tion for one moment. Let us make another supposition, then. Perhaps, as Lord Normanby had vacated his post, and been succeeded by an able and excellent man, it might be hoped that a brighter day had dawned upon Ireland, and therefore the Committee might have thought it well to let the country be governed a little longer by the ordinary laws. Still the high offences of Lord Normanby would have required punishment. Justice called for it; the necessity of striking terror into the minds of all corrupt and unprincipled rulers demanded it. It must therefore have happened that some one of the chosen few who represent Lord Roden in the House of Commons, should rise up in his place, and propose the impeachment of Lord Normanby. But, strange to say, there is not a trace of such a motion in the journals of the House. There is then but one alternative. Lord Roden failed to prove his charges against Lord Normanby. If so, of course we shall find a record of it. The Committee will have reported that the characteristic crimes of Ireland still exist, but in a mitigated form; and that there has been no evidence to prove that the Executive Government, during the last five years, have been wanting in alacrity and zeal to detect and punish crime. Lord Roden surely can never have been so unjust, as, in the face of the country, to bring forward specific charges of the gravest nature against a high public functionary-pledging himself to prove them by sworn evidence-and then, when he has failed, not to come forward and avow the fact, and strive to make all the reparation in his power. Again, however, we are compelled to say, that not one word of this appears. What course, then, has been pursued by him and his Committee ? What have they Reported, or how have they fulfilled the duties intrusted to them? They were to tell the House how it was that life and property had been rendered insecure during Lord Normanby's Government-they were to find out the means of arresting the arm of the assassin, and of setting free the course of justice. Nothing of the kind has been attempted. They have just piled upon the table of the House four thick folios, containing sixteen hundred pages of evidence and papers;-recommending the Peers to read them-well knowing that not one in fifty will have time or inclination to do so—and then conclude by dropping a hint about being appointed again next session. And this is what Lord Roden calls a triumph! It is one which few will envy him. The House of Lords may applaud him, and his friends in Ireland may greet their hero, as they did, with the assurance that they honour him as the appointed means which 'Providence has blessed for the protection of their Protestant ' rights, and the discomfiture of the enemies of their faith ;'* but this will never remove from him the imputation of having brought forward charges which he could not prove, and of seeking to perpetuate the injury which those charges had inflicted. We shall say no more. The questions we have discussed are of vital importance to England-she is deeply concerned in the character of her public men-she ought not to allow them to be trifled with, and to be wantonly sacrificed to serve the ends of party. And as regards the Government of Ireland, we pray that, for her own sake, she may never again suffer it to be conducted on the exclusive principles, and with the bitter passions of a sect; and that she may long continue to pursue the free, paternal, and enlightened policy of that Government which has been so unjustly maligned. We say for her own sake; for the Irish will now take care for themselves. In vain will the rash bigots, who are now clamouring for the repeal of the Emancipation Act, attain to power. They may for a season hold Ireland in military subjection; they will never govern her; they will never tranquillize her; they must always fear her, and they will end by yielding to her. 'The power of armies is a visible thing, Formal and circumscribed in time and space; * Address from the gentry of the county of Down, October 1839. ART. VIII.-1. The Ninth Report of the Commissioners appointed to enquire into the Management of the Post-Office Department. Presented to both Houses of Parliament. 1837. 2. Post-Office Reform-its Importance and Practicability. By ROWLAND HILL. London: 1837. 3. First, Second, and Third Reports from the Select Committee on Postage; together with the Minutes of Evidence, and Appendix. Ordered by the House of Commons to be Printed. 1838. 4. Facts and Reasons in support of Mr Rowland Hill's Plan for a Universal Penny Postage. By W. H. ASHUrst. 1838. 5. The Post Circular. Nos. I. to XIV. London : 1838. 6. Du Service des Postes, et de la Taxation des Lettres au Moyen d'un Timbre. Paris: 1839. IN the beginning of the year 1837, a pamphlet was published, developing a plan by which, according to the calculations of its author, letters might be conveyed through the post, from one end of the kingdom to the other, at the uniform rate of one penny per half ounce, without any great ultimate loss to the revenue. This bold project did not obtain authority from the name of its author, who was little known to the world. It did not seem capable of being made subservient to the objects of party politics, and it was far out of the region of polemics. Its boldness was, therefore, likely to be quietly contemned as empirical rashness by a busy population like our own, whose curiosity has been palled by the fallacious hopes of advantages which have been so constantly obtruded on the public attention. No scheme, therefore, was ever promulgated with less probability of success from adventitious causes; and yet no scheme ever made its way in so short a time to the convictions of mankind, not only in this country, but wherever a post-office is to be found. In two years and a-half, the theory of a private individual became the law of the land; and efforts are making in France, Germany, and other countries, to introduce into their own systems the principles on which the plan is founded. It would be useful, and not less interesting, step by step, to trace the progress of this plan. It would show the rapid and consentaneous movement of the national mind in an aspect somewhat new, and highly satisfactory. The numberless individuals, bound together by no party ties, who sprang forward in all parts of the country, to labour, each in his own way, for the common object; the various public bodies who examined, discussed, sanctioned, and supported it; the news papers in their unwearied exertions, although their conductors might not unreasonably have been afraid that the facility of advertising by circular letters would be adverse to their interests,all these acting towards one end, and influencing the public and the legislature solely by the array of facts and arguments which they were able to adduce, present a spectacle peculiar to our age and country;—a spectacle, too, of the best omen, at a period when good omens are by no means too common. But our space precludes the possibility of such details; and we must be satisfied with a very hasty review of the principal steps in this extraordinary movement. · A Commission was sitting when Mr Hill's pamphlet appeared, charged with an Inquiry into the Management of the Post-Office 'Department.' The Commissioners, Lord Duncannon, Mr Labouchere, and Lord Seymour, had already concluded their investigation as regarded the general post, and were engaged in the twopenny post department of the metropolis. The Commissioners summoned Mr Hill, and subjected his plan to careful examination ;-comparing his statements and opinions, as they were expressed, with the evidence of Mr Smith, the chief of the department, who was examined at the same time. We may here remark, that the gentlemen of the Post-Office have necessarily been placed in a difficult and somewhat invidious position. All public offices are besieged by plan-mongers, whose projects, ninety-nine times out of a hundred, are not worth the paper on which they are set forth. Between these schemers, who are by no means a patient and long-suffering race, and the executive officers of the different boards by which the complicated machine of government is kept in motion, there is a feud of ancient standing. The projector and the officer are therefore of necessity placed in a hostile attitude. In short, they are natural enemies. The plan is considered by the officer, under the strong presumption that it is built on some fallacy which he is bound to detect and expose add to this habit of mind, that it is not pleasant to find a stranger claiming to instruct one in his own art and mystery, and we shall not wonder at the slow progress which improvement must perhaps ever be destined to make, in places where the improver has no power of stimulating either by the hope of profit or the fear of loss. : But this state of things, be it remembered, is not productive of unmixed evil the officer makes an excellent Devil's advocate. All the zeal which a knowledge of practical difficulties, and a keen suspicion, not to say insurmountable distrust, of every thing speculative, can bring to oppose the reception of a theory in which his microscopic glance can detect aught unsound, is brought into full activity. In July 1837, the Commissioners, having concluded their investigation, reported in favour of Mr Hill's plan, so far as regards the department in reference to which the examination had been made. 'We propose (say they) that the distinction in the rates ' and districts, which now applies to letters delivered by the two'penny and threepenny post, shall not in any way affect correspondence transmitted under stamped covers; and that any let'ter, not exceeding an ounce in weight, shall be conveyed free within the metropolis, and the districts to which the town and 'country deliveries now extend, if enclosed in an envelope, bearing a penny stamp.'* In May of that year, a Petition in favour of the plan was presented to both Houses of Parliament, signed by merchants, bankers, insurance companies, men of science, solicitors, publishers, printers, and others, comprising in each class the most important names which the metropolis can furnish. About the same time a Memorial to a similar effect was presented to the Lords of the Treasury by the Society for the Diffusion of Useful Knowledge; and in the course of the same year, the question was warmly taken up by the Common Council of London and the Councils of several provincial towns. Parliament met in November, and Mr Wallace, who has been a most zealous leader in the cause of Post-Office Reform, obtained a Committee To inquire into the present rates and ' mode of charging postage, with a view to such reduction there' of as may be made without injury to the revenue; and for this purpose, to examine especially into the mode recommended for ' charging and collecting postage, in a pamphlet by Mr Rowland • Hill.' It has been erroneously stated, that Mr Wallace had the nomination of this Committee. The nomination was made by the Chancellor of the Exchequer. Now, there are some qualities which so certainly enter into the composition of every Chancellor of the Exchequer who ever lived, that we have sometimes thought we could, Cambo-like, imagine that functionary in the abstract, without any reference to either the House of Commons or Downing Street. The most remarkable of these qualities is an ex-officio sensibility to an approaching depression in the revenue, of the most delicate kind. No one, therefore, was less likely to submit a plan which was founded on so startling a reduction of charge to a slight or partial examination. Neither, in point of fact, as most of our readers already know, * Ninth Report, p. 7. |