of those very Straits and the keys of Constantinople in the hands of the Emperor Nicholas, by refusing aid to the Porte, when he applied to us for succour in his last extremity, after the battle of Koniah, which necessarily led to his throwing himself into the arms of the Russians, and the conclusion of the fatal treaty of UnkiarSkelesse, which converted the Euxine into a great Russian lake.

Pass to internal transactions. They professed the utmost horror at governing by means of patronage, or resting on any other support than the affections of the people; and they have, since their accession to office, created ten offices for every one which the Conservatives had previously abolished, having overspread Ireland with an army of Government officers in the police, the constabulary, and other departments, and spent no less than L.477,000_on_foraging commission

ers.

They professed the greatest detestation at persecution or harassment of any kind on account of religious opinions; and they have entered into a cordial alliance with the Popish faction, which has uniformly declared undying war against the Protestant establishment, and is putting in practice a persecution of the severest and most heart-rending kind—against not merely the Protestant clergy in Ireland, but their wives, children, and households. They professed the warmest interest in the welfare of the poor, and the most tender concern for the sufferings of disease, old age, and destitution; and they have exerted their whole strength to pass and carry into execution an act which, in order to diminish the assessment on the estates of the great and the affluent, has consigned indigence to the punishment of crime, loaded innocence with the charges of seduction, and aggravated the sufferings of misfortune by severing families from each other. They professed a reverential regard for order based on liberty, and they testified the sincerity of their professions by spreading abroad the passions which lighted up the fires of Nottingham and Bristol. They declared that centralization in all ages

had been the grave of real freedom, and held in utter abhorrence the swarms of civil employés, who, in the Austrian, Russian, and French empires, gave the whole command of employment, and consequently the whole sway, in the state to the central government; and in order to show how well disposed they are to act upon their principles, they have copied from despotic France a plan for a rural gendarmerie, taking all its orders from Downing Street. They have laid their grasp on the general direction of the Poor Laws throughout England, and are preparing a bill for taking the whole administration of the turnpike-roads into the hands of Government !

The Whig-Radicals will exclaim that these remarks are dictated by a spirit of virulent hostility to the present Administration; but we declare solemnly, and with perfect sincerity, that they are the result of an entirely different feeling-nay, that they proceed from a desire to shield them from the crushing weight of these inconsistencies, and refer them to their true cause, viz. the utter impracticability of Government being conducted, or even society holding together, under the practical operation of the principles which they have held out to the country. In Opposition, they professed principles which, when put in practice, they soon found to be utterly inconsistent, not merely with the maintenance of their own authority, but the preservation of any thing like order or security in the realm. In a moment of national madness, they succeeded in overthrowing all the ancient and well-tried bulwarks at once of constitutional freedom and general subordination; and their whole subsequent effort has been to supply the gap. They are now treading over again the old and wellknown path by which, in the decay of Roman virtue, the Emperors strove to make up, by legions of inferior functionaries and a Senate for life, for the want of the old hereditary Aristocracy, swept away during the insanity of former democratic contests ; * and by which Napoleon and Louis-Philippe,

after the frightful shocks to freedom, property, and order which resulted from the previous triumph of revolutionary ambition, and the entire ruin of the aristocratic class, regained, amidst the total extinction of liberty, the degrading quiet of despotism. These errors are the result of their situation of the monstrous doctrines they have promulgated, and the impracticable projects which they have held forth. They are now ground down by an invincible law of nature; the same which, in the end, arrests the course of the prodigal and the spendthrift, and brings on the unrestrained career of passion a certain and bitter retribution. If they had the energy of Napoleon, the genius of Cæsar, or the tenacity of Wellington, the result would be the same. They might exhibit, perhaps, a more splendid example of Satan-like perseverance in error, but they could not elude the force of the moral law by which, in the end, its punishment is secured.

It was the same in former days. There is nothing new in the moral world under the sun, because the changing theatre of human events exhibits in different ages, under every different combination of social affairs, the certain operation of the same passions, desires, and vices. What was expected when the English nation ran mad in 1642, and the people, drunk with the politico-religious enthusiasm of the day, grouped round the standards of Pym and Hampden, and flung abroad to the winds the flag of defiance to their sovereign? Did they expect that the King was to be murdered, the Peers abolished, the Clergy dispossessed, taxation quadrupled, personal freedom destroyed, Parliament turned out of the chapel of St Stephens by the bayonet, Go

vernment carried on solely by the Major-Generals of Cromwell, and the last severities of military oppression endured by the guilty and now repentant people? Did they expect, when they took up arms, in order to wrest the command of the militia from Charles, that, before fifteen years had expired, EIGHTY-THREE MILLIONS sterling was to be wrenched out of the people by war-contributions and taxes -a greater sum than had been raised in England in all the centuries put together since the Norman conquest? Did they expect that distant and impartial history was to narrate, as the termination of their efforts in favour of freedom-"To raise the new imposition called the decimation, the Protector instituted twelve Major-Generals, and divided the whole of England into so many military jurisdictions. These men, assisted by commissioners, had power to subject whom they pleased to decimation, to levy all the taxes imposed by the Protector and his council, and to imprison any person who should be exposed to their jealousy or suspicion; nor was there any appeal from them but to the Protector himself and his council. Under colour of these powers, which were sufficiently exorbitant, the MajorGenerals exercised a power still more exorbitant, and acted as if absolute masters of the property and persons of every subject. All reasonable

men

now concluded that the very mask of liberty was at length thrown aside, and that the nation was for ever subject to military and despotic government-exercised not in the legal manner of European nations, but according to the maxims of Eastern tyranny. Not only the supreme magistrate owed his authority to illegal force and usurpation, but he had parcelled out the people into so many

subdivisions of slavery, and delegated to his inferior ministers the same unlimited authority which he himself had so violently assumed."*

Was

What was it which the French were passionately desirous of obtaining, when, in 1789, they installed, amidst shouts whch made the world resound, the Peers and Commons in one chamber-thereby destroying the veto of the Upper House, and realizing in full perfection our Liberal dreams of Peerage Reform? Was it that the whole liberties of the nation were to be extinguished by the iron grasp of the Convention, or buried under the sordid cupidity of the Directory, or crushed under the conquering chariot of Napoleon ? it, that after fifty years of bloodshed, confiscation, and suffering, they were to sink down into a hopeless despotism, heavy as the leaden yoke of the Byzantine empire, immovable as the institutions of the Chinese government? They expected none of these things: they looked for the regeneration of the human race-for a renewal of the golden age for the termination of the tithes of aristocratic injustice, and the commencement of the bright dawn of democratic freedom. Yet all these things came and came in spite of their utmost efforts to avert them-swift as the hour of punishment certain as the approach of death.

We are told by physical philosophers, that although a few detached fires on the crust of the globe may be explained by partial combustion, yet the simultaneous appearance of earthquakes at places far distant from each other, points, with the certainty of demonstration, to some common cause operating in the regions of central heat. The complete coincidence and

identity of the effects consequent on democratic ascendency-in Rome, through the strife of Marius and Sylla, following on the transports of Gracchus, to the despotism of the Cæsarsin England, through the fervour of the Long Parliament to the massacre of the King and the military government of Cromwell-in France, through the warm aspirations of the Constituent Assembly, the blood of the Convention, the despotism of Napoleon, the discontent of the Restoration, to the leaden yoke of LouisPhilippe-and, in England, through the transports of Reform and the fires of Bristol to the degrading despotism of O'Connell's Tail, and the centralizing policy of a time-serving Democracy-points to some general and common cause, deep seated in the recesses of the human heart, to which they are referable. The cause is, indeed, deep seated; it is, indeed, universal in its operation; it is, indeed, irresistible in its effects. It is explained in the earliest record of human existence; it is referred to in every part of Holy Writ; it is confirmed in every page of profane history-that cause is the ORIGINAL CORRUPTION OF THE HUMAN HEART; and till we close this great fountain of wickedness, or dilute the streams of depravity which it is incessantly pouring out upon the human race, all attempts to correct the evils of Government by a larger infusion of popular influence will be as vain as striving to extinguish a conflagration by heaping fuel upon the flames.

As this point of the original, inherent and irremediable save by Christianity, depravity of the human heart is the vital basis of revelation, so it lies at the root of the instant and total failure of democratic institutions to

Hume, vii. 241.

administer relief to the social state in every age and country of the world, and the woful results which have everywhere arisen from trusting the remedying of abuses to the profane and corrupt hands of the mass of the people. How could it be otherwise? Worn out or disgusted with the oppressions and abuses of the great, we intrusted the great work of reform to inferior hands, and hoped that by changing the seat of power from the higher to the lower orders, we would succeed in eradicating the social evils under which society had so long laboured. Abuses and injustice, it was thought, did not originate in human nature in general, but in the peculiarity of power being vested in a few hands; if this error was corrected, and the popular voice allowed to be heard in all the branches of Government, the reign of oppression must cease, because the interest of the majority, then rendered predominant, is to check the abuses of the few, and obtain for themselves the blessings of good and cheap government. Vain conceit! Granting that in this way you may effectually put an end to the abuses or corruptions of the minority who formerly ruled, how are you to guard against the vastly multiplied abuses of the majority who are now installed in power? Quis custodiet ipsos custodes? That is the rock on which democratic institutions ever and ever must immediately be shipwrecked. It is the inherent corruption and depravity of our nature, appearing only more clearly and deplorably by every successive addition which we make to the multitude of our governors, which is the real, universal, eternal, and deepseated cause of the utter impossibility, in an advanced and artificial state of society, of democratic institutions either existing for any time, or producing any thing but misery and evil during the brief period of their endurance.

"The necessity," says Coleridge, "for external government to man is in the inverse ratio of the vigour of his self-government. Where the last is most complete, the first is least wanted. Hence the more virtue the more liberty." This is one of those precious thoughts, the simplicity of which

disguises its profound truth, but which, when duly meditated on, throws a flood of light on the seemingly contradictory and inexplicable difference in the stability of, and effect produced by, similar forms of government in different countries and ages of the world. What, say the Republicans, can be so absurd as to refer to human corruption the failure of democratic institutions, when history has recorded the virtues of Sparta, the simple heroism of Switzerland, the flourishing commonwealth of America? Softly: before these examples are considered decisive on the subject, consider well whether they do not establish a conclusion directly adverse to that for which the Revolutionists refer to these celebrated States. It is not mere power which proves fatal to democra tic institutions; it is power which confers the means of increasing selfish enjoyment and gratifying human passion; it is power coinciding with or falling into the hands of persons alive to the luxuries and corruptions of life which is the fatal poison. Lycurgus showed a deep knowledge of human nature when he prohibited any money but iron coin in his commonwealth. If the citizens of a Republic are shepherds, who assemble once a-year under the canopy of heaven, as in the canton of Underwalden, to deliberate on their simple political wants, which do not exceed the concerns of a tolerablysized English parish; or if they are warriors, chained by severe laws and severer customs, as in Sparta, to a frugal and simple life, eating black broth, drinking water, and knowing no distinction but in warlike celebrity; or if they are retained by extraordinary circumstances in a rude state of agriculture, as in America, and have two hundred millions of uncultivated acres always ready to afford a refuge to the poverty or drain off the discontented multitudes of their country, they may go on for a considerable time without society being shattered by the unruly passions of the majority of mankind. Now, however, the inherent depravity of the human heart is evincing its tyrannic propensities even in that simple and religious land, where rural labour generally induces simplicity of manners, and the general presence of com

fort, equally with the absence of wealth, moderates the most violent passions of our nature. The dreadful spectacle of a human being recently burnt to death by a slow fire by a savage mob in the southern states, proves that the inhuman passions of our nature are shared alike by the authors of a Castilian auto da fe and the liberal electors of Transatlantic independence. The frightful and now almost daily occurrence of persons of all descriptions being seized by the people in the southern states of the Union, and hung up in the streets, without either trial or sentence, merely because they entertain opinions disagreeable to the tyrant majority, is but an unhappy illustration of the power of the human heart, as society advances and important interests come into collision, to withstand the temptations consequent on the lust of power. They seem resolved to realize the celebrated saying of the French Republicans" Is this the freedom which was promised us? we can no longer hang whom we please."

That we may not be suspected of European exaggeration on this subject, we subjoin the following extract from one of the most enlightened and moderate of the American newspapers, the Philadelphia Gazette :—

"The most ravenous appetite must have been glutted and destroyed by a perusal of the columns of any late newspaper. Revenge, riot, and intemperance seem to have their perfect work in every section of the country. Exhibitions are every day made of lawless excess, of infernal jealousy, of cold-blooded malignity, of most debasing sensuality, of utter recklessness of life, and entire disregard, if not disbelief, of a futurity, which would have been considered honourable by the most brutal of the red-capped friends of the human race' of the French Revolution. And the signs of the times have for a long time past given full promise of such a state of things. The preparation for it has been long and thorough. The pernicious doctrines, that any measures however dishonest, and men however unprincipled, may be made use of, in order to accomplish a political object that the laws are inadequate, or too tardy in their operations, to enforce rights and redress wrongs, and must give place to the inconsiderate judgments and sanguinary executions of the mob that self-gratification, in its broadest sense, is the chief end and aim of manand that the requisitions of morality and

religion are to be considered as burden

some exactions which are to be avoided

by all who would obtain power or wealth in the community, have been inculcated every where and in every possible way. What matter of surprise, then, is it, that, having sown the wind, we now begin to reap the whirlwind? that murders, robberies, gambling in all its varieties, suicides, mob outrages of every kind, have become so existence of such a state of things being frightfully frequent? But the fact of the unquestionable, and the evils of it perfectly apparent, the question naturally suggests itself, what measures of prevention or cure can be taken by those who prize the blessings of order and law, and are desirous to preserve their property and save their lives? Let every good man and true in the community put this question to himself in sober earnest, and let the answer which suggests itself to the wise man, the learned man, and the good man, be made known and acted upon. Let the lessons of wisdom, of experience, of truth, be put forth boldly. This is no time for timidity. He who, having the power to do something to increase knowledge, to proclaim truth, to confute error, and thus to advance the cause of order, morality, religion, law, and liberty, is too timid, or calculating, or desponding to do all that he can do, by speech, or writing, or action, is false to himself and to the Being who gave him powers to be used for the benefit of his fellow-men."

Even in the northern states and best regulated parts of the Union, the possession of power, as society advances, and important interests come into collision, appears to be producing its usual effect upon the human heart. The "tyrant majority" is even more unrelenting in his oppression than the tyrant oligarchy or the tyrant despot. Hear what the able and dispassionate Tocqueville says on this subject :"In America the European ladder of power being inverted, the rich find themselves in a situation similar to that of the poor in Europe; it is they who have often too much reason to dread the law. The real advantage of democracy is not that it protects the interests of all classes in the state, but that it accords with the wishes of the majority. In the United States the poor are the real rulers, and the rich have constantly reason to dread an abuse of their power. Omnipotence is universally dangerous; to resist its seductions is beyond the human strength; God alone can exercise it