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thousand power to support it. These are the hands, too, that fight with the heat of the furnace, and make yielding as wax the iron that is the tyrant's argument and reliance. But these are not all-Birmingham, with all its might, is but a part, and a small part, of this united people. Its voice is but a breathing of the common spirit. Its language is but a sample of the general sentiment. It is almost piteous to see how men, whose world is Bond street and St James's street (whose Dionysius's ear is a fashionable shop), propose to deal with such awful warnings. They prate of capital felonies and treason, and Lord Eldon reproaches the Law Officers of the Crown for not having prosecuted the multitude, who, by holding up their hands, assented to the resolution for the resistance of taxation. "Give me a quart bottle," said the madman at Niagara, "and I will draw off, and cork up, this noisy water!-what is it but a collection of drops?" A hundred thousand traitors would, indeed, make a State Trial-that is, a trial of the State, that would be pretty conclusive. The alacrity with which the Lord Eldon sprung up to preach the rigours of the law, is characteristic of the man-instinct with mischief, and who is sure to be called into activity by any opportunity of injury or vexation to society.

It is a grand principle of the Constitution that representation is essential to taxation, and the confessed rottenness of the representation vitiates the

authority. Though warranted by the letter of constitutional law, we would not break the bands of obedience so long as there is a prospect of obtaining the desired end by more safe and tranquil means: but if that prospect be closed, the people know their course, and will take it with the courage and constancy that wait upon forbearance nobly exercised and cruelly exhausted.

Since the tyranny of the Stuarts, has it ever been pretended that Hampden's resistance of taxation was an unconstitutional extremity? The pliant Judges, sure foes of liberty in all times, decided that the resistance was illegal; but did their arbitrary sentence decide the question, and has not the judgment of the world reversed the decree, and affirmed the illegality of the exaction, and the constitutional right and patriotic virtue of Hampden's resistance? The taxation Hampden resisted, was the unauthorised taxation of the Crown; the taxation the people of Birmingham threaten to resist is, the unauthorised taxation of Parliament. Hampdens in our time would be visited with the denunciation of Lord Eldon; and Lord Eldon in the time of Charles would have largely contributed to the destruction of the Monarch and the Monarchy. The error which we are endeavouring to correct as to the character of resistance of taxation, in the event of the denial of Reform, has been greedily seized upon by our antagonists, who say that a power is arrogated above the law, and mut

ter of rebellion. We reply that all turns upon the authority of the law, and that a distinction may as properly be taken in the nineteenth century between acts of parliament and law as in the seventeenth between commands of the Crown and law. Had not the people of Paris risen against the ordinances of July 1830, those ordinances would have passed for law, and the dissatisfied would have been stigmatised and punished as rebels, but the French discriminated between the commands of an established power, and its authority to issue them. They arrogated no power above the law, when they resisted the proclamations; and, were Reform hopeless, the people of England would arrogate no power above the law, in resisting taxation without representation.

The House of Commons would, indeed, arrogate a power above the law of the Constitution, and the source of its own authority, if, without purging itself of its corruptions, and restoring its representative character, it attempted to impose taxes. The people, in resisting such an usurpation, would act according to the letter and spirit of the Constitutional principle. The revolution is said, with much pretence of terror by our adversaries, to have commenced; but it began not with the measure of Reform, but with the usurpation of Boroughmongery; it was then that the provisions of the Constitution were set aside, and the authority of Parliament vitiated, and the rights of the

people spurned, when individuals, by corruptions of the purse, and in violation of the laws, possessed themselves of the legislative power without the legislative warrant of representation.

Then it was that Constitutional securities were flung down, and the people given up to plunder. Then it was, that the furtive Aristocratic Revolution had place, rendering up the many to the pillage of the few. What is now miscalled Revolution, is Restitution-it is the stripping of the thief, which the knave calls robbery.

It were a grievous error for the people to mistake the last stand upon their rights for the occupation of a ground beyond them. The resistance of taxation is not an expedient to be preferred; but it is one to which the nation may be compelled, if the reformation of the Commons be not presently accomplished.

DELICATE STATE OF GOVERNMENT.

BETWEEN the plague of the House of Lords and the pestilence, the public mind has been kept in a seasonable horror this grim month. If one alarm subsides, another immediately springs up. If the accounts from Sunderland are more favourable, the reports from Brighton are "such as to excite the

most serious apprehensions." If the pestilence remits, the Cumberland influence, the epityrannic, instantly becomes ascendant. If our bowels seem for a moment safe, the frame of society is threatened with convulsion; if health improves, the Constitution falls into danger! Scarcely have we thanked Heaven that our stores from the apothecary, the laudanum, the opium, the calomel, the capsicum, are likely to be useless, when we are advised to lay in munitions of war against the Boroughmongers—or, in default of fear of them, a pauper rebellion is threatened. Fright is the order of the day. It would be pleasant now to hear some one vapour of "confidence in Ministers," and "standing by Lord Grey." But there is, at present, more of lying than of standing in the town talk. Nothing can give an idea of the terror of the times, but that prophetic chaunt of Gaffer Thumb, as he rises through the trap-door to the horrified King Arthur,

"Pale death is prowling,

Dire omens scowling."

Ending with that too apposite passage,

"Grizzle's rebellion,

What need I tell ye on."

Pray Heaven the sequel complete not the parallel; but it is said, and believed in certain quarters, that our Tom Thumb will be swallowed up by a red cow, if he have not been actually swallowed

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