blame the Government for what, in truth, is the working of the new constitution. Bills that consume half one session-lost in the Lords, are naturally reproduced, to waste one-half the next. Legislation is more popular, but more encumbered and more tardy. The evil must be taken for the sake of the good. Urtica proxima sæpe rosa est. Again, in the old Parliament, a large proportion of members, representing only a nobleman's tenants, or their own pockets, did not deem it necessary to crowd the benches with nightly attendance, or cumber the order-book with notices of motion. Great party conflicts were rare, and the debate was left in the hands of a very few members. Adjourned discussions were prodigies out of the usual course of events. The business of the session, such as it was, proceeded with fluent regularity. Any one who has paid attention to Parliamentary business, must be aware how difficult it is to proceed far with a full House. You cannot chain the attention of four hundred or five hundred members to the tedious and minute details of a Bill which interests only some thirty or forty. * But constituents naturally desire to see the names of their members in the lists of the divisions; and the very virtue of regular attendance produces much of the vice of impatient and yet protracted legislation. The enfranchisement of the large towns, with their complicated interests, public and local, tends to the multiplication of Bills. The interest in politics, that is always keen in proportion to the freedom of the constitution, tends to the multiplication of speeches. All constituencies unite in lamenting that so much time is wasted in mere talk; and yet each constituency is proud of the talk, or angry at the silence of its own member. Hence linguæ centum sunt, oraque centum. These are the faults of assemblies, in proportion as they are popular in their nature, and numerous in their constitution. The House of Commons is the largest popular assembly in the world. All the reforms that can be devised in the constituencies, will not increase the virtue of the chamber as a deliberative and business-like body. It is by reducing the members that you may augment its capacities of business. A hundred men of common sense will get through their work quicker than six hundred sages. But would the good of this change compensate for the evil? It

*

In fact, one cause of the number of bills passed, and the quantity of actual business done at the close of the session, compared with the beginning and the middle, is that Party Debates are then pretty generally over, and a sufficient proportion of members have left town, to allow those who remain to get through the necessary work with temper and dispatch.

is the numbers of the House of Commons that give popular life and vigour to its debates; that excite the eloquence which rings through every part of the empire; and waken in the most torpid that interest in public affairs which is to liberty what enthusiasm is to action. No change would be more fatal to popular principles, even with Annual Parliaments and Universal Suffrage, than one which paralysed the democratic vigour that the House of Commons takes from its numbers alone, by converting the great arena of debate inso a committee for consultation. But it is precisely because of the close communion between representative and constituent-because of the competition, jealousy, and emulation which arise from sympathy with popular bodies, and desire of their applause-because in the new House of Commons every interest finds some representative-every talent covets some display-every grievance obtains some voice, that there are complaints of the disproportion of talk to business--of the quantum of legislation begun to the modicum of legislation achieved—that Motions that never can succeed-Bills that never can be passed-interfere with the progress of measures that belong to the essential welfare of the country. Hence it is that, even without the chilling influence of the Upper House, the Lower House produces its own obstructions, from the fervour of its own activity. Musæus says that the eagle lays three eggs, sits on two, and hatches one; and Parliament may be said to do business pretty much as the eagle, according to him, lays eggs. But we think still, as the people thought when they demanded the Reform Bill, that the good counterbalances the evil. And if the effects be judged, not as Lord Lyndhurst proposes, by the number of bills that are not carried, but by the number and the nature of those that are, we believe we shall be enabled to show that the people have no cause to complain. The Whigs have now, under two cabinets, been in power nine years. You say they have been vacillating and inefficient; and we do not ask you to match what they have done in nine years with the acts of any one previous Administration, the strongest and most vigorous, commanding all the powers of the Commons, the Lords, the Throne, and the Press,-but we ask whether all the Cabinets from 1688 to 1830 have effected as much? In the first three or four years under Lord Grey, they carried the Reform Bill, against what obstacles we need not say. The Act for the Abolition of S'avery; the East India Charter; the opening of the China Trade; the Bank Charter Bill (including a partial repeal of the Usury Laws and Regulations for the improvement of Joint-Stock Companies;) in Foreign Policy, the settlement of the great European questions which established the thrones

of Greece, Portugal, and Belgium; the Scotch Burgh Reform; the English Poor-Law Bill; the Consolidation into one volume of the Commercial Laws of the Empire; the law that applies the principle of bonding to the manufacture of Sugar; the removal of the Prohibition on New Silk from France; various improvements in the Laws, (not, indeed, so extensive as could be wished, and leaving much to be done, but comprising at least, in the Limitation-for-Actions Bill, a reform that has justly been called the most sweeping change made in the laws for half a 'century,') all these, a single one of which would have immortalized a Tory government, were amongst the earliest achievements of this inefficient Whig Administration. During this time,

was no relief afforded to the people? If no other good had been effected in our financial arrangements than the simplification of the Public Accounts-the credit and the immense advantage of which Mr Hume justly attributes to the Whigs-it would have been no small service to the country. But what have been the more palpable financial benefits? From 1831 to 1834, out of the fifteen millions which the national debt and the actual exigencies of the state leave available to the economist, a reduction in the expenditure was made to the amount of two millions, nine hundred and thirty-six thousand pounds. In 1831 and 1832, one million, seven hundred and ninety thousand pounds were taken off the taxes; in 1833, one million five hundred and forty-five thousand pounds.* Did the working classes, who are now told that the Whigs are callous to their welfare, reap nothing from these reductions? Were the reductions not made with an especial eye to the poorer classes? Is there a Whig-denouncing Chartist in the land who has felt his situation the worse for the reliefs in coals, soap, candles, leather, printed cottons, the large reduction of taxes on houses from L. 10 to L. 18 value ? The Government are accused of seeking patronage. Did they show it when, in their savings to the state, they resigned patronage in the several establishments to the amount of 1265 official appointments; in the customs, to 414; in the excise, to 507; in the colonies, to a pecuniary reduction of nearly L.400,000?

But these are the merits of Lord Grey's cabinet. Will you deny any share of them to Lord Melbourne, who was of that cabinet? What is the distinction between Lord Grey's cabinet and Lord Melbourne's? This, that Lord Melbourne has to deal

Sec, for a more elaborate account of the measures and the reductions referred to in the text, the valuable pamphlet, entitled, 'The Reform Ministry and the Reformed Parliament.'

with fewer abuses which the public are generally decided to correct, that, having a much more formidable opposition in the Lords, a much less commanding majority in the Commons, a much less zealous support from the press, he has less power to effect reforms. But with all these drawbacks and disadvantages, is it said of Lord Melbourne's Government that it is less liberal than Lord Grey's? that it hazards the expression of more timid principles of reform? This is not said by the Tories: this is not asserted by the Radicals. Well then, Lord Melbourne's Government, enfeebled, if you please, by the strength of the Opposition-having a comparatively scanty majority in the Commons-having had at one time but a reluctant countenance from the Court at all times the unrelaxing opposition of the Lords, and with that disadvantage in the popular mind which is to be found in the reaction or exhaustion that followed the Reform Bill, as it does all isolated popular efforts have carried greater and more difficult questions than ever procured for the strongest Tory administration the praise of efficiency and vigour.

Let us now cast a glance towards the benefits derived from their management of the finances. Even prior to the Government of Lord Grey, the Duke of Wellington thought that the limit of retrenchment, and, consequently, of reduceable taxation, was attained. Then came the relief effected by Lord Grey. Yet, under Lord Melbourne there has been an additional reduction in taxes to the amount nearly of a million and a half. And this, be it remembered, during the very time when the exigencies of the state seemed rather to threaten increase than to promise diminution of the national burdens. During the very time when it was necessary for the honour and security of the empire to augment (and not inconsiderably) the army, the navy, and the ordnance, an adequate force has been provided for the defence of the Canadas; the military movements in the East Indies have been carried on with a spirit, and on a scale unprecedented in later times; the British contingent employed in Spain has been maintained, and has been a main cause of tranquillizing the Peninsula. And have financial reductions, and military preparations, been attended with a niggard bounty to these departments in national civilization, in which we seek the ornament and grace of states? We venture to say, that literature, science, and the arts, have received more liberal encouragement and aid than were ever before accorded by the Treasury. Expeditions and voyages of discovery have been undertaken; extended serieses of observations have been made; a geological sur vey of unexampled precision and accuracy is in progress; the publication of useful works has been promoted; paintings of the

rarest value have enriched our National Gallery; new relics of antiquity, manuscripts precious to learning, vases, engravingsvarious collections inestimable to taste, to art, and to sciencehave been added to the British Museum. We do not envy those who can sneer at such acquisitions to the intellectual wealth of a great and polished people; or who deem the advancement of the liberal arts unworthy the attention of Government. But art has not been favoured to the neglect of trade. A branch of industry capable of very large extension has been saved from utter ruin, by the reduction of the duty on Flint Glass to half its former amount. At the time of the reduction, the manufacture was in a state of rapid decay; capitalists about to quit the trade; several of the glass houses already closed the selection of this tax for large reduction, has given to the industry thus relieved a new impetus. The alteration of the Paper Duties, (an article in which the interests of literature were deeply concerned,) has not only greatly lessened the pressure of the Excise, but remedied fraud on the one side, and oppression on the other. The entire repeal of the duties on Printed Paper Hangings, has added materially to the cleanliness and comfort of even the poorest householders. What was the state of the law, as regards the Press, when Sir Edward Lytton Bulwer brought forward his motion for the reduction of the Newspaper duty to one penny? Not only was the progress of knowledge impeded by the high duty then existing, but the law was at once odious and ineffective. Prosecutions were undertaken-printing-presses confiscated-prisons crowded with offenders, who derived from the judgment of the courts of justice not only the honours of martyrdom, but the rewards of successful speculation. The year following that motion, the Government, having the available surplus, according to the proposition it embraced, reduced the duty from fourpence to one penny, in the teeth of the most violent but subtle opposition of the Tories, headed by Sir C. Knightly, and under colour of substituting the repeal of the duty upon tallow! With the reduction of the Newspaper Duty, ceased all the oppression and the immorality of countless prosecutions and lucrative imprisonments. Before Lord Melbourne's Government, motion after motion had been vainly made for equalizing the Sugar Duties, and reducing the drawbacks on exportation. Over and over again had Mr Whitmore (whose retirement from Parliament all well-wishers to British commerce must lament,) urged the impolicy of the existing duties on East Indian sugar, and their fatal consequences to trade, to the revenue, and the improvement of the African race. Lord Melbourne's Government was the first