understanding; and, according to the elements which constitute the vitality of a party, they will be innocent or injurious. Where a party depends for its existence on movement and agitation, the extinction of that excitement which is essential to its progress, must be fatal to its continuance. But where the strength of a party rests on feelings of a calmer and more considerate kind, an abatement of the exaggerated feelings which some of its followers may have rashly indulged, will still leave room for a qualified but decided approval of its measures, and for a less romantic but equally useful support of its ascendency.

The policy of the present Conservative Ministry is to be judged of in reference to the position in which they are placed. They are called on to govern the country on Conservative principles, through the medium of a Parliament elected under the Reform Bill. These few words are full of meaning; they involve a bitter but a wholesome truth, and remind us of the difficult and delicate task imposed upon our rulers. We cannot have yet forgotten the fears with which a change in the system of representation was a few years ago regarded and resisted. We had reason to look upon it with the utmost suspicion and alarm, as disturbing the existing equilibrium of government, and introducing new elements of power, of which we either could not foresee the operation, or foresaw that it would be destructive. That momen tous measure, facilitated at first by divisions among the Tory party, was ultimately passed, in spite of their united opposition to it. adoption as a part of the law of the land, is now a fixed and irrevocable fact. Right or wrong, it stands in the statute-book, as unchangeable, for any thing we can now see, as Magna Charta or the Bill of Rights. Has this measure, then, from which we anticipated such hazardous consequences, produced none of the results which we apprehended? Were we wholly in error in dreading its approach, or are we now, after_its accomplishment, in the same position as if it had never been proposed? We deceive ourselves if we say so. The return of a Conservative Ministry to power has not repealed, and cannot repeal, the Reform Act. It is inse

Its

parably engrafted on the constitution, and its most questionable effects, so far as they legitimately flow from it, must be submitted to as inevitable, and are even entitled to share in the respect which we owe to the constitution in all its component parts, and to the vested rights of classes and individuals, whether of early or of recent date. We cannot annul the Reform Actwe can at best restrain and regulate it; but restrain or regulate it as we may, a change has come over the spirit of our policy, which is the necessary product of new principles, now as much a part of the constitution as its most ancient and venerable peculiarities.

It was open to the Conservative party when Reform was carried, to retire from political life, or to renounce for ever the duties and responsibilities of office. But such a course would have been cowardly and selfish. They owed it to the crown and the country not to despair of the republic, and not to shrink, when it became necessary, from governing according to those existing laws under which they were willing to live. But when they came to accept office, they found Reform as a fact from which they could not escape, and without which they could no more carry on the government than they could do so without a parliament. Conservatives they might and they must be. But Conservatives of the constitution as reformed, not opponents of past reform, but defenders of the Reform Bill against the aggressions of its original promoters, against the barbarity of the unnatural Saturns who would devour their own offspring. This was the law and condition of their tenure, if they sought to save and benefit the country by rescuing it from the endless agitation of further reform, or the blundering mismanagement of incapable mountebanks.

That the measures, therefore, of a Conservative Ministry under the Reform Bill, should be, in all respects, what might have been wished by those who opposed that measure, is a simple impossibility. Whatever change the Reform Bill has introduced into the constitution must show itself in the representative assembly of the nation, and must extend to any measures which the majority of that assembly are likely to approve. The Conservative majority of the present, and of every future Parliament, must have its root in the principle of Reform, and must partake more or less of the nature of the soil from which it springs. If, as we apprehended, the population population of great towns had an ascendency in the arrangements of the Reform Bill; if the secondary trading and monied classes were thereby admitted to a new preference over the larger interests of property, commerce, and agriculture, this redistribution of power must necessarily show itself by its effects in any measures adopted by a Reformed Parliament, in the same proportion in which it has been produced in the constituencies themselves. We may lament or we may repine at it; but such will continue to be the necessary operation of the representative system, as modified by means now unalterable. We may adhere, if we please, to the precise ideas which we should have chosen in unreformed times; but if we do so, we must be content to sit in a Reformed House of Commons on the left hand of the Speaker instead of the right.

The success, then, of the present Ministry in the task which they have attempted, is not affected by the circumstance that they may have made some concession to the coalition of principles under which we live, and some sacrifice to the interests or demands of the great consuming classes of our population, who have been admitted to an additional share in the representative portion of the constitution. To speak more correctly, it is essential to their success that some such concession and sacrifice should have been made, provided it has been done with as little change as was practicable upon existing rights, and with no surrender to democratic encroachment of what might possibly be preserved.

We humbly but most confidently express our conviction, that the measures of the Peel cabinet, independently of their consummate ability and admirable adaptation to the end in view, are calculated in a preeminent degree at once to do full justice to the legitimate principles of the late constitutional change, and to neutralize those dangerous tendencies of the reformed system which made it an object of terror to its opponents, and of anxious solicitude to its true

We think it probable, even if Reform had not taken place, that many of the commercial changes which are now proposed would already have been brought about by the force of public opinion; and certainly that they should have occurred under a reformed parliament is neither to be wondered at nor regretted. The doctrines of what is called free-trade, a phrase of very various and versatile signification, had made rapid progress before 1830; and their enforcement has, in the first instance, been rather retarded than advanced by the agitation and effects of Reform. The contest which that question produced, and the course which its supporters pursued, of seeking to conciliate the movement party by further changes, suspended the consideration of almost all practical propositions. The Whigs, during a ten years' continuance in office, originated no important measure of commercial reform, until their own financial blunders, and the desperation of their dying struggle, impelled them, like drowning men, to catch at the only hold which seemed within their reach. But the opponents of free-trade have as little reason to thank them for so long leaving its principles in aeyance, as its advocates have for their tardy attempt to carry those principles into effect. The Whigs were not free-traders at first, because they anticipated no advantage from such a course, and were too busy with projects of further constitutional change or or personal aggrandizement. They became freetraders at last, for a personal object, without understanding the principles which they professed, without providing any means for enforcing their views, without any attention to the safeguards that were required, and without a remnant of moral weight remaining to ensure confidence either in their wisdom or their sincerity.

Nothing can be more ludicrous or absurd than the complaint or boast of the Whigs, that the new ministry have borrowed their principles. If it were so, it would be a severe satire upon themselves, that they had damaged a good and a winning cause by their own want of character or want of skill. But the allegation is as groundless in itself as it is unjust to the British nation. Apart from the impossibility of borrowing any principles from men who had none to lend, the measures of the new Ministry are essentially different from those of their predecessors, both in the spirit in which they have been devised, and in the manner in which they have been carried out. The Whigs neither knew what to do, nor how to do it. They shrank from difficulties where none existed, and they discredited even innocent and eligible propositions by mixing them up with what was dangerous or destructive. They did not understand the inestimable value of mild and moderate remedies, particularly in a state of society where almost every advantage to one class of interests must be obtained at the expense of another. Nothing had a charm for them which did not excite extreme feelings of extravagant enthusiasm on the one hand, and of serious alarm on the other. The Reform Bill had spoiled both the leaders and the followers of the Whig camp. It inspired a taste and created a necessity for popular excitement, without which they could neither act with confidence nor keep their forces together. Add to this, that they were essentially deficient alike in genius and in skill, in courage and in character.

The measures and career of the present Ministry have presented a very different picture. In so far as essential doctrines are concerned, they have shown an immoveable adherence to a fixed system of political principles, and have thus inspired the admi. ration and won the respect of the whole reflecting portion of their countrymen. They have arrested the downward progress of the national finances by a bold and decided measure of indisputable efficacy, which, at its first announcement, extorted the unwilling applause of their political opponents, and has since, from time to time, received the direct or indirect approval of almost every statesman of the day whose opinion is of any worth. That measure alone will for ever distinguish them from those predecessors, whose progressive mismanagement and vacillating irresolution had made it necessary to adopt it. It implied a degree of moral courage, of personal weight, and of generous confidence in the honour and self-denial of the nation at large, that could never have found a place with any politician of the Melbourne school. We believe that

it will be duly rewarded, and that its blessed fruits, in restoring the credit and asserting the dignity of the country in the eyes of the whole world, will be wholly imputed to those who have proposed it; while its inconveniences and inequalities will be laid, as in justice they should be, at the door of those who occasioned the existing evil, without having the skill or the energy to provide a remedy.

In this measure the Ministry have given place to those considerations of humanity which will best consolidate our existing social relations. It has been resolved to exempt from taxation a larger portion of the humbler classes than have ever before enjoyed such an immunity. The Income Tax has been imposed exclusively upon persons in possession of such means as infer a comfortable subsistence. Those who are struggling with the realities of poverty are not only relieved from its pressure, but are to benefit by its operation, in so far as it has enabled the Government to diminish taxation upon the necessaries of life, or the materials of industry. This boon to their poorer countrymen is the proposal of a Conservative Ministry, cordially responded to by the property of the country, and sealed by the ready sanction of the aristocracy and the sovereign herself. It is an honourable and a prudent concession, calculated at once to exculpate the upper classes from sordid or oppressive motives, and to consolidate the peace and order of society by mutual feelings of good-will, and offices of practical kindness. During a period of unexampled commercial and manufacturing distress, in which the labouring classes have steadily refrained from acts of violence or disorder, we cannot help thinking that a conciliatory influence has been at work, under a sense of the generous spirit which the government measures have displayed, and in the absence of any fear of additional burdens from the impending arrangements for supporting the national revenue.

To counteract, if possible, the natural effect of the Ministerial measure of taxation in reference to the poor, a most false and fraudulent allegation has been put forward by the Whig party, that an Income Tax, though laid upon the rich, must be injurious to the poor by limiting the means of their employers. On this paltry and palpable sophism, we shall bestow only a few words, as more than sufficient for its exposure. If the proposition means that any kind of taxation is injurious to all classes when no taxation is necessary, we shall not trouble ourselves to dispute it. If the Whigs had left us a surplus instead of a deficit, we might admit thatan Income Tax, for the mere purpose of raising money, might have injured the poor, even though laid exclusively upon the rich: yet, even in that inconceivable case, the qualifying consideration would arise, that the money taken from one class of possessors must be given to another, and a new source of employment to the poor must be opened in place of the old one that is dried up. But we have no concern with a question of that very speculative kind. It must here be assumed that a given amount of taxation is wanted, which must be raised from some quarter. Is it better for the poor that it should be raised directly and exclusively from the rich, or that it should be laid partly on the poor, either personally or through the commodities which they peculiarly consume? Surely only one answer can be attempted to such a question. It is nothing to the purpose to say, if it were true, that when laid upon the rich, it will partly fall upon the poor, by diminishing the means of their employment; though even here we would again suggest that the means of employment will be merely transferred from the payers to the receivers of the tax, and that the poor must still be employed, though by a different set of masters. But esto that the poor suffer something, indirectly, by the taxation of the rich, do they suffer as much in that form as by a tax laid upon themselves? If this be true, it would become a matter of utter indifference on what class of society taxation was imposed; and it might equally be said, that it was better for the poor to resort to a poll-tax, or a tax on salt, and exempt the rich entirely from taxation, as it would enable the rich more freely to employ, and more liberally to remunerate their dependents. Such a result is the legitimate sequel of the doctrine promulgated by Lord John Russell and his friends, with the envious desire of depreciating an act of generosity which

belongs to their opponents, who have adopted the mildest possible form of remedying the blunders of their predecessors; but common sense and sound reasoning alike revolt from the heartless fallacy.

We certainly regard the restoration of our finances, by means of the Income Tax, as the most important measure of the past session. The maintenance of public credit is one of the surest tests of a firm government and a wellbalanced constitution. It is apt to be overlooked, alike by despotisms and by democracies. Whether we think of the constant tamperings with the currency which have so often been resorted to by needy and arbitrary rulers, or to the equally infamous doctrine of "repudiation," avowed by some American states, we have reason to rejoice that Britain, under the auspices of a Conservative Cabinet, has made a noble and successful effort in a different direction. Both in a commercial and in a moral point of view, the salutary effects of a restoration of national solvency, by an equalization of revenue and expenditure, can scarcely be overrated.

What has now been done affords us a ground of assurance that feelings of right principle and of an enlarged prudence have not yet lost their legitimate ascendency in the national mind, even as manifested through the medium of the reformed constituencies. But the measures adopted, while they are satisfactory as proofs of public integrity, are not the less honourable to the Ministers who have proposed and carried them. They may claim the merit of having roused the country to a sense of duty, and of having supported and directed it in the path which it should take. The readiness or resignation with which Parliament and the public have consented to the sacrifice required of them for this allimportant object, is creditable to the government who have availed themselves of it, in the same proportion in which it reflects disgrace on their predecessors, who shrank from the attempt after their own errors had rendered it imperative. However well disposed the public mind may be to second or support, when necessary, the measures which an honest and able minister may bring forward for imposing new taxation, it is from the government that the proposal must emanate; and no better criterion can be afforded of a good or a bad government than their willingness or unwillingness to incur, when circumstances require it, the partial odium which such a course of policy infers. The cowardly blun. derers, who involved us in our difficulties, did not dare to propose the only remedy that was admissible, and indeed were probably deterred from doing so, by a consciousness that the proposal would have led to a very inconvenient enquiry as to the causes which had made it necessary. Year after year they allowed the deficiency to increase, and rubbed on by means of Savings' Banks, and Exchequer Bills, and a succession of other shifts and subterfuges, such as can only find a parallel in the exposures arising under the commission issued against some fraudulent bankrupt. Even when they knew that the revenue was running into incurable embarrassments, they could not resist, however unwilling they might be to concede, the popular demand for the remission of the postage duty-a sacrifice which, with all its intrinsic conveniences to the public, should in no view have been made without an immediate substitute being provided for the deficiency. Their parting proposals for a fixed duty on corn, and a re-adjustment of the duties on sugar, were not measures which could, on any sound principles, be expected to restore the revenue, but were desperate speculations, resorted to as a last refuge to support appearances and complicate their accounts, with the hope of concealing their former frauds and extravagances.

While we dwell with peculiar satisfaction on the redintegration of public credit by the ministerial scheme, we are not insensible to the merits and advantages of the new tariff, which has tended so much to facilitate the adoption of the taxation on property, and is at once a liberal boon to the middling and poorer classes of the community, and a probable remedy for the signal depression of trade with which, under Whig auspices, the country has been visited. We have neither space nor inclination at this time to enter on its specific provisions; but we bear our willing tribute of applause to the impartiality with which its general plan was devised, and the firmness with which it has been adhered to.

In so far as regards the bearings of

the ministerial policy upon the agricultural interest, we feel satisfied that, in point of principle, both the new corn bill and the tariff are safe and salutary enactments. We shall wait with anxiety to see whether any error in their details has left room for unexpected and undue prejudice to the producing classes; but at present, though not without anxiety, we are without serious fears upon that subject. We believe it was necessary to strip the corn-law of its most startling anomalies, and to reduce it to the minimum measure of protection which the general interests of the community at large would admit. That course has now been followed without endangering, as we humbly hope, the permanent prosperity of domestic agriculture, whether as a means of support to the great and important classes who are connected with it, or as a security to all classes against a deficient and uncertain supply of food. If this be the case, it is a great matter that the change has been considerable, as it affords a powerful reason for resisting any attempt again to unsettle the law, and as the alarm which even this degree of alteration has produced, is a warning against further and more serious interference.

The repeal of the laws against the importation of cattle was an indispensable measure; and the only question related to the rate of duty. There is no doubt that it has been adjusted with every desire to deal fairly with competing interests, and we trust that the result will be such as the authors of the alteration contemplate.

Believing, as we have already said, that the different measures which have been brought forward, have been honestly, impartially, and skilfully managed, we can have no sympathy with the small portion of the Conservative party who seem to have been desirous of producing a split in the camp. We are no friends of schism either in church or state. We believe it impossible that good can be done in national affairs, except by a general adherence to the principle which divides public men into large sections of political opinion, and by which individual crotchets are sunk and lost sight of in a broad line of common policy. It is impossible that three or four hundred constituencies, or their representatives, can minutely agree