allowance. This likewise was of course a minor point, and, par consequence, NO RESIGNATION.

The 13th of February we find them in a minority of ten on Mr. Herries' motion for certain financial returns, but-NO RESIGNATION.

On the 28th of the same month we find them in a minority of twentyeight on Mr. Liddell's motion concerning Sir John Newport's pension, but NO RESIGNATION.

The 26th of May, on Mr. Villiers' motion on the corn-laws we find them in a minority of 123, but NO RESIGNA

TION.

During the same year we find them in the following successive minorities on a matter of vital importance, namely, Lord Stanley's Irish Registration-bill:

March 26th, in a minority of sixteen, but NO RESIGNATION.

May 18th, ditto of nineteen, but

NO RESIGNATION.

May 20th, ditto of three, but No

RESIGNATION.

June 11th, ditto of eleven, but No

RESIGNATION.

As a wind-up to the session we next find them, on the 22d of June, in two minorities of forty-nine and eleven, but NO RESIGNATION. We cannot weary our readers by going seriatim through the successive defeats they have sustained since the commencement of last session. Suffice it to say, they were beaten SEVEN times, and that we were not surprised to find, as usual, that there was NO RESIGNATION. Thus we find those Whigs, who always arrogated to themselves the credit of being the lofty defenders of freedom, introducing into the constitution, from a love of office, the shabbiest motive that can influence the conduct not merely of a statesman, but a gentleman- the despotic precept, that in this country a government can continue to exist in the face of a declared majority in both houses. The step which Sir Robert Peel finally adopted was a bold and decisive

one.

A vote of confidence in ministers had been carried fourteen months previously by a majority of fifteen. Yet in the same House of Commons Sir Robert Peel carried a motion of want of confidence in the same men, and a motion asserting that their continuance in office was in violation of the spirit of the constitution. They

then, with singular tenacity of life, did not resign, but they dissolved; it was pushing their right to the very extreme under the circumstances, but they did so, and the nation, by a vast majority, has deliberately decided against them. The circumstances attending this dissolution were of a nature so singular, and betokening such a combination of recklessness and incompetency, that they come within our province to examine.

The Whigs had, as we have shewn, by gross financial mismanagement, brought matters to such a state, that every year there was an increasing deficiency in the revenue of the country as compared with its expenditure. They said that the country must therefore be taxed to the amount of 1,700,000l. per annum to make up the deficiency. They, with this object, proposed to encourage slave-grown sugar, and, in the very critical state of the Canadas, to exasperate our colonies there by reducing the prohibitory duty on foreign timber. These plans we have not space to discuss, and therefore pass to that which crowned their fate, and on which they prided themselves as their master stroke of policy-their proposed alteration in the corn-laws. They found themselves each session sinking lower and lower, and every debate and every new election strengthening the phalanx of the Conservative opposition. To rescue them some bold measure should be adopted-some popular topic of excitement to throw forth to the nation, and then, when they had shaken society to its foundation, to dissolve, and to be once more borne into continuance of power on the turbid waves of the storm they had raised. The happy idea of the "big loaf" occurred to them. Let us, said they, proclaim cheap bread, cheap sugar, and the elections must be in our favour. They accordingly did so. But, instead of that terrible agitation on which they doubtless counted, those meetings of 150,000 that shook the country with their threats before the passing of the Reform-bill, the nation received the

value, by the laws of nature, is as fluctuating and uncertain as the seasons which produce it. We would wish to have bread cheap; we would wish, if possible, to have it for nothing; but, as we cannot, we prefer to continue as we are, paying a price that gives fair remuneration to the farmer in times of plenty, and with a power, when corn is scarce, of buying foreign grain at a mere nominal import duty. The present corn-laws may doubtless require alteration, but it must be a very different alteration from that proposed by ministers, and one which will not compel us to pay a high instead of a nominal duty on corn when it becomes really dear. The principle of the sliding scale-a principle which adapts the price to the degree of scarcity of the article to be purchased is manifestly just-it perhaps requires such alteration as experience of its practical working may suggest, and we make no doubt that it will receive from a powerful Conservative ministry, able to carry their own measures, much more efficient amendment than can be given to it by the tinkering of a ministry who are dependent for the carrying of their measures on the will of an opposition more powerful than themselves. We believe that the above few sentences do really comprise the sentiments of the vast majority of the people; and that it was as well the conviction of the inefficacy of the measure itself, as a general disgust at the unconstitutional government of the Whigs, that caused the agricultural districts, as well as the great manufacturing and commercial towns of Leeds, Liverpool, London, Dublin, &c. &c., to call to power that Conservative opposition, in whom their confidence had for ten years been gradually acquiring renewed strength.

Thus, my Lord John, you have been disappointed. The people have discovered your "big loaf" to be a big lie; and there has not been a meeting of 150,000 persons at Birmingham, as in 1831, to proclaim no payment of taxes, unless we pay you your quarter's salary-no meeting, declared by the lord-chancellor to be illegal, with which, as once, you, a minister of the crown, may enter into open correspondence, to encourage violation of the law. There has been no castle burnt at Nottingham-no

Bristol riots-no town gaol at Derby broken open-none of those desperate riots that disgraced the realm in 1831- -no anxious display of violence for the purpose of retaining you in office. The poor peasantry of Ireland did indeed make a fight for you, at the bidding of a leader that has said he despised you; and even that contest was unsuccessful, but sufficient to throw a light on the character and motives of those who pulled the strings of the puppets: the people were glad to be rid of you.

Our readers will observe, that we have all along argued on the supposition that the Melbourne ministry do not mean to act so ungentlemanly or so very unconstitutional a part, as to advise their youthful sovereign to diminish the present loyal and warm attachment felt towards her by men of all parties, by retaining them in office, when once a decided majority of that house, which she has summoned together for the express purpose of declaring whether the nation confides in them or not, shall have recorded its verdict against them. We heed not the ominous tone which the Standard has of late, on some occasions, thought right to assume; and really after the professions made by Lord John Russell, Mr. Macaulay, and others of the ministry, that they would no longer hold office under such circumstances, when we find notwithstanding those professions and the terrible infringement of all the free principles of our constitution, which would be implied by such retention of office-when we still find in any a scepticism, an unbelief in these pledges, and a supposition that these men could place their queen in such an invidious and disagreeable position it affords the best commentary on their past conduct. For ourselves we own frankly that we do not believe them capable of such baseness; and refuse to entertain the belief that for another quarter's salary they could willingly insult a nation, hazard the popularity of the queen, or peril her crown.

We have no doubt that when Sir Robert Peel returns to office he will find, as he avowed in 1839, his chief difficulty to be Ireland. He will be greeted once more with the unmeaning cry of "Justice to Ireland." We say unmeaning, for wherein has Ireland been treated with injustice?

Of what has she now to complain? She too has had her reform-bill, her emancipation-bill, her poor-laws, an altered system of her corporations, and a profuse distribution of government patronage for ten years amongst the Radical and Popish portion of her population. Is it for these that we are threatened with rebellion? Rebellion, indeed! Let them try it. With all his faults we cannot divest ourselves of a sort of personal liking for O'Connell, based, strange as it may appear, on his immense and varied talent and wonderful assurance. We, therefore, give him a friendly hint (though his deficiency in the courage of a Catiline may perhaps render it unnecessary) to beware how he gets his neck into any legal noose, with the iron Duke to pull it.

Let the Protestants of Ireland be but united; and then, even without the aid of this country, they can have nothing to fear. It is always more difficult to keep a victorious than an assailing army together; and again we say, be united. It is melancholy to think there should be need of such advice; but when we look into the speech now lying before us, of the Right Hon. Frederick Shaw to the electors of the Dublin University, it would be folly to deny the fact that there has been a schism in the Conservative camp at the other side of the water. The men who seek too much are if possible more detrimental to the interests of their party, than those who seek too little. The time when moderation, always expedient, becomes graceful, is in the moment of victory; and we trust that the great cause of Conservatism will be no longer scandalised by such attempts as were recently made to oust Mr. Shaw from the representation of the University because he had not deserted his post, or from inability to obtain all that might be wished, neglected to secure all, which the great leader of his party thought it advisable to seek. We hold in high respect, no doubt, the tinkers and tailors of the old Dublin corporation; but we advise them in future to abstain from dictating to educated Ireland, as represented by the electors of the Dublin University, whom they ought or whom they ought not to send to parliament. Let the schism,

if ever it arrived at that dignity, be now forgotten and buried in the long list of upwards of eleven hundred of those electors who have deprecated its continuance and sanctioned by their approval the disinterested conduct and laborious exertions, where exertion might be useful, of Mr. Shaw, whom we presume we may now regard as their member for life.

We have thought it right to allude to this affair; for though it appear trivial here, yet was it a sign of the times in Ireland, and nothing connected with the history of the Protestant party there can be now considered unimportant.

There is one more topic on which we must say a word, differing from many of our Conservative brethren as to the light in which we view itwe mean the queen's speech. We rejoice that it has been made what it is. In the first place, its approval of a course of policy so contrary to the sentiments of the great majority of both houses of parliament affords the earliest possible opportunity of each house recording its decision against ministers, and terminating their career. This, therefore, is some gain. In the second place, their preferring to make their royal mistress thus publicly appeal to the country in their behalf- their endeavour to quit office with the queen engaged, in the eyes of the more ignorant classes, by her recent speech to uphold their policy, is all that was wanting utterly to remove any regret amongst gentlemen at their departure from office; and to prove that as they reigned without dignity, so they fell without decency.

We have told the tale" of the Whigs literally "as 'twas told to us" by their actions. Let our readers determine whether these have proved their incompetency; and as to proof of their shabbiness, we are content to rest our case on their crowning act of disrespect both to the nation and their sovereign, as exhibited in the technically called "Queen's Speech."

And now, my Lord John Russell, think you, to use your own words in a familiar epistle to a seditious assembly,-think you that "IT IS IM

POSSIBLE THE WHISPER OF FACTION SHOULD PREVAIL AGAINST THE VOICE OF A NATION?"*

read-that is, with a copious apparatus of interpretation, illustration, and commentary, supplied by contemporary and subsequent discovery and rescarch-we seem to be admitted into the immediate society, or presence, of the persons described. The various traits of their moral physiognomy become familiar to our eye; it is very desirable to sketch their faces in our note-books, before we lose them in the crowd; or rather, we should continually renew and vary our sketches, so as to present the warriors, the statesmen, the orators, of whom we read, in the very attitude and with the very expression which history gives them. We may not only have a portrait of Burleigh in the court of Elizabeth, but in his own library; when, with his robes, he had put off the lord keeper. We need not gaze upon Raleigh amid the glories and mysterics of El Dorado, without glancing at him for a moment in the luxurious indolence of reverie, and smoking his first pipe in England. Alexander, indeed, wished to be painted by Genius alone; but our delineations are for our individual improvement, and, however rude the outline, they will not be without benefit, if properly understood and moralised. In the repose of a country autumn, we have the most pleasing opportunities for the prosecution of these interesting studies of the human mind:

peace,

Domestic life in rural leisure pass'd."
Task, b. iii.

Our studies in literature and art would derive a pleasing assistance from the constant practice of daily annotation. The miscellaneous extracts and observations of Atterbury, slight and superficial though they be, which were found among the papers of Sir Robert Walpole, give agreeable glimpses of his critical taste. If a copy of Montaigne, with the autograph of Shakspeare, has in our day been almost deemed worth its weight in silver, what would have been the value of his diary? The personal history of a great writer, or a good man, is always full of enjoyment. To travel over the glories of his mind, to think with him, to feel with

him, to live with him-this would be indeed delightful.

But the delight has been very moderately supplied. The diary of Evelyn is an interesting, but imperfect specimen. When Johnson was writing the Life of Dryden, he applied to Cibber for some information respecting the personal habits of the poet; and his hopes were raised to a great elevation by the assurance of Cibber, that he had met Dryden a thousand times, and was as intimately acquainted with him as if he had been his own brother. All these admirable promises dissolved into air; and Cibber communicated nothing of more importance, than that Dryden sat by the fire in winter, and at the window in summer. If Cibber had possessed Boswell's curious felicity of journalising, what a treasure of fine thoughts should we have obtained from Button's! The slight notices of eminent men by Aubrey, uncertain as he sometimes is, are inexpressibly pleasing. Johnson always urged upon his friends the necessity of keeping a diary, in the more general sense of an individual record. He might have pleaded the example of famous men in old times:-"Sometime I hunt," are the words of Pliny, "but even then I carry with me a pocket-book, that while my servants are busied in disposing the nets and other matters, I may be employed in something that may be useful to me in my studies; and that if I miss my game, I may at least bring home some of my thoughts with me, and not have the mortification of having caught nothing." The sketch-book of the painter is his journal. The composer avails himself of the same aids to reflection. Beethoven might have been seen in the streets of Vienna with his tablet in his hand.

A diary, properly arranged, ought to present the advantages of a commonplace-book. The minutest instructions for forming a journal of this description are contained in a letter from the famous philosopher Locke to M. Toinard. But without adopting a plan so strictly methodical, much may be done towards the collection of knowledge. We cannot begin to make the attempt too early. The Adversaria of the great scholars of the sixteenth century are monuments of their industry, if not always