trated by the composition of the house of commons ? Does our mode of election practically exclude the men of highest talent and character from public affairs, which M. De Tocqueville assures us is the general result of universal suffrage in America?

When the sons of our nobility and gentry, when men who have gained the highest literary honours at the universities or as authors; eminent barristers, able and prosperous merchants, distinguished officers of the army and navy, remarkable for their perspicacity of intellect and decision of character,-when these offer themselves as candidates for a seat in parliament, is it with the view of obtaining the petty salary of some public functionary? Do they not rather expend considerable sums of money in order that they may have an opportunity of devoting their time and gratuitous services to their country in that sphere of honourable ambition ?

Doubtless it may, and often does happen, that men of ability who might have been usefully and honourably distinguished in parliament, are by their lot in life excluded from that career. But where superior talents for business and debate are combined with integrity of character and independent fortune, the very qualities which, in America, would debar the man from a statesman's career, would tend to secure his election as a member of the British parliament. There Burke, Pitt, Fox, Sheridan, Canning, Wilberforce, Wyndham, Romilly, and many other statesmen of former and of modern times, scarcely their inferiors in genius, wisdom, eloquence, patriotism, and philanthropy, have charmed and enlightened the listening senate, and the admiring nation, have defended the people's rights and the royal prerogative. For many generations our most illustrious commoners have found their way into parliament, have sustained its character by a course of

legislation, in the main, wise and salutary, and by many great and able measures. The just and noble sentiments uttered there on important occasions, and circulated throughout the empire, have kept alive our love of freedom, have roused the gallant spirit and generous patriotism of the nation, while valour received its highest reward in the tribute of praise spoken by some eminent orator in the name of his country.

But it may be said the house of commons is not composed throughout of these choice materials. Undoubtedly" the imperial crown does not consist of a single diamond, it must be held together by baser matter." The house of commons consists of men of various characters, talents, information, and pursuits, from the ablest politicians and most eloquent orators, to the useful plodding man of business, who works in committees, and the country 'squire, who follows his leader and his party in the same hark forward style that he follows his hounds. It is an epitome of the better part of British society, but it represents the whole.

Designing agitators endeavour to persuade the working classes that they are not represented, because mechanical and agricultural labourers are not members of parliament. Even among mechanics there is a necessary division of labour. The ploughman, or the smith, or the carpenter, who steadily attends to his own trade, will succeed better than the Jack of all trades, who is proverbially master of none. Still greater is the inconsistency between the duties of the statesman and those of the ploughman and the mechanic, whose abilities assuredly would be as much misplaced and misemployed in the senate, as those of the Duke of Wellington, Sir Robert Peel, and Lord John Russell, would be at the plough or at the anvil. But when we have seen the two Mr. Scotts, rising by native talent and assiduity from a comparatively humble origin, to

the dignified and useful stations which they occupied as Baron Stowell and the Earl of Eldon; when we see Mr. Copley, the son of an eminent painter, becoming the ornament of his college, one of the most powerful and distinguished advocates at the English bar, filling successively nearly every seat of judicial honour in the land, and now Baron Lyndhurst, and for the third time Lord Chancellor of England;-there is proof that individuals of humble station are not debarred from acquiring even the privileges of a peer, and the highest offices and honours of the state.

It not unfrequently happens that an industrious and respectable farmer, mechanic, or tradesman, who has given his family a good education, has the proud satisfaction and delight to see his children or his grandchildren becoming prosperous merchants, naval or military officers, physicians, clergymen, barristers, nay taking rank with the ablest and the noblest of the land. And that this should occur in the second or third generation is surely far better both for the individuals themselves, and for the community, than that uneducated men should be exalted into public situations of high trust and responsibility, for which they are not qualified, and where they would effectually mar their own happiness and mismanage the weighty and difficult affairs of the nation. The ancient fable of Phæton's rash attempt to drive the chariot of the sun, by which the ambitious driver perished, and the earth was scorched, is an apt emblem of all such incapable aspirants to power.

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To persevering merit the to prosperous ful distinction is open in England. genius will sometimes pass from the lowest grade of society to the highest honour in a single lifetime. And it is a mistake to suppose that the people are not properly represented, when their representatives are

men of superior station, who have frequently a refined and generous sympathy for the privations and hardships of their poorer fellow countrymen, which probably would not be felt, at least in the same degree, by persons in their own class of life, if elevated to a seat in parliament. An accurate observation of mankind will lead to this conclusion. Pharaoh's butler, when he had been taken from prison to a palace, forgot Joseph, who had been his companion and his benefactor in the dungeon. The French convention, whom the people raised to power from their own ranks, became their most cruel oppressors.

On the other hand, no negro had a seat in parliament; but Wilberforce and other friends of humanity became the voluntary advocates of those oppressed but not unrepresented outcasts, and continued to plead their cause, until the accursed slave trade and slavery itself were both abolished throughout the British dominions. In democratic America, however, where universal suffrage has sent to Congress (as De Tocqueville says) representatives who cannot write correctly, what have they hitherto done to procure liberty for the oppressed negro labourers? In one half of the states of the union slavery exists, and throughout the whole of them the black population are treated as a degraded and despised race.

And who in England has recently explored the factories, workshops, and dwellings of artisans in the manufacturing districts, collecting statistical information relative to the sufferings and diseases produced by excessive and unhealthy toil, that he might advocate in parliament the cause of the mechanics and the factory children? Who has carried his humane enquiries down to the depths of our mines and collieries, to discover what unheeded hardships orphans have had to endure in various places, from the workmen to whom

they were apprenticed; what evils females and young children have had to suffer, their own husbands and parents consenting, and some of their employers neglecting them? He who has done this signal service to the working classes is not one of themselves, but Earl Shaftesbury's eldest son, Lord Ashley. While agitators for selfish ends have deluded the people with their mischievous schemes for repealing the union, and changing the monarchy into a republic, Lord Ashley has sought out the real grievances of these afflicted people; and pitying their distresses, their ignorance, their irreligion, has made them known to parliament, has struck at the very root of this enormous evil, which will now be removed; and he has accomplished these important and humane reforms, without altering one jot the glorious constitution we inherit from our forefathers. The orphan apprentice will no longer be deprived of his wages; the miner's wife will be restored to her proper place and duties at home; and the little children will be allowed to go to school, and to enjoy the sports of childhood in the light and sunshine of the upper world, and of their gayest hours, instead of having their young hearts chilled by cruelty, and their bodies cramped by labour, and their souls dark as the deep pits in which they were formerly buried. And was it to get into power and place on the shoulders of the multitude, and to gain a salary for some government situation, that Lord Ashley became the people's friend? No. When that disinterested and amiable nobleman was offered a place in the cabinet, by the present distinguished prime minister, with whose political principles and Lord Ashley's there is an entire agreement, he refused the honours, rewards, and influence which awaited him, in order that he might prosecute and urge, without distraction or restraint, those claims of Christian benevolence, which he had generously undertaken.