ART. XII-A Letter to His Majesty George the Fourth, King of the United Empire of Great Britain and Ireland, on the Temper and Aspect of the Times. London. 1822.

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N 1815 a war unexampled in its nature, duration and consequences terminated. This war raised the character of Britain to a height which was before thought inaccessible to human effort. It placed her in almost every variety and combination of situation and circumstance that could destroy the unanimity, corrupt the morals, blight the honour, baffle the wisdom, dissipate the courage, and exhaust the hopes, resources and energies of a nation, only to render her triumph the more glorious and complete. Her conduct and achievements in this contest form a picture even oppressive with grandeur and sublimity. Not only the fleets and armies of half the world, but the fiercest and deadliest passions of human nature were arrayed against her ;—not only her fame and possessions, but her good principles and existence were attacked:-seductions, snares, evil examples, traitorous counsels, and the dagger of the assassin all combined with open assault to accomplish her destruction; and still she triumphed! Wealth seemed to spring from expenditure, armies and fleets from the waste of battle, and courage and hope from disaster. She entered the conflict poor and feeble, she came out of it rich and invincible. The last years of this long and destructive war saw Europe deluged with her wealth, the sea covered with her fleets, and her armies conquering at once in three quarters of the globe. The means by which this success was gained were as honourable as it was resplendent. Her faith remained untarnished amidst universal perfidy, her magnanimity and virtue gathered vigour as those of her enemies vanished, and, scorning to repel crime with crime, she fought with no other weapons than those which were offered by honour and honesty.

Her victory was the gain of the whole world, but it was more especially that of those whom she conquered. It was not alone the triumph of men, or of a nation, but it was the triumph of feelings and principles. She did more than crush a tyrant and usurper-than defeat combined Europe and America-than dash to pieces the most gigantic combination of force, resource, talent and energy that the world ever heard of;—she restored dethroned Religion, she re-established all those feelings and principles which dispense prosperity and happiness to individuals and nations, and which it had been the object of her enemies to destroy.

Thus fought and triumphed Britain, and she had her reward. At the peace she obtained every thing she wished for. It secured to her glory such as had never blazed round her, and power such

as she had never possessed. Never was any other nation the object of such universal and boundless honour, admiration and benediction.

What her population then was, may be gathered from her conduct and achievements. No other than a nation in the highest degree moral, religious, loyal, wise, industrious, and enlightened would thus have rallied round the throne and altar when these alone were attacked-would thus have remained upright amidst the universal sacrifice of honesty around it-would thus have continued unshaken amidst the most grievous sufferings and the most feeble hopes: and no other than the most perfect form of government, and the most able ministry could have called forth, concentrated and directed the resources and energies of such a nation so as to enable it thus to plan and act-to suffer and obtain.

What has been the history of this country-the same country which in 1815 enjoyed this splendid reputation—since that period?

In 1816, a large portion of the lower orders were disaffected, and the Spa-fields meetings and riot took place.

In 1817, in consequence of this disaffection, the Habeas Corpus Act was suspended.

In 1819 the disaffection was found to have extended to the great mass of the lower classes. In the metropolis and various parts of England and Scotland, innumerable meetings of these classes were held, at which the most diabolical sentiments and intentions were promulgated. The government and all constituted authorities were loaded with execrations-the church and its ministers were reviled-threats of assassination were directed against many of the most eminent and spotless persons in the nation-mothers were called upon to inculcate on their children hatred of their rulers and the ministers of religion, and to instruct them in sedition and blasphemy; and combinations were entered into, the declared object of which was, to overthrow the government, to commit the most atrocious public and private robberies, and, in truth, to perpetrate almost every species of wickedness. The disaffected considered their success to be certain, and, from their immense numbers, it was regarded by the rest of the nation to be possible. A large addition was, in consequence, made to the army, Parliament was assembled at an unusual period, and several new laws were passed considerably abridging the liberties and privileges of the nation, but which were the only alternative to the loss of the whole.

In 1820 a rebellion broke out in Scotland, the ramifications of

which extended to several parts of England. A plot was formed for assassinating the ministers. The queen was solemnly arraigned at the bar of the House of Peers. Before one syllable was offered in disproof of the charges brought against her, the lower orders in almost all parts of the country voted her addresses compounded of equal portions of adulation, slander and sedition. The laws were openly set at defiance-attempts were made to corrupt and intimidate public justice, and a ferment was kept up which threatened the dissolution of every thing sacred in the empire.

In 1821 the queen died. On the day of her funeral an immense concourse of the lower orders assembled avowedly for the purpose of violating her last wishes and the authority of government. The military and civil power was attacked and overpowered, blood was shed over her ashes, and amidst shouts and execrations and laughter they were borne through the metropolis, the appalling trophy of infidel and revolutionary victory.

In 1822, up to the hour in which these lines are traced, the same turbulent and seditious spirit has been manifested by the lower ranks at almost all the public meetings which have been held for the purpose of discussing the state of agriculture. The honest, intelligent and loyal speaker has been hooted down, and the seditious and senseless demagogue has been alone listened to. Whenever resolutions and petitions containing fair statements and rational arguments have been proposed, they have generally been rejected for others alike false, absurd and inflammatory, and which have been passed only because they reviled the government and the legislature, and called for the subversion of the constitution.

In what way this mighty and deplorable change has been effected by what means it has come to pass that a nation has so suddenly fallen from pre-eminence in intelligence and virtue to so low a point of ignorance and vice, constitutes a problem the solution of which interests alike the peasant and the statesman. In the best of times the richest lessons for promoting individual and general prosperity might be drawn from it; and in the present ones of mob philosophy and regicide triumph, it will point out how nations may be saved from ruin, and mankind preserved from that abyss of barbarism, guilt and misery into which it seems to be madly hastening.

It is demonstrable that the change has not resulted from any thing that would in the smallest degree justify it; the disaffection has not arisen from misrule, nor the atrocities from provocation. At no former period was the practical freedom of the subject so great; and never did the nation possess a sovereign and ministry who more scrupulously abstained from trenching on public privileges, or overlooked so many wanton abuses of liberty on the

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part of the people. Never were the laws more impartially administered, or the affairs of the nation conducted with more integrity. Never were the poor treated with greater kindness and iberality by their superiors, and never were greater efforts made to provide for their bodily and mental wants. The distress which has occasionally pressed upon them has not been produced by the government, nor has it been in the power of government to remove it, and it has not been more severe than they have frequently borne in former periods with exemplary patience and unimpaired morality and loyalty. If the disaffection and demoralization of which we have spoken could plead public wrongs in justification, we would seek no farther for a cause, and merely call for the redress of the injustice and the punishment of its authors. This they cannot do, and we must therefore find their origin and remedy elsewhere.

That LIBELLOUS PUBLICATIONS have been the instruments which have accomplished the change is now so generally admitted that it would be idle to offer proofs of it. Not many months ago the intelligent part of the community bore public testimony to the fact, and no other evidence is necessary. The questions, we think, are however without any satisfactory answer-Who protect and perpetuate these publications? Whence, when almost all the upper classes profess to hold them in abhorrence, arise their profusion, their ability to defy the law, and the almost insuperable difficulties encountered in the attempt to bring them to punishment? As we conceive the source of our calamities and disgraces to lie under these questions, we shall chiefly confine ourselves to their consideration.

We have sundry reasons for investigating the subject at the present moment. Although the nation enjoys a comparative calm, it is only the languor of exhaustion, and not the repose of restored health, If the crimes and dangers which we have enumerated had sprung from causes temporary and insulated in their nature, we would, in charity, hope that they had passed away for ever, and our efforts should be used to bury their remembrance in oblivion. But their origin was wholly different. They were the fruits of instructions which are still given-of a system which is still acted upon-of principles which are still believed in, and of wishes which are yet cherished. The only difference therefore in our situation is, that we have the silence of preparation, instead of the thunder of conflict. Nothing is wanted to renew the battle, but a season of scarcity, or manufacturing distress, or some similarly favourable moment for applying the torch to the passions of the multitude, and such a moment must by the laws of nature, at no distant period, arrive.

While the anarchists among us are thus a gigantic sect completely organized, acting on abstract opinion, guided by the creed that whatever is, is wrong in our political and socical system, and having for its object the overthrow of this system, various causes are operating to give it strength and hope, and to render its existence permanent. Its disciples are numerous in almost all other countries, and in one, or another, they are constantly in the field, either for battle or parade; the representative governments which have been established have each what is called an opposition; and it unfortunately happens that these oppositions, including our own, promulgate opinions, and pursue conduct, which, at the best, bear a very close resemblance to those of the Anarchists. The press, the mighty engine of the sect, revels here in uncircumscribed licentiousness; in France it has become comparatively free; and in some other nations it has exchanged the fetters of monarchical for those of mob despotism, and publishes scarcely any thing that is not directed against the best interests of mankind. In this state of things it would be criminal in us to slacken those exertions which, we are vain enough to believe, have hitherto contributed to frustrate the plans of the revolutionists, more especially when we find ourselves supported by the most powerful and illustrious allies. Never, we think, since the commencement of our dangers and disgraces, were the friends of the nation so full of courage and energy, so unanimous, so well armed, so accurately informed of the enemy's resources and plans, and the means by which he has become so powerful; and so resolutely determined to act no longer on the defensive, but to carry the war into his own camp, as at present.

We now enter upon our inquiry.

The inseparable attendants of freedom are party and faction; (we are by no means sure that in politics these terms are not synonimous). It is one of the laws of nature that conflicting doctrines and contending bodies shall be co-extensive with liberty of speech and action; and it redounds but little to the honour of mankind that generally the collision of honest opinions has the least, and self-love and self-interest have the greatest, share in forming them. Our constitution affords every facility for their growth by the liberty, great in theory and almost boundless in practice, which it bestows; and in addition to this, it operates powerfully, though unintentionally, to call into being and foster a political one known by the name of the Opposition, which too often acts in hostility to its letter and spirit, and which, continually coming in contact with the interests of the nation, invariably regards them as secondary to its own. The highest offices in the state are, with few exceptions, open to all; and those

who