that there is a proverbial expression borrowed from it, and that the epithet Quixotic would be eminently applicable to the conduct of Great Britain if she interfered in the affairs of the continent at the present juncture. And yet there are persons who persist in believing that Mr. Canning is any thing more than a pivot on whose oily hinges state policy turns easily at this moment, unheard, unseen, and that he has views and feelings of his own that are a pledge for his integrity.-If all this were fickleness, caprice, forgetfulness, accident, folly, it would be well or would not much signify; we should stand a chance of sometimes being right, sometimes wrong; or if the ostensible motives were the real ones, they would balance one another. At one time we should be giving a lift to liberty, at another we should be advancing our own interests: now we should be generous to others, then we should be just to ourselves, but always we should be doing something or other fit to be done and to be named, and acting up to one or other of Mr. Canning's fine pleas of religion, morality, or social order. Is that the case? Nothing

was said for twenty years about the restoration of the Bourbons as the object of the war. Who doubts it now? This cause skulked behind the throne, and was not let out in any of Mr. Canning's speeches. The cloven foot was concealed by so much flaunting oratory, by so many different facings and piebald patchwork liveries of ruinous policy or perfidious principle, as not to be suspected. This is what makes such persons as Mr. Canning dangerous. Clever men are the tools with which bad men work. The march of sophistry is devious the march of power is one. Its means, its tools, its pretexts are various, and borrowed like the hues of the camelion from any object that happens to be at hand : its object is ever the same, and deadly as the serpent's fang. It moves on to its end with crested majesty, erect, silent, with eyes sunk and fixed, undiverted by fear, unabashed by shame, and puny orators and patriot mountebanks play tricks before it to amuse the crowd, till it crushes the world in its monstrous folds. There is one word about which nothing has been said all this while in ac

counting for Mr. Canning's versatility of mind and vast resources in reasoning-it is the word Legitimacy. It is the key with which you "pluck out the heart of his mystery." It is the touchstone by which all his other eloquence is to be tried, and made good or found wanting. It is the casting-weight in the scale of sound policy, or that makes humanity and liberty kick the beam. It is the secret of the Ayes and Noes: it accounts for the Majorities and Minorities. It weighs down all other considerations, hides all flaws, makes up for all deficiencies, removes all obstacles, is the crown of success, and makes defeat glorious. It has all the power of the Crown on its side, and all the madness of the people. All Mr. Canning's speeches are but so many different periphrases for this one word-Legitimacy. It is the foundation of his magnanimity, and the source of his pusillanimity. It is the watchword equally of his oratory or his silence. It is the principle of his interference and of his forbearance. It makes him move forward, or retreat, or stand still. With this word rounded closely in his ear, and with fifty evasions for

it in his mouth, he advances boldly to "the deliverance of mankind"-into the hands of legitimate kings, but can do nothing to deliver them out of their power. When the liberty and independence of mankind can be construed to mean the cause of kings and the doctrine of divine right, Mr. Canning is a virago on the side of humanity-when they' mean the cause of the people and the reducing of arbitrary power within the limits of constitutional law, his patriotism and humanity flag,

and he is

"Of his port as meek as is a maid!”

This word makes his tropes and figures expand and blaze out like phosphorus, or "freezes his spirits up like fish in a pond." It smites with its petrific mace, it deadens with its torpedo touch, the Minister, the Parliament, the people, and makes this vast, free, enlightened, and enterprising country, a body without a soul, an inert mass, like the hulks of our men of war, which Mr. Canning saw and described so well at Plymouth. It is the same word, that announcing the profanation of “the

golden round that binds the hollow temples of a king" by unhallowed hands, would fill their sails, and hurl their thunders on rebel shores. It denounces war, it whispers peace. It is echoed by the groans of the nations, is sanctified by their blood, bought with their treasure. It is this that fills the time-rent towers of the Inquisition with tears and piercing cries; and owing to this, Manzotti shrieks in Italian dungeons, while Mr. Canning soothes the House of Commons with the soft accents of liberty and peace !-In fine, Mr. Canning's success as an orator, and the space he occupies in the public mind, are strong indications of the Genius of the Age, in which words have obtained a mastery over things, and "to call evil good and good evil," is thought the mark of a superior and happy spirit. An accomplished statesman in our day, is one who extols the Constitution and violates it-who talks about religion and social order, and means slavery and superstition. The Whigs are always reminding the reigning family of the principles that raised them to the thronethe Tories labour as hard to substitute those