lection of this piece of humour, more than at all the imposi tions upon the people, to the success of which he has contributed.

We differ from Lord Shelburne in this, that when the influence of the crown is gone, we know of no power in the state that can guarantee the exercise of the royal veto. No man can think this to be practicable who duly reflects upon the cause of its long desuetude. Is it not the consequence of a gradual change in the circumstances of the nation? Is it not the consequence of a public feeling, which has settled into a maxim? Can this be restored at the will of any minister, or the fiat of a prevailing party in the country? That it cannot, is plain to every honest and reflecting mind; and, therefore, any theory of reform which supposes this to be practicable, is built on no foundation of experience or analogy. Who shall take down from its place in the sanctuary this spear of Goliah, and put the unwieldly weapon into the hand of the sovereign? or who, while the prince is employing it, will answer for the security of the sceptre?

Still, however, our modern reformers contend for the neces sity of replacing this influence, by the restoration of a proper proportion of the prerogative. By this they hope to avoid the dilemma of either proposing a vain thing, or advocating republicanism; since every man of sense, and almost every school-boy feels, that we must have active prerogative, or silent influence, if the kingly government is to be supported. If they take away the influence, they perceive that to leave the elements of monarchy standing, they must set up the prerogative. But in their endeavour to prove their constitutional orthodoxy, they have gone into an excess which plainly shews their ignorance of the consequence of political measures. Thus Mr. Cobbett has contended that the parliament has no manner of right to interfere with the king's choice of his ministers; and a popular commoner has argued for restoring to the sovereign the prerogative of settling what burghs shall be allowed, and what shall be excluded from the privilege of sending members to parliament. It would be a waste of room to comment upon the absurdity of either of these propositions. One thing is certainly to be said for them, viz. that they are not only reconcileable, but that the one is well adapted to support the other. For if the commons are to be no party to the choice of ministers, nor to interfere with their continuance in place, the king and his servants become insulated from the people, and must maintain the conflict together: majesty must put itself foremost and sustain every attack, till at length, as the author of the

Oceana has somewhere expressed it, there will be a perpetual wrestling-match between the monarch and his people. In this state of exposure, the proposal last alluded to comes in to the relief of the king, by enabling him to put all the burghs in the kingdom at the disposal of the treasury. To such absurdities are men driven when they seek to substitute speculation for experience in human affairs, and quarrel with what is practically good, because they can prove it to be false in theory. But we do not give to all who clamour for prerogative the credit of being real friends to it. We wish these professed friends of prerogative to reflect, if they are sincere, that if their point were carried the dilemma of the crown would be this,-either it must suffer all its power to be lost, or it must contend hand to hand with opposing factions.

It is a maxim of unquestionable verity, that power is attracted by property. The house of commons, therefore, which holds the purse, has acquired insensibly by far the largest share of the real power of the country. Theorists have amused themselves with the picturesque idea of the balance of powers, controuling each other by their opposite tendencies, and maintaining their allotted places in the system, without any blending or intermixture of operation. Many fine observations have been made by De Lolme, Blackstone, and Montesquieu, on this happy counterpoise in the parts of the constitution of this country. Their illustrations are perfectly agreeable to the theory of the state, and are therefore well pleasing to the lovers of symmetry and system. But as practical representations, they have little more to do with the case than the vortices of Descartes. The House of Commons is the mart of business, as it is the focus of power, and there is hardly a person in the country familiar only with the newspapers, who does not know that if this part of the constitution did not include in its composition the elements of the monarchy and aristocracy, it would soon set itself in array against them both, and prove too strong for their united force. This is not theory. The history of the country supplies the example. It is, therefore, a problem much too hard for our solution, to determine how the business of government can possibly be carried on, unless the king and lords are indirectly represented in the commons, and have their hands upon that only lever by which the state can be put into motion. This is to speak fairly out, but not with greater sincerity than the times demand.

But we are very far from meaning to deny that this influence, for the necessity of which, to a certain degree, we have ventured to contend, may exceed a proper measure, and be carried to a

and

greater extent than is wholesome for the state. It is always a very rational subject of enquiry, we will say, of jealous enquiry. Neither is it possible to deny that at the present juncture the existing sources of influence are great and spreading. But let it be remembered that extension of the revenue, which is always considered as one of the greatest of these sources, is in an equal, or perhaps a much greater degree, a source of discontent; that if the patronage of the crown is doubled in a time of war, the sacrifices which it calls upon individuals to make require some augmentation of influence to support the continuance of public effort. But under all this pressure of influence, what has been the strength of the party in opposition to government? And how far has it been able to avail itself of an antagonist influence in the country? Has it, or has it not, been sufficiently strong to answer all the purposes for which an opposition is desirable? These, at least, are questions. worthy of being considered and answered, before the mind of the politician is made up on the dangerous extent of the existing influence. If it be admitted to be at all necessary, as we trust we have given some reasons for concluding it to be, there can be no fixed, assignable quantity allowed, abstractedly from the circumstances of the country. The quantity necessary to answer that wholesome purpose, to the exigency of which it must be bounded, will depend upon the dispositions, or the difficulties, of the particular conjuncture. Such were the difficulties in which William the Third found himself placed by the reduction of the prerogative, without the substitution of that indirect influence which has since arisen from the debt of the nation and the collection of the national revenues to pay it, that he was reduced much against his inclination, (for he was an honest man,) to resort to secret influence of the direct kind, and perhaps of any kind; and this only served his purpose occasionally; for he was unable to secure a regular majority. His situation, therefore, was uneasy, and his reign embittered by the animosities of parties, and a sour opposition to his vigorous and seasonable activity. That the weakness of the executive forced this secret direct influence into action for the greater part of a century after the revolution, appears plainly enough from the history of that period. But with the gradual change in the circumstances of the country, DIRECT influence seems to have given way to a system infinitely less exceptionable, and, in the opinion of many wise men, not exceptionable at all. It is the nature of this sort of influence, last alluded to, in some measure to rise and fall with the exigency for its

application; and if the case were better sifted than we have room or leisure, or perhaps ability, to do, it might be discovered that the average exertion of this influence is regulated by reference to the actual necessities of the state and the true interests of the country.

It is curious, and would be entertaining, if all frauds upon the understandings of the people did not lead to dangerous consequences, to observe how the same political facts are twisted into directly contrary inferences by different reasoners, as their general wishes or feelings prompt them, or by the same persons as their places in the political system may happen to be shifted or reversed. In the year 1809 (and it is material to attend to the situation of parties at that time) a writer in a very distinguished journal, who had been accustomed to treat all subjects of political discussion with that self-complacent decisiveness which cuts through every difficulty, felt himself on a sudden embarrassed with the extreme delicacy of the great question of parliamentary reform, and more peculiarly as it stands connected with the topic of the influence of the crown. Professing still, in terms, to be the strenuous friend of parliamentary reform, he proceeds with his usual didactic solemnity, to an examination of all the grounds of popular expectation of specific benefits to result from it, and shews them to be, one and all, miserably fallacious. He shews, for it is easy to shew it, that it is a piece of wretched quackery. Will it case us of our taxes? No, says this omniscient reviewer. "To expect this is in the highest degree chimerical. The greater part are actually levied to pay the interest of the debts which we have contracted, and a vast proportion of the remainder is required for the maintenance of the war in which we are engaged.". The war, as almost all the other wars by which our debt has been created, has hitherto been most unquestionably popular; and it is reasonable, therefore, to presume, would have been carried on to at least as great an extent by a legislature more immediately under the influence of popular feelings. The same writer then remarks on the subject of influence, that it has greatly accumulated, (and who can deny it?) but then he allows that the burthen of taxation being so great, it can never be the interest of a minister to increase it, with any view to an increase of influence, which would be more than counterbalanced by the loss of popularity. "The most effectual bribe which a minister can now give, is in the form of a remission of the taxes." He concludes this branch of his subject with very properly observing, that the great body of the people never yet engaged eagerly in the pursuit of an un

attainable object without throwing the frame of society into disorder. He then takes a view of the state of patronage vested in the executive, upon which he remarks that all our present vast establishments are now a part of our existence, and can neither be abandoned nor diminished; and though we are transformed into a nation of public functionaries, yet so we must remain. And though he declares it to be a grievance, yet it cannot be removed. Neither can the salaries of the public officers be diniinished. They are rather inadequate than excessive. Therefore, he concludes, that he sees no prospect of removing or even alleviating the evil by any alteration in the House of Commons. The only remedy that occurs to him, is to break down this patronage, as much as possible, into separate and detached portions, and to vest them in local assemblies.

But then, he says again, that this remedy would be very inadequate and very inconvenient, and there he leaves us, to extricate our intellects out of these labyrinths as we can. He then com

plains of the monopoly of all posts of importance, which he seems to think are engrossed by a few great families. But this. appearing, probably, to be no very tenable proposition, he lets loose his hold, and soaring again into a metaphysical elevation to take an ampler ken of the real mischiefs which he has undertaken to point out, he settles at length with all his vengeance upon the heads of the present administration. He concludes with a panegyric upon the government of influence as succeeding to that of prerogative, and decides that the reign of influence and freedom began together. Now it is rather singular to find in this same journal, this same writer (for it is pretty clear, from the internal evidence of the composition, that it is the same writer), about two years afterwards upon the same subject of parliamentary reform, declaring that the prerogative is the measure and ultimate support of the legal authority;" and that a government of influence is necessarily the government of a faction, which has made itself illegally independent both of the Sovereign and the people:" a little afterwards "he states that there is no ground for any jealousy of popular independence, where all the powers of the crown are acknowledged to exist for the good of the people :" "It is evidently," says this writer, "quite extravagant to fear, that any increase of union and intelligence, any growing love of freedom and justice in the people, should endanger or should fail to confirm all those powers and prerogatives."

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Now surely there cannot be two opinions more completely at variance than those which we have extracted from the same