specious pretence of reform, eventually to sacrifice it; to surrender it on the summons of the ignorant or the artful; without the remotest prospect of receiving any practical benefit from a measure, so fraught with evil.

To avoid the necessity of making such a sacrifice, let us be true to ourselves; to insure the possession of the benefits above enumerated, we are not called upon to make any exertion to obtain them; we enjoy them already; we are, as the prator of old told the Athenians, κυριοι της ψήφου; we are in possession, and all that is required of us is, not to do voluntarily, wilfully, and blindly, that which would deprive us of them; not to suffer ourselves to be deluded by those who, to speak of them in the most favorable terms, are very incompetent judges of reason or expediency, though very severe tyrants, whenever they are permitted to gain any ascendancy. Resist the first attempt at innovation, the second is prevented; but give way to the first, and you know not to what extent you are pledged. In the reign of Charles the First, the bishops were excluded from the House of Lords, and Lord Falkland voted for it; but when he saw to what lengths innovation was afterwards carried, he sincerely regretted the consent which he had given.-Encourage the same spirit now, and we may soon hear the House of Lords spoken of as "the other house;" and the House of Lords and every thing else, either useful or venerable, laid prostrate at the foot of some artful demagogue who, laughing at our folly, will establish, like Cromwell, his greatness on the ruin of ours.

We do not think so humbly of the intellects or the patriotism of the majority of the nation, as to suppose that they will suffer themselves to be the dupes of such politics-we have among us the spirits of those worthy men, though they themselves may now be no more, who frequently, in the House of Commons and elsewhere, warned the nation

of the snare that was spread under their feet, and we hope and trust that the warning was not in vain, but that all who do not prefer riot and disorder to peace a security, will join heart and hand to aid the government to defeat one of the most ruinous projects that was ever obtruded on a people.

We' expect that our opponents will object to us, that the author of the Commentaries on the Laws of England, whom we have had occasion to quote, has expressed himself in terms amounting very nearly to an approbation of a Reform in Parliament; and we readily adinit that, whatever may be his encomium on the laws respecting Parliaments, he has said, "if any alteration might be wished, or suggested in the present frame of Parliaments, it should be in favor of a more complete representation of the people." How far it may be perfectly discreet in an author writing on a grand political question, to throw out a hint at an imperfection, without defining accurately what it is, and pointing out a remedy for it, I leave to profounder understandings than mine; the learned author has already told us that there is hardly a free agent to be found but what is intitled to a vote in some part of the kingdom or other; he has told us that it is expedient that agents who are not free should not have votes, lest they should become corrupt,—and yet a hint is thrown out that we want a more complete representation of the people. If we are not mistaken, Sir W. Blackstone is sometimes to be detected in saying and unsaying the same proposition; and until it be accurately ascertained what alteration in the constitution could remedy so singular a defect as that above stated, that is to say, the incomplete representation of the people, when there is hardly a free agent in the kingdom but has a vote, and only such are entirely excluded as can have no will of their own,

'See Blackstone's Commentaries, Vol. 1. p. 171. and Seqq.

and those who are esteemed to have no will of their own ought not to vote, as all popular states have admitted by their conduct, we really are at a loss to discover. We might make an alteration, without making any improve. ment in our system.

But, allowing to Sir W. Blackstone's observation, that a more complete representation of the people is desirable (an observation in which we do not concur with him) all the weight possible; what is it compared with the skill and judgment manifested in settling the right and mode of voting, in arranging the claims of the landed and commer. cial interests, a skill and judgment to which Sir W. Blackstone himself, notwithstanding any objections that he might have, bears testimony?—a mere nothing!

Or even supposing, for argument sake, that real evils did exist, and we only suppose it for argument sake; and that some intellect, luminous without doubt above the usual lot of man, could devise something by which this evil might either be palliated or removed; is this a time to reject old habits and customs, and disturb the public mind by futile innovations? to throw aside that which is venerable in system, for its antiquity, to adopt that, which though it be not rejected, yet ought to be held for a suspect,' as Lord. Bacon expresses it; which will require the lapse of centu ries to acquire the same interest in the minds, or the same hold on the affections, of the people, as the exploded esta blishment had. Far more probable is it, the system thus adopted would be superseded long before time has shown either its merits, or its defects, to make room for another which, in its turn, might yield to a third, at the pleasure of those who might gain power sufficient with the people for the purpose, and thus the energies of the nation be exhausted in a succession of fruitless experiments, till, at last, as in the instance of the Commonwealth, established on the destruction

of monarchy in the time of Charles I., the people gladly return to their former mode of government, and hail him as the deliverer of their country, whom they had before persecuted, and driven into exile.

It now remains that we notice the second part of the proposed innovation, the making Parliaments triennial, instead of being, as they now stand, septennial. We call it an innovation: for, notwithstanding at one period since the Revolution, our parliaments were triennial, yet as for divers prudent reasons the law was altered, the restoration of Parliaments to a duration of three years is as much an innovation, with respect to us, after the lapse of near a century, as if they had always been for seven years;-with this difference, which is with us an argument against such innovation, that we return to that which, upon making a fair experiment, was rejected.-We will quote the words of Mr. Justice Blackstone on the subject'-' The utmost extent of time that the same Parliament was allowed to sit by the statute 6. W. and M. C. 2. was three years-After the expiration of which, reckoning from the return of the first summons, the Parliament was to have no longer continuance-But by the statute 1 Geo. 1. S. 2. C. 28, (in order professedly to prevent the great and continued expenses of frequent elections, and the violent heats and animosities consequent thereupon, and for the Peace and security of the Government, then just recovering from the late rebellion) this term was prolonged to seven years.'So that it appears that the experiment was made for about twenty-eight years, and then an alteration took place. That the grounds alleged as the reason of the alteration existed as facts, we cannot reasonably doubt; neither can we well doubt that the same reasons exist at present that

! Commentaries, Vol. I. p. 189.

prompted the alteration at the time when it was made, whether it be the expenses-the heats or the animosities;

for though we no longer hear resounded through our streets 'roundhead and cavalier'—'Whig and Tory'Jacobin and Aristocrat-or Pitt and Fox,' the cry may be as loud and the ferment as great, that are excited by the Reformers of Parliament against septennial parliaments and the settled order of things, as on any of the occasions above alluded to. It is therefore the duty of our governors, because it is the interest of the community, to prevent as much as possible the recurrence of those events which are calculated to create heats and animosities, and to endanger the public security; and though it may be truly said that by the wise and prudent measures, and generally speaking, the success of the plans, of the Administration of the present day, the splendid achievements of our fleets and armies, and the degraded state of the common enemy, many fears and apprehensions have been done away, and confidence is reposed in our rulers, yet those know but little of the people who suppose that the most consummate integrity or the profoundest wisdom, attended with the most prosperous issue of their labors, would ensure to any administration that support from the mob, which would be proof against the attacks of such as would wish to render them dissatisfied. And as at all elections there are many whose interest it is, to render them dissatisfied and to humor, in every sense of the word, the passions and prejudices of the electors ;— the period of an election is always, and must necessarily be, from the nature of things, a season of turbulence and riot, a general nuisance to all who are disposed to live peaceably in their habitations.

In addition to the argument above stated, which, whatever weight it may have with the patriots of the present day, was certainly considered as important a century ago,