ties under the sun the nostrums, and the good feelings, peace and happiness of empires, the spoil. We need only enumerate the objects which guided the Whigs of 1688, to prove that all their principles but one, have been renounced by those of the present day. To preserve the church from ruin, the constitution from innovation, and the laws from change; in a word, to keep the present system' in vigorous operation, they deposed the King. To keep every thing else unchanged, they changed the dynasty; they made no appeals to the populace, and they promulgated no levelling opinions. With the fabric of the government in their hands, they altered not a stone or a stile, and they merely added to the weak parts some substantial supports formed of the same materials which composed the whole. Nolumus leges Anglia mutari was their motto, and it governed them in every thought and act. From the conduct of the later Whigs, it has inevitably followed that their papers have been of the most dangerous description: they have uniformly fought for the sectarian doctrines of their masters, and consequently their attacks have been directed, less against the ministry, than against the foundations of society and the British constitution. Religion and loyalty the crown and the church-the legislature and the laws-the clergy and the magistracy-judges and juries-the society for the Suppression of Vice and the Constitutional Association-in a word, every component part and every safeguard of whatever is dear to the nation, have been made the objects of their ceaseless scurrilities. All this they have very gravely called a legal, constitutional, and patriotic attempt to drive the ministry from office! While the opposition journals have become what they are, their readers have increased in the proportion of a thousand to one, and their power of producing injury has increased in the same ratio. This is the age of mechanical improvements, and no one craft has been carried to greater perfection than that of newspaper-making. The liberal' prints of England and the continent have been conducted into one mighty channel, and machinery of the most complex and perfect description has been constructed for keeping it full, even to overflow, of whatever is necessary for the good of the 'great cause.' If a congress be assembled, negociations be in progress, a revolution be commenced, or a conspiracy exploded, these prints teem, not with articles of intelligence, but with articles studiously framed to conceal the truth, and to bring contempt and hatred on established governments and religions. Forged state papers, fabricated letters,-whatever human ingenuity, unfettered by the antiquated restraints of truth and honesty, can devise, are employed, to swell the flood which sweeps almost without without interruption through the civilized world, scattering around it every thing that can render mankind ignorant, sensual, barbarous, criminal, and wretched.^ The French Revolution formed in this as well as other countries a host of traitors. It exposed to these men the vulnerable parts of governments, showed them the prodigious extent of the ignorance, credulity and folly of that body, which is commonly though falsely called the People, and proved to them by what common abilities and cheap means a nation may be seduced to its ruin. While it thus initiated these persons in all the mysteries of their vocation, the Whigs provided them with the widest field, and the most ample protection in the exercise of it. All the principles that the revolutionist has wished to teach, the Whigs have taught wherever he has wished public hatred to fall, there they have endeavoured to point it-all that he has had to do has been to assume their name, to tread in their footsteps, to translate into his own slang what they expressed in somewhat more decent phraseology, and to openly avow what they darkly insinuated. Loyal and moral as the lower orders were, they would have rejected with horror the lessons of sedition and blasphemy, had not their better feelings been destroyed before these were offered to them. Disloyalty and irreligion were the necessary fruits of contempt for the government and the teachers of religion; and when the radical leaders showed themselves, the uneducated adherents of the Whigs went over to them in a body. This was natural and inevitable. 2 The course which the Whigs have followed has enabled the revolutionists to set the laws at defiance. The principles of the intelligent classes have remained so sound, that the latter would have been put down as often as they showed themselves, if they had been left to their own resources. With our present laws no public libel could circulate an hour, if the struggle was alone between the laws and the libeller, and no power interposed to render the former impotent. But Hunt and Wooler could say nothing that was not in substance said by the Whigs; and Cobbett and Hone could publish nothing that was not in substance published by their papers. It was no doubt believed that the two parties were actuated by different motives, that the one merely wished to drive the ministry from office while the other wished to overthrow the Constitution, but this belief, however true, was founded upon conjecture, not upon facts, and there was no legal difference between them. Ministers could not therefore prosecute the most guilty of the Radical speakers and writers, without being bound in justice to prosecute many of the Whig ones, and if such prosecutions were instituted, they were converted at -- once into mere party-questions. Publie justice was scoffed at, the most atrocious abuse was lavished on the prosecutors, the libellous matter was republished and defended in ten thousand shapes, and attempts were made, both by seduction and threat, to induce the jury to perjure itself and to violate the laws, that the criminal might escape. As much popular phrensy was excited against the attempt to enforce just and necessary laws, as though it was an attempt to destroy the constitution; and the flagitious violator of them was enriched by the Whigs as a reward for his guilt, and a stimulus for him to double it. It is too well known for us to repeat it, that, while the laws are all-powerful against the sovereign and the government, they are inefficient when assailed by party that when nothing else can prejudice juries, they may be led to the most gross abuse of duty by party-feelings. The laws were attacked by party, and they became merely the laughing-stock of libellers; as the Attorney General could not obtain a verdict, he ceased to prosecute, and the Revolutionists published whatever they thought proper. If any man doubt that this similarity has existed between the Whig and radical orators and writers, we will request him to divest himself for a moment of all party-feelings, and to examine their speeches and writings of late years, without suffering himself to be biassed by the names of those by whom they have been produced. Without adverting to a more distant period, if he finds that the speeches delivered in the present year at public meetings by the Duke of Sussex Lords Folkstone, Albe marle, King; Messrs. Hume, Coke, Bennett, &c. &c. have not been the same in doctrine, tendency, and even language, as those delivered by Hunt and his itinerant colleagues;-we will be content to be branded as the publishers of untruths. If any difference has been perceptible, it has amounted to simply this, the one party has called for a revolution, and the other has contented itself with declaring a revolution to be inevitable→→ the one has taught the application of those principles which necessarily lead to revolution, the other has inculcated these principles, and remained silent respecting the application-the one has cannonaded the whole fabric of the constitution at once, and the other has undermined the pillars of it in detail. Both have agreed in the necessity of re-modelling it, but they have disagreed in their plans of a new one. To the nation this difference has been nothing, and their difference of motive has been nothing; for their labours, so far as it has been concerned, have tended to produce exactly the same result. In truth, when the Whigs have, on all great questions involving the existence of the con stitution, made common cause with the Revolutionists; when they they have eulogised all the revolutions that have taken place in Europe, and zealously inculcated all the principles that led to them, it is worse than absurd to assert that in any one essential point, their conduct has differed from that of the Revolutionists. Our questions are now answered. Public libels owe their origin, almost wholly, to the opposition. Let the Whigs imitate the conduct of the Marquis of Lansdown, and become a constitutional opposition, and their prints will immediately abandon that path which they now tread, to their own disgrace and the ruin of the nation. Let them, in all conflicts between the law and seditious and blasphemous libels, remain neutral,—we do not ask them to act the patriot and to support the law,-and in six months these libels will be one and all suppressed. The Opposition-we speak of it in its usual character-is formed for the purpose of opposing indiscriminately all the measures of the ministers, without any reference to their merits; and of driving them from office, whatever may be their ability, and however disastrous the consequences may prove to the nation. It struggles, not for the good of the country, but for the virtual sovereignty of the country-not for public benefit, but for personal profit and aggrandisement at the public cost. While such are its motives and objects, its power and resources are of the most formidable kind. Its wealth is immense, it carries along with it a very large portion of the community, it possesses half the public prints, and its numbers have no other limit than its inability to increase them. Its actual influence in the state is thus secondary only to that of the government, and instances are not wanting in which this influence has overpowered the government, and seized the dominion of the country in direct opposition to its will. It is in all essential matters the personal interest of the ministers to study the benefit of the nation. The favour of the sovereign, whatever it once was, is now of inferior value to them; the favour of the people can alone maintain them in office, and this can only be obtained and preserved by serving the nation ably and faithfully. Whether their motives be the grovelling ones of thirst for lucre and love of place, or the ennobling one, the passion for fame, they can only enjoy what they seek by the display of talent and integrity in the discharge of their duty. But it is the personal interest of the opposition in essential matters to deceive the nation. The acquiescence of this body in any of the leading measures of the ministry would furnish such evidence of the ability of the latter as no opposition could prevail on itself to give; and therefore, however wise and necessary such measures may be, it regularly obstructs or withstands them. If agriculture or commerce be in distress, instead of assisting in endeavours to discover the cause, it labours to involve it in still deeper obscurity-instead of joining in a remedy, it opposes with all its might the application of such remedy. It bewilders the discussion of public questions by distortions, misrepresentations, and personal vituperations, and its constant occupation is to render the functionaries of the government odious and contemptible, and to create discontent and division in the community. It must do this to keep itself in sight and existence. As we have already said, the objects of the opposition and the Revolutionists, up to a very high point, are the same. The former may entertain no hostility towards the institutions of the state; but its first wish is to effect a complete change of rulers, and to obtain the reins of government, and it must therefore travel in the same path with the latter. The necessity for the existence of an efficient opposition is nevertheless only secondary in degree to the necessity for the existence of a ministry. Although this body is self-appointed, is scarcely tolerated by the letter of the constitution, and exists even in defiance of the laws, it has to perform public duties of the very highest importance to the state. It has to act as the guardian and champion of the constitution and laws as the inspector of the conduct of the ministers, the denouncer of their incapacity and misdeeds-and as the leader of the nation in its opposition to their measures and in the attempts to remove them from office. It forms almost the chief instrument by which they are spurred to the able and upright discharge of their duty, and restrained from the abuse of their power. By holding itself constantly in readiness, and duly fitted at all points for undertaking the direction of public affairs, it gives to the sovereign and nation that perfect independence and efficient controul over the ministers, on which the good of the state so essentially depends. Such is opposition; and we think it must be clear to the dullest capacity 1. That if those who constitute it are not men of high honour and sound patriotism-do not identify themselves with the institutions of the nation, civil and ecclesiastical-do not defend the constitution and laws from all assailants whatever-do not possess the confidence and support of a considerable portion of the intelligent classes and are disqualified by the want of talent and integrity from becoming the ministry, such men are altogether useless as an opposition; and so long as they form it, so long will the nation be deprived of those services for which alone the existence of the opposition is tolerated. 2. That |