nigh gone.

"Great events were on the gale"-and men whom the country, not in mere courtesy, called great, were the chief speakers. They had the ear of the House-and of the island. They often discoursed wisdom. Elevated sentiments and profound thoughts were often uttered in music; and in the House of Representatives, on the night of some high argument, was heard the voice of the Intellect of Britain. Genius and talent took the lead, and were allowed to keep it, but not to the silencing of them who, without eminent endowments, spoke the words of truth and soberness, plain in their patriotism, homely in their eulogies as in their invectives, and inspired but by love of their country and institutions. The people were too free not to be discontented almost always with one thing or another in the conduct of every Ministry, and of every Parliament; nor were they ever choice or chary in their expressions about their rulers or their representatives. But they regarded both Houses with a respect and even veneration that were not shook in their minds by such temporary ebullitions of discontent or anger-however violent; and there was confidence-not undeserved-in the superior knowledge and wisdom, and in the integrity of public men. Is there the same confidence nowor has the character of the House of Commons risen, since the people got their own Bill, in the estimation of the people?

No-it has fallen almost to zero. Not a new man above mediocrity in talent-nor by the people themselves so esteemed; most of the popular members being sad dunces, and having nothing to pride themselves on but their zeal. A zealous blockhead is either a private or a public nuisance-and can never be made to consume his own smoke. Their integrity is about equal to their talent; and their knowledge, small as it is, equal to both. The people are not by any means proud of such representatives; and there is hardly a constituent among the ten-pounders who does not, and not unreasonably, think he would himself make as good a Parliament-man as most of the folk whose speeches he spells of an evening over his beer at the Cat and

Fiddle. We cannot help believing, though our hopes are not high, that all this stupidity must cure itself; and that in a few years Electors will require other powers in the elect than that of gulping pledges. The elect, too, will get sick of swallowing lump after lump of indigest ble matter and the head regain its ascendency over the stomach. For our own parts, we used to derive much instruction from almost every discussion in the House of Commons, on any important subject; but now most of the speeches are but chippings and parings of pamphlets, and we have found more information in a single paragraph of a leading article in the Standard or Morning Post, than in many a debate that covered three sides of the sheet bearing the name of one or other of these admirable papers. This cannot well last; the meanest constituencies will get sorry and ashamed of such mouthpieces, and, after a Parliament or two, will be found preferring gentlemen. The English are a proud people.

The Conservative Party is, all over Britain, fast gaining strength-and in Parliament it is the only party deserving a name. The Destructives are not an hundred strong; and the Whigs are so generally despised, that by themselves they could not stand a day. 'Tis a great pity they are so worthless; for had they shewn some virtue, common cause might have been made with them by the Conservatives, without any sacrifice of principle on our part, and every other sacrifice would have been cheerfully made by men who desire but their country's good. Now, that is impossible. Yet see our power. But for the Conservative Party, what would have become of the Ministry when pressed even by Joseph Hume on the Corn Laws? Why, one Minister would have strangled another

the Grahame sunk ingloriously beneath the suffocating hand of a Thomson-and the Government been a corpse.

His Majesty's Opposition should really not be in his Majesty's Ministry. Who, pray, is the leader of his Majesty's Opposition? A question arises, about the food of the people. They open their mouths and are not fed, says he of the Board of Trade;

tives were not entirely bad; it would at least have shewn that they had a mind of their own, however mischievously exerted; and that they were capable of conceiving a crime. But they had not genius to imagine such an iniquity-nor courage to execute it-and in their dulness and their cowardice they listened, and were noseled by a more inventive and daring demon than was ever lodged within their own bosoms. They were cowed by O'Connell. He drove them a-field, like an overseer brandishing his whip over a gang of slaves. How mean all their behaviour to that man! What signify all Stanley's sarcasms, cutting as they have sometimes been; what all Althorp's lowings, sulky as those of an ox recalcitrating to the goad, when the whole Ministry submit their snouts, like swine, to be ringed by their savage driver, and hold up their hinder legs to be noosed by him, that he may collect all the ties into one knot, and holding it in his sinister, and an iron-tipped thong in his dexter hand, may leeringly look on the drove in spite of all their obstinacy marching from Mullingar to Michaelmas, as if, so they think, according to the freedom of their own will, but, as the cunning Irishman knows, moved onwards by the magic of the string that encourages while it seems to control, and sends them all abristle and a-scamper to their own bed in the mire, which he has heaped up for them from a hundred ditches!

Had the Agitator's defeats been a hundred times greater than they have ever been-and sometimes he has indeed seemed to lick the dust at Stanley's feet, and even to shun the hoof of Althorp-one fatal dereliction of principle like this, would have rendered them all vain, nay, converted them all into triumph. At the bidding of him who should now have been a convict, did the Ministers tie themselves to the tail of a conspirator against the majesty of Justice, and suffer themselves to be whisked about like so much joint less hairy skin, by a savage who all the while laughed in his sleeve at the absurdity of the appendage. He once called Mr Stanley a shavebeggar." But he has made the Amende honorable to the Secretary

for the Colonies, and elevated him, along with Lord John Russell, to the tuft of the Liberator's tail.

O'Connell knew his men better than we knew them; for false and faithless as they have one and all been to the sacred trusts confided to their keeping, we could not have supposed for an instant, that even they would have been so insane as to venture on such an outrage. We should have said, had any one told us of O'Connell's intention, that from very shame they would have crushed the calumniator. But no-they aggravated the guilt of aiding him in his attempt to shake the seat of Justice, by incredible baseness, peculiar to themselves, to which our whole Parliamentary history affords no parallel. The Judge against whom the motion was to be made, was officially told that it would be suffered to sink-and his friends having come into the House unprepared to demolish the lying accusations, which they knew would die a natural death, found, not to their dismay, but to their disgust and indignation, that the motion was to be supported by the whole strength of Ministers, and a shocking sacrifice to be made of one whom his country regarded as her best and wisest son, and would not that a hair of his venerable head should be touched, to save the Whig Ministry from perdition.

The Irish Secretary, if he has spoken truth, which some good-natured people seem disposed to believe, must be by far the weakest creature in Christendom. It was not, he has told us, till his small senses got involved in the final sentence of O'Connell's speech, that the bright idea entered the vacuum which nature does not take the trouble to abhor in his head, that he would accede to the motion for enquiry into the conduct of Baron Smith. Is he absolutely such a simpleton as not to see even now that he thereby broke a solemn promise-violated all honour and all faith-and shewed himself, in the face of his country, ignorant or reckless of all moral obligation? Call this weakness, they who will-we call it wickedness too; and we believe that at this hour there is not a man in all England more despised than Mr Littleton. O'Connell's motion for enquiry could not be carried

without throwing a slur on the character of the Judge; and Mr Stanley was pleased to say, in a subsequent debate, that the Judge must be anxious for farther enquiry, that he might vindicate himself from the charges to which the carrying of O'Connell's motion had given weight. Should those charges be proved, why, some of the Ministers and their friends thought Baron Smith should be cashiered; others, that he would merely resign; while all men of common feeling, that is, all men out of the Ministry, felt that were such an enquiry entered into, and all O'Connell's accusations shewn to be steeped in bitterest and basest falsehood, Baron Smith would not, though honourably acquitted, disgrace himself by remaining another day on that bench which would then be a seat but for slaves.

Is it credible, then, that Mr Littleton can be the blockhead he has boldly proclaimed himself to be? Not altogether incredible; for you cannot have failed to remark, that every week throws up a new blockhead more portentous than one and all of his predecessors, who, brought be side his bulk, all fall into shade. Thus but one blockhead at a time occupies the public eye, which seems capable of taking in some thing immense-and now has on its retina, let us trust, the image of the biggest possible of the breed, with the face freest of all human expression. And is he indeed to be re-shipped for Ireland ?

The

But all the Ministers are not Littletons. Shame and sorrow to see Mr Stanley seeking to degrade the wise and good, whom in his better heart he must love and admire! He knows the sacred nature of a promise, and the inviolability of truth in the soul of a statesman. path of duty lies plain before every man's feet, nor is there any danger of deviation into cross-ways to any man who but keeps his eyes open, and winks not in fear, or anger, or any other unworthy passion. We keep a promise, not by the letter merely, but according to its spirit, and that is felt by the conscience that palters not with us in a double sense, but is ever clear as daylight. Nor will the people of England tolerate any plea that would justify eva

sion; they abhor all shifting; and unless you be so, no special pleading, however ingenious, will ever persuade them that you are an honest

man.

Here there was much special pleading, but far, indeed, from ingenious; the Ministers and their menials became all loathsome Littletons of a smaller size, and the finger of public scorn has written indelibly their proper names on their brazen foreheads, which he who runs may read.

But what were the charges brought against Baron Smith by O'Connell ? Such as carried with them, on their face, their own refutation. Look back on them now, and you blush to think they should have been entertained for a moment in any supposed assembly of gentlemen. How false they glare! He pictured the Judge as old, feeble, indolent, obstinate, prejudiced, bigoted, cruel, implacable, capricious, crazy,-a dangerous dotard, who changed day into night, and, that his absurd sleep might not be disturbed, huddled prisoners into the bar by dozens, and tried them during the dark hours without mercy or justice. All the while he was speaking, O'Connell knew there was not one word of truth in all these allegations; but he knew also the power of bold bluster over the timid and treacherous; a hundred times had he tried it in that House, as well as in the open air of Erin, and for once that it had failed, ten times had it succeeded; to gain his end, he had a hundred times been indifferently cajoler or cajoled, and frequently, by some sudden jerk, had wrested his object from the hands of the Incapables, or by some supple jugglery made it slip like quicksilver through their fingersand now he trusted to frighten lowminded Littleton out of his small wits by a series of audacious falsehoods, till the trembling coward should not dare to defend the calumniated-so black should be the picture-but be wheedled into consent to a motion for Enquiry-not, mind ye, for removal from the Benchoh, no, no, no-nothing of that sortbut a mere motion for Enquiry-a moderate and most humane motion that could hurt nobody's feelingsin itself injure nobody's characterand, by eliciting the truth, could not