"THE Devil," said Dr Johnson," was the first Whig ;" and however much modern liberalism may be inclined to modify the caustic severity of this celebrated saying, it must be confessed that every day's experience is proving more clearly, that there was in the observation of the Tory Giant of the eighteenth century a profound knowledge of human nature. It is not merely as the first rebel against authority that the great author of evil bears an affinity to his degenerate progeny in later days; it is more clearly and decisively from the evident connexion between the efforts of sin and the selfishness of democracy, and the mysterious invitation to our first parents to eat of the fruit of the TREE OF KNOWLEDGE, that the connexion is established. This experience of these latter days was necessary to evince the truth of the aphorism; but it has now become apparent from actual proof, how deeply it was founded in human nature, and how strongly to the end of the world the political as well as private sins of mankind are destined to bear testimony to the verity of the truths unfolded in the first chapter of Genesis.

Much as we have written on democracy and its effects, past, present, and to come, during the last six years, we are conscious that we have not hitherto gone to the bottom of that subject. We could not have done so till, passing through the intermediate stratum of political effects, we dived to the depths of the HUMAN HEART, and sought in our own feelings, and the feelings of every one with whom we live in society, the remote but certain causes of the total failure of the great political experiment which was going on around us, and of the corresponding failure of all similar attempts in all ages and nations of the world. It would have been to little purpose to have made the attempt sooner: for it is experience alone which can either substantiate the conclusions of the thoughtful, or command the assent of the bulk of mankind; and philosophy reasons in vain when its conclusions are at variance

with the unreflecting wishes of an ardent and heated generation. There is a time, however, when a different set of opinions begin to prevail : when experience has opened the eyes of the thoughtful, and disappointment has cooled the ardour of the enthusiastic : when innovation has been found to be productive only of fresh evil, and a change of masters prolific of nothing but varied methods of corruption. Then is the moment to endeavour to investigate the ultimate causes of these things, to show in what principles of human nature they take their origin, and by what law of the Almighty they are permanently regulated; and instead of sinking in despair under the pressure of evil, and abandoning the great cause of freedom and social amelioration, from a well-founded disgust with the methods pursued by the democratic party for their attainment, to recur with fresh vigour to the great truths unfolded by religion, supported by reason, confirmed by experience, which explain the only methods by which they can be really promoted, and which, like the eternal church, are overwhelmed for a time under a load of delusion, only to rise again, brighter, and fairer, and more invincible than ever.

It was on this day six years that, penetrated with a sense of the ruinous principles of speculative government which had sprung up with the triumph of the Barricades, and threatened to overturn even the ancient fabric of Saxon freedom, which a thousand years had erected in these lands, we began the great conflict with democratic ambition. We were well aware how deep and strong was the current with which we were to strive; how many and powerful the motives which swelled the ranks of our opponents. All the varied passions of the human heart, usually ranged on opposite sides in every social conflict, were there, by an extraordinary combination of circumstances, ranged against us. The Whigs had two months before been seated in office, not from any casual accident or court

intrigue, but the admitted inability of the old half-changed, half-liberal Tory party to carry on the government. The overthrow of Charles X., and the unparalleled spectacle of the government of a powerful monarchy being destroyed by a vast urban tumult, had excited, to an unparalleled degree, the factious, reckless, and desperate over all Europe. A general regeneration of society, a total and universal change of government was everywhere expected. Reeling under the shock, the throne of the King of the Netherlands, guaranteed by all the powers of Europe, had sunk into the dust: Switzerland was in a state of alarming fermentation: many of the lesser thrones of Germany were overturned or loosened the old anarchical ambition of the Poles was reviving, untaught by the disasters of six centuries, and already gave presage of that desperate struggle which it was to maintain with the power of Russia, while the ardent spirits of the Spanish Peninsula, deeming the hour of democratic ascendency at hand, were already evincing, in no equivocal colours, the reckless and infuriate ambition which was destined, for six long years after, to bathe the Peninsula in blood.

Dark, however, as was the prospect on the continent of Europe, it was not there that the worst symptoms of the political atmosphere were to be descried. It was at home that the seat of the real evil was to be found, it was there that the seeds of lasting decline had been implanted in the British empire. Not only was the Whig party, which is obliged by its principles to give at all times a certain license to democratic ambition, firmly, and to all appearance immovably, seated in power, but the strength of their once powerful opponents was, as far as human foresight could penetrate, permanently broken. The old compact and dauntless aristocracy, which, under the guidance of Pitt and Burke, had with fearless hearts braved the terrors of the first French Revolution, and with the arms of Nelson and Wellington struck down the gigantic power of Napoleon, appeared to be no more. Determined as was the character, vast the talent, discriminating the judgment of many of that heroic band, their power as a body seemed crumbling into the dust. At a moment of unparalleled danger, under

the pressure of perils infinitely greater than those which, with tears in his eyes, had drawn Burke from the side of Fox, and ranged him on his natural side, the defence of freedom and order, the British aristocracy were divided amongst each other. The fatal poison of Catholic emancipation rankÎed in their veins, stimulating the popular ardour of some, rousing the profound indignation of others. Numbers of their youth had become tinged with the false liberality of the times: the evils of democratic sway were forgotten, because they had long been unfelt; the blood-written lesson of the French Revolution was dimly descried through the blaze of intervening glory, and British patriotism, in its higher classes, was fast melting away under the praises of French philosophy and the smiles of Italian beauty.

While such were the dispositions of the higher ranks, the temper of the middle and lower were, if possible, still more alarming. Various events, conspiring to one common effect in so surprising a manner as almost seems inexplicable, had weakened the раtriotic spirit of a large portion of the old defenders of the constitution, and excited, to such a degree as to be for the moment irresistible, the ardent passions of republican ambition. The changes in the currency had involved in distress, unavoidable, perhaps, but still most poignant, the whole agricultural classes, the natural defenders in all troubled times of existing institutions. The rapid fall of prices, consequent on the same alteration, had reduced almost to despair a large proportion of the manufacturing classes, and all those, of whatever party, who, without considerable capital, were involved in the then perilous business of buying and selling commodities. Foreign travelling, the natural inclination of youth to opposition to government, a mania for liberal opinions, had deprived the constitution of its soundest bulwark-the young men of thought and education in the learned and liberal professions. The monstrous passion in the great for exclusive and aristocratic society had spread, far and wide through the middling ranks, an aversion to their influence, which has happily proved only transitory, and is totally at variance with the natural disposition of the English character. The Tories had become unpopular,

vassing? Was it intended that the magnificent institutions which the charity of former and more enlightened ages had established for the protection and relief of the distress necessarily consequent upon a high state of civilisation, and an extensive manufacturing population, should be converted into so many Bastiles for state oppression, where poverty is treated with the harshness of punishment, and suffering deprived of its last consolation of sharing its bitterness with those most dear to it? Was it intended that the country should be oppressed by a vexatious set of municipal magistrates, unfit either for the discharge of their duties or the administration of justice, and who disgraced even the seat of judgment by their jealousies and passions of inferior democracy?

Was it intended, in foreign transactions, when we launched so vehemently into the career of revolution, that freedom was to expire everywhere under the consequences of its own extravagances, or the insidious poison of our non-intervention policy? That France, after six years of bloodshed, tumult, and massacre, was to sink into such a state of apathy and political despair, that the very name of freedom became odious, and Prince Polignac's ordonnances were re-enact ed with double severity, and executed with an hundredfold activity and vigour? That Spain, after having streamed with blood and all the hor

rors of a warfare plusquam civile, for five long years, was to relapse in utter horror at the evils of democratic ascendency to the government of an absolute monarch? That the heroes of democracy should have there no triumphs to record, but those over their own sovereign-no successful assaults to boast but on the bedchamber of their defenceless queen ?-Was it designed that Poland, pierced to the heart, trodden down, subjugated, was to have its dreams of anarchical independence extinguished in the blood or captivity of its bravest citizens?— Was it meant that the very name of England was to become odious or contemptible even to those states which had shared most largely in the benefits or glories of its alliance; that an Englishman was to be hated in Holland, even while the heroes of Quatre Bras were still alive, and execrated in Portugal, yet ringing with the glories

of its deliverance; and pointed at with the finger of scorn in the valleys of Navarre, while the turf was yet green on the graves of the Pyrenees? -Was it intended that the scenes of all our former triumphs should be sullied by our present perfidy or disgrace; that the thunder of allied French and English cannon should shake the graves at Waterloo, to restore Antwerp, itself, as Napoleon said, "worth a kingdom," to the tricolor flag; that the plains of Vittoria should witness the inglorious melting away of British uniforms under the scythe of disease and the orgies of intemperance; that the breach of St Sebastians should be trodden for months by a British garrison imprisoned within its walls; that the quay at Lisbon should witness the English standards retiring in disgrace before a revolutionary rabble, thirsting for the blood of their Queen? These are the external triumphs of democracy; these the trophies which New England has exchanged for the Blenheims, the Trafalgars, the Waterloos of former days; for the respect of the brave and the love of the good all over the world; for victories unprecedented in the bright page of European fame; for renown unexampled in the long annals of civilized glory.

These have been the foreign and domestic RESULTS of revolution-results now certain and passed into the page of history, graven deep on the tablets of English story, imprinted with a burning iron on the time-honoured front of her deathless fame. And again we ask, were these the results which were either expected or desired by the chaotic crowd that, six years ago, brought on all these evils, by joining in that destructive passion for democratic power? What did they expect? We will tell them what they expected. They had no doubt that the complete regeneration of society was at hand; that the reign of justice, peace, and prosperity was about to commence; that Government, purified by the infusion of popular virtue and energy, was, with the general concurrence of the nation, to engage in a career of general and benign usefulness; that corruption was to be unknown, ambition extinguished, patriotic ardour alone triumphant. Abuses, it was said, nestle in the recesses of aristocratic power; corruption is ne