sin and an ensample of godly life," and whose patriotism therefore is grounded on scriptural principles, will stand on an elevation far above the maddening battle-field of mere party strifes; but they will firmly grasp principles by which they may judge both of men and measures, and by the application of which to passing events they will endeavour to form a just and scriptural estimate of them. In too many of the wars of English politics, the real contest has been, whether by skilfully working upon the minds of the people, this or that section of partizanship shall prevail; neither side, as Mr. Wilberforce once pleasantly observed of some confederation, wishing for more public mischief than might just suffice to concentrate power in the hands of its own friends. We do not imagine that Lord Melbourne patronized Mr. O'Connell farther than to this extent; but we are bound to add that to this extent the Irish churchproperty alienation scheme, called by the soft name of "appropriation," and various other proceedings, seemed to indicate that the late cabinet were willing to advance; as though they had resolved to balance their difficulties in both houses of parliament, and with a very large proportion of the wealth, rank, education, and religious and conservative feeling of the country, by calling to their aid the dangerous force of public agitation. If this were so, it was a grievous fault; for after the many changes of late years, be they for good or evil, the country requires tranquillity and confidence, rather than a restless catering to gratify the popular craving for morbid excitement.

It is to be hoped that the new ministry will not think it necessary to be always doing great things. The important business of the country is of a steady, quiet, and conservative character; the turmoil of party is the opposite. We wish indeed that Sir R. Peel would henceforth discard the very word "party"-" the great party with which I have the honour to be connected," and so forth. We instinctively shrank from the word in writing the "conservative body;" believing, as we do, that the great "body" of the people -that is, the intellectual, moral, and potential majority-are allied on the side of our national institutions in Church and State, and wish to see them preserved, but purified and invigorated, without the baneful intermeddlings of party-spirit; which only seeks selfish ends under the guise of public virtue.

Respecting the ministry formed, there can be no doubt, from the known abilities and character of its chief function

aries, that it is eminently adequate to its high duties and responsibilities. It is also called to office by her Majesty, in deference to the wishes of the nation, constitutionally intimated through their representatives in parliament; her Majesty having dissolved the former House of Commons, and given her subjects the opportunity of expressing their opinions; and this under the provisions of the Reform Act, which has added so largely to the popular suffrage, that those who proposed and carried it, and advocated its "finality," cannot, with any show of justice, affirm they have not had a fair trial. To this also must be added the very remarkable fact that in not one of the numerous cases in which there has been a re-appeal to the electors, in consequence of the acceptance of offices under the Crown by the Peel ministry and its subordinates, has there been a shadow of a serious attempt to set up a rival candidate (the sham proffer of Mr. Acland, as a peg for a speech, is no exception)-the effort in every instance has been regarded as hopeless; a futile waste of labour and money to no purpose. Under these circumstances it is surely more factious than reasonable not to allow that the claims of the present government are fairly based upon public opinion, as legally, constitutionally, and we believe morally, expressed.

But it is replied, that the Reform Act was both incomplete and vicious; that it did not carry the suffrage far enough, and that it bestowed it where it ought to have been withheld. As to the alleged want of completeness, the awarding a vote to every ten pound householder in every borough, was allowed on all hands, in the debates upon the measure, to be no stinted extension of reform; and as to the objected viciousness of granting the suffrage to £50 tenants in the counties, surely persons thus circumstanced have a claim which no stickler for popular enfranchisement can consistently dispute. In disgust at the working of the whole measure, some zealots are now crying out that there are not materials in the land for a good and honest constituency; that farmers are interested, and are frightened at their landlords; and that freeinen and the poorer householders are duped and bribed; so that we are altogether a most abject people, clinging to a prison and hugging our chains.

The extravagance of this conclusion is its own refutation; for though there is much cause for pain and humiliation, when we consider the absence of principle and the base selfishness which widely prevail among large classes of the electors, it were unjust and absurd

to say that a general election of representatives does not, upon the whole, form a tolerably fair test of public opinion and feeling;-at least with a £10 suffrage it cannot be plausibly affirmed that the balance is in favour of aristoeracy and exclusionism. We expressed at the time of the passing of the Reform Act, and we incline towards a similar opinion in regard to the corn laws, our belief that party leaders and their followers on both sides are apt, in the heat of debate, to attribute more of good or evil to measures than a calm estimate will justify. We remember expressing our conviction in August 1832, that a "reformed parliament," as it was called,-if it was a fair index of the sentiments of the great body of the land-owners and householders, and in general of the property and respecta bility of the nation, would not, "of necessity, be so vehemently anti-conser vative, so recklessly destructive," as some hoped and others feared. We had not indeed been among the advocates for so sweeping a measure as a £10 suffrage; though we thought some considerable extension was due to the vast masses of unrepresented property, and that some powerful barrier should be erected against the anti-constitutional system of nomination boroughs, and the venality and vice which often gave the entire command of an election in many places to pot-walloppers or handicraft freemen, while the merchants, higher tradesmen, professional gentlemen, and others best qualified by education and principle to vote, were destitute of suffrage. But, even taking the measure as carried by Lord Grey's cabinet, we still expressed our opinion that unless the great mass of the people were more blind, wilful, and wicked, than, with all their faults, we took them to be; unless education and churches, though inadequate to the national exigences, had been worse than useless; unless, which we did not believe, rank, property, and sound constitutional feeling, and attachment to the Anglican church, had lost all their salutary influence in British society; there would be a strong re-action in favour of solidly conservative principles; more especially after the correction of acknowledged abuses, and the adoption of various good measures. We remarked as follows: "It seems too probable that upon the first enlargement of the elective franchise there will be an ominous protrusion of men of evil principles and damaged character; men who have a fortune to make and no consciences as to how they make it; men of vast pretension and little value; speculatists, vision

aries, rash innovators, political quacks, and legislatorial mountebanks. Thus it has ever been; but the characters of such men are soon discovered; and their countrymen are not likely to confide to them the management of their concerns. The ranting demagogue will soon rave in vain, and the man whose character is known and valued be elected. It may be otherwise at a moment of particular excitement; but such, we feel assured, will be in the end the usual result." We added: "Our readers will perceive our intended inference, that as there is no danger at present that our institutions will not be sufficiently free, Christian men and lovers of their country should beware not to allow themselves to be carried away by rash and violent candidates for distinction; men who declaim about nothing but peculation and tyranny; who affect to view a reform in parliament as the commencement of a political millennium; and place at no great distance in the glowing vista, the destruction of established churches, perhaps the subversion of monarchical government and the introduction of a republic; and to a certainty the cessation of war, poverty, want, oppres sion, and injustice. Those who talk thus are either fools or knaves. While sin remains in the world, crime and misery will not fail to attend it; and to a far higher regeneration than what politicians call by that name must we look for the extirpation of the evils that prey upon nations. The Christian elector will endeavour to follow the excellent advice of Jethro to Moses,

Thou shalt provide out of all the people able men; such as fear God; men of truth, hating covetousness, and place such over them.""

These, and similar remarks, brought on us much reproach from two opposite quarters. We were denounced in dissenting journals as blind bigotted Tories, and servile interested sticklers for a semi-popish church, which we must know in our conscience God had denounced; while some of our own friends protested that we were "radicals, or something like it," because we ventured to hope that there was still enough of good sense, public virtue, and religion in the land, to conserve our beloved national institutions, after effervescence had subsided, and the repectable portion of the new electors had learned to understand their interest and their duty.

But our object in recurring to these remarks, is not to vindicate our foresight in anticipating the reaction which has taken place, but to reply to those

who say that the Reform bill has failed of its object, and requires to be itself reformed. It certainly, and most happily, has failed, if its projectors meant by it to exclude for ever from parliament a strong body of men of property, influence, and conservative principles; but unless this was the settled wish of the great mass of British householders, including the rich and the middle classes, as well as the £10 tenants, the revolutionist has no just cause to say it has failed only because it has not produced what he expected. At all events, as the Conservative body-we speak not of a few impracticable opposers of every amendment in Church or State-did not ask for the reform act, and opposed many of its provisions, but submitted gracefully to it when it had passed, they ought not to be taunted and threatened, as Sir R. Peel has been, with some sweeping revolutionary reform-reforming measure, because" the bill, the whole bill, and nothing but the bill, happens to have produced a more conservative parliament and ministry than some wished and some expected. If the reform act, as many both of its friends and foes said, was a national, though bloodless, revolution, let us not have a revolution every year; but allow public feeling and principle to grow up around existing machinery. We have been of late years so hasty in running with rail-road velocity in legis lation, that after forming an embank ment it is not allowed to solidify, before some new project is undertaken, and all again becomes unsettled. is not national wisdom, for to kingdoms as well as to individuals the proverb applies that "a rolling stone gathers no moss;" or, in more sacred diction, as applied to a national tribe of old, “Unstable as water thou shalt not excel."

This

We cannot quit the subject of the late general election, without expressing our fears, our deep regrets, that on both sides there has been much bribery, corruption, and other interested and immoral dealing. If the Conservatives were the best able to expend money, their adversaries were able to wield the seductive or intimidating energies of office; so that throwing out these plus and minus elements, the equation may stand pretty much as before. To our minds it is no party question. We wish we could discern ainong our leading statesmen and their followers on all sides a clearly honest and determined aim to put down bribery and unfair and sinister influence. The Act of last session, it is to be hoped, will do much good, for as bribery may now be proved before agency is

established, greater facilities are pro-> vided for bringing offences to light; but some still stronger measure is requisite to eradicate unconstitutional and illegal practices. It is fearful to think how much wickedness is generated by the mal-practices which are too current upon these occasions; and for which those who aid or connive at them are morally responsible. The limitation of the time of polling has happily abated many of the evils usually atten dant upon warmly contested elections ; but while tacit toleration is in many cases allowed to the sale or purchase of votes, directly or indirectly, the effects must be most baneful. The conductors of our two great election clubs, the Carlton aud the Reform, ought, as pa triots, as gentlemen, and as Christians, to determine to discountenance all such mal-practices. It is not easy to see how the enormous sums which pass through their hands as secret service money, can always be virtuously and constitutionally (we do not say legally) disposed of. Such compromises as are alleged to have sometimes taken place, to the effect of "If you will not proceed against our candidate or agents we will not proceed against yours," are not in the spirit either of honest conservancy or honest reform.

We shall be glad to witness the revival in the House of Commons, next session, of a body of religious persons firmly and zealously acting together for the promotion of Christian objects. It used to be in the House of Commons, as in ancient days, that "they that feared the Lord spake often one to another, and the Lord hearkened and heard it," but it has seemed to us that of late there has been a grievous absence of such salutary co-operation. During the last session, upon such questions as Maynooth college, the observance of the Lord's-day, and others involving directly religious considerations, though Sir R. Inglis, or Mr. Plumptre, or some other individuals might be at their post, and discharge their duty, there was not a compactly-allied body of members who might always be depended upon, as in the days of Mr. Wilberforce, and at more recent periods, to originate or uphold religious measures. What for

bids such men to press, with their united strength, a bill for suppressing Sunday trading? and so with regard to various other matters.

We are thankful to Mr. Plumptre for again protesting against the annual grant to Maynooth, which Sir R. Peel unhappily determines to cling to, as he has done for thirty years in and out of power. Even setting religious consi

derations aside-which however ought not to be set aside-we do not admit that there is any sufficient ground, either of policy or compact, for upholding that grant; but even if the grant were originally a covenant under the political disabilities of the Roman Catholic population, it ceased to be so when the emancipation" bill placed the Romanist upon the same footing as Protestants. It happened at the time of the discussions on that bill, that having occasion to communicate with Sir R. Peel upon another matter, we mentioned the question of Maynooth, which at that time had scarcely been alluded to in parliament, but which would, before long, be conscientiously agitated, as it has been, by the clergy and religious members of the church of England, and which would be an annual impediment in the path of a Conservative ministry, as the opposition would come from many of its own friends; men of just influence and high principle; and we respectfully suggested that at that particular moment it might be settled without much difficulty and with a good grace, as a boon was being bestowed upon the Roman Catholics; and it was quite fair to say that as they were then to be placed upon the level of Protestant dissenters, their ecclesiastical seminaries fell under the same category as Homerton or Hoxton; nor do we believe that they themselves would have found much fault with this position. Such another golden opportunity for doing a right thing pleasantly may not occur; but believing it to be a right thing, we hope and doubt not that Sir R. H. Inglis, and all other members of the House of Commons who have hitherto protested against the grant, will continue their remonstrance, and divide the House upon the question, at whatever pain or inconvenience to themselves or their friends. Lord Ashley, in declining office under Sir R. Peel because he found that his acceptance of it might be inconsistent, or

might damage his influence in the factory question, as the government is not disposed to adopt his humane and Christian views, has exhibited a noble example to Christian senators in all things to regard principle rather than political party.

With regard to the corn-law ques tion, we see no reason to change the opinion which we expressed in our last Number, that it is one of political economy, and not of a religious character, except in the sense in which all legislation should be religious. The Manchester meeting, which calls itself, in its advertisements, a "National conference of ministers of all religious denominations," but which Lord Normanby, in his polite communication of the Queen's gracious reception of its petition, significantly reduces to a meeting of "Christian ministers of various denominations," dropping the words "national" and all," the Manchester meeting professed to be convened at this juncture of public affairs," in order, by "prayerful interposition and co-operation," to prevent "fearfully ominous collision and animosity between the different classes of the community." We are bound in charity to assume that there was nothing political in this; no wish to keep in Lord John or to keep out Sir Robert; it was entirely to prevent "collision and animosity," though unhappily it has sadly exasperated them. But we deny that it is a religious question; it is a question of national economics upon which religious men may hold different opinions. For ourselves, the arguments must be cogent to convince us that a fluctuating duty upon any article of commerce is in itself better than a fixed one, fairly adjusted; that it best secures steadiness of supply and of price, and best prevents gambling speculations. But this is not a religious question, and may be safely left to the wisdom of parliament, unaided by the pulpit.

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