THE COURT-THE CABINET THE COUNTRY.

Reform has now completed the first has been the keystone of public term of its apprenticeship, and, become morals ; but the people, so often beof legal age, is fast ripening into the trayed and basely bartered away, are unbridled manhood of revolution. To at length becoming deeply impressed the achievement and practical estab- with the disastrous conclusion, that lishment of the ten-pound suffrage public virtue and patriotism is no more has succeeded the theory of the house. than a dream of the olden time, the hold brigade, propounded à la galo modern and wholly opposite reading pade by the free-and-easy constitution of which they have become profoundly mongers of the Molesworth manufac- imbued with, by their more intimate tory, shored up by the ballot-box of intercourse of late with ostentatiously the mild and miscalculating Grote, professing patriots and philanthroand both brought up in the rear with pists, in whom they have ultimately the Anti-Church and Anti-Corn cries, discovered only sophists, selfish and in full concert, of the Hume and heartless public plunderers, and time. O'Connell reserves. Below the deep, serving traitors. Is there cause for however, there is even a lower deep; wonder, then—with proofs so patent, before the blazing oriflamme of and belief so rooted, in the profligacy Chartism, the cobweb banner of patch- of principle, and the egotism, absorb. work Liberals less daring but more ing as unfeeling, of the classes above dishonest, torn into rags and tatters, has them; of their disdainful disregard been swept away for ever into the for, their utter want of sympathy, or chaos of frauds flimsily fabricated, and their scandalous traffic, with the inimpostures palpably detected, by the re- terests of the masses—that popular sistless tempest of popular indignation, faith should be staggered, and popular lashed into raging madness through traditions scouted ? That the masses, the mercenary treachery, yearly re- thrust almost without the social pale, peated, of leaders, by whom a confiding like outcast Pariahs of the East, should people were goaded and cajoled into themselves seek to sever the last rethe outrageous assertion of the wildest maining bond of relationship-should, extravagances of “ right” supposed, justly mistrustful, resolve for the - by whom basely sold and abandoned future to concentre their confidence when the hard money-and-place bargain alone in leaders selected from their had been wrung from the terrors of a own condemned caste? The singular recreant government. Vainly do pre- spectacle has been presented, in these tending patriots now whirl with art- our times, of an organized Association ful aim the well-known lasso ; dear- so vast and comprehensive as to em. bought experience has warned against brace millions in its affiliated ranks, the calculated devices of political in which the jealousy of an intruder fortune-hunters and philosophical from other classes, thus assumed to be charlatans

; and a people is now hostile, has been carried to the length no longer entrapped, entangled, and of earnest debate and angry discuscarried unsuspectingly to sacrifice and sion, under his eyes and in his prethe shambles, whether of Whig or sence, whether one of the middle quasi-Radical venality and ambition. classes could be accepted as a trust

But, with experience so wholesome worthy member-whether, in fact, in the one sense, the very foundation goodly raiment and a respectable exof national morals has been sapped in terior were not the characteristics another, a larger, and a more vital indisputable of a possible spy and a sense, the dry rot of which is invading, prospective Judas.' In vain Feargus corrupting, and threatening to under. O'Connor subscribed his hundreds of mine and disorganize the whole frame. pounds to the large joint-stock comwork of society. Politically, the con- posed of individual pence; the glitter fidence arising out of the conviction, of gold profusely proffered had lost its and the reality of the existence of charm, for the people had before been patriotism and honesty in public men, betrayed by Iscariots for gold, and

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NO, CCLXXXVII, VOL. XLVI.

tempted into confidence with gold, How, indeed, could the sentence of as prodigally lavished in their cause. death have been consistently enforced The three hundred pieces tendered against the more humble instruments by O'Connor 'might be a bidding of crime, whilst the criminals in chief, more magnificent to the National, seated in the high places, remain, not than the five pounds' subscription of unscathed only by the terrors of the Mr Joseph Parkes to the Birmingham law for their misdeeds, but elevated Union--the former with perhaps the amongst those whom Royalty, or same rapacious intent as the latter the Ministers of Royalty, delight to both carrying their various wares to honour ? If it were legal for Lord the same market; with the difference Fitzwilliam, and the party acting with only, that the more free and open. him, to “stop the supplies" unless the hearted Irishman by temperament, Reform bill, or Charter of the middle could be no match in driving the most classes, as pretended, was passed—if economical bargain with the more threats of physical force in the Comwary and worldly-wise Utilitarian- mons' House, and actual resort to phyUnitarian, who had learned that, if sical force out of it, in Bristol, Biryou “ take care of the pence, the mingham, Newcastle, and elsewhere, pounds will take care of themselves." were justifiable means to the end; why The people had before them the magic should resort to physical force be less cal transformation of the wreck of the defensible in support of the “ People's Birmingham Union, which, under the Charter".

'--as a people, not less deluded pilotage of Joseph,was scuttled, and had now than on the Reform Bill, have been foundered into the west-end palace, taught to view it? Were the pikes and the glittering equipages, the Pacto. bludgeons of the Birmingham Union lean splendours of the once humble less formidable, and more according to Birmingham attorney ;-they feared law, than the staves, daggers, and arlest the National Association should son of the Birmingham branch of the be as faithlessly steered on to the same National Association ?

Are Feargus rocks, and the same Oriental creations O'Connor, Bronterre O'Brien, and founded at its cost and on its ruins. other Chartist chiefs, greater treason Long they hesitated ere Feargus O'. and sedition-mongers than their elder, Connor was accepted as a member, or factious, and fire-breathing brethren of trusted as a chief of the league ; and the Reform time than the Fitzwil. even at the last, he owed the distinc. liam, whose stoppage of the supplies tion, less to the metropolitan than to would have been tantamount, as none the overpowering voices of the pro- better knew, to a civil war ?—than the vincial and manufacturing districts. Attwood and Scholefield, M.P.'s now, But the line is not the less rigorously who then paraded their masses and floudrawn by the operatives betwixt them- rished their weapons of offence ?—than selves and the other classes, but more the Baines, M.P., who urged on his furibroadly still against the middle class; ous Reform battalionswith frantic shouts and it will require demonstrations of of three groans for the Queen ?"much more sterling worth, and repa. than the Muntz, not a Reform leader ration of past treasons much more before only, but a member of the Na. signal and sincere, to remove the bar- tional Association, and its elected Bir. riers of excommunication, than the 08- mingham delegate to the National tentatious hypocrisy of a delegation to Convention, since and now, but now Lord John Russell, composed of such also a worshipful justice of the peaceliberal deserters and patriotic delin. he, the first to counsel an appeal to quents as Messrs Warburton, Hume, force, and to recommend the people, Scholefield, C. Buller, O'Connell

, according to his own boast, to armHawes, &c., to beseech mercy for he, the first cowardly bully to desert the the condemned Birmingham Chartists, ranks, and fee from the perils of the their own dupes and victims, two days conflict so wantonly provokedhe, opportunely after it was fully known holding her Majesty's commission of that mercy had been vouchsafed for the peace on the nomination of Lord life, by a Government as deeply com- John Russell himself, with full know. promised, morally, as the deputation ledge of his notorious antecedent-and and the convicted culprits themselves, his then incendiary courses- who, on in the mournful events by which life proposing the health of his gracious had become forfeit to the laws. Sovereign at a public dinner, prefaced

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it with, “Well, gentlemen, as the farce themselves and friends; more honest, must be gone through, I give you the they have volunteered no pledges, and Queen ?". We are told, indeed, in the broken none-that for themselves or Leeds Mercury, by that dainty critic kindred place and pelf they would Mr Baines, now M.P., and still of that accept never! The religion of Mr paper, in an address to the Chartists, Baines, all fervent and radiant as it tliát the National Convention is a may be, would seem but of the skin“rabble of vulgar, unprincipled, design, deep sort; it does not, we suppose, ing demagogues--who have been for however, in his creed, require much six months spending your money, only Jesuitic craft to prove that the public to illustrate how far ignorance, impu- pledge of official abjuration was bind'dence, folly, ay, and cowardice too, ing only

so long as office was unofcan extend. Why, half the Convention fered. The son is actually recorder has deserted, and the rest are at

of Hull; and therein lies the commendaggers-drawing among themselves." tary on the broken pledge, and the Truly to speak, this is highly wrought thrifty conscientiousness of a prudent impudence and something more of the parent. journeyman printer that was, and Was there one sane and soberthanks to the purse and the liberality minded man out of the ranks of the of the Wentworths-proprietor, editor, infatuated Whigs, who doubted that and M.P. that now is. The imputa. Reform, once let loose on

a field tion of vulgarity comes with winning so wide as that of which the gates grace, too, from the smutty-faced com. were unlocked by the Reform Bill, positor that was, and the greasy-gloved, could then, and within the bounds of puritanical, pretending democrat of a its dry ditches, be restrained from member that is. There is something running riot ? There were practiparticularly edifying in the exhorta- cable and prudent modes of reformtions of this sanctimonious person there were ways and means of enwho all his formerlife has lived, breath. larging the constituency-of infusing a ed, and had his being, by agitation and more direct and popular action into revolution-who abetted Luddism co- the representative system, and bringvertly if not openly-whose “ three ing the weight of public opinion, not groans for the Queen" are on record of one, but of all orders of society, to who regarded pikes and bludgeons as bear more urgently and irresistibly integral and legitimate accessories to- upon it-other and far more safe than wards a Reform revolution ;-itisedify. tampering capriciously and recklessly ing, we say, to find him now so furi- with the quality of the elective franbund against “violence," confusion," chise. The new-fledged statesmen of “ civil war," and all that; and exhort- 1831 made it their idle boast, that by ing the Chartists “ that, if their cause the wide and comprehensive scheme be really a good one, it is certain to be of an universal ten-pound suffrage, carried by peaceable and constitutional they had so satiated the voracious means, and therefore the resort to vio- cravings of Reform, that appetite farlence is wholly without excuse. ther was for ever stayed—that before

We uphold not Chartism or the the Reform Bill, planted like Canute Chartists; we are but referring effects on the shore, should recede the revoto causes, consequents to antecedents. lutionary surges, never more to afChartism is the spawn of the Reform proach and overflow the landmark. mania-Chartists are the offspring, in a "Oh, conceitl false, frivolous, and right line and by legitimate descent, of self-applauding! Hearken to the inWhigs and Radicals; more thorough. spirations of the truly wise and phi

; going and desperate if you will, but losophic De Tocqueville, when treatmore straightforward and intelligible ing of changes and constitutions among than either. Chartist pikes and blud- a younger offshoot of the great Anglo. geons, openly brandished, are, after all, Saxon race on the other side of the less to be dreaded than the silent stab, Atlantic:and the skulking step, of the stiletto

" When a nation modifies the elective armed Whig-Radical Destructive of qualification, it may easily be foreseen that appropriation-clauses and freethinking

sooner or later that qualification will be eneducation schemes. Less fortunate tirely abolished. There is no more invathan Mr Baines, the Chartist chiefs riable rule in the history of society; the have as yet accomplished no jobs for further electoral rights are extended, the

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more is felt the need of extending them; them, it has sought to raise iron-bound for after each concession the strength of ramparts of safety against the ven. the democracy increases, and its demands geance of the people at large, on increase with its strength. The ambition whose rights it has trampled, whose of those who are below the appointed hearths it has invaded, with whose rate, is irritated in exact proportion to the wellbeing and lives it has wantonly great number of those who are above it. sported. Scared with their own The exception at last becomes the rule; work of the Reform Bill, and more concession follows concession, and no

affrighted still by the hordes and stop can be made short of Universal Suf

combined vagabondage of the mefrage."

tropolis, through whose ready aid Let us not delude ourselves : to this it was mainly carried, means were « complexion we must come at last." anxiously sought by the Grey Cabinet The greater or less gradation of velo- to get rid of allies no longer useful, city in the descent, is altogether purely who were troublesome and must be contingent on the continuance of the dangerous. The real question was to governing power in its present, or in let out the bad blood without an ina modified shape. The pressure from quest for murder. French ingenuity without compelled Lord Grey to leave had forestalled and resolved the diffihold, after provident forecast for his culty. We were present when, after family. Lord Melbourne and Lord the Revolution of July, 7000 superJohn Russell, the one all voluptuous fluous heroes of the Three Glorious abandon and thoughtlessness, as the Days of rapine and murder, were musother all bladder-blown of self-pre- tered and paraded in the Place Vensuming infallibility, Phæbus-like, seiz. dôme, round the pillar of Napoed the reins, in blind assurance by leon; from whence the scape-gallows first giving head, more readily after wretches, all whiskered and ghastly, to curb in the unruly half-jaded steed were packed off by diligence and of Reform-in reverse of the French post, amidst cries of Vive la Revosaying, sauter pour mieux reculer. lution, to the frontiers of Spain and They have not been long to learn the interior of Belgium — the soil the

of which they fertilized with their " Facilis descensus averni; not, and were not intended. The ex

bones, for return they did not, could Sed revocare gradum, superasque evadere

ample was not lost. Some thousands ad auras, Hic labor, hoc opus est."

of British vagrant Reformers were

dispatched with Don Pedro to PortuTheir doom is fixed—the fiat has gal, and those who escaped the sword gone forth against them as hommes of the Miguelites perished more inusès--they fall, like Lucifer, never to gloriously afterwards of starvation. rise again. They may, indeed, be Some ten or twelve thousand of surreplaced for a moment by the impo- plus Reform heroes were banded tent virility of a Normanby rouè, and afterwards for Spain; of whom Colonel the gangrenous humours of a bile-dis. Evans, baton in hand, returned with eased Durham--for a moment only. the muster-rolls marked all dead,

The breed of aristocratical democrats mutilated, or missing, shamefully is a cross too unnatural for long life slaughtered in the field, or disgraceand endurance ; it is a lusus naturæ fully left to perish in a strange land. a monstrosity, moral and social-a The incapacity of Evans justified the race born only to see the light and penetration with which, for the special become extinct.

object, he was selected; by his rashThe Melbourne and Russell system ness and routs, thousands of unruly of administration and attempted re- agitators were disposed of as efficiently trogression, if founded in corruption as if by letter of instructions and the most extensive on the one hand, plan of campaign, drawn out for the was as deeply based in the most atro- special end. It was KILLING NO MURcious tyranny on the other. It has DER : the Brevet Colonel for the exbeen sustained by the wholesale bri- ploit has been rewarded with and bery of agitators and incendiaries, wears a riband as deeply, glowingly both of the higher and among the red as if dyed in the blood-stained more hungry middle class section of fields of Hernani, or in the purple popular leaders. Confederate with gore of his defeated and massacred

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mercenaries before the walls of St exulting Whiggery was at length fixSebastian. Hume and the Radicalsed firmly on the neck of a prostrate Utilitarian for once were overreached. nation. Let us, however, be just : They anticipated the glorious return there is one crowning charity in the of a disciplined and victorious army, new law at least—the pangs of lengthready to achieve such further reform ened incarceration are spared to the or revolution as might suit the exigen- hapless pauper, by the summary merces of party, however distasteful to cies of starvation diet and rigorous sethe Ministry, with another Welling: paration from kith and kind. The ton in the shape of laurel-browed portals of the living tomb, once closed Evans, to frown or fight down oppo- on the wretch condemned, to him open sition. Alas ! how fall the mighty ;- no more, unless, if then even, to Evans went out a triumphant Radical the passage of his mortal remains to to return a discomfited Wnig !

that a bourne from whence no travelHad the new principle of KILLING ler returns." The passage from time NO MURDER stayed here its desolating to eternity has not, however, alone progress, the country might have been been shortened, but that also from the consoled as by deliverance from a pes- bed of death to the grave. The poor tilence, however humanity must shud- and broken hearted may enjoy the sad der over the long array of unhappy consolation of sleeping with their favictims. But the millions remained thers no more; for the Bastile in which unthinned—the millions, revelling in they are immured contains also withideal rights, rife, unruly, and boister- in its own precincts the dark and ously clamouring for entry and pos- dreary dungeons of the earth, where session of their share in the land of pro- buried, as medically hurried, by conmise- the land flowing with milk and tract with the lowest competing underhoney, newly conquered under the Re- taker, he sleeps till that day when all form Bill. The Solemn League and wrongs shall be redressed when the Covenant between Unions and Liberals oppressor and the oppressed shall stand was there the seal could not be railed side by side, equal in all things save defrom off the bond-Whig perform- sert, before the Great Judge of allances, in no measured tones, were de- when Lord John, the New Poor-Law manded of Whig promises. But per placeman, shall change place with formance was out of the question with poor John, the parish pauper. a prodigality so wild of spendthrift Description of the horrors of the promises. The reapers would infin Bastile system--of the havoc it has nitely have outnumbered the ears of worked, and is working—of the the golden harvest, reserved exclu- mortality which, more surely, more sively, within a ring fence, for a cho. largely, although more silently than sen class and for the Whig sickle, if plague, pestilence, and famine conall who had helped to plough, sow, jointly, it has accomplished and is and harrow in the seed, and were producing-description, we say, is betherefore bid, had come to the feast of yond the powers of language, and the harvest moon. But the masses will be, until a New Poor-Law vocapressed and danger was imminent. bulary shall be constructed expressly The deep-mouthed voice of discontent, of signs appropriate to the practical that could not be satisfied, must be atrocities and the theoretic conjurasilenced. So the coup d'etât was re- tions of which it would be the harrowsolved upon : against new rights, as- ing and disgusting record. A hunserted by the people, old rights were dred volumes would not suffice the presented as grievances by the Whig annals of its five years' career of fraud, Grand Jury; the claim of a Reform falsehood, and infamy. Efficiently, Bill was answered with a New Poor- for diabolically, does it work out the Law Bill-coup and contre coup were ends of its projectors and philanthrothe order of the day-the ayes had it, pic superintendents ; and whilst it in the so-said people's house, against spares not the aged, and spends not the people—the Poor-Law Abolition on the able-bodied, who are economi. Bill was carried triumphantly--dun- cally and indiscriminately disposed of geons supplanted workhouses-pau- where no more heard of, at the railwayperism, declared felony by Act of Par. speed of short commons and close corliament, was made punishable with im- finement, not less tender is the New prisonment for life--the iron hoof of Poor-Law in its cares for infant life, or

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