but we are here examining the principle alone which he developes, and the inference to which it conducts, without regard to other practical conclusions which the author may illogieally draw from it, or other modifica tions of his views, which, if the matter were to be brought to the test of experiment, of which, indeed, there is but little chance, he would be compelled to admit. * MEETING OF PARLIAMENT. THE meeting of Parliament, at all times a matter of importance, has been, on the present occasion, marked by results of eminent value. Since the close of the late session the country has been kept in a state of constant disturbance. Ignorant passion had been stirred up by every stimulant of falsehood, pecuniary corruption, and revolutionary frenzy. The rabble had been taught to look with contemptuous insolence, or to turn with daring menace on the administration of law, religion, and government, and the strength of rebellion, flung upon, the ground, seemed to have caught strength from the contact, and to be rising with sudden and formidable vigour within reach of public ruin. The meeting of Parliament was to faction the grand epoch. The major sæclo rum ordo of insult to the Crown, and decay to the constitution, was to take its date from the hour when the House of Commons opened its portals. It was within the circle of this democratic portion of the state, that the democra tic orators were to sweep the sword of vengeance and of oratory, with "huge, two-handed sway;" and an easy vice tory was to be achieved by the WIL BONS and WOODS, and their followers and imitators, over the helpless and supplicating feebleness of government. It is notorious, that this was the expectation and the language of faction throughout England, "Wait but till the meeting of the House of Commons. We have been foiled in the Lords; six-eighths of the peerage have voted that miserable woman guilty, whom we had combined in taking up as a pretence for our combination, boroughmongers and radicals, aristocrats and sans culottes, as we are ; but the Peers are independent of popular passions, they may be frightened, but they can. not be shaken from their seats; they may be menaced at their bar by a hired pleader, but they cannot be pelt ed from the hustings by a hired rabble. In the House of Commons, the field is our own, the ground is measured and divided, every orator has his part, in which, from practice and pertinacity, he is irresistible. Our first object was to bewilder the mob-that we have done; our next is to crush the ministry; and the power, once in the hands of whiggism, radicalism must have the lion's share. What may not the lowest clamourer for reform expect from a ministry, when Lord Erskine holds the Seals, and my Lords Grey and Holland sit at the head of the Treasury?" The House of Commons have met, and the defeat of faction has been unexampled. The coalition of the Foxites and the Radicals within doors, has been worsted and thrown into utter contempt, by vast majorities; and their defeat out of doors has been scarcely less striking. The King has appeared in public; and the homage manifested under the most public and impartial circumstances, has been striking, universal, and decisive, in the highest degree. A more open appeal, or a more triumphant answer, could not possibly have been given. The nation has thus, in the space of a few days, cleared itself from all that mass of degradation which it was the labour of faction for half a year to heap upon it. The process in this matter, was the old customary course of the enemies of the legal order of things. Rebellion, in its affectation of discovery, adheres to precedent with the spirit of a drudge; if it does not hunt for it through the dust of libraries, the practice lies ready in the corruption and avidity of degraded human nature. The same statute in the book of Republicanism, which overthrew the constitution in the days of our unfortunate Charles, directed the overthrow of the government of France, in our own, and is the study of our jacobins at this hour. Its first principle is to vilify the sitter on the throne. It is necessary to revolution, to break up the natural course and current of the affections. The heart in which it is to inhabit, must be cleared out of all its old prepossessions of honour to God and to the sovereign, and domestic love, and personal humanity. Revolution knows neither father nor mother, nor brother nor sister. Moloch's altar disdains all but the blood of kin dred. Revolution will have the heart, but it must first be made hard and sullen, reckless, and thirsty of blood. Like the aspirant in the old Greek mystery, its devotee must steep in slaughter, and be dragged through flame, and be maddened with wild prediction, until his nature is turned, and he bears upon his brow the brand of a gloomy and desperate spirit to the hour of consummation. In England, two centuries ago, rebellion began by insulting the sovereign. In France, the person and habits of Louis, were the first derision of those who, at length, brought their king to the scaffold. In England every species of low insolence has been levied against the monarch as an individual. Every pen and pencil of abomination has been busy to give a false and degrading impression of his principles, his manners, and even of his form and countenance. The etiquette by which the King was restrained from appearing in public, except on matters of state, for a year after the death of the late Sovereign, assisted this insolent imposture. But his visit to the theatres at once gave to the multitude an opportunity of judging for themselves, and gave to the enemies alike of King and people, the most unanswerable proof that the heart of the nation is loyal at the core. But let the history, of this decline and fall of whiggism proceed in its order. The commencement of the session had been for some months pronounced on by the whigs as the moment of victory; their trumpet was already blown through the land. This confidence certainly imposed upon a considerable number, and petitions and remonstrances were prepared to follow up the charge of the triumphant Opposition; that, after the strength of government had been trampled down, the rabble might be upon the spot, to share in the true and original cause of the attack the plunder. But if their confidence deceived others, it lulled themselves; and at the commencement of the session they still had to arrange a plan of offence. The address passed without an amendment or a division. This shewed the genuine feebleness of the cause; but their lapse was now to be recovered byany means, however ha zardous, and Lord Archibald Hamilton, brother, as he is ludicrously called, to Her Majesty's court, (Lady Anne Hamilton being the only female who has condescended to succeed to the honours of the Countess of Oldi,) was put forward on an occasion so pregnant with defeat, contempt, and absurdity. This nobleman, the feebleness of whose oratory forms a singular contrast to the fierceness of his gesticulation, accordingly gave bold notice of a motion for restoring the Queen's name to the liturgy. But this was too rash a hazard, and too giddy for the more rational even among the whigs; in the teeth of all their declarations that the Queen must be cleared on the first trial of the question before the Commons, they dared not burthen themselves with the weight of her alleged criminality, and the question was modified into the " inexpediency and ill-advisedness of omitting her name in the liturgy." The secret history of this curious proceeding goes on to state, that Lord Archibald remonstrated on this occasion with infinite fury and unproductiveness; that he was finally forced to swallow his notice, on pain of being thrown out of his new employment as orator; and that he was further commanded to say nothing from which the party could not subsequently withdraw its neck, by evasion, shuffling, or subserviency. The true object of Opposition was, as it has always been, place. But the adoption of the Queen's cause, in all its blackness, must have acted as a disqualification in the highest quarter. The difficulty, then, lay in using the Queen's question so as to throw out ministers, without involving themselves in it so far as to offend the source of authority. This problem might fairly try the most practised brains; it was the more absurd to trust its manipulation to the touch of Lord Archibald. But after his Lordship had consented to pare his original motion, he had the parental mortification of seeing its spirit altogether abandoned, and the question turned solely upon the right in law, to exclude the Queen's name. This was the most disastrous dwindling down of the subject-matter that could be conceived; the debate was at once thrown into the hands of the lawyers, who perplexed the House till daybreak, and concluded by drawing on their party a consummate and crushing defeat. Such was the result of the whole system of menace, and tumultuary processions, and ostentatious insult to the throne. And this defeat was not less an exposure of the actual weakness of whiggism, than of the paltry and vulgar spirit of subterfuge, in which their whole tactique has consisted. They actually abandoned the Queen, from the beginning of the debate. Whatever chivalry might have fired Lord Archibald's northern blood in giving his notice, it cooled as suddenly as it had heated, and the hope of throwing out ministers usurped at once the whole space which had been devoted in the magnanimous bosoms of Opposition, to the sufferings of the purest of her sex. The whole topic was laid by, like the frippery of the last Lord Mayor's day, till the rabble were to be summoned up to another season of licentiousness, idleness, and clamorous folly. The course of the debate was actually one of the most ludicrous distress. The lips of all the usual haranguers, were padlocked by the strong hand of the Whig Council, which had sat upon the measure two nights before. All the pathetic appeals, and furious invectives, and schoolboy metaphors, which the long vacation had sublimated in the breast of the oratorical aspirants, were rigorously corked up, and the whole course of opposition rhetoric was, with whatever agony, confided to the hands of Messrs Scarlett, Brougham, Wetherell, and Mackintosh, men who, if they talked nonsense, were at least the only ones able to talk it technically. The Queen was, during this dry discussion, left to the silent memory of her wrongs. Her injuries were as little told as her love. One of her orators has described her as, "Patience on a monument;" but if her patience smiled on this occasion, it was in contempt at the hollowness, feebleness and poverty of heart, that had made a traffic of her cause. The whigs had from the commencement, made but a ladder of her rights and wrongs, such as they were; but the moment that seemed to raise them within reach of power, shewed them flinging away the ladder, and they now oscillate, a common scorn to government and people. The result of the legal oratory was a majority of 101 against their cause. This decision left no doubt of the feeling of the House of Commons, the great democratic assembly in which the ruin of administration was to follow the opening of the doors. The prediction is now only ridiculous. "The charge was prepared, "And the lawyers were met," and the old culprit was the culprit still, after all the clamour and boasting of hired advocacy. But assurance has since been made double sure. The committee on the Queen's pension gave the deathblow to all hopes of involving the House of Commons in the mire of the Queen's interest, either of love or politics. Fifty thousand pounds, the original offer, were proposed as her pension. She was bold enough to send down, on the opening of the business, a note, impudently called a message, refusing to receive the bounty of the House, unless her name should have been previously inserted in the liturgy. All the strength of whiggism was mustered, and it was all helpless. In a full assemblage of the intelligence, wealth, and public feeling of the nation; in a House of four hundred and fifty members, the whigs did not dare to divide, upon the Speaker's leaving the chair. The measure of government was carried, with no objections, but from those whose experience suspected the abuse of so large a sum in irresponsible hands, and naturally contemplated new processions, placards, Italian countesses, and estates for other Bergamis. This vote was a direct sentence of the House. If their opinion had been, that the Queen was innocent, this vote would have furnished the plainest of all remonstrances-it would have been offering to the acquitted the bounty which had been offered to the accused. The allowance to the Queen of England, purified of all stain, and holding her place at the head of English morals and society, would have been the same sum allotted to the Princess of Wales, travelling obscurely in a foreign country, stained with degrading accusations, and humiliating herself to the familiar intercourse of chambermaids and footmen. We must for once congratulate the country on the conduct of the Queen. The politics of Brandenburgh House are intricate, but it is obvious that there, too, is "something behind the throne more powerful than the throne." The fifty thousand pounds have been saved to the Treasury. That this desperate refusal should have proceeded from the whigs, their notorious avidity forbids us to believe; and to pension the opposers of government with its own money, would have been a contrivance too exhilarating not to have captivated the most obtuse of their rhetoricians, down to Mr Wetherell himself. But the special adviser who brought her Majesty through the trial, while her hired counsel were exhausting their inge nuity in vain, the Man of Mobs is understood to have stood up triumphantly against the host of those more sus picious friends, who advised her to take the money and thank her fortune. The hope of a subscription to ten times the amount was played before the royal eye. There were strong examples in point, and many a desperado was in the revolutionary books, thriving on the subscription which peers and baronets had flown to heap upon him, at the moment of his conviction for crimes against religion and the state. The Man of Mobs prevailed, the pension was in an evil hour refused, her Majesty is now thrown upon the bounty of the whigsthe empty purses at Brookes's are, at this hour, undergoing a thorough search for the remnant left in them by luckless politics and inveterate gambling, and the hired advocates must go without their fees. This is the measure of true misfortune the L.50,000 was to have healed all the wounds of hurt pride and beggared avarice. But the day of this consummation is now thrown to a hopeless distance the fate of the subscription for the pension will be like that for the plate, of which Alderman Wood was the treasurer, and of which no account has yet reached the public eye. The defeat of Opposition, fighting under pretext of the Queen's calamities, was too complete for a second experiment under that shelter. A motion was brought forward in the subsequent week, which endeavoured to succeed by a bold and open declaration of hostility to ministers. The Queen's name was still used, for the whigs, the aristocrats of the House, willingly stoop to the mob but the course of the debate set full upon the expulsion of ministers from their places. Here again the attack was weak, wavering, and repelled with total discomfiture. After a debate, continued till seven in the morning of the second day, the motion was rejected by 334, to 178. Of members for cities, towns, and bo roughs, where the number of voters is great, and the elections are free voted 149.10 Danmark For ministers 92 against them 57→ majority 35.02 xonim eitt een Thus, of the members who are allowed on all hands to represent the people, 175 out of 280 vote an approval of the conduct of Ministers in the whole course of the late measures. The true and rational feeling from all this is, that the national mind has been disabused, that the gross and virulent falsehoods which had inflamed the multitude, and filled our streets with mountebank exhibitions of sympathy for the associate of her own menials, had either never reached the higher orders of the English mind, or had altogether perished from it that revolution is postponed sine die, and that the men of England may ay return to their homes and occupations, without fear of finding the guillotine at the entrance of their villages. i yd oottesøg eda qurt The close of this debate was characterized by a striking circumstance. The attack on ministers had been repelled, and it was suddenly changed into a charge upon their accusers. Mr Brougham was openly summoned by Lord Castlereagh to answer to a series of imputations, the most direct and most painful that could be pointed to the feelings of a man of honour. It had been remarked, that this advocate, in contradiction to his usual fondness for the foreground, had suffered the debate to proceed till an extraordinary late hour without making his speech. Mr Brougham has not denied, and therefore may fairly be said to have admitted, at least three damning circumstances. 1. That he, without the knowledge, to say nothing of the authority of the Queen, carried on, for eighteen months, a secret negociation with his Majesty's Ministers, the projected close of which was, all along, the Queen's assumption of the title of Duchess of Cornwall-a step which Mr Brougham has always talked of in Parliament as utterly unworthy of the said Queen. Tony 2. That Mr Brougham put an end to this negociation merely because Ministers insisted upon seeing his commission or authority from the Queen in other words, that he begun it entirely on his own bottom, and ended it merely because he was compelled to do so. "3. That Mr Brougham had, for months, in his pocket, a private, express, distinct, and authoritative offer from his Majesty's Ministers to the Queen, which he never took And it is notorious, that a speech delivered at four in the morning has no chance of being published at any length in the newspapers, which are all then on the point of being put to press. In consequence, the report of his answer to those most obnoxious charges defies all intelligibility. It is obscure, narrow, and feeble, for which, in all politeness, we must throw the blame on the newspapers, or rather on the ill luck which postponed his defence till it was beyond their power to detail it. Among the minor convictions of opposition it is to be observed, that all their doubts of the truth of the witnesses against the Queen have been suffered to glide out of view. While the trial lasted, Majocchi, and the rest, were indiscriminately treated as prevaricators and perjurers of the blackest description, and Ministers were commanded, on the severest responsibility, not to suffer one of the culprits to escape. Those menaces have turned to air, the witnesses have been in the hands of their slanderers, and no process has been ventured on, to atone to the indignant majesty of opposition justice. This is decisive of two things, it shews the veracity of the witnesses, and it shews to what base and fraudulent practices the public mind has been exposed, for the mere purpose of prejudging the question by clamour. Actions would have been brought, if the party dared to try the evidence; for, with all their boasted aversion to calling in the arm of the law, actions have been brought against individuals and public journals, and that too, by the most suspicious mode of indictment, where the accused is not permitted to rest his defence on the guilt of the ac cuser. It is painful to be forced still to advert to the conduct of a wretched wo man, whom it is hopeless to redeem from the situation which has brought her so unfortunately before the people. But she is the point of union to a party combined of all the elements of disorder. Rebellion looks upon her, unauthorized or not, as its most important ally; every hater of King and law, from the pilferer in the streets up to the more culpable ruffian who uses his influence for popular inflammation, looks upon the Queen's name as the outwork from which the constitution is to be battered. Whether this is vo luntary on the part of her Majesty or not, the evil is the same; and until she openly disclaims all connexion with these profligate disturbers, she must hope for no share of the confidence of the nation. The King's visit to the theatres was like an unintentional and final appeal to public opinion. The finding of the Bill of Pains and Penalties, in the Lords, was not more decisive than the rejection of the Queen's name from the Liturgy, in the Commons. The theatres added to those the testimony of the people. Nothing can express the affectionate eagerness of the King's reception at both Drury-Lane and Covent-Garden. It has been attempted to say, that the audiences were packed. But how can an audience be packed in London, when every one may force his way? The audiences were of the most general description. At Drury-Lane, there were but few persons of rank, from the shortness of the notice, which precluded the taking of places; and the boxes, like every other part of the house, were filled by the multitude. At Covent-Garden, the interval of a day gave time for an easier arrangement, and a great number of persons of distinction were present: Still the multitude, who were not to be restrained, formed the immense majority, and by those, who could have no motive but their feelings, the King was received with the most unwearied and enthusiastic applause. The Queen's name was occasionally called out, and instantly suppressed by shouts of indignation. His Majesty's appearance was stately and noble in the highest degree. If there was no more in his thus coming be fore his people, than this living answer to the degrading and infamous caricatures which had insulted his person, a desirable object would have been effected-but the manifestation of opinion is of infinitely higher importance. The lies of Radicalism have been refuted in a night-the revolutionary instigators feel that their corruption of the popular mind has been but narrow and superficial-and the friends of law, freedom, and good order, have received an additional and resistless proof, that, in the hours of emergency, as the people may trust to the King, the King may trust to the people. any measure whatever to place in her hands, and which, in point of fact, he did not place in her hands till he himself had left St Omer's, and she had re-entered London. How, all the world asks, how can this be explained ?"-BEACON, No. VII. |
