the Melbourne cabinet, which was thus nothing more than the original reform ministry abandoned by all its best men, because it seemed to them to be manifesting danger ous tendencies, and forming dangerous connections. These tendencies and connections went to what was termed working out the spirit of the reform act, and the protection and extension of popular rights; and these phrases, as they were explained by those who best knew what they themselves intended, meant the lodging of all political power in the hands of those in whose numbers nature has lodged all physical force; the unrestrained exercise of that political power, by means of annual, or at least more frequent, elections of the commons-the abolition, or the transmutation into an elective assembly, of the house of lords, the destruction of the established church-and the abandonment of Ireland to a Popish government, either by allowing the Papists to exercise substantial power acting through the ministers, or to assume the government even in form by a repeal of the legislative union. It was only by purchasing the support of parties attached to principles like these, that the Melbourne cabinet could maintain its existence. Its members might be inclined to higgle about the price, and endeavour to acquire that support for the smallest possible consideration; but so long as this continued to be their tenure of office, the institutions of the country could never be secure. Lord Melbourne and his colleagues might proclaim that, even to obtain the support without which they could not exist, they would sacrifice no

essential part of the constitution; but nothing was more natural than that the love of power should conceal from them the character of the proceedings by which it was to be preserved, and either bribe them to consider that as perfectly reconcileable with the ends and purposes of the constitution which changed its very nature, or blind them to the unavoidable progression of consequences in which it was only the first link. Neither did they command respect or admiration by the display of superior ability. The greater part of their members were below mediocrity; none of them rose above it. The seceding members of the cabinet had carried its talent away with them as well as its safe policy. To all, therefore, whether Conservatives or Whigs, who were alarmed at the prospect of a cabinet dependent on the support of that pressure from without which urged on to democratic and revolutionary results, its dismissal did not appear an event in any manner to be deplored. The dismissed ministers had stood low in the favour even of the radicals, and were punished for the sins of their predecessors, before they had made their own concessions, and formed their own alliances. The reform ministry, when it came under the guidance of Lord Melbourne, had lost its popularity with the radical reformers, who complained that it had resisted all their favourite measures of amelioration, and that, although they themselves had been used as instruments to raise the Whigs to power, they had been thrown aside, ridiculed, abused, and disclaimed, so soon as the interested objects of their employers had been attained.

From these causes, the dismissal of the Melbourne ministry was received by the country with undisturbed composure and perfect good humour; and to its members and their partisans this tranquillity was much more alarming and humiliating than the event itself, because it betokened a relaxation of power in the springs to whose action they trusted for their speedy return to office. They had expected that, at the intelligence, the country would be agitated to its centre; that their expulsion from power would be received as a declaration of war against the liberties and interests of the nation; that the events of 1831 would be renewed, and that public commotion and menace would bear them back in triumph to their former seats. They left no means untried to produce these effects. The dismissal of the ministry itself was announced in a public print, by a cabinet minister (as it was said),as having been exclusively the work of the Queen, a statement which was forthwith abandoned as a gross and calumnious falsehood. Then it was put forth as the result of a deep Tory plot and complicated Tory intrigues; but these assertions, too, were all abandoned. The multifarious organs of the party, disappointed in not finding universal dismay, preached up the necessity of indulging and creating it, and insisted, day after day, on the dreadful fate which awaited the country from the removal of the only men who had either head to conceive, or courage to undertake the task of saving the public weal, and putting in their place politicians who would repeal the reform act, impose new taxes, restore and multiply unnecessary pensions,

establish military law, and produce a civil war. The country, however knew that the picture thus exhibited was, in both its parts, a work of fiction, and refused to be dismayed. Even the radicals, irritated by what they esteemed the cold and distant treatment which they had received, did not raise any clamorous outcries at the downfall of their former associates, whose distress gratified their animosity, while it as certainly would drive the ousted ministers into a renewal of the connexion on terms more favourable to those whose alliance must again be sought.

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The bargain accordingly was soon struck, and the alliance formed; and it thus became one result of the change, that a greater degree of influence was acquired by the radical party, than it had as yet been able to manifest. the question were considered as lying only between the new and the late ministry, it was already decided in favour of the former, for the latter, by themselves, could muster no successful opposition. The whigs, meaning by this appellation those of the Whig party who still adhered to the principles and conjectured policy of Lord Melbourne's administration, could not possibly succeed in recovering office, except by gaining the undivided support of the radicals and Irish repealers, whose favourite political nostrums for carrying on the improvement of the constitution they had hitherto resisted. That support could not be obtained without allowing to the radicals an increased influence in public affairs in the event of the whigs being again restored to power: some share of the spoil must be abandoned to the allies

without whose aid no victory could be achieved. The country might not yet be prepared to see the patrons of democratic institutions and of Popish influence actually in place; but, in the meantime, substantial power must be conceded to them, though it should operate through less obnoxious agents. The danger would have been avoided, if the whigs had possessed the selfdenial to say, we cannot get the Government into our hands with out the aid of men whose principles are not ours, and are dangerous to the constitution; we cannot have that aid without increasing their influence, and enabling them to infuse some portion of their spirit into our own policy; that is a price which we will not pay for the possession of power.' This was too much to be expected from the patriotism or disinterestedness perhaps of any party; and the whigs and radicals soon came to terms for the purpose of putting down a common enemy. The formation of a conservative government by Sir Robert Peel, if it should be able to support itself by its own strength, was equally fatal to the personal ambition of the whigs, and the political views (which are only personal ambition in another form) of the radicals. To displace it, was a necessary condition of the whigs returning to office, and of the radicals possessing influence in the government. Widely separated, therefore, as these parties were from each other, on many points of the very first importance to the institutions of the country, they had no difficulty in striking an alliance for a common object. The new ministry, they said, would be opposed to what they called the spirit of reform; and, therefore, it

was the duty of all reformers, whatever might be the opinions in virtue of which they styled themselves reformers, to sink, in the meantime, "minor differences," and unite in one great effort to expel the common enemy. Some of these "minor differences" were, whether in Ireland the protestant church should be maintained or abolished by either supporting no established religion at all, or by supporting popery as well as the church of the reformation; whether, in any part of the kingdom, a national church should be recognized; whether a further stride should be made towards pure democracy by extending the elective franchise beyond even the liberality of the reform Act; whether elections should be septennial, triennial, or annual; whether the House of Lords should be abolished, or converted into an elective senate, and whether, whatever shape it might assume, the bishops should continue to form any part of it. All of these were points on which the whigs, if they were true to the creed of their party and to their own repeated declarations, could have nothing in common with democrats and papists; and even now they did not profess to have adopted any of the opinions on them avowed by them; but they consented to unite with the radicals, and to owe to them their importance as a party, and the existence of their government, if they should be able to form one. The radicals, again, and the papists willingly consented not to press, in the meantime, these various questions as the test of party; for by doing so, they inserted the small end of the wedge. They became the creators of a cabinet, which might not, indeed, promise to propose or to counte

nance their favourite measures, but to which they could present, at any moment, the alternative of concession or resignation. Sir Peter Laurie explained the whole matter well on the hustings at the Middlesex election. "I asked a very influential radical the other day, why his party wanted the whigs in again. He gave me the same answer which my friend Hume gave me to the same question, namely, "because they are the weakest. We can manage them; we can pull them along ; but we cannot manage the tories." The radicals could justify their declaration of war against the new ministry both in policy, because the old one would be better suited to their purposes, and on principle, because the new one would neither propose shorter parliaments, nor a more extensive franchise, nor vote by ballot, nor a democratic constitution for boroughs, nor the confiscation of church property to secular purposes, nor the destruction of the established church, nor the abolition of the house of peers. All these were broad and intelligible grounds for their opposition. But when the whigs opposed the new ministry, they were excluded from taking their stand on the greater part of these grounds; for, though some of them had professed a willingness to apply to the purposes of education the surplus revenues of the Irish Church, if such a surplus could be found, and though they had named a commission to inquire into the abuses said to be connected with the government of municipal corporations, they were as hostile, in words, at least, to all the other demands of the radicals as if they had been conservatives. With the radicals, both the real and the os

tensible reason for wishing to oust the new ministry was the intelligible and sensible desire of removing an insuperable obstacle to the progress of their own principles; with the whigs, who professed to dread the progress of these principles, and yet united with the men who supported them in order to remove that very obstacle, the real reason for wishing to oust the new ministry was, a desire to take its place. The osteusible reason, again, which they were compelled to put forward was, not that the new ministry would refuse short parliaments, the extension of the suffrage, vote by ballot, the suppression of the peers, and the plunder and degradation of the church,—for all of these things they, too, had refused; but that it would oppose something which, not meaning any of these things, was called by the unmeaning name of " the spirit of reform."

Reform is a practical science, and whether a man is, or is not, prepared to act in the spirit of reform must be judged of by practical measures. The address of Sir Robert Peel to his constituents had declared (and they never pretended to doubt his sincerity) not only that the Reform Act would remain untouched, but that he would not be found any unwil ling labourer in removing real abuses, though he would not truckle either to democracy or popery. The impression which that document was calculated to produce, was strengthened by the knowledge of the fact, that Sir Robert, immediately on his arrival, had made overtures to Lord Stanley and Sir James Graham, and by the conviction that he would not have made such proposals, unless his in