THE imminence of the danger to all our institutions arising from the open accession of O'Connell, with his united band of Radicals, Infidels, Papists, and Dissenters, to the practical direction of affairs, has at length roused that general sense of the necessity of exertion, to which every person gifted with the smallest share of political foresight has long looked forward as the only chance of salvation yet remaining to the country. Go where you will now, from the Land's End to John o'-Groat's House, and in every society, apart from Whig expectancy, sectarian jealousy, and revolutionary ambition, you will find the most unequivocal proofs of a general convergence towards Conservative opinions. Reaction is a bad word; it savours of French fatalism and infidel principle; it does not express the natural tendency of the human mind towards truth, which uniformly arises from a practical experience of the consequences of error. This, however, is the real principle; and it is the law of nature, which provides for the slow but certain correction of evil in all political societies, where sufficient virtue and public spirit still exist to take adVantage of the change.

This gradual approximation towards Conservatism has received a very great impulse from the events which have occurred within the last VOL. XXXVIII. NO. CCXXXVII,

two years, and has now spread to an extent to which we could have hardly hoped to have seen it diffused. The Radicals and Revolutionists, the deluders and deluded of mankind, feel this, and dread it from the bottom of their hearts. They do not attempt to disguise the danger. Isaac Tomkins bewails in pathetic terms the universal tendency of all the educated youth at the universities to Conservative principles, and fairly warns the middling orders that henceforth they must look to themselves in the struggle, for the upper classes are every day falling more rapidly under the bonds of corruption. Peter Jenkins reiterates the sentiment, and amidst warm eulogiums on the genius of Tomkins, bursts forth into bitter sarcasm on the Aristocratic classes, by whose vigour and energy all the fine spun theories of the Revolutionists are likely to be dissolved into thin air. Lord Brougham, in reviewing and praising both publications, exerts all his energy to impress upon the public the paramount necessity of vigorous exertions on the part of the lower orders to withstand the manifest tendency towards Conservative opinions, which has made such alarming progress among all the highly educated classes of society. The same truth is openly avowed by the Revolutionary leaders in London, who have convoked,

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in extreme alarm, a meeting of all their party in the metropolis, to provide the means of combating the dangerous activity of the Conservative associations.

The acceptance of the helm of Government by Sir Robert Peel, and the result of the general election, contributed in a powerful manner to invigorate and strengthen the Conservative party throughout the country. For the first time since the passing of the Reform Bill, they then perceived that their cause was not hopeless; that they were no longer struggling against an overwhelming current, and that by a concentrated effort of the whole friends of order and virtue in the state, the designs of the Revolutionists might yet be stayed. They are no longer a gallant band standing bravely up against an irresistible enemy, and sacrificing themselves from a heroic sense of duty to their country, but a vast and hourly increasing party, embracing three-fourths of all that is excellent in the land. Herein was the great benefit which the four months' possession of office by the Conservatives conferred upon the country. By holding the reins of Government for that short period, they evinced their real power: by maintaining such a struggle with the coalesced Whigs and Radicals, so soon after the Reform Bill, they demonstrated that the times were approaching when they might reasonably expect the victory. What was still more important, they had an opportunity, even during that short period, of proving to the world what their real principles of government were; of showing that the vulgar clamour got up by the Revolutionists, that they were desirous of upholding abuses for their own purposes, was totally unfounded; that they were disposed to go every length in the remedy of known evils consistent with the preservation of existing institutions, and only resist ed such farther concessions to democratic power as threatened to create corruption infinitely greater than it removed, and induce dangers an hundred times more alarming than those it professed to obviate. The effect of this, even though their lease of power was of such short duration, was to throw their oppo

nents obviously and flagrantly into the wrong; to drive them, in despair at their inability to discover any rational ground of complaint, into an evidently selfish and factious opposition; to compel them to abandon all their original principles, eat in all their former denunciations, and coalesce with all their bitterest enemies; to reduce the descendants of the Russells and the Cavendishes, who fought and bled to establish the Protestant faith, into the bumble followers of a Popish agitator, whose professed aim is the overthrow of the reformed religion; and convert the haughty aristocrats, who so long refused to admit the great agitator to their tables, and publicly denounced him as a common enemy in the speech from the throne, into the obsequious followers of that overbearing demagogue, who has never ceased to proclaim his intention of dismembering and revolutionizing the empire.

The speech of Sir R. Peel at Merchant Tailors' Hall has had nearly as great an influence in directing into an effective and constitutional channel the vast Conservative spirit, which these measures, on the part of his administration, and these factious proceedings on that of the Revolutionists, has every where evolved. In it the counsels of a great statesman gave a practical and useful direction to the general burst of public feeling which had broken forth in the country. He pointed out the means which yet remained of saving the state, and directed the energies of the nation to the only channels which existed for turning the Conservative principles to good account. "There is danger," we are told by the great leader, " to the whole institutions of the country; but it may yet be averted. There is a risk, an imminent risk, of public and private revolution, but the means of staying it still exist, if skilfully applied with the energy and patriotism belonging to freemen. To attain success in the contest, however, there is need of union and perseverancethere must be no vacillation-no divisions-ABOVE ALL, NO DESPONDENCY." This is the way to meet a nation of freemen, habituated by centuries of liberty to act for them