popular states have been obliged to establish certain qualifications, whereby some, who are suspected to have no will of their own, are excluded from voting, in order to set other individuals, whose wills may be supposed independent, more thoroughly upon a level with each other."

But it requires no elaborate disquisition to prove that in the increased power and number of the rabble-voters, those of the higher orders of society, men of refined understanding, and decorous deportment, would be overwhelmed in the unbridled vehemence of popular fury; and no man would gain even a hearing, but he who would be weak enough, or corrupt enough, to abet the preposterous wishes of the mob.

We have said that the people have, when left to themselves, generally, if not always, been the dupes of artful men. In order to prove our assertion, let us advert to those who have obtained a seat in Parliament by the means above alluded to: let us contemplate those who have been the choice of the people, when placed in the situation of senators have they been the active, the vigorous, the enlightened benefactors to society? in general, if not universally, they will be found to have been totally useless; devoid of the talent, the wisdom, the experience, the cool dispassionate investigation, necessary to devise any measure for the good of the state; and no otherwise known to have been members of Parliament, than by occasionally, if not always, thwarting that which they could not make better, and calumniating those who, called to direct the councils of the nation, are doomed, by the licence which the constitution allows, to endure the revilings of envy and the misre

'Here again we allude to what happened at the Middlesex election above alluded to. We prefer giving matter of fact, to forming hype theses.

presentations of malevolence. From that which has been the case hitherto, we may fairly infer what the future would be, only increased beyond all calculation, by the scheme proposed.

Thus would our lower house be filled with those who of all descriptions of men are the least useful, the popular declaimers; the dulness of many may perhaps be accompa nied with something that may have its use; it may bring forward information on particular subjects, where nothing more is required than plain matter of fact, which brighter minds may refine into something luminous. But in the talents which succeed with the rude mob, what was ever found worth the bringing forward into notice? What connexion have they with the grand machine of the government of a great empire? They may indeed be serviceable to palliate iniquity or incapacity; and in this view they must be looked upon as most hostile to the interests of the people: but the factious are not very solicitous how much mischief happens, provided it be of their own making, though it sometimes happens in the event that they are the victims of it; the judges might decide contrary to the laws, and trample every legal principle under foot with impunity, provided all this were done subserviently to popular ferment; and Jeffries himself might have been canonized in the calendar of patriots, had he wrested the law to oppose the King, instead of making it the instrument of the abuse of royal power.

To bring about this reform, to procure such a House of Commons as that which we contend ours would be, when chosen by a set of rabble-voters, extraordinary means must be employed; we say extraordinary; for our ancestors, having no sinister purposes to answer, provided all due means for procuring a fair representation of all who in sound policy had a right to be represented; established

rights and privileges must no longer be of any avail; these must be annihilated.

Sic volo, sic jubeo, stat pro ratione voluntas.

Prescriptions, sanctioned by regular grants, and acquies ced in for centuries, melt away; the text, that we are not to do wrong that good may come of it, rests upon high authority; but our reformers make so little account of it, that they are desirous of doing an evil, where all the good that is to come of it is problematical, however certain the evil may be. They therefore have no objection to disfranchising ancient boroughs, on the ground that the population of these boroughs is not so great as it was formerly.' It is, in our opinion, no excuse to say that the inhabitants of such boroughs shall have, as a compensation, a vote for the county in which the borough is situated, for perhaps, as the matter stands at present, they may have a vote for the county:-but if they have not, the giving them a vote for a county makes a man one voter among ten thousand; whereas in his vote for the borough he might be one of five hundred, or of fifty, or even of five: for instance; the borough of Old Sarum is almost deserted, and some few others are nearly in the same state. Why should such places as these send members to Parliament,' cry our reformers.- Let them be disfranchised: no matter for the right. That is of no importance with them, good patriotic souls! But we, who candidly profess ourselves of the old school, may perhaps be excused if we declare ourselves not quite satisfied with this logic, and beg leave to suggest that, according to this mode of reasoning, there is not a charter, a right, a prescription, from one end of the kingdom to the other, that is safe.-It would not be merely the borough

'Lord Bacon mentions, as one of the causes of sedition, the breaking of privileges. See Essay on Seditions and Troubles.

of old Sarum that would be attacked, and consequently it is not merely the borough of Old Sarum that we defend. It is a principle that we contend for, the borough alluded to may perhaps not have above half a dozen inhabitants left in it; the right is binding; great and little, many and few, are relative terms. And if the sophistry of the new school were to be adopted, wherever it can be shown that any alteration has taken place in any thing sanctioned by a charter, we may be told that the charter is become void, if it suit the views of the reformers that it should be so. What would be the outcry, if any of the courts of Westminster Hall were to lay down such doctrines, we may, without any apprehension as to the result, leave to every man to decide.

But we will suppose that the Reformers prevail; all elections are popular, or, in other words, solely decided by the voice of the people; without interference from governany ment or from the aristocracy. We have shown that the men who will now obtain seats must have the faculty of addressing the mob in their own way; and would be expected to be loud in abusing all those who happen to be in power; and in this respect it is taken for granted they do not disappoint the expectations of the electors, and we may likewise presume that they would not fail to show to the satisfaction of their masters the electors, that nothing is necessary to the correcting all abuses, but the choosing them, and such as them, for their members; accompanying their declarations with all possible assurances that they will anxiously watch over all the corruptions of government, and preserve inviolate the dignity and independence of the Borough of ******, The artifice succeeds, the candidate is chosen: the chances are infinitely greater that the candidate, now the new member, will take his seat very quietly, and give himself no further trouble about his florid speech and his fair promises from the hustings; and all this must be the case, if he be such a man as the people, when left to themselves, generally

choose, because he has not any talents or faculties applicable to the business before him. But what is done by this? What is achieved? The effect will be this, that men of education, men of literary habits, men who are an honor to their age and country, will necessarily be excluded from a seat in the lower House of Parliament: for if they possess these recommendations, they probably, if not certainly, do not possess the faculty of haranguing a rabble: and if they possess that dignity of mind which cultivated intellect never fails to confer, they will disdain the paltry arts of ingratiating themselves with those, whose good opinion, not being founded on any basis either of integrity or intellect, they will wisely consider as beneath their regard.

Sume superbiam

Quæsitam meritis.

And thus, the best, the most honest, the most efficient individuals that the state can produce, will be excluded from those situations, where they could render the most service to the public. Let us conceive, for a moment, a man of the character here described; let us suppose him willing to offer himself to represent some place in Parliament; but, before he begins his canvass, he is given to understand that he must exhibit on the hustings of a country town the talents above stated; talents, perhaps, it may be said, better adapted to a mountebank than to a gentleman and a man of family.Let us conceive the Clarendons, the Somerses and the Falklands of the day in this situation, and that even they must adopt the course here pointed out, or forgo their claim, and retire. Or, to make the case still more our own, by instancing names more familiar; let us consider the venerable president of the Court of Admiralty, of the present day, a man in all good learning ORNATISSIMUS;' or the late Right Honorable William Pitt; or the heroes of the Peninsula,