deeds, as there 
 is shame in having opposed them, one and all, as 
 Sir Robert Peel and most of his followers have done. 
 
117 
 
 But reforms and reductions, such as these, can- 
 not be effected without raising up a whole host of 
 open or secret enemies, amongst the tenants of 
 ** vested interests" in abuse, whether in Church or 
 State. The holders of parliamentary nominations — 
 of pluralities — sinecures — places — patronage — pro- 
 tections, — of all those good things which were either 
 abolished, or in danger of being abolished under 
 the Whigs, were too happy to undermine them. It is 
 no wonder, therefore, that they were overthrown, ' 
 and that an interested and malevolent misrepresen- 
 tation has pursued them. But as time wears on and 
 their successors are tried, consideration reverts from 
 the' present to the past. It places the puny per- 
 formances and mischievous subterfuges of the Tories, 
 issuing in insurrections, most disadvantageously 
 beside the frank and great deeds of the Whigs, 
 which, taking root in the institutions of the empire, 
 bear their goodly fruit in wholesome tranquillity. 
 
 And why all this difference : is it that Whigs are 
 so much wiser and better than Tories ?— No : but 
 the policy and principles of the one party are in ac- 
 cot-darlce, and of the other in discordance, with the 
 spirit of the age. The progressive party naturally 
 harmonizes and acts easily with a progressive age ; 
 whereas the repressive and exclusive — the aristo- 
 cratic and privileged — even with the best possible 
 intentions, can, in such times, when called upon to 
 act, maintain itself only by masquerading its prin- 
 ciples, or by making shipwreck of them, or of its 
 
118 
 
 country's peace. It is necessarily in a state of an- 
 tagonism. 
 
 In the present critical state of the country, there 
 can be no set of men particularly anxious for office. 
 We verily believe that two-thirds of the present 
 Cabinet would give their little fingers to be well out 
 of it. But they have taken their places at the 
 table, they have drawn the corks and they must 
 drink their wine — such as it is. They are ashamed 
 to throw up. They see the dilemma to which they 
 have reduced themselves, their supporters and their 
 country. They find all their policy returned upon 
 their hands, frustrate, or laden with mischief. They 
 see they cannot go on with it— and with a certain 
 degree of manliness they feel ashamed of reversing 
 it. But this cannot be helped ; for there is no time 
 to lose in shamefacedness now, while the preservation 
 of the country's peace and prosperity, if not even its 
 integrity, depend on a prompt and clear course. 
 Let them follow it, and fear not. It may, perhaps, 
 be excuseable in some, to have been hurried on by 
 the natural eagerness of party politics, to have 
 credited party accusations, and to have believed in 
 the efficacy of anti-progress, anti-free trade, anti- 
 tolerant principles. It required the putting them 
 into harness, the carrying them into office, to con- 
 vince them of their mischievous impracticability. 
 They have now been tried by some of the ablest 
 men in the country, supported by the greatest ma- 
 lorities, and found wanting If they are doggedly 
 
119 
 
 persisted in, until their mischief becomes deep 
 seated and ripe, their abandonment will be im- 
 possible without a violent reaction, whereas now 
 nothing irrevocable has been committed on either 
 side. But there must be no longer delay or double- 
 dealing. The way of Free Trade is open before 
 the Government — so is the way of general Educa- 
 tion — so is the way of frank and friendly recog- 
 nition of Ireland's rights and Ireland's religion. 
 The Government has not, as a Government, abso- 
 lutely compromised itself against any of these 
 active principles — it has stood between them and 
 their opponents, leaning perhaps a little too much 
 the wrong way — but this was natural-— -was the 
 effect of old habits, and may be retrieved. Let 
 it lean now a little on the other way, and gradually 
 move on in the direction to which it points, and it 
 may find, if all its paths be not pleasantness, that at 
 least its ways are peace. It is morally impossible 
 to go back to old Toryism — it is not practicable to 
 stand still. The ground will slide, is sliding away 
 from those who fancy they are reposing firmly on 
 it. No men, nor party of men, can stand still in the 
 times and circumstances in which we are living. 
 Let the Government then go on —go forward gently, 
 firmly, charitably, justly. And in that case good 
 luck go with it, for in that case we, for our part, 
 will not then disturb it. 
 
 But we have our fears. We confess we have slen- 
 der hopes that Sir Robert Peel and his Government 
 
i20 
 
 will take this straightforward course. It is, con- 
 trary to the usual bent of his character. Those 
 about him are, witb one exception, either expediency 
 men; or those who have shrunk from following out 
 their former Liberal opinions ; or old Tories, who 
 mafee even the smallest advances with wry faces, and 
 only for the sake of their party or their place. His 
 supporters in the country are angry with him, dis- 
 trust him, and threaten to desert him, so that he 
 hasdittle or nothing to fall back upon. It is there- 
 fore most likely that he will endeavour to temporize 
 -"to profess much, and to do little^ — to appear all 
 things to all parties. 
 
 But if the Government will not do its duty, what 
 then must be done ? Our dangers and difficulties 
 must be met honestly and temperately, by all who 
 wish well for England's prosperity, and Ireland's 
 peace. There are many who will go certain lengths 
 with' their « party,' but ' who will not suffer matters, 
 for party's sake, to be driven to extremities ; and it 
 is-for these persons to consider the frightful and dis- 
 honoured position of affairs in Ireland, combined 
 with the distress and ignorance in England j testified 
 by ' insurrections and incendiarism, and the hard 
 sense- of injustice taking its stand in vast leagues 
 and. counter associations. If they see danger irt 
 thisfj state of affairs, let them avert iti They 
 may, in conjunction with the liberal party, assume 
 such anjattitude both within Parliament, and outside 
 of-HParliament, as by its support may enable, or by 
 its opposition compel the more liberal members of 
 
121 
 
 the Government to amend their proceedings or 
 resign. 
 
 We should be sorry to see a resignation. But we 
 would rather see it, than see Ireland exasperated 
 into civil war, or held in military subjection. And if 
 there be a resignation, let us hope there will be 
 energy and good feeling enough amongst the consti- 
 tuencies of England, Ireland, and Scotland, to right 
 (the wrongs they themselves have committed, or suf- 
 fered others to commit. But we are not afraid of 
 such an extremity. Sir Robert Peel has staked his 
 reputation upon this administration, and he will hold 
 fast by it so long as he can ; and therefore we think 
 it highly improbable that he will resign. He would 
 rather do justice to Ireland, and follow Free Trade. 
 But, unlike Falstaff, he will not do either of these 
 good deeds, except upon compulsion. 
 
 With regard to England we have less fears. It 
 is clear enough what must and what will be done. 
 The great free trade league is confessedly increas- 
 ing yearly in numbers, funds, discretion, ability, 
 and success. It has all the characteristics of a 
 winner, — of what we are accustomed to call the 
 persevering, straight-forward, business-like, resolute 
 )but not violent, Anglo-Saxon blood. And we firmly 
 and conscientiously believe that it has justice and 
 good intentions on its side. If this be so, and it is 
 fiifficult to deny it, where will Sir Robert Peel find 
 either the ability or the means for permanent resis- 
 tance. Already there are signs of the times, — of 
 
122 
 
 some pilot-balloons holding out terms, — offering the 
 deeply-pledged Sliding-Scale as a scape-goat. But 
 let the free traders persevere, hold together, and 
 they are sure of success. 
 
 But for unhappy Ireland, the prospect is far less 
 clear. The very severity of their wrongs and suffer- 
 ings, the heritage of a century, has unfortunately, but 
 almost necessarily, put the Irish themselves along 
 with their wrong-doers, in the wrong. And so 
 arming English antipathies against them, for what 
 they do of wrong, they deaden their sympathies 
 with them for what they suffer of wrong. While 
 they are clamouring for what would be injustice 
 and misfortune to themselves — for a Kilkenny 
 war of vengeance upon both England and Ireland 
 — in the mad name of Repeal, there is danger 
 lest the astuteness of Sir §-obert Peel turn this 
 against them, and make it a plea with the English 
 for rallying round his government in defence of 
 the integrity of the Empire. But in the name of 
 peace, righteousness, and liberty, let them not fall 
 into this trap ; let them remember that nothing 
 but justice and mercy can permanently cure the 
 Repeal madness, though brute force and armed 
 power may for a time bind down its expression, and 
 drive it deeper inwards. Therefore, that which the 
 friends of peace should do, if this or any other 
 appeal be made to them for acquiescence or aid, 
 must be firmly and unitedly to say " First do 
 justice to Ireland.' 
 
123 
 
 Finally, then, and summarily, it appears that a 
 Government of repression and exclusion is ill fitted 
 for times of progression and expansion — and that 
 these now require for the peace and well being of 
 the country — 
 
 For Ireland, the support of her tenantry, and 
 the endowment and recognition of her Roman Ca- 
 tholic church. 
 
 For England, National education. 
 
 And for the Empire at large, Free-trade, which 
 includes the relief of her pauperism, by finding in- 
 creased employment for her increasing hands. 
 
 Let who will, do these, but done they must be — 
 sooner or later; and the sooner, the better and 
 the safer. 
 
 THE END. 
 
 NORMAN AND SKEEN, PRINTERS, MAIDEN LANE, COVENT GARDEN. 
 
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