dered out, and the streets were to be lined from Hyde Park Corner to St Pauls, by the various addressers, with all "the pomp of war"-flags, bands, and badges. But the madness was at an end-the whole exhibition failed. Out of perhaps fifty thousand, who in the extravagance of the time had carried up addresses, not five hundred obeyed the summons of " the general." The cavalcade counted perhaps as many more, and consisted of a motely mixture of inn-keepers, cityapprentices, and petty farmers. No person of any consideration joined this parody of a royal progress. Nothing could be more threadbare than this mounted majesty of the mob. Sir R. Wilson acted as Field-Marshal of those "Beggars on Horseback." But the streets were crowded with the gazers, who came attracted by curiosity, and with the pickpockets, who came to plunder the curious. It is one of the peculiar distinctions of the Queen, that she never moves unes corted by the spontaneous activity of this alert body of her subjects. 66 Magnâ latronum comitante catervâ." Where the carcases are, there will the eagles be gathered together. Her triumph infuses itself into the depths of society. Petty larceny is cheered by the discomfiture of law; the precedent of St Stephens has dissolved the Old Bailey of half its terrors, and Filch cries, at the top of his voice, "Long live the Queen.” But nothing was spared that could render this culpable proceeding a more direct offence. The procession was led past Carlton House! though the route by the Haymarket was equally open, and much more common to the public. But this offence has been practised by all the processions. The day chosen was one on which the psalms contained expressions that, in the gross application of party, might allude to the Queen's accusers, and to this odious mingling of human passions, in a solemn act of thanksgiving, was to have been added a manifesto, in the shape of a sermon.— Archdeacon Bathurst, the son of the Bishop of Norwich, was the person who had the misfortune to appear fit for the purpose: and he arrived prompt and prepared to go through his part. The character of this divine is not that of" the prophet honoured in his own country," and he would probably be listened to with more respect any where than in Norfolk. But his piety was nothing to the purpose. He had figured as a pamphleteer, and levelled his eloquence upon the ministry. If this was not the source of his selection, it might be difficult to decide for what cause the royal smiles were employed to seduce the best shot in the shire from his natural enjoyments, and that, too, in the height of the season. The sermon was however forbidden, on ceremonial and acknowledged reasons, and glory" at one entrance quite shut out," to this reverend Meleager. The sermon has since been published, and it is on the whole a temperate production. It may have been fortunate for the Archdeacon's favour at Brandenburgh Court, that it was not preached, for it contains no obvious insults. We should have expected to see him reprimanded by her Majesty, through the medium of her Unitarian Secretary, and put at the bottom of the roll of the future reformed church. In his preface, (a safe ground,) he feels his paces rather firmer, and cur vets, with constitutional freedom, ac cording to the new version of Major Cartwright and his fellow expounders. He there declares his opinion, the opinion of Archdeacon Bathurst! "Quo me Bacche rapis tui plenum?" "That the passing of the Bill would have been, he feared, the loss of the Country, and certainly, the latter end of a government of fixed and known law." To oppose to this great politicoecclesiastical dictum, we have unfortunately nothing stronger than a majority of the Peers. But to the Legislators of the new school, the reason and feelings of the honourable by station, learning, and public service, &c. are trifles light as air." The "proof strong as holy writ," is to be found in brutal clamour, and corrupt intimidation, in the ignorance that will not learn, and the folly that cannot understand. There is nothing quite so absurd as this in the sermon, which is a tissue of common-places, with, however, now and then, a hint sufficient to give an idea, at once of the zeal and of the reluctant restraint of the orator. "Though monarchs, like ourselves, (a pleasant participation of royalty,) may be deceived, yet, "that the people are no evil doers, (to use the language of the Book of Esther,) but may be the children of the most High, and most mighty living God, who hath ordered the kingdom both unto us, and to our progenitors, in the 1 most excellent manner." We cannot find this passage in the Book of Esther, and we suspect, that the Archdeacon's theology is as irregular as his politics. But what similitude is there to be found between the Jews in their captivity, the chosen people humbled before Heaven, and in sorrow and privation honouring the law of their fathers; and an insolent and vitious rabble, urged on by desperate arts to outrages, and burning with the spirit of domination. The reformers of Charles's time found "the sword of the Lord and of Gideon" in the Scriptures, and "to your tents, O Israel," was not the the less a signal of rebellion, because it was taken half in derision and half in madness, from the great code of peace and holiness. We discharge the Archdeacon from imputations like these, because we believe him nothing blacker than the customary tinge of country gentlemen, a pleasant convivialist, and an accurate shot. The good-humoured maxim has its truth. "Un homme qui rit n'est pas dargereux." We have no fears of overthrow from the ambition that feels its "great ap#petite" glutted by a pigeon-match, or a steeple-chase. But the peroration of this sermon contains a passage which the author may have written in sincerity, but which, to those convinced of the Queen's guilt, must seem the most cutting and virulent attack on her feelings. "I see a disposition the most earnest to conciliate those who have listened to her deadliest maligners; and this, which I will now speak for her, is the language I seem to hear from that personage to the assembly of this day: "I have afforded proof sufficient to convince, of my wrongs, the reasons of a vast portion of those who were most impartially disposed to hear evil as well as good of me. For those who were not satisfied, I have added my solemn declaration before God and my country, before the tribunal of my le gislative judges. I have sanctified that declaration of a conscience void of offence toward God and men, as to the charges of my accusers, by partaking of those holy mysteries, from which the most suspicious nature will hardly appeal. "Ask your own hearts, is there any thing in rank or power so fascinating, and at the evening of a troublous and a stormy life, that I should go to my grave, where I hope to find repose, and to be joined again by the saint in heaven which so untimely left me with the drag chain of deliberate perjury ? Is there any thing in the applause of a multitude here which can recompense me for the loss of the applause of angels in Heaven? Am I such a fool as to set time against immeasurable eternity, and at the moment, too, when human life wanes? Did I not believe even in Christ as the rock of my salvation, yet is there not a something after death, a something adown that stream which carries us to all eternity, enough to appal the imagination, and arrest the boldness of one who would defy wantonly the terrors of the invisible world? "Do you think that I would make a nation a mockery for aught which on this side of the grave is left me? If you think so, you would do it yourself; and you partake not of that charity, which thinketh no evil, and which hopeth all things." This composition is cast somewhat in the romantic and poetical mould, which distinguishes the rhapsodist of the Queen's answers. But it touches on thoughts, which, to the general conviction, are appalling. Those proceedings are of the highest importance as a clue to the general intricate design of the performers. The guilt or innocence of the Queen is comparatively trivial, but as matter of example. The true conclusion to be drawn, is to the unsparing and pestilent activity of the disturbers, who have taken upon their hands the pretended purification of the state; the eager and sleepless diligence with which they labour to take possession of every point from which the constitutional fortress may be commanded; their struggle for the Bar, the Army, and even the Church;-" Omnia maria vexata." Every harbour and creek of the civil polity has been searched for a secure deposite of their contraband, imported from the decayed stores of French democracy. The republican spirit knows nothing too high or too low for its flight; "Now shaves with level wing the deep, now soars up to the burning concave." It is yet pent within strong bounds, but the hour that the nobler guardianship of the gate is removed the hour that a relaxed vigilance, or a corrupt fellow-feeling, is entrusted with the key; in that hour the portals will be flung open, and Satan be sent for to sicken and taint the peace of general human nature. It is the business of all honest and honourable minds to guard against this mighty misfortune. The old game of statesman against statesman is superseded. The business of the time has been driven home to "men's hearts and bossom." The legitimate trials of ability among the leaders of the great parties of the Legislature-those clashings of high-tempered and polished minds in whom the strife struck out only the stranger brilliancy-those rollings and hurtlings of the moral thunderclouds, elevating the eye that gazed upon them, and with it elevating the heart by their evidence of the range and magnificent powers of our nature and after all, however the concussion might end, which ever mass of those splendid meteors might be absorbed by the other, ending only in good-in pouring down freshness and fertility on the reaim-all this generous and stately contest has at least, for this time, come to a close. The danger has descended among the whole lower multitude, and has become only the more deadly. We have now to provide against an inundation which will come round every man at once, and take the ground from under his feet. The mind of the realm is now to be summoned to stand upon the dykes, and repel the entrance of the rude and dreary element that now roars and beats round its boundaries. The principle and manliness of the nation have certainly been roused. It would not be in the nature of things, that the men who have learned their liberty in the volume of the constitution, and their religion in the Scriptures, should long tolerate the slanders and perversions fastened on both by the men of the placard and the dagger. But the experiment of endurance has gone too far, and the public mind cannot be too speedily shown the hollowness and utter hypocrisy of Reform, and its real, and growing, inextinguishable, appetite for prescription. Reform is a jest -it answers a purpose with the weak, who will not see, and the negligent, who will not resist. It serves as a general disguise to the varied, countless, speculations of public ruin. Every adventurer on this enterprize of midnight, has his different object. Reform is the temporary cover of all It is the crape of the robber, but the moment that detection was no longer dreaded, the crape would be flung aside, every abhorrent physiognomy would be displayed, and the work of plunder, and brutal revelry, and bloody domineering, would go on according to individual caprice, passion, and revenge. The Black Dwarf would be as black as nature made him-and the Scotsman would glare with his own open torvitude of glance. The question is not whether Whig or Tory shall sit on the treasury bench, but whether we shall manfully, and by the exertion of our reason and strength, abate the nuisance of the state, or see the gullotine erected at Charing Cross? Whether we are to defend our lives and properties, the hopes of our children, and the fair freedom of England, or to lay down our despised necks on the block of a reckless, lawless, insatiable democracy? Whether we are to see the mild dignity, and venerable learning of our judges, administering the ordinances of our forefathers, or to be ourselves dragged before the tribunal of a savage licentiousness? Whether our last hour is to be soothed and hallowed in the fulness of years, by the presence of wife, and child, and friend, and the consolations of religion; or life to be torn from us in its vigour, and the common struggle of nature be embittered by the tauntings of a bloodthirsty rabble, and not less insulted by the graver ribaldry of some squalid missionary of republican deistical abomination. "TO BE, OR NOT TO BE? THAT IS THE QUESTION." There is nothing of partizanship in these feelings. Let the ministry find their right to public confidence in what they have to shew of public service; in their conduct of the nation through difficulties, which it was the fashion of their opponents to pronounce insuperable, and for withstanding which, they stood the brunt of ridicule for many a year. They have established their monuments, where no forgetfulness, nor folly, nor faction, can dissolve their firm and marble fabric-in the liberation of every kingdom of Europe. Their niche is prepared in that temple where nations offer thanksgiving, and come to draw new hopes and inspirations for freedom. Of the individuals we do not speak. It is not for humbler minds to allot and parcel out the praise of the great directing influences of the council and field. We speak of them as a whole, as that noble combination of vigilance and courage, of practical ability, and lofty speculation, which has saved Europe. It is easy to talk slightingly of services past; it men who called Napoleon the “child Te Deum facimus, et cælo locamus. Those who can believe in nothing but a paltry lucre, or a still more paltry ambition, as the stimulants of accomplished minds, to guide the state, are not worthy of an answer. Yet the denial of all disinterested impulses comes with a dubious grace from those who profess themselves ready to dip their hands in blood, and dare the scaf fold for simple patriotism. But the competition is not between ministers and their parliamentary opponents. We are not called on to any nice and pacific balance of wisdom or wit-Mr Tierney's modicum of pleasantry against Mr Canning's eloquence-or Mr Brougham's furious garrulity, and never-ending panegyric of himself and his friends, loose as they are on the face of a troublous world, "Rari nantes in gurgite," against Lord Castlereagh's temperance, decorum, and knowledge-or Lord Car narvon's contempt of the English language, and merciless, blind, indiscriminate butchery of law, politics, and divinity, against the Premier's senatorial sense and dignity. This was for "the piping times of peace." We have now no choice but between the constitution as it stands, and none; the seats from which the ministry were expelled, would not be left to the stiff and formal possession of parliamentary successors. They would be leapt into, before they were cold, by the men of the dungeon-by hungry fraudulent bankruptcy-by rapine fresh from his chains-by haggard, insane, remorseless homicide. But, in this consummation, there would be no conclusion, the victory would be only the signal for more inveterate animosity; the triumph of Radicalism would generate nothing of even the ominous and gloomy repose that follows the ordinary triumph of tyranny. The right hand of Radicalism hates the left, and the first labour of the prosperous would be, to send their associates, where, after life's fitful fever, if they did not "sleep well," they should at least sleep soundly. The late proceedings in Westminster Hall have not a little added to the general knowledge of this faction. Cobbet, "clarum et venerabile nomen," to the whole muster-roll of public disturbers, has been lately brought to justice for two libels; the latter, one of that atrocious nature which his jury thought not undeserving of a mulct of one thousand pounds, a sum which it would drain the united purses of the whole body corporate of revolution to pay. These libels were against two of his own helpers in the Register, now old and venomless. But the chief amusement was furnished by Mr Brougham, who conducted the former of those cases. The spruce barrister, now still more spruce, from his new honours of the gown, was palpably afraid to trust himself within the brawny sweep of his antagonist. He began with a profusion of compliment, and wandered about the skirts of the accusation with a mixture of mauvaise honte, affected meekness and zeal, very delightful to, in the theatrical phrase, one of the most crowded and fashionable audiences of the season." Cobbet kept his eye fixed on his future victim with grim and sardonic contempt. Still, the Queen's attorney-general muster ed his tropes, and paced his ground, like the reluctant hero of the highway. "He handled the rope, and he traversed the cart, "And he often took leave, but was loth to depart." Towards the close of his speech, insipid as his best in St Stephens, he ventured a little onward, and talked of libel in a tender and enigmatical way. This was the least return for his brief. But then came Cobbet's turn; he made but a single spring till he reached the centre of the question, and leaving Cleary untouched, rushed mugiens, with hoof and horn upon the barrister. The battle was here" to the strong." He tossed and gored the unfortunate jurisconsult with ferocious and exulting ease. He tore his pleadings into fragments, and flung them up for the sport of the ring.— He scattered the silken advocate's metaphors, compliments, and reasonings, smoothly as they were laid, like the Sybil's leaves, into nonsense by the puff of his nostrils. The triumph was complete. Mr Brougham sank under his merciless and persevering burlesque, and when the turn for revenge was come, and his bulky antagonist stood over him breathless with his sport, he shrunk away without ever turning to cast a glance upon him.— He made no reply. Mr Brougham, was not engaged on the next trial.— Weby no means rank this person among the pledged subverters, but he had no answer when Cobbet charged him to his teeth with having, as Dogberry would have said, "written himself down-radical," and we presume he now rather regrets his early indiscretions. We have not time now to do more, than advert to a project, which would form a relief to those miserable bustlings of mediocrity. A Royal Society for the encouragement of Literature is about to be formed. Nothing can be more promising or admirable than the principle. But in the general opinion of London, it is already evident that the intended number of associates is too small. The institution ought to comprehend every name that has done honour to the literature of the country, and to open its doors to the hope of every one who may yet do it honour. It should be a great assemblage and array of loyal genius, against the libelling and seditious scribbling of the day. This is, we understand, exclusively, the project of the King: |
