It is impossible to touch upon this subject without expressing the deep sorrow and sympathy which we have felt for the sufferings of the working classes during the last twelve or eighteen months. These sufferings cannot any longer be treated as the exaggeration of interested men; they are described in the official reports made by agents employed by the Government. In all cases-whether the condition of a single town like Stockport is considered, or the interests of a whole class, like the hand-loom weavers--it is to our wretched Corn-Laws that we trace the aggravation of these calamities. Whole families are shown to have been left without fuel, furniture, with scarcely any raiment or bed-covering, and with a pittance of food inadequate to human support. In these miseries, old and young, the industrious as well as the idle, have been alike involved. The consequences have been wretchedness the most deplorable, the exhaustion of the charitable subscriptions collected, the depreciation of the property liable to assessment, the spread of contagion, and mortality frightfully increased. Under such circumstances, how strong is the appeal made to our hearts in a noble sonnet, in which Wordsworth has shown how truly the sympathies, as well as the genius, of man may be preserved and exalted in advancing years ?Feel for the wrongs to universal ken

Daily exposed, woe that unshrouded lies;
And seek the sufferer in his darkest den,
Whether conducted to the spot by sighs
And moanings, or he dwells (as if the wren
Taught him concealment) hidden from all eyes
In silence and the awful modesties

Of sorrow.'

That our Government and our Legislature felt deeply for these sorrows and sufferings, we are far from doubting; but let us ask, whether they have practically marked this sympathy in their acts. Perhaps it will be said, that nothing could be done in the way of relief. We are always slow in admitting this plea, the threadbare apology of indolence or ignorance. Parliament might have derived sounder instruction from a sublime exhortation which closes the poem we have quoted :

Learn to be just; just through impartial law,
Far as ye may erect and equalize,

And what ye cannot reach by statute, draw

Each from his fountain of self-sacrifice.'

Would that this precept had, in the last session, been practically adopted! But looking through the tedious statute-book, and the debates more tedious still, we confess that we see but little evidence to prove that the condition of the suffering workmen of

England has occupied a due share of the attention of our rulers.

We must, however, guard ourselves against what would be a most false inference, if it were to be deduced from these observations. Though we may admit many of the causes of complaint of the working classes to be just, we do not more strongly deplore than we condemn the late wicked outbreak. The grievances were not of a character to justify the illegal violence which has prevailed; and even if the grievances had been such, the illegal conduct of the rioters could not but aggravate them, and greatly increase the obstacles which impede the success of all remedial measures, whether political, economical, or social. Falstaff declined to give his reasons upon compulsion, and John Bull is apt to refuse to do justice as long as he can, if justice is demanded in a tone of menace. All violence, by creating alarm, throws back the cause of popular reform, and increases that power of resistance on which Tory ascendancy depends. But the whole movement was as absurd as it was iniquitous. Except in the ever-memorable blunder of the Irish insurgents who burned the notes of an unpopular banker, no example can be found of such signal folly as the violence which prompted men to interfere with active industry, and consequently with the remuneration of labour, at a time when the immediate cause of suffering was a want of employment. But in many cases the suffering, was not the criminal class; and even when the sufferers were led into criminal acts, they appear to have been the dupes and instruments of more guilty men. The sympathy which we feel for calamities, however deplorable, ought not to render us unwilling to repress or to condemn atrocities and violence which strike at the root of all prosperity, and whose severest and most immediate pressure falls on the poorest class of the community. Tranquillity, important as it is to all, is essential in a pre-eminent degree to those whose existence depends on their daily labour. The wages of the artizan are the first sacrifice made in times of civil confusion. The landed proprietor, and even the capitalist, may wait for better times, but the working classes perish. What to others is

pain, to them is death.

We have hitherto adverted to the larger measures of policy, in which we have shown that the conduct of the present Government has been diametrically opposed to the anticipations of their friends, and to all their principles and their professions. Similar examples are to be found in almost every other act of the session, however secondary. The postponement of the Ecclesiastical Courts' Bill in former years, had been held up to reprobation as a proof of the indolence or the incapacity of

the Whig Government; yet that bill has been again postponed, as also the bill for the registration of voters. 'The curtailment of colonial measures in former sessions, had been relied on as conclusive evidence of the weakness of Lord Melbourne's Cabinet; yet we have seen Lord Stanley's Newfoundland Bill limited in its duration, and shorn of its fair proportions, when pertinaciously opposed by Mr O'Connell. The alteration of financial measures had been described as an unpardonable of fence in Lord Spencer and Lord Monteagle; Sir Robert Peel not only reduced his proposed coal-duties one half, but he claimed credit for the concession. A bill authorizing the importation of foreign flour into Ireland, had been rejected in 1840 by the Tories; the Tories, in 1842, have carried the same measure. A proposal to allow the grinding of foreign wheat in bond, had formerly been opposed by Sir Edward Knatchbull, as being an insult and an injury to the agriculturists; in the last session the very same proposal was made by Mr Gladstone, and met with less opposition from the Paymaster of the Forces than he would have raised to the payment of a turnpike toll in Kent. So far from reducing the funded debt, the present Board of Treasury has increased it; and the redemption of Exchequer bills by the trustees of Savings Banks, (a measure so much misrepresented and objected to,) has received a new legislative sanction under the auspices of Sir Robert Peel. In short, the fixed and definite principle on which it would appear that the Government acted throughout, has been to oppose all that they had previously supported, and to support much that they had most strenuously opposed.

We might here be taxed with disingenuousness, if we were to pass over unnoticed a remarkable defence which has been somewhat ostentatiously put forward in the last number of the Quarterly Review. If that defence were admitted, we confess that much of our argument would be inapplicable, and many of our inferences most uncandid and unjust. It is contended that no want of truth and candour can be attributed to the leading Conservatives, no suppressio veri, and no suggestio falsi; because in June 1841, before the late General Election, an article had been published in that Journal, recommending some alterations in the scale of corn and customs duties. Now, we confess that a very great bribe is held out to induce us to agree with our contemporary. We should thereby assume for ourselves, as well as grant to him, new and most extraordinary rights and functions. We should claim, for our political essays, privileges and authorities hitherto confined to speeches from the Throne, state papers, and the official declarations of responsible ministers. The

present Government would rule not only by the force of a parliamentary majority, but by the grace and favour of the Quarterly Review. Till a diplomatist produces his letters of credence, and his full powers, he cannot be recognized by a foreign court. We doubt whether Sir Robert Peel will sign the unlimited power of attorney under which the Quarterly Reviewer demands to act. Indeed, it passes all credibility, that at a moment when the secret of the minister was so very carefully kept that the Duke of Buckingham remained his colleague, that Sir James Graham and Lord Stanley made their memorable speeches at Dorchester and in Lancashire, when all explanations were refused to Parliament, the whole future policy of the new administration should have been confided to the generous, faithful, and friendly Reviewer. The dilemma in which the over-zealous advocate has involved himself and his friends, is one of no common difficulty. If, in June 1841, Sir Robert Peel had determined on his line of policy, concealing it from his own cabinet, his friends, and the public, at a time when he confided it to any single literary and political associate, however strong his attachment and approved his fidelity, no greater deception was ever practised in the annals of our history. If, on the contrary, he only determined on his course upon subsequent deliberation, after profiting by those official counsels of which he stated himself to stand in need, the predictions of Mr Murphy's Weather Almanac are entitled to as much of authority as the mere surmises of the Reviewer. As well might the glory and responsibility of the victory of Waterloo be claimed by one whose only connexion with that event had been the command of a very awkward squad at Wormwood Scrubs. It also behoves us to reject this supposition, however gratifying to our own self-love as belonging to the class proposed to be exalted; because, if the supposition be founded on fact, many fatal inferences might follow. On the same principle, we might anticipate the reconstruction of the national Church of England according to Tractarian doctrines; the enactment of a new penal code in Ireland; and the excitement of hatred and all uncharitableness between the Anglo-Saxon races on each side of the Atlantic. How very indefensible must this chivalrous advocate have felt the position of his friends to be, when he thus throws himself into the breach, leads forward les enfans perdus, and exclaims, Me, me, adsum qui feci-in me convertite ferrum!' There is another subject which it is impossible to overlook, and yet it is one very difficult to discuss in a sketch so rapid as the present. The anticipated foreign influence of Sir Robert Peel's government has received a most signal contradiction, in the refusal of the French cabinet to ratify the treaty not only

agreed to by their minister, but in some degree negotiated at their own instance. The disgrace of this event, most fatal as it is to the character of the French government, but not very flattering to our national pride, rests, it is true, mainly with the King of the French and with M. Guizot, not with Lord Aberdeen; but had such an event occurred to Lord Palmerston, no epithets would have been too vituperative to have been applied to his conduct. We shall not imitate this injustice. Let the disgrace rest on the foreign statesmen who are really responsible. We not only hope, but we believe, that for this event the Foreign Secretary is in no respect to blame; we have, however, some curiosity to know in what language the complaints and protests of the British Minister have been expressed."

6

We feel some difficulty in referring to the inexplicable policy of Lord Ellenborough in the East, and yet it cannot be entirely overlooked. In an Empire like ours in British India, which depends so peculiarly upon opinion, and upon a conviction of our moral superiority, a degrading retreat seems to have been meditated, which has only been averted or postponed in consequence of opportune orders from home, or some other happy contingency, which has saved England from unexampled ignominy. Well, indeed, was Lord Palmerston justified in saying that he could 'not conceive a fouler dishonour, or any thing that would have dyed the cheek of every Englishman with a deeper blush, or that would have struck a more fatal blow at our Indian power, 'than a flight from Affghanistan in the circumstances in which Lord Ellenborough's order was issued.' But if this measure was disgraceful on political grounds, where shall we find words to condemn it, if English soldiers, English subjects, and English women, wives and daughters of our countrymen, were proposed to have been deserted, and left in the hands of barbarians? Our diplomatic minister had been treacherously murdered; the sacred compacts of treaty had been violated; our brave troops had been betrayed and cut to pieces; the heroic Lady Sale and her fellowsufferers left in captivity; and yet no effort seems to have been made to avenge their wrongs, or to set them free. Scarcely less disgraceful will it be, if the safety of these unhappy persons has been made matter of low and unworthy compromise. At no former period of our history, in our most disastrous campaigns, has any event occurred which seems to us comparable to the ignominy of Lord Ellenborough's proposed retreat.

Whilst this article has been in the press, accounts have been received of the close of our diplomatic controversy with the United States, by the signature of Lord Ashburton's treaty. Considering peace between England and the United States to be impor