IF by some great social evolution in the nature of a parliamentary division, the whole body of the loyal and wellaffected to the constitution of England, were to be separated from the radical reformers, we have long felt confident that the latter would be taught one great fact of no small importance to the country, that they are a contemptible minority, which derives its whole weight from the base passions and the blind activity which make it an efficient instrument in the hands of every political adventurer- the “scoundrel to be found in every village, who calls himself the public." But the action of the saner opinions and better affected feelings of the country is, as ever has been the case, slow and retarded in its progress. While error is easily involved in specious pleas of patriotism and public good, and exposure depends on the more difficult process of disabusing the public mind;-the peaceful and industrious, the honest and highminded have a reluctance to be dragged forward into collision with turbulence and wrongful violence, and are devoid of that fierce energy which gives its fatal power and concentration to the factious. And if it be considered that the elements of revolutionary move ment, working together, long and under various forms, in many an under-ground channel, are necessarily far advanced into maturity, before resistance can be thought of it will be understood, how fearful is the advantage of the destructive principle-how desperate the odds against the counteraction of right, truth, justice, religion, and civil order. Thousands of rightly disposed minds are imposed on-and the country sustains many a heavy shock before the public mind is truly roused into a state of intelligent attention; VOL. IX.

and before its virtue, courage, and resisting spitit can be fully brought into concert; the destructive may have secured a position inconsistent with the public safety. Such is the fearful process that has been passing before our eyes from the end of the Peninsular war to the present moment. It has been such as to make many a sound heart quail for England, and some leading minds retire in despair from the hopeless conflict. Hopeless indeed, in the history of nations, have such conflicts been. We never, ourselves, despaired, for we trusted in the righteous Power, that has never been deserted by England, or abandoned her in her distress.

Great as was the danger, and slow as has been the rally, the mind of England is awake; voice calls to voiceand deep calls to deep-the virtue, wisdom, and power of the first people on the earth-Protestant Constitutional England. The struggle on which the fate of the kingdom was suspendedhad been transferred to Ireland-the first blow was struck at the rights of the subject, and the second at the Church of Christ. Such blows could not be concealed by palliations, and the conservatives of Ireland were brought together by the common and imminent danger. The Conservative spirit of England responded-and the sense of every right and true heart began slowly to be linked into communion through the land, until the voice of the public-not the offscouring of sedition and ignorance, to which that high name is sometimes misappliedbut the genuine, well-informed, industrious, independent, sound-minded British public, utters its genuine senti ments, Nolumus leges Auglice mutari;— as loudly, and we trust as irresistibly

K

as ever it has been heard in the hour of constitutional danger.

The reaction which we have thus described, has been for some years the subject of question, among the unversed or unobservant in public events. The doubt we trust is over and the simplest Protestant will feel as little faint-hearted on this head, as the most watchful Conservative who sounds the watchword of the fight. It would be impossible to imagine a sign more fatal to the hopes of the infidel democracy, which has so long banished order and peace from the country, than the de-, cisive conduct of Glasgow, in its recent reception of the illustrious leader of the Conservatives of England. The city of Glasgow, second to none in the empire for its commercial prosperity and profound intelligence, has been less happily marked for the curious inconsistency with which it had suffered itself to lend an ear to the spurious liberalism of infidel philosophers, and radical empirics. But it has illustriously redeemed itself, by the more sterling liberality, which frankly acknowledges error.

Of this glorious event it would be our desire to give our readers the most full and minute intelligence. For not the slightest incident can be wanting in interest, which is connected with an event, for the report of which every intelligent mind in the kingdom is on the watch. But our Number is almost made up, and while we write the printer is at a stand. We must, therefore, though fain to dally with a theme we love, pass on with a rapid pen, and endeavour to select the points of chief interest for narration or comment.

After what we have said, it will be unnecessary to dwell on the fact of the inauguration of Sir Robert Peel as Lord Rector of an University, hitherto conspicuous for its Whig predilections. Though justice will not allow us to pass on without the qualifying admission, that it is but recently that the imputation of Whiggism implied tainted loyalty and unconstitutional opinion. The young are by nature Whigs-maturity brings experience and conservatism.

Nor will it be necessary for us to

delay with the inaugural specch—it has won the free applause of even the liberal press-and this may be its praise. It was marked by that strong masculine common sense, discriminating sagacity and tact, and nervous simplicity of language, which are the great features of Sir Robert as a public speaker. Even on the topic of education conservative, he dwelt with great vigour and propriety of illustration on the study of those models of classical antiquity, from which so many firstrate orators and writers have been formed, and to the neglect of which may be traced the modern corruption of British literature.

We come, now, to the true point of universal interest, the dinner given by the city on Friday the 13th. It is hardly less memorable for the explicit declarations from Sir Robert Peel, of which it was the occasion, than for the circumstances which proudly distinguished it from all ordinary public demonstrations-the magnificence, superb scale, and perfect good taste of the preparations, such as could only come from wealth and intelligence of the first order. We remark this, because the facility with which public entertainments can be got up, in some degree diminishes the ordinary impression of this mode of expressing public sentiment. A pavilion, which dined Three Thousand Four Hundred and Thirty-Five Gentlemen,-thirty-two feet in height, supported by twentyfour elegantly formed pillars, with galleries on three sides, and adorned by national devices, was built for the occasion with a celerity that surprised the builders themselves. At five the guests assembled in this vast pavilion, more splendid than the halls of Oriental monarchs

When Egypt with Assyria strove
In wealth and luxury

with that calm and orderly precision which marked that the guests were of a better order than public dinners sometimes bring together in these times. Among these guests were the prime of the Scottish aristocracy.* One incident we must not omit, strongly indicative of the

class and the feeling: Sir Robert Peel's first introduction was greeted by no loud cheers—the moment was felt in every heart to be sacredsolemn as the eve of battle; he was received with no heartless outcry, such as raises its prostituted vociferation before the base idols of the Corn-Exchange,—but the hearty cheer of three thousand Conservatives was preceded by a deep, sudden, breathless silence which showed the reverence of Scotland for the representative of the national cause. And well, before they left that room, was that respect vindicated, and the high expectations fulfilled of that company, and the hundreds of thousands who sate expectant throughout England, Scotland, and Ireland, for every word that was to be spoken on that evening.

Sir Robert Peel's speech has been very ably reported in some of the Conservative papers; and we deem it right to say, that it has been so far contracted by some of their liberal opponents as to be entirely stripped of its pretension to eloquence. This we do not condemn-it is the common custom on both sides, and is by most readers understood. All agree in a substantially fair statement of the political sentiments he has so distinctly expressed. As we are here reviewing simply, we shall so far follow their example, earnestly advising, intreating every one of our readers not to rest until, for the benefit of his whole household, he possesses a full and accurate copy of this sound and masterly exposition of genuine Conservatism.

Sir Robert expresses himself freely on the nice and difficult limits between reform and revolution. He advocates no narrow, short-sighted adherence to past forms of institution, which society in its progress must ever continue to outgrow: but recognizing the enlarged and altered frame of modern society,

he asserts,

"I see the necessity of widening the foundation on which the defence of the British Constitution and the religious establishments must rest. I ask you I have no right to ask you for any confession of error, or

even of the change of opinion-all I ask is, do you adhere to the principles on which reform was advocated in 1831? and if you do, with me you ought to combine for the defence of the institutions of the country."

To the peculiar assembly, at that moment addressed by Sir Robert, the appeal is fair-there is no room for a taunt on either side. Time, and experience, which follows in its train, has taught to both the lesson of adversity. But we shall follow and recommend the worthy leader's profession of amnesty for the past, and trust for the future. We shall not "fight again the battle of Bannockburn and Flodden." One thing is fair to admit, that the working of enactments may be for good or evil according to the hands to which they are entrusted and the measures that are to follow them up. We never, for our part, doubted the intentions of Sir Robert: but we still doubt the justness of his former application of the wise principle of reform, which he quotes as the rule by which he was governed-a careful adherence " the acknowledged principles of the constitution, by which the prerogative of the crown, the authority of both houses of parliament, and the rights and liberties of the people are equally secured." All general statements require the nicest modifications before they can be confided to the operation of detail. And this necessary precaution is precisely what now meets our unqualified approbation in this able It answers and satisfactory speech. the question, what do you mean by the principles of the British constitution, by which all swear and few agree upon? Sir Robert here leaves no loophole for retreat from the assertion of his future rules of public conduct.

"to

"Let us come then to the main

point, because I do not wish to conciliate your confidence, or attempt to gain your support by hoisting false colours. I mean, gentlemen, to sup port the national establishments which connect Protestantism with the state in the three countries (tremendous applause, the whole assemblage standing up and waving their handkerchiefs.) Nothing could be so unseemly after

"I see that the time is come for us to stand forward in the exercise of our privileges; for I have read speeches of late, delivered by those whose special duty I should have thought it to be to defend the British Constitution in all its integrity, but which speeches make me unwilling to trust its defence to their official exertions. I have read speeches delivered by great legal authorities, from which I find that they have not yet made up their mind about the reform of the House of Lords. I am sorry for it. They fear the time for reform in that House has come, but they have not seen the plan that is quite according to their wishes. They are wearied out with the ransacking of the pigeon-holes, in which are deposited the plans for the reform of the House of Lords; every objection is, that they have not yet had the good luck to draw out the right one. On that miserable trifling let them spare themselves the time and the troublelet them take the first that comes in their way, whether in the place of the House of Lords there shall be a Couneil of Ancients of five hundred, or a new body elected by the Peers, or by the heads of families-or whether the Peers shall have a suspensive veto; take one or other of all their plans, and the effect is the same. Why, do you believe you can uproot the oak of the forest that has seen a thousand generations?—do you think you can uproot that noble production with the achievements of thousands of illustrious deeds suspended from its branches— 'Exurius veteres populi sacratas que gestans Dona'-do you think you can uproot it, dig a trench around it, and sever the thousand minute fibres and ramifications, the growth of centuries, that have incorporated it with the mass around it do you think by the aid of pullies and machinery, by all that ingenuity can devise-do you think you can transplant it, and bid it abide the fury of the storm? No, the first gush of popular passion that should sweep the land would bring it to the ground, and with all the contrivances of artificial machinery which had been used to support it; and miserable would be the consolation we should have that the advisers of that machinery, and the architects of that ruinous fabric, would probably be the first to be overwhelmed under it."

To this we are tempted to add another extract, which but continues the chain of these leading thoughts,

And-" when for such arguments as these you shall have abolished the House of Lords, how long do you think the privilege of hereditary monarchy will remain? I will tell you just so long as the prerogative of monarchy can be made a useful instrument in the hands of the democracy that is to be triumphant. The peers, it is said, are irresponsible. I heard that before. I replied, that certainly the Peers were not responsible in the sense in which the Commons were responsible; but that I did think that in their responsibility to God, to their own conscience, and to enlightened public opinion, the public had a guarantee for the faithful performance of their duties. But what I said in the place in which I said it, met with a different reception from what it meets with here. Now, if it is a vital objection to the House of Peers, that it is not responsible to the whole mass of the population, let me ask whether there are any other bodies of men who are not in the same sense irresponsible also. The House of Commons are responsible to their constituents-the ministry are responsible in a different sense from the House of Commons; but let me ask you to whom is the constituent body responsible? You have selected a certain body, and qualified that body for the exercise of a great power. I say not a word on that subject, as finding fault with the bestowing of that power. I state only the fact, that you have been investing some 3 or 4,000 men of the whole classes of your society, with great political privileges; and to whom are they responsible? They are not selected for any peculiar qualification. You can administer no test by which the fitness of a man to exercise the franchise can be correctly determined. His right of franchise depends partly on hereditary privilege, and partly on the possession of property; but what security have you for the faithful discharge of this trust, but that security which we have that the peers will faithfully discharge their duty, namely, their responsibility to God, to their own consciences, and to an enlightened public opinion."

He

Sir Robert, from these general propositions, goes to vindicate the peers against some special charges. replies to the charge of having resisted improvement, by the unanswerable reference to the charges already made with their indispensable concurrence, and by this cutting retort against the