or in any son of man, for that which neither prince nor man can do for them. By a thirty years' discussion on the subject of parliamentary reformation, they have learned to know, that, for national salvation, they must put their trust in the CONSTITUTION alone. And this again is the key to that attachment to an individual at which I have hinted. Ardent as it is, it is qualified, it is conditional, it is united to him by a constitutional link, and no other. This is his own doctrine. He asks no confidence in his ability to save the state, in his plans or projects, as a substitute for the constitution. He disclaims being a depositary of public confidence, farther than in his sincerity and honest endeavours, for assisting his countrymen in recovering that constitution.

The young Lord George Grenville can inform his party of their entire mistake, in lamenting over the people's depravity in having lost the very capacity of respecting talent and public virtue. When his lordship, on the 21st day of June, found a gratification in working his way against the stream of population, which that day slowly flowed from the Tower to Piccadilly, it was only by an obliging effort on the part of the multitude, in opening a passage for him to squeeze through, and by keeping the spurs in the sides of his horse, he could get along. That it was not a scene of apathy and insensibility, this young lord can well relate.

From the foregoing premises, the inference to be drawn is this; that on no other ground whatever, than on that of a restoration of the constitution, will the people ever again-can they ever again, have confidence in any public character. When light and knowledge had exposed to contempt the impostures of sorcery, who longer pinned his faith on witches or wizards? These goodly personages doubtless complained of the alteration; but the world has not gone on the worse for their loss of popular confidence.

I have alluded to an individual, and the confidence reposed in him. Is it otherwise to be accounted for than as I have suggested? Does he possess any of those fascinating qualities which usually are not only found in, but industriously displayed by, the courters of popularity? No. Are his manners peculiarly attractive? No. Are his habits eminently social? No. Did he ever lay himself out as a professed party leader, by assiduously cultivating personal friendships among the great, either in or out of parliament? No. Did he ever, as a party subaltern, with a view to arriving at command, trample on any right of the people, or abandon any principle of the constitution? No. There is nothing of this kind in him, or about him. The whole secret of the public confidence in this man is, that, on all occasions, he has evinced an indignant feeling of public wrongs, and of individual oppression; a lively attachment to English rights, and an obstinate adherence to the English constitution. Were he to change his conduct, the confidence would vanish. If he shall not change-if he shall not

swerve either to the right hand or the left, that confidence must increase; and he will necessarily become to the gathering body of parliamentary reformers a centre of gravity, which, moving in the true orbit of the constitution, that body will ere long, as appearances indicate, acquire a momentum which nothing either hollow or rotten can resist.

But, have we not, in this man, all things considered, somewhat of a phenomenon on which a nation must involuntarily gaze, and from which they will necessarily draw portents? Constitutional rectitude and political philosophy, unfolding the science of civil government, and teaching the attainment of its delicious fruits, liberty, prosperity, happiness, and glory, are not, in the retirement of an obscure man, whose principal theatre of action is his own study, considered as very extraordinary rarities; but when all this is discovered in a person of rank, of splendid fortune, but of more splendid eloquence; and when, in vindicating public rights, in maintaining truth and justice, he foregoes the usual pleasures of his class in society, incurs the hatred of equals, and encounters the dangers of a person charged with the worst designs against the state, the people behold a phenomenon they have never before seen; and, by an influence they cannot resist, they read in it portents of incalculable good to themselves and to posterity. Their confidence increases, and their attachment becomes intense, in proportion as they see such a character the subject of calumny, or the object of persecution.

Now, my countrymen, who are the enlightened, the practical 'statesmen, of talent and integrity to preserve our laws and liberties?" Shall we find them among those who in enmity to our freedom, and in the excess of passion and folly, involved us in the detested war that has nearly brought the state to ruin ?* Or can they be discovered, among those who, having been tried, made, in contempt of the constitution, additional inroads on our liberties, but no effort to re-place them on their proper two-fold basis,-legislation, in the hands of real representatives; and defence, in the hands of the people themselves? Or must we look to those who look to us?-Here I wish you to pause and ruminate.

That, while correcting the mistakes of others, I may not be myself corrected, for addressing the collective inhabitants of the whole united kingdom as the people of England, it is sufficient to say, those inhabitants are universally so called by the foreign world; and their liberties depend on the ENGLISH CONSTITU

TION.

Constitutions, whether animal or political, when materially deranged, can only be set right by those who understand them. Touching the ordinary care and preservation of a person's own bodily health, the adage says, that the man of forty must be either * See page 15.

B 2

a fool or a physician. And ought not the same, in a political sense, to be said of every Englishman, respecting the English constitution, who has been forty years a politician? Not having yet arrived at my fortieth political year, I have at present nothing to fear from the unfavourable side of the alternative. And whether, my countrymen, I am to pass with you as one of the practical state doctors, is for you to determine; but, with your permission, and by way of an illustration in advance, I will present you with a short narrative of what happened in my own case, for showing the difference between gentlemen of the college who practise physic, and a practical physician.

At an early period of life, in consequence of some rough treatment of a sound constitution, and the accidents of a sea life, my health so much declined that I sought medical advice. In the course of seven years, and in the hands successively of as many regular physicians, my case grew more and more desperate, till I was brought to the brink of the grave. Not a man of the seven had discovered the cause of my ailment. At this period it was my good fortune to consult the honest James-a learned, but a plain unostentatious man, with a mind as penetrating as it was independent, and perfectly free from any of the finesse or mystery of the trade. I had not been two minutes in the presence of this sagacious man ere he told me in two words the cause and character of my complaint; and which, by means of a single medicine, requiring neither confinement nor constraint, and very cheap, he speedily cured.

Since this reformation in my own disordered frame, I have already lived nearly thrice as long as the probable duration of human life at the most favourable period, according to the rules of calculation; and therefore may be said to have survived the crisis of disorder near J three ages of man and I feel strongly persuaded I shall yet see the sun of England take once more his majestic course through the bright expanse of liberty and glory.

my

A political state, existing in principles of truth and reason, which are eternal, is not necessarily mortal; and may, by successive reformations, for aught that casuists can prove to the contrary, have a duration without end. And when we consider the attention with which the people now listen to those physicians who prescribe only a single medicine congenial with the constitution; as well as their mortifying disregard of the secundem artem doctors, is not this the proper bulletin of the state-convalescent, with every indication of returning health and strength?

The Genius of England, if he have not abandoned his charge, may therefore now be imagined standing, as a herald, on the loftiest battlements of freedom's fair castle, proclaiming to all the duty of watchfulness. May we not suppose him to cry aloudLo, a mighty change is at hand: stand to your arms !—be vigilant, that ye may be victorious!'

We need not, indeed, the voice of any supernatural agent to inform us, that a spirit of parliamentary reformation is abroad and actively working in the public mind. But it behoves us to be on our guard against the warfare of the never-sleeping enemies of freedom; as well as against the mental errors of assured friends: but above all, against the sordid machinations of those who, like other mercenaries, are either neutrals, or allies, or enemies, as serves at the moment the purposes of their shortsighted ambition.

Let us, therefore, be vigilant! let us stand to our arms! that we may not only encounter with success the panic-smitten armies of corruption in our front, but keep to their fidelity also the unsteady squadrons on our flanks-those who have different colours and a different language for different occasions;-those who only appear in the field of reform when invited by gain, or dragged thither by shame or by fear;-those whose policy it always has been, that as little as possible shall be gained for freedom, while of that little they shall, if possible, carry away the credit.

If, through the lofty air and solemn phraseology of men pretending to superior wisdom, or, through the wily insinuations and sophistries of place-hunting adventurers, persons of integrity have been seduced into these hovering bands, they ere long, it is to be hoped, will see their error, and join with hand and heart those reformers whose sole object is their country's liberty-blest source of every good! whose banner bears this inscription-THE CONSTITUTION: THE WHOLE CONSTITUTION: NOTHING BUT THE CONSTITUTION.

It may be said of the factious, as of false prophets, by their works ye shall know them. If we ask a statesman for the bread of the constitution, shall he give us the stone of the close boroughs? Or the garbage of those which are open to the highest bidder?-If we call for a brother's aid to avert from us the dire contents of seven vials of wrath, shall that brother be the person to pour out upon our heads three of those blistering plagues, and gravely call it our medicine!

When to an option between two experienced curses we must submit, we of course prefer the least; but, to choose, to propose, to canvas for a curse, and, because of its being merely less in degree than another of its kind, to call it a blessing-what, in God's name is this, but party infection, historical ignorance, or pitiable infatuation! Even by those well-wishers who have neither consulted history, nor reason, nor the constitution of their country, a triennial parliament, one would think, might be rightly appreciated from this striking fact, that, on the very first apprehension of reform in the late session from Mr. Brand's motion in the House of Commons, a triennial parliament was spontaneously

offered by an avowed enemy, Lord Milton, who declares himself averse to " any steps which might lead in the remotest degree to "a reform in parliament." He yet officiously offers you a triennial parliament; telling you he considers it as mere "regulation," not "reformation." This young lord had no doubt been instructed by those who knew, that, before he was born, a similar offer had done good service, in dividing reformers and defeating reform; and who also knew the truth of the words they had put into his mouth, that, in a "triennal" parliament there would be по "reformation."

The true state physician, or, in other words, the enlightened and practical statesman, when a government is threatened by its corruptions with extinction, looks at once to the VITAL ORGANS, and his first effort is, to remove the offending matter, which either palsies their powers, or puts them into a mischievous activity; so that he may restore them to the natural tone proper to life and health. If this be the very characteristic of statesmen, who hath convinced us that we should find them in a Grenville ministry?

If it be asked, which are the VITAL ORGANS of the English government? Be it answered, A COMMONS HOUSE and A COUNTY POWER. The first mentioned of these VITAL ORGANS, the COMMONS HOUSE, ought to be a concentration, by free election, of the public wisdom and will in a single council chamber, for guardianship of the common weal-for checking the excesses of regal domination by its own power of the purse,-for prosecuting official delinquency, for executing the legislative trust as limited by the constitution for its own conservation,-for the preservation of public liberty, and for concurring in all legitimate proceedings of the other two estates of the realm.-Would such a COMMONS HOUSE be the desire of a Grenville ministry?

Lord Grey (then Lord Howick) in the House of Commons on the 5th of January 1807, said, "that illustrious statesman, "Mr. Fox, in the most severe moments of his illness, stated it "to be the ardent wish of his mind to accomplish, before his "death, two great works on which he had set his heart-the res"toration of peace, and the abolition of the slave trade;"* but it never did appear that the Grenville ministry of that day, or any part of it, had in contemplation any restoration whatever of either of the VITAL ORGANS of the state.

The other VITAL ORGAN, the COUNTY POWER, ❝ includes "the whole civil state from the duke to the peasant."+ It is, by law, at the instant call of the sheriff and subordinate civil magistrates, for preserving the public peace. It is also answerable for putting down insurrection, for quelling rebellion, and for opposing invasion. To fit it for these duties, reason and the common

Courier, 6th January, 1807.

+ Sir William Jones.