sentence of disclaimer? At least, let the ministers keep some appearance of consistency. Sir Robert Peel, in Parliament, distinctly announces, at a time when he feels how extremely insecure the hold over that assembly is, that the ministry will throw themselves upon the country, looking only to the people for sup→ port. Well, then; their chief goes to a meeting of the better classes of the people, assembled to do him a civility; and he thinks it beneath him to open his mouth in refutation of the worst charge which could be brought against a public man. He prefers labouring under it for a season, to denying it at the earliest opportunity. Is this the conduct of men who appeal to the people, and throw themselves on the country?

If, however, such be the predicament of the present ministers in respect of French affairs, such is not that of the people. With an unanimity wholly unexampled, they have suffered their delight at the late Glorious Revolution to burst forth, and to reach all the ends of the earth, in accents of applause, of exultation, of heartfelt thankfulness to the French people. The reason why gratitude is felt as well as admiration, may easily be discovered. The cause of the French is that of all freemen. If Polignac had succeeded, there would not have been wanting imitators of his conduct elsewhere. We should ourselves have had our Polignacs. No man of common sense can doubt this. But such a consummation is now, God be thanked, rendered utterly impossible. Several lessons have been taught in the University of Paris, which will not soon be forgotten. The soldiers of other countries have taken a degree there; it will be an honour to them, for it will make them remember they are citizens; it will be an advantage to them, for it will keep them from being exemplarily punished, and without any delay, by their fellow-citizens. The lesson which all armies have learnt is, first, that their duty is not to butcher their fellow-subjects at a tyrant's commands, in order to save a priest's favour, or a minister's place; next, that if in breach of their duty they lend themselves to such treasonable plots of courtiers, they are rushing upon their own certain destruction. For a lesson has also been taught to the citizens of all great towns, that the soldiery cannot succeed in enslaving them by force of arms. A well-inhabited street is a fortress which no troops can take, if the inhabitants be true to themselves; provided there be other streets near requiring a like attack from the military. Far be it from us to suspect the gallant soldiery of other countries of showing less patriotism, less humanity, than those of France lately displayed; but the example is encouraging to the virtuous portion of the army; the lesson, the warning, is wholesome to the profligate and unprincipled, who alone make a standing army dangerous.

Furthermore, the emancipation of France is the hope and strength of freemen all over Europe. Had she succumbed, the chance of liberty in Italy, in Spain, in Portugal, was indefinitely postponed: in England herself, a sight of much evil omen was held out to both rulers and people. The most imbecile of ministers, and the least trusted by their country, are ever ready to retreat behind the ranks of the army; ever prepared to support their power by force. But no reflecting man can now entertain a doubt, that if our rulers, untaught by the recent lessons, should ever attempt to enforce arbitrary acts by arms, the people of this country would be ashamed of being outdone by those of France in defending their most sacred liberties.

Finally, we take it to be clear, that the honest and generous emulation, which has ever made the two greatest nations of modern Europe run the same race of rivalry in improvement, will now help us in the amendment of whatever defects exist in our institutions. The people of England will not long brook any marked inferiority to their neighbours; and especially will such an eclipse be galling, if it lie in the freedom upon which they have so long prided themselves as their distinguishing and exclusive excellence. France has now a freer government than England. This truth must be told. Shall we not make such improvements as may restore us to our pristine station, and regain for us what Milton called our prerogative of 'teaching the nations how to live? The people have but to will it, and the thing is done. Such ministers as the present, have at least the recommendation of utter inability to resist the tide of popular opinion. They are, it is true, wholly unfit to lead the public sentiment; altogether impotent to carry through great measures of themselves; but if the country decrees a thing to be done, be it right or be it wrong, they have no power to resist. Reform within certain limits is the right thing which they must now do, or rather suffer to be done. What though all the present cabinet be deeply pledged against it? What though Sir Robert Peel has of late come forward, somewhat ostentatiously and very needlessly, to deny representatives to the great towns? So did he, for many a long day, refuse the Catholics and the Dissenters their rights; and in a few weeks, continuing quite unconvinced,* as he declared, he, and his principal, himself as

* This declaration of Sir Robert Peel is certainly by far the most strange that any public man ever made. He had surely opposed the Catholic question from a conviction that there was more mischief in granting than in withholding it. Then, if his opinion remained, as he solemnly and repeatedly asserted, unchanged, he was, for some reason or other, induced to grant

stout an enemy to the repeal, came round-right round about, and carried the grand measure through Parliament, as it was said, 'triumphantly,' to the no small benefit of the empire, if not to the immortal renown of the senate or its leaders. So will such men yield again, if the people desire it; perhaps they will even volunteer the measure of reform, in order to keep their places a little longer; and they are surely well worth having at such a price. Religious liberty, received as a fine upon renewing the lease of office one year; law reform for the next year; reform of Parliament for a year longer-never sure did landlord make a better bargain, or poor tenant pay more handsomely! It will not be hard to find some fourth fine fit to be exacted when this third year shall be out.

what it was more mischievous to give than to refuse. What could induce any man to do it? What right had any man to act so? It won't do to say that circumstances were altered-for that is saying that the question is safer given than refused; and he declares his opinion to be unaltered, and that the mischiefs preponderate. What then can Sir Robert Peel have meant? We know very well that his enemies say, he means only that he preferred giving up his opinion to giving up his place. We believe no such thing; and we mean no such thing; but we cannot comprehend what he means, and we believe he had no distinct meaning when he made the very incomprehensible statement. At all events, he must now allow, and he ought in a manly way to say, that he was wrong from the first. For his argument was that the emancipation was full of danger and risk; these are prospective words, and they mean that the measure would lead to mischief if carried. Carried it has been; what was the future is now the past; no mischief whatever has ensued. Five or six members in England, and as many in Ireland, are Catholics; there's the whole evil we have encountered to pacify Ireland! Does Sir Robert Peel say that the evil may yet arrive? Then he should tell us at least how, if not when; or he is like the Jew who waits for the Messiah, (and ought, therefore, says this statesmanlike reasoner, to be excluded from Parliament and from office,) or the Portuguese who is looking for the return of King Sebastian from Africa. Had he not far better admit, what most men now see, and all men of candour believe he sees, that he was in error from the first? He put himself at the head of a party in church and state which wanted a leader, and had in those days much more power than they now have. And he took their creed with the command. He afterwards found he had paid too dear for the station, and abandoned both, to the great benefit of the country, and his own great and lasting honour. His way of doing so is another matter; so is his wholly inexplicable opposition to Mr Canning in 1827. These are the dark parts of his conduct; and these, we take it, never can be cleared up, although further services and new sacrifices of prejudice may tend to efface them from our memory.

ART. II.-A Narrative, by John Ashburnham, of his attendance on King Charles I. from Oxford to the Scotch Army, and from Hampton Court to the Isle of Wight, never before published; to which is prefixed, a Vindication of his Character and Conduct from the Misrepresentations of Lord Clarendon. By his lineal descendant and present representative (The Earl of Ashburnham.) 2 vols. 8vo. London: 1830.

T

HE groundwork of this publication is a narrative by John Ashburnham, groom of the bedchamber to Charles I., of his attendance on that monarch from Oxford to the Scottish camp before Newark, and of the assistance he subsequently rendered his royal master in his flight from Hampton Court to the Isle of Wight. To this narrative is prefixed a short account of the author, by his editor and representative, the present Earl of Ashburnham, and appended to it are various documents in confirmation of its truth. There is, besides, a preliminary volume by the editor, in justification of his ancestor from the injurious aspersions of his fame, propagated, if not invented, by the Earl of Clarendon.

Whether we view this performance as a vindication of John Ashburnham, or consider it in the light of a minute and critical dissection of Lord Clarendon's character as a man, and of his accuracy and fidelity as an historian, it is a work of no inconsiderable merit. It is written, indeed, in a careless, discursive manner, with little regard to style or method; but it displays much acuteness of argument and patience of research, and throws a new, and very probable, light on many obscure transactions of the times. It is full of wit, sarcasm, and allusion, and rather prodigal in the use of irony and banter. Readers indifferent to the reputation of John Ashburnham may peruse it with pleasure and instruction.

By comparing Lord Clarendon's history, and his biographical account of himself, with the state papers and other documents, erroneously described as the materials and authorities for these works, Lord Ashburnham has shown, that in many instances the noble historian has suppressed or disguised the truth; that he has frequently given a false colour to the transactions he relates; that, writing for effect and trusting to his memory, he has been often betrayed into inconsistencies and inaccuracies; and that in his representations of individuals, he has been biassed, by his prejudices and resentments, to distort the characters he delineates. These charges, be it observed, are made by one who partakes in the political sentiments of Lord Clarendon, and who professes, and indeed proves himself, to have been at one time

a blind admirer of his virtues. They are brought forward by the editor, not for the invidious purpose of lowering the reputation of the High Church and Tory historian, but from anxiety to vindicate the fame of his ancestor from the hints, surmises, and insinuations, with which Lord Clarendon has laboured, and not unsuccessfully, to blacken the memory of that gentleman. If, in the discharge of this pious duty, Lord Ashburnham has overstepped the boundaries of defensive warfare, and carried hostilities into the quarters of the enemy; if he shows Lord Clarendon to have been greedy of money, not at all scrupulous or delicate in his modes of acquiring it, and when questioned on the subject, defending himself by equivocations tantamount to falsehood; if he exhibits him as not unwilling to profit by the roguery of his inferiors, though careful not to seem conscious of the transaction or participant in the fraud; if he finds him blaming severely, in other persons, acts of which he had himself been guilty, studious of his ease and pleasure, at the expense of his public duties, employing the agency of others to obtain ends, which he was ashamed openly to avow, disguising from his most intimate friends the real motives of his conduct, professing to reject what he desired, and contriving to have honours and emoluments forced on him apparently against his will; if he represents him forgetful of kindnesses, but tenacious of resentments —vain, peevish, and presumptuous-haughty to his inferiors, and obsequious to those above him-flattering in letters, that were never meant for the public eye, those he has abused in his works-mean in his professions of service, and protestations of devotion, where he passes himself for a blunt, boorish, uncompromising stoic;-let it be remembered, that Lord Ashburnham was led to these detections by a natural and laudable desire to rescue his ancestor from unmerited reproach, and that, by exposing them to the public, he has taken from the accusations against John Ashburnham their efficacy and sting, by unveiling the duplicity, disregard of truth, and systematic hypocrisy of the statesman and historian, from whose character, credit, and authority, they derived their force and venom. But let us hear Lord Ashburnham's vindication in his own words.

'It may be objected,' says his lordship,

that there is here 'an attack on Lord Clarendon, rather than a defence of John 'Ashburnham. The answer submitted is, that in cases where no positive facts have been adduced in proof, and where none in disproof are now adducible, where the charge is raised solely on unsubstantial allegations, and unauthenticated deposi

* I, 105.