best befits a gentleman for the purposes of life, and enables him to work good in his generation. But the whole bent of his culture-moral, intellectual, and even physical-was faulty; and the consequences were such as the records of Newgate have preserved. It is evident that, in the case now under consideration, the judgments of the jurist and of the moralist stand a good deal apart. The jurist affirms that the individual, having been convicted of the most heinous offence upon the statute-book, deserved to die; the moralist, admitting the truth both of the premises and of the conclusion, endeavours, nevertheless, to throw a sort of shield before the victim of the law, by contending that a court of conscience would deal with him more leniently than with numbers who escape from the hands of justice scot free. Perhaps the moralist may be right. Nevertheless, this much seems to be certain, that of all the sources of misery, and it may be of crime, by which men and women are surrounded, there is none more fruitful than that over-weening regard to Number One, which leads its victim always to consider how words spoken or deeds done may affect himself, to the entire oversight both of the feelings and the just claims of others. Unthinking persons dignify a temper of this kind with all manner of sounding epithets. They describe it as that of a man of acute honour, of great spirit, of generous notions, of an excessive sensibility; whereas, in point of fact, it is selfishness, and nothing more, the meanest and most despicable of all dispositions. Nor does it greatly matter into what particular line of absurdity it may run. The foolish youth who, in order to keep up what he calls appearances, lives at a rate which his pecuniary circumstances do not warrant, may thank Heaven for the chance which has thrown his vanity into one chamber, out of the many wherein vanity presides, rather than into another. IIad his sensitiveness on the head of appearances happened to take the turn-not unfrequently its accompaniment, by the bywhich that of Francis David Stirn took, instead of being a spendthrift, he might have become a murderer; in which case, duns would have changed places with peace-officers, and Newgate received him in the end, instead of the Marshalsea or the Queen's Bench, THE POSITION OF MINISTERS. WE are not going to be moved either by the queen's speech or by the extraordinary discussions that ensued upon its delivery, in both houses of parliament, from the determination at which we last month arrived. follow the direction clearly. Under these circumstances we beg to reserve to ourselves the right of choosing our side in the battle, if a battle there is to be, after the grounds of strife shall Of have been made manifest to us. And the ministerial project for regeneseeing that this cannot appear before rating our commercial system we as the article which we now write shall yet know nothing. Hints broad, if have passed through the printer's they be not very clear, may have been hands, and taken its place in the dropped in various quarters—and gosstandard literature of the age, our sip is busy enough, Heaven knows, readers, be their prepossessions either elsewhere than amid the precincts of for or against the policy of Peel, the court. But whether it be through must have patience with a delay on some defect in our understanding, or that matters really are as dark as to our parts, which is unavoidable. We do not choose to follow the exus they appear to be, we confess, that neither in Sir Robert Peel's explanaample of orators who flatter or condemn the minister unheard, according tion, nor in the not less ominous avowal of the Duke of Wellington, to the dictates of their own prejudices. Sir Robert Peel may be all can we discover any just reason either that the more impetuous of the adto approve or condemn a line of policy of which we are unable to vocates of agricultural protection call him; and should it appear that he deserves the opprobrium which they the right of dispensing the Church's Meanwhile, it is impossible to contemplate the general state of public feeling, and the chaos into which, not so much parties as society seems to be resolving itself, without the deepest anxiety and alarm. We are advancing, or we appear to be, to that war of opinions and of classes which has preceded, and that not at a remote interval, the downfall of all the great empires of the world. Religion is forgotten amid the bitterness of sectarian animosity, and po litics have merged in the strife of interests-the interests of order as opposed by disorder, and of man as opposed to man. Look, in regard to the former of these heads, at Scotland, with which we begin, because it is the least populous, and used to be the most quiet portion of the empire. It is torn by disputes which the individuals engaged in profess to treat as religious differences, but which, in point of fact, are begun, continued, and ended, in considerations wholly secular. What is all the stir between the Establishment and the Free Kirk about, except to determine with whom shall be left daily apostasy both of ministers and of people? Moreover, the adjustment of such questions as have arisen within the bosom of the Church is no longer left to authority, or even to argument, among Churchmen. Congregations make up their minds beforehand, that they will tolerate this practice and not enIdure that in the celebration of Divine worship, and constitute themselves judges of the soundness of the very doctrines which the individual appointed to instruct them may teach; while bishops are obeyed or disobeyed, exactly as their recommendations happen to fall in with the humours of those to whom they are addressed. And, finally, the daily newspapers do their best to encourage this spirit in the nation, by encouraging every clown to sit in judgment on his church and its pastor, themselves delivering ex cathedra sentence of condemnation or approval on men and things, with which, as it appears to us, they have no business whatever to interfere. It indicates All this is very bad. a state of mind which is directly opposed to the faith which these religionists profess to honour. For Christianity is a religion of order, not of confusion, and foremost among the tempers recommended and approved by its Divine head are singleheartedness and the charity which thinketh no evil and is kind. Yet disputes which turn upon abstract opinion, or, at the worst, do not interfere with considerations more urgent than the forms, or the manner, or the garb in which men prefer offering their worship in public to the Supreme Being, might be listened to with comparative indifference, provided they stood alone. But they do not stand alone; they are intimately connected with matters more tangible by far; they constitute but one symptom out of the many characteristic of a disease which is overspreading the whole body politic. All love of order, all reverence for law, all belief that the wellbeing of the state depends upon the good understanding that shall prevail among the several classes of which society is composed, appear to be departing from among us. Ireland the Repeal mania, though unquestionably on the decline, has left a canker behind to the full as In virulent as itself. Taught to know their own strength, the masses undervalue the strength of the government, and by the outrages which they perpetrate, or sanction, or defend, are preparing the way for such a catastrophe as we dare not stop to contemplate. And wherein is the condition of England and Scotland the better? Life may as yet be more secure in Lancashire than in Tipperary, and the sanctity of an oath, particularly in a court of justice, be held in more esteem; but of agitation we have to the full as much as our neighbours, and we are by no means sure that its purpose is not more hurtful here than it is, or ever could be rendered, on the other side of St. George's Channel. In Ireland there is a sort of opinion cherished that the leaders of mobs, and the speakers in Conciliation Hall, have some public good to achieve. They profess to seek the regeneration of a great nation. They talk about a parliament on College Green, and tell their dupes that it will be the source to them and to the whole country of blessings innumerable. Moreover, they invite all orders of the community to seek the same end. The book of Řepeal membership lies as open to a manufacturer as to a landed proprietor, to a peer as to a peasant, to a Churchman as to a Dissenter, to a Protestant rector as to a Popish priest. The great Agitator himself promises, as the issue of his endeavours, peace and unanimity to the land which gave him birth. Is this the case in England and Scotland? By no means. Here the war of classes is begun, and, let it terminate for the present as it may, must lead to a second war of opinion. And a war of opinion, or of principle -call it which you will-leads, as all experience shews, to revolution. Let us explain ourselves. We do not charge the authors of the Reform-act with seeking the end which is now palpably before them, any more than we accuse the greedy buyers up of rotten boroughs of having purposely provoked the storm beneath which they fell; but no man in his senses can doubt that the strife which the manufacturer for the last ten years has been waging against the proprietor of the soil is the legitimate issue of that ar wheels of the movement. Their motto was, "Let us have no more changes. You gave us the Reformbill as a final measure, and a final measure we are determined that it shall be." And no more changes did they sanction, save only in regard to institutions which appeared to them to be much less intimately connected with their own interests as an aristo rangement of the franchise which, to a great extent, revolutionised all the influences in this country. If there were any politician in the empire so infatuated as not to foresee that the middle classes, having achieved the power, would wield it for their own purposes, sooner or later, we, at least, never happened to encounter him. Put the truth for them, many might and did, while others affected to see in it just cause of rejoicing; for these made boast of the good sense which they assumed to be spread largely through the nation, though the conduct of the masses gave but small assurance all the while that any portion of it had fallen to their share. We well remember, for example, when the Duke of Wellington's windows were broken, and Bristol pillaged, and Nottingham Castle committed to the flames, that the cry was still "The good sense of the nation will bring every thing round; all things will yet find their just level." But, when closely pressed, did such men as Lord John Russell or Mr. Macaulay venture even then to deny that, so soon as the royal assent should be given to the great measure, the fate of England's "proud aristocracy" would be sealed? We believe that Sir Robert Peel never has made any secret that such was his opinion also. We know that the same view of the subject has been taken, and is still held, by statesmen as able, if not as persuasive, as he; and that the great aim of all their exertions, subsequently to the consummation of 1832, was to let down the constitution with as easy a progress as possible to the level wherein it was to them apparent that it must hereafter rest. Accordingly, there was no eagerness among the leaders of the Conservatives for power, but the reverse. Many a good opportunity of thrusting their rivals out of Downing Street they permitted to pass unimproved, and many a blessing they received in consequence from the Toadys and Tapers who frequented the Carlton Club, and charged wiser men than themselves with lack of courage and we know not all what besides. But while they steadily refused to force themselves into office, Sir Robert Peel and his party acted as a constant drag upon the chariot cracy than the present state of affairs proves them to have been. Now let us not be misunderstood. The insertion of the tenant-at-will clause into the original act was accomplished with the entire concurrence of the whole party. It seemed to afford them some counterpoise against the ten-pounders; it bid fair to give them the counties, however weak they might be in the boroughs. But did any of the followers of Sir Robert Peel in 1833 and 1834 look the length of their noses farther? Surely not; otherwise they would have resisted to the death such a measure as the New Poor-law bill, which has completely alienated the labouring classes from the classes above them, converting into bitter enemies the men who used to be the humble but devoted friends of the aristocracy. Surely not; otherwise they never would have consented to the suppression of ten bishopricks in Ireland, thus weakening the influence of Protestantism in the very portion of the empire where it stood most in need of support, and encouraging further attacks upon the church of which they professed to be the champions. These things, however, they gave up, because their leader told them that it was wise to do so. They flung from them the affections of the poor by invading their vested rights, and alarmed and offended the clergy by the indifference with which they looked on while O'Connell and his adherents, the Popish hierarchy, achieved so signal a triumph over the Irish branch of the united church. But no sooner was a proposal made to extend the franchise, or interfere with the game-laws, or reverse the financial system of the empire, or promote an increased freedom of trade, than to a man they denounced it. Moreover, to do them justice, they were marvellously tender both of the property and the privileges of the Church in England. They ac -- cepted a Tithe Commutation-bill, it is true; but they said, and perhaps believed some of them that it would be as advantageous to the clergy as to the country-gentlemen. But they would not hear of Lord Melbourne's plan of national education. And as to Church Reform, the term was never used, except vaguely by the Whigs, and then it was hooted down as synonymous with confisca tion. Thus in every question which appeared to threaten their own influence, or their rentals, or the arrangements, fiscal or otherwise, which were connected with their personal influence, the Conservative opposition worked wonders. Their broad principle, in which their chief seemed to go with them cordially, was resistance to change, and they had strength enough to retard the headlong progress of a government which was without power to stop of its own accord, and, for obvious reasons, did not desire that its adherents should believe that it contemplated stopping any where. In 1835, the party which had won its new name so gallantly in opposition, came, as we all recollect, somewhat prematurely into power. What was the first act of its chief? A manifesto against the established constitution of the Church, and the appointment of a commission under the crown to devise changes in it! The representatives of the party in both houses of parliament threw up their caps. It was a bold measure, but the state of the times required it; and as not a farthing was taken from the Church, however widely diverted some portions of Church property might be from the uses to which the testators had assigned them, nobody could deny that it was a strictly Conservative measure. Accordingly, the Commission sat; extinguished canonries; remodelled sees; reduced bishops from the dignity of landowners to the respectable position of state pensioners; applied tithes and lands, bequeathed by good men in Durham for the spiritual benefit of Durhamites, to the relief of the spiritual necessities of the dwellers in Cornwall and Sussex; and boldly transferred a prelate from Bangor to Ripon, with all his Welch revenues in his hand. What was the aristocracy about then? Did they not see that their own rights and privileges were weakened by such a blow struck at the rights and privileges of the Church? Not a whit. They were consenting and approving parties to a measure which we considered at the time, and still hold to have been the first step on that ladder of descent, to the very base of which, as they themselves now affirm, their champion is going to lead them. Sir Robert Peel's tenure of office was, in 1835, very brief. He went out upon a foolish question concerning the appropriation to secular purposes of Church property in Ireland, on which he might have borne a defeat in the Commons with perfect equanimity, knowing that the Lords were not only willing but eager to retrieve it. But to have acted thus would have been to test too severely the reasonableness of the opinion at which he had arrived in 1832. He believed, or suspected, or acted as if he did so, that the power of the Lords in the balance of the constitution was abrogated. He, therefore, not only declared in his place that no minister could constitutionally retain office in the face of an adverse majority in the Commons, but in all his appeals to his supporters told them that they must thenceforth fight the battle of the constitution in the Registration Courts. They did fight the battle there, and won it. Once more returned to their proper places, the Conservative Opposition again put a stopper upon every movement which seemed to threaten established institutions with damage. The Whigs tried to carry the appropriation clause, but failed. They endea voured to remodel the constituencies in the Irish boroughs, and were defeated. Their scholastic device, brought forward again, was again crushed by the influence of the Church and the party. They nibbled at some alteration or re-adjustment of the financial system, but were forced to take refuge in the clumsy and ineffectual device of adding so much per cent to the assessed taxes. But why pursue this subject further? The influence of the Op: position to check and restrain, and the pertinacity with which they withstood change of every kind, is still fresh in the recollection of the young. est; and, finally, when, amid defeat |