sons for voting against his promise? And does he now come down to the House with a formal statement, that he never made any promise? What faith can we put in men's words if this be their mode of proceeding? How Dr. Lushington can reconcile these two assertions; how he can make the whole proceeding agree with the straight-forward, simple rules of honour which a gentleman is in the habit of using for his guidance, is beyond my powers of conception. Here is no room for any nice distinctions. There can be no fine-drawn difference between pledge and promise: the matter does not turn on such a matter. The case is much more simple. On one day, he solemnly avers that he made a promise, and explains why he feels himself compelled to break it. On another day, he declares he made no such promise. Now, I would swear, that he made both these assertions. They are contradictory: both cannot be true; one must be false. Which is false I know not, care not; but that one must be so, is self-evident. If this be established morality, I blush for the public; if it be not, I blush for the individual.

There was another instance, not so glaring indeed, of saying one thing one day, one another, that should be taken notice of. Mr. Macauley, in his first speech on the Irish Church bill, was at great pains to prove that church property was private property. He answered Sir R. Peel, and more than one-half of his harangue consisted of a refutation of a proposition put forth by the Right Hon. Baronet, to the purport, "that the property of the church was like the property of individuals, and therefore not subject to the dominion of Parliament." Now, Mr. Macauley holds an office in the ministry, and though he be not of the cabinet, what he says bears an official character. Arguing then so strenuously as he did, for the principle of making church property state property, he necessarily gave that principle the sanction of the government to which he is attached; and arguing the matter at full length, when the Irish Church bill was in debate, he irrevocably connected that principle with the measure before the House; for it would be asked, if that principle be not involved in the matter of the present debate, why discuss it? The truth is, that the ministers knew that they should gain great popu larity, if they would give their sanction to this principle. Lord Althorp did not like to do it himself, and Mr. Stanley is fiercely opposed to it; so they got an inferior person of their body to argue the matter; thereby inducing the belief that they were favourable to it, while they left themselves a loop-hole to escape, should the support of the principle become disagreeable. Mr. Macauley was the person thus employed; and had he been possessed of any very nice feeling on the matter, he would not have come forward this evening to show that the principle for which he had fought a stout battle some evenings before when the same bill was in debate, was not in the slightest degree connected with the measure. If so, why did he lend himself to the artifice of making people believe that it was connected with it? It is quite true that Lord Althorp and Mr. Stanley made a pretended distinction between the surplus mentioned in the 147th clause, and church property generally—a distinction so palpably absurd on the face of it, that every one saw that it was used as a flimsy pretence. But Mr. Macauley left this poor cavil wholly out of the question, and stood up boldly for the principle itself. He therefore should have been the last person to bolster up the wretched device, which he himself had taught us to disregard. There appears some tainting influence, some moral poison, in the ministerial atmosphere of this country. No sooner does any one go into their ranks, than he

VOL. III.NO, XVII.

seems, by some painful, degrading necessity, driven to adopt a tortuous, a dishonest path. The steady conduct of a man of high honour seems no longer possible. To truckle, to shift, to waver, to put a false gloss on plain words, to say ay to-day, nay to-morrow-to be ever dealing in ambiguous phrases-and to live a life of hollow pretences, such seems the fate of every servant of our ill-constructed government. Wretched indeed is their destiny!

When at length the majority became certain in favour of ministers, through the labours of Mr. C. Wood, the impatient young gentlemen, who had heen brought, in very unwilling mood, from the Queen's ball, began with their accustomed modes of putting an end to the debate. Whether the question had been fairly discussed, was to them a matter of no import. The majority was certain, and they wanted to resume dancing. They had undertaken the duties of legislators, it is true: but among those duties, they had not included any laborious attention to the peo ple's interests. At the division of that evening, they had no intention of being present, and the country would certainly not have had the benefit of their vote, had not such vote been necessary for their party. Now, serving their party was a very good thing: but that by no means required any continuance of the debate; and seeing that dancing was to them far more amusing than legislating, they determined to put an end to the latter, in order that they might instantly resume the former. Consequently, "question," "question," "ba," "ba," hooting like an owl, crowing like a cock, and other noises peculiar to the House of Commons, and the one-shilling gallery, immediately commenced. The passage below the bar was crammed full of idlers; the greater part of the red-coats were there assembled ;—such stont heroes, for example, as Lord Norreys, and Lord Arthur Lennox, appeared very impatient, and were assuredly very noisy. The dancers having soon overpowered the debaters, the division took place, and the scene that followed baffles all description. The thing most like it, that I ever witnessed, was the rush at the opera to see Sontag the first night of her appearance. The in stant the numbers were announced, a simultaneous rush was made to wards the door, and in about two minutes the House was empty. Cries of all sorts might be heard, such as occur on the breaking up of the theatre. The red-coated gentry, evidently "on dancing thoughts intent," rushed down the steps, and through the tortuous passages, to the im minent peril of all who might be in their way. Orderlies, following in the wake of their officers, helped to increase the confusion; while execrations of no measured description against the debate, the question, the people, and their honest representatives, served to finish the whole scene, and give it a character well calculated to raise serious and painful thoughts in the mind of every right-thinking man. As I took my way home an hour after, in the grey light of the morning, through the silent streets of this mighty congregation of the human race, many and bitter were the moody thoughts which ran through my over-wrought mind. The fresh air of the morning could not at once cool down the fever which the exciting night had raised, nor could the splendid scene of London at daybreak withdraw my contemplation from the degrading mockery of which I had just been a witness. Oh, yes, it is true, the industry, the talent of the people have raised this mighty city; it stands out the wonder of mankind, a stately specimen of the skill and the labour of the patient multitude. But while the millions thus toil and bring into existence all this wealth and comfort; while they, in their quiet and humble sphere, set a

bright example of temperance and honesty, while in good truth their morality supersedes in great part the necessity for law, everything in public life, all proceedings on the part of government seem expressly designed to spread ruin and desolation over the land. In England, the high civilization of the people counterbalances the mischievous effects of the laws enacted by her ignorant and unprincipled legislators. In Ireland, no such countervailing power exists; and there, where the law is required of its own unassisted force to maintain peace and good order, all is riot and confusion. In England what the people do is done wellwhat the government attempts is ever a miserable failure. In Ireland the people do nothing, the Government is left alone to do all: and we see the consequence. Why is this? The scene of this night will serve as an explanation. The affairs of this great people are intrusted to unworthy hands. Sinister interest and ignorance are predominant in its councils; need we then wonder, that sorrow and shame wait upon its deeds? And these things are permitted, even when our sons of America exhibit so different, so instructive an example. The wildest freak of the most deranged imagination could not fancy such a scene as the one above described taking place at Washington. Children and fops have no voice in the councils of republican America. From the people emanates all power; and the Government is, consequently, honest, industrious, decorous, and peculiarly sagacious. My notions may be very democratic, and in very bad taste, but I most sincerely own, that I believe the sooner we get rid of the causes of such disgraceful exhibitions; the sooner we follow the example of our brethren on the other side of the Atlantic; the sooner we take the government of ourselves into our own hands, and cut off all vain and useless trappings, the better for all parties concerned for the nation as well as those who now occupy the chief places among us. people would no longer be tormented by the ignorant, and the idle, and the dishonest, who now prey upon their vitals; while these would be obliged to obtain an honest subsistence by honest labour, no longer debasing and demoralizing the whole body of their countrymen by their degrading, their disgraceful example.

The

Got to bed at a quarter to four, and dreamed of a radical reform in the House of Commons.

WHIG SETTLEMENT OF THE "GREAT QUESTIONS."

FROM all the obloquy which has been cast upon them,-from ugly vi. sions of broken pledges, old purposes surrendered, principles long sworn by laid down before the Moloch of the Aristocracy, the Whigs have attempted to take refuge in their settlement of the "Great Questions ;" and they seem to regard their settlement of these questions as the very sanctuary of their fame. It is not our intention to demolish these boasted measures, as they easily might be demolished; but we cannot resist the temptation of withdrawing the veil from the sanctuary, of stating, in a few plain terms, intelligible by plain people, what the mode and merits of the proposed settlements really are, and of again evincing to " persons of the meanest capacity," the truth of that famous saying of Chancellor Oxenstiern's, regarding the little wisdom by which this world is governed! In pursuance of this design, we shall shortly remark on the

several bills now in progress in reference to the East India Company, the Abolition of Slavery, the Irish Church, and the Bank Charter.

I. The East India Company's Bill, is the only one of the four, in which there is any thing to praise. That Bill includes the abolition of the Chinese monopoly, and a prohibition of the Company to trade. These two grand objects are distinctly, completely, and well accomplished; but we doubt whether any merit ought hence to be ascribed to the Whigs, because we doubt if they had here a choice. It appears from reports of interviews which passed some years ago between the Directors and the Duke of Wellington's administration, that even Lord Ellenborough had made up his mind to move the destruction of that monopoly; for which achievement we had assuredly been indebted, not to any power or marvellous intelligence on the part of Lord Ellenborough, but simply to the state of the public mind, and the command already assumed over us all on such subjects, by the silent but ever increasing and most beneficent influence of the author of the Wealth of Nations. While we rejoice therefore that so vast an expansion is so soon to be given to our commercial interprize while we rejoice that English capital and industry are to be permitte, free access to the whole continent of India, and unrestricted intercoursd with the ingenious multitudes of China; we yet turn to other matterse when we desire to guage the qualities of our present Cabinet; for there, alone are the difficulties of this question.

The first important point is what is called the compromise with the Company, or that arrangement, by which their whole debt, commercial pensions, &c., &c., are decreed to rest henceforward upon the shoulders of our fellow-subjects in Hindostan. Now there is upon the very face of this settlement suspicion of the grossest injustice. If the debt had been contracted during the process of conquest, or, in other words, had it been a war debt, it might, by the ordinary laws of war, have been justifiably laid upon the territory of the conquered country; but evidence is wholly wanting that it was so contracted; nay, there is abundance of probability that it is mainly owing to losses in trade. Until very recently, the Company's own servants never ceased to tell us of the SACRIFICES submitted to in order to carry on trade; which assertion they very oddly imagined to bring great honour to the Company; and every acute and impartial inquirer, who has hitherto set himself to examine the subject, has arrived at the conclusion of Mr. Richards, who asserts positively, that the revenue has always been equal to defray the expenses of Government, and that the debt altogether flowed from commercial operations. We do not know if this assertion be wholly true, but we know that, in great part, it is true; and Ministers, without either ceremony or inquiry, have just acted as if it were wholly false. It has not been shown, or pretended to be shown, that the debt is properly territorial; but Ministers, by way of making a "good bargain," and ensuring support," have at once assumed it to be territorial, (for the story about valuable commercial assets is a humbug, a mere blind;) and, without farther ado, laid it upon the shoulders of the distant and uninfluential Hindoos. How the Company chuckles over the "settlement," and how smartly the proprietors think the Hindoos are to be taxed in their behoof, is emphatically written in the Stock Exchange. On the day of the promulgation of the Cabinet Scheme, India Stock rose from 208 to 223 per cent., and has since reached 219! There is not a shadow of doubt, that, at least, a considerable portion of this burden ought to have been provided for in the way usual in such cases, viz. by the loss or even the bankruptcy of an unsuccessful

commercial company; but then, how " embarrassing would have been this procedure to honest Lord Althorp! and how much easier was it, as well as much more in the way of trade, to tax the unresisting Hindoos! Mr. Macauley tells us, in his peculiar style, that these things ought not to be inquired into too curiously, and that we should not grudge a few millions if they secure the peaceful settlement of a great question. The mischief is, it is not the persons who give away who are to pay; we are very generous out of our neighbours' pockets. But why wonder, seeing that it is thus in every thing? It is still the aim of state jobbery to sacrifice the absent and the weak to the scowling overgrown few; and in the mode of doing this most quietly, of devising a specious pretence, and getting up a flashy oration, abide the great mystery of the craft. Mr. Macauley is a useful instrument, we wish him joy of his laurels. But there remains the mighty question as to the government of India ; and that, our wise, and daring, and straight-forward Ministers have left all but untouched. Hitherto this subject has attained no due attention from the British public: but there existed a cause of confusion. We were confounded by the two distinct offices of the Company. A strange medley, as it was, of a mercantile and legislative character, we have been inclined most unfortunately to regard and criticise it, in its mercantile capacity alone; thus very foolishly and criminally losing sight of its aptitudes for government. It stands out now, however, altogether undisguised, the cumbrous, formless, ill-arranged thing which Britain, in her wisdom, has chosen to invest with the guardianship of a vast, complex, and distant society. In this point of view, it will bear no examination. But to examine, far less to amend it; to do one small good thing they were not compelled to do; or in an article so important, to aim at the correction and improvement of public opinion; these were efforts and objects far a-head of the poor Whigs. Lord Brougham talked of his party having dared to grapple with the great questions. The boast is vain, for they have not grappled with them at all; not, at least, with the question of the Indies. They have left every objectionable portion of the old arrangements quite as they found it; they have passed by every difficulty, and laid it upon the shelf. Believing, as we do, that the trade monopoly was borne down by the irrisistible authority of opinion, we discern no active or energetic statemanship in this entire measure, nor one spark, one scintillation of that high or commanding intellect of which the Whigs would persuade us they are possessed. Verily, it is strange, that notwithstanding of all the noise and bustle of parturition around us, nought but pigmy products is yet being brought forth.

It is painful to think how far our knowledge regarding what should be done with India has declined since Mr. Fox's time. But matters cannot remain as they are. The public mind is now directed to the subject with steadfastness and determination; and a very few years will suffice to bring to light how much of permanence there is in the Whig settlement of India.

II. But let us turn to the anti-slavery scheme; and assuredly a notable scheme it is!

Every person truly acquainted with the West Indies has long been aware of the intimate connexion between the state of slavery and the kind of industry prevailing in these islands-an industry fostered by many absurd and detestable monopolies. The question of slavery is in fact but a part of a vast question going into the roots of West India society; and it never can be satisfactorily treated but with reference to those