that such progress has been made towards a reorganisation of the machine, that to stop short at what we have attained is impossible. At the same time there is no just cause to assume that our course is necessarily one of deterioration. Danger there may be there always must be while a great people are changing their views of things-while ancient prejudices, or principles, if the term be preferred, are losing their hold upon men's minds, and the principles or prejudices that are to take their place remain as yet immature. But never surely was revolution-if a revolution it deserve to be called-carried forward with greater moderation than among us. Nobody makes an attack upon property. Many, in their secret souls, may regret that it should have got into heaps, that hundreds should be overladen with it, thousands moderately cared for, and millions in poverty. But the thinking among the poor themselves feel and understand, that they, far more than their betters, would suffer from any attempt to break in upon the established order of things by violence. Nobody, as far as we can understand, seriously meditates an attack upon the House of Lords. The custom of voting there by proxy will probably be discontinued; and, for our own parts, we shall be glad to see it quietly got rid of, for not on any principle of common sense can it be defended. But the House of Lords, the chamber of hereditary legislation, is just as dear to the hearts of Englishmen as the House of Commons; they would not endure that the hand of the spoiler should interfere with it. In like manner, we have no fear for the Church. The Establishment may be still more shaken than it has already been, and in Ireland it will probably cease to hold its ground altogether. But as to the Church, as we believe it to be founded upon a rock, so we are confident that there does not exist the smallest inclination, where there is power, to molest it. On the contrary, we believe that sound Church principles were never more respected by the great body of the middle classes, the real strength of the empire, than they are now; and we are confident that there needs but common prudence, mixed with increasing zeal in the clergy, to confirm this feeling.

And, finally, is the crown in danger? Does any human being, in parliament or out of parliament, indulge in dreams about a presidency? Very much the reverse. We may be, we are, in a state of social transition. We are scheming, indeed living, for the nineteenth century-perhaps for the twentieth-and not for the eighteenth; but it is not, therefore, a settled thing that we are going to rack and ruin; digging at the throne, laying barrels of gunpowder under the House of Lords, or mustering for the overthrow of the altar.

That the opinions which we have ventured to express are held by the great body of the people is apparent from the perfect apathy with which they looked on during the whole course of the recent struggle. Except in the House itself, no human being seemed to be roused. The city of London sent no addresses either for or against the proposed changes. We heard of no gatherings in the Bull-ring at Birmingham, or on Penenden Heath, as in other days. And now that Peel is out and Lord John Russell in, the people seem to care as little about the matter as if Lord Johnstone had merely removed from the Mansion - house, in order that Lord Thomson might come in his place. And the people are right. Events must now take their course; though whether they are to move too fast or too slow, both extremes being perilous, will depend mainly upon the measures which, in the beginning of their reign, the Whig ministers shall propose.

We write it with regret, but a consideration of the materials of which the Whig ministry is composed, compels us to avow our belief, that Lord John will not be able to carry on the government. There is no principle of cohesion in his cabinet. Not only do the individual members hold opinions on all important subjects diametrically opposed, but they boast of these discrepancies to the world. Take one great question, which we defy them to blink-the Irish Church question, and see how they are circumstanced.

In 1835, Lord John Russell forced Sir Robert Peel out of office by proposing and carrying his Appropriation clause. Lord John did not, it is true, persist in this policy, after

he had won his way back to Downing Street, but he made a boast of retaining the opinions which he had advocated while in opposition, and claimed credit on the ground of moderation while putting them in abeyance. He now tells the world that he cannot conceive a more fatal measure than the disestablishment of the Protestant Church in Ireland, and declines taking any further notice of the project of 1835. Meanwhile

Earl Grey has published a manifesto against the Protestant establishment of Ireland. He considers its existence to be the monster grievance in that portion of the empire, and conceives that there is imposed upon the government no more pressing duty than its overthrow. Lord Grey is supported in his opinions by Mr. Sheil; whereas Mr. Macaulay appears to have arrived at the unexpected conclusion that even to pay the priests out of the Consolidated Fund would be injudicious. Not so my Lord Morpeth. He is all for a stateendowment; and, if we understand him right, he would rather take it out of the property of the Church than supply it through the Treasury. Mr. Ward, on the contrary, is for no state-payments at all. He would have religionists of every sort to provide their own parsons as they provide their own physicians, and, saving vested interests, he would seize the property of the Church, as incumbencies fell vacant, and apply them to the general education of the people. Mr. Ward may be a small man in the estimation of the noble lords to whom he plays second fiddle; but he is not small in his own estimation, nor in that of the Radicals, of whom he is one of the representatives; and having Mr. Benjamin Hawes to support him, he flatters himself that he will be more than able to counterbalance Mr. Charles Buller, whose views on religious points are somewhat Puseyite, and who is too honest a fellow to sanction the spoliation of any class of the queen's subjects, even if the class proposed to be plundered be the clergy.

So much for the state of feeling in the new government on a question which is just as sure to be brought forward early in the next session, as day is sure to succeed to night. Let

consider one or two points besides,

in regard to which, if there be greater unanimity in the cabinet, there has been too much of coquetting out-ofdoors to sanction remissness in the executive, or to ensure success after the movement is made. And, first, let us take the sugar question, on which Lord John is pledged to speak out forthwith. It was during the former reign of the Whigs, when Lord John was rising to the first place among them, that in order to get rid of the incubus of slavery in our own sugar colonies, the British parliament voted to the holders of slaves a compensation of not less than twenty millions sterling. The vote was opposed, of course, by the Joseph Hume clique of economists. But a sense of justice prevailed over the opposition, and, with the hearty concurrence of Quakers and philanthropists of every sort, the Whigs, supported by the Conservatives, gained their point, and the planters their money. So bold a confiscation of the property of Englishmen was tolerated only upon the plea that our West-India growers must be placed in a very unfavourable condition of rivalry towards the growers of sugar in the Brazils, and in the Spanish and French colonies. It was held that, taking into account the natural habits of the negro, the planter who cultivated his canes by means of free labour could not possibly compete with the slave-owner; and that to give him any chance at all it was necessary first to compensate him for his loss of property in his labourers, and next to afford him

such protection as a proper adjustment of import duties between him and his rivals might establish. Indeed the levying of duties, comparatively heavy, upon slave-grown sugar was regarded as a measure not merely of fiscal arrangement, but of Christian duty; and as such the Whigs proposed and triumphantly carried it. Now see what they are prepared to do..

On the plea that the repeal of the Corn-laws has entirely revolutionised the commercial policy of the country, the head of the Whig government talks of equalising the duties on sugars, whether fabricated by slaves or by free labourers. Christian duty has thus ceased to have any weight with him. The Quakers, it appears, were mistaken in the use which they

made of this argument; and his lordship, with his friends, accepted their view of the case, simply because it suited their convenience to do so. Perhaps Lord John is right, looking at the matter in a purely religious point of view. A state of things which has existed ever since the world began, which was sanctioned by the example of Abraham, and is nowhere denounced in the New Testament, cannot be opposed to the spirit of the religion which we profess; except, indeed, in its abuses. But we are quite sure that Lord John will never persuade the Quakers to understand this; and we are apt to suspect that he will find more than the Quakers averse, on other and less sublimated grounds, to sanction the arrangement which he proposes to make. John Bull retains a lively recollection of the twenty millions which it cost him to get rid of slavery in his own dependencies; and will not see, all at once, that there can be any fitness in the encouragement of slavery elsewhere. Besides, John cannot endure to be humbugged; and so if the Peelites and Protectionists unite to resist the move, Lord John will be obliged to dissolve and go to the country on a question by no means calculated to win recruits to his standard.

Lord

But worse remains behind. John has taken new ground, such as we cannot believe that he will be permitted to hold throughout a single session. He is for waiting the progress of events. Whatever his own views and the views of his cabinet may be touching the arrangements which would best promote the permanent welfare of the empire, he is determined to do nothing-to propose nothing, till public opinion shall have declared in favour of a change. Now we shall be exceedingly surprised if gentlemen on either side of the house permit this. The purpose for which a cabinet exists is to take the lead in legislation, to think for the people, and to provide them with laws and usages which shall carry them forward in civilisation and prosperity; and the people know this so well that they will not readily be put off with a continued waiting upon Providence. Moreover, there are those, apart from the people, the leaders of faction both here and in Ireland, whose very na

ture must change if they abstain from goading ministers into action. Does any body suppose that Mr. O'Connell will be quiet? He may patronise the Whigs to a certain extent, and count upon getting a good deal out of them; but he is no more willing to relinquish the trade of agitation than he is able. The Repeal cry may be softened for a brief space out of deference to that show of decency which even he is constrained occasionally to put on. But that it will be raised again in due time, assuming the cabinet to persevere in doing nothing, is just as inevitable as that without it the rent would not come in. Lord John may feel and express the utmost reluctance to open a campaign against the Irish Church, but we defy him to escape from it. And what is more, we do not believe that his half-and-half scheme-his Popish establishment here and Protestant establishment there will content any body. Delenda est Carthago. The Irish Church is, in the councils of O'Connell and the WhigRadicals, doomed; and the sooner and the more boldly Lord John or Lord Grey breaks ground before it, the better it will be for all concerned.

But we have not yet done with the difficulties of the new cabinet. The members of the present government are as much divided on the subject of labour in the factories as upon the Irish Church question. An influential section of them, with Lord John at their head, supported Lord Ashley in his last attempt to carry a Ten-hours' bill, while Lord Grey and the more decided of the economists denounced the project as worse than visionary. What is now to be done? Will the government leave to Lord Ashley-on whose re-election next year we count as surely as we do upon any thing that is in the future the honour of fighting once more the battle of the factory children, and winning it? or will Lord John assume the initiative at the inevitable risk of exasperating his supporters of the League and of coming into direct collision with Sir Robert Peel? or, finally, knowing that Lord Grey is against him, will he be content to keep aloof, or possibly vote against his own wishes? These are points which it remains for time to determine. And, let us add, that their settlement, be it managed

as it may, cannot fail of causing very great embarrassment to the cabinet.

So much for some of the questions in domestic policy, about which the new government is at issue with itself. Look now to the personelle of the cabinet, and judge how far such men are likely to go on smoothly together. But a few short months are fled since Lord Grey refused pointblank to sit at the same council-table with Lord Palmerston. This reluctance has, somehow or another, been overcome; but he must be very simple-minded indeed who supposes that the feeling in which it originated can have passed away, or that the noble earl of July 1846 is not just as full of crotchets as was the noble earl of 1845. The noble viscount, on the other hand, has neither forgotten nor-and our readers may take our words for it-forgiven the fracas of last autumn. Lord Palmerston has the happy knack of laying all personal slights and wrongs in the secret recesses of his memory, where they are nursed and kept warm, that they may be brought into activity on the first favourable occasion. Neither would it be just towards the head of the house of Grey to conceal that in this respect his memory is to the full as tenacious. Macaulay's letter, more plain than pleasant, has never departed from his mind, and some fine day, when his colleagues least expect it, this will be shewn. Moreover, it is not one Grey, but many, whom these feuds effect. The noble secretary for the colonies may count fairly on the support of the home-secretary and the chancellor of the exchequer; and two secretaries of state, with the principal member of the Treasury board, seem to us to be capable of holding their own against all the other limbs of the cabinet put together.

Again, it is a matter of grave doubt with us whether Lord John Russell, with all the prestige that surrounds his name, really possesses the confidence of the Whig party. That he does not possess the confidence of the country we take to be an admitted fact. Just at this moment the country cares very little whom her majesty may be pleased to raise to the office of first lord of the Treasury. It is the general belief in society that Sir Robert Peel has left nothing

really useful for his successor to accomplish, and that the best thing that could happen would be a suspension for a few years of the labours of a legislature, which cannot meet without making or changing laws, whether the operation be in itself desirable or not. But the people know that Lord John is a very ambitious statesman. His character for courage, too, is more universally admitted than for discretion; and he has been too long in the hands of the movement to sanction a hope that he will be able to shake himselffree. Something his lordship feels that he must do; and when men are operated upon by this sort of conviction, the chances are at least even that rather than do nothing they will do mischief. For example, was ever admission made by a minister of the crown more perilous than that which Lord John was drawn into on the subject of the estimates? Let the principle be once conceded that the House of Commons has a right to examine by committee before they are brought forward the estimated expenses of each current year, and there is an end to all power in the state, except that of the Commons. There is an end, likewise, to all responsibility by the minister. He ceases to be answerable for the conduct of public affairs. He has no further control over the expenditure of the revenue; embarrassment at home and disaster abroad may befall as fast as they may, but he will not withdraw from the councils of his sovereign on account of either, because the financial committee of the House, and not he, has occasioned them. Could the admission in question, or rather the hesitating reply of the noble lord, be dictated by the misgiving which always affects men's anticipations of the future when the memories of the past are unpleasant? Was Lord John thinking of the progressive decline of the national credit from 1835 to 1841; and considering how, in the event of a similar decadence, he might still hold place and pay in 1850 and beyond it? We suspect that he was; nevertheless, we take leave to assure him that neither the English people nor their representatives will permit the minister of the crown to devolve his gravest and most onerous duties on a committee of the House of Commons. No, not even if the reward

of acquiescence in the arrangement should promise to be a monopoly for life to the firm of Russell and Co. of the Treasury benches, with all the agreeable concomitants thereunto attached, namely, lodging, presidence, patronage, and pay, with royal dinners ad infinitum.

There is yet another damaging circumstance connected with the position of the new government, that in their Irish appointments they have not been happy. It is the general impression-and we believe that the impression is a correct one---that the Whig lord-chancellor of the sister kingdom owes his rise to O'Connell. Not that O'Connell directly patronises the Rt. Hon. Mr. Brady, but it was necessary to place Mr. Brady where he is, in order that another and a surer berth might be provided for the protégé of the Liberator,-who is understood, in like manner, to have imposed upon the authorities at the castle their law adviser. And of the opinions of the O'Connor Don on the great question of repeal, nobody is ignorant. Now an individual Repealer, like an individual Radical, may find it convenient to change his views when he comes into office. Indeed, we will go farther by allowing, that on all questions affecting the government of the empire, men in office receive of necessity so much more light than can be afforded to persons in private life, that it is not to be wondered at, assuming them to be reasonable beings, that, with their privacy of station, they should usually lay aside both the language and the sentiments of demagogues. But in the case of one who has spoken in favour of repeal, whether it were in the House of Commons or in Conciliation Hall, we cannot but think that the cabinet labours under a fatuity which advances him to a post of honour and responsibility under the crown. That Mr. Smith O'Brien should make something of the fact that the repeal functionary never gave in his formal adhesion to the Association, we are not surprised. Mr. Smith O'Brien is certainly not the Solomon of his party, but weak as he is, Nature has given him brains enough to apprehend that it is a good thing for the cause of mischief to get a Repealer into place; and that it is prudent on his own part to excuse the Repealer to the

mob for having accepted it. And Mr. O'Brien is right. Say what they will, the Whig cabinet need not expect that they can ever succeed in persuading the British people that the association of the O'Connor Don with themselves is other than an act either of political treason or political cowardice.

Meanwhile, the enemies of the English connexion are elated,-the friends of the Union exasperated rather than depressed. The former anticipate a ready compliance with all the demands which they make immediately, and calculate, at least the more sanguine among them, on forcing a separation by and by. The latter, disgusted and outraged in their bitterest prejudices, are ready, through sheer dissatisfaction with times present, to make common cause with the wildest of the declaimers against Saxon injustice. We think that measures which go to produce such results are the reverse of wise; for though it be impossible to deny that in former years the Protestants somewhat abused the powers that were intrusted to them, we defy their worst enemies to bring against them now any charge of the sort. And let it never be forgotten, that their worst outbreaks were the results of a loyalty peculiar, but perfectly honest; of a principle which partook as much, perhaps, of hatred to Popery, as of love for Protestantism or for the throne; and could not be dissevered from the remembrance, that their fathers having won Ireland with the sword, kept it, not for themselves but for England, and devolved upon them the solemn duty of keeping it still. We think, then, that a policy which forces the Protestants into hostility, even if it seem for the moment to win the favour of the Roman Catholics, is neither a just nor a wise policy. For the party whom you strive to conciliate make no pretence of loving you for your own sakes, far less desire to be considered one with yourselves; whereas the outraged Protestants used to boast that they were English, not Irish subjects, and were ready to sacrifice property and life itself in defence of the English connexion.

Hitherto we have spoken of the Whig government as of a self-existent and isolated body. We have pointed out the causes of the weakness which