necessary to the prosperity of the kingdom, in the following lofty style: "In a country where there is so much inequality of wealth, so much enterprise, information, and capacity for public business, so many ardent, restless, and ambitious spirits, as in Great Britain, there appears the strongest reason to apprehend that the fabric of the Constitution would be exposed to continual shocks, and the peace of society incessantly brought into peril, by the turbulence and daring intrigues of individuals, unless the executive government were in some degree charged with the means of bringing those spirits into harmony, and fencing itself round with a strong barrier, cemented by the mutual interests, the hopes, and pride of its retainers. These may be stigmatized, perhaps, as unworthy motives of action, and unfit to be adopted as the basis of a system of free institutions; but they are the motives by which nine-tenths of both the good and evil which befall mankind are determined, whether they be in direct alliance with their system of government or not."

Now, if this farrago of words signify any thing, it signifies that a government ought to have the means that wealth and power afford to bring ambitious "spirits into harmony, &c.;" namely, in plain English, the power of bribing adherents and buying off foes. This is exactly begging the question; and this experiment-satisfied with a higher view of the principles of human conduct, of the true majesty of laws, and the modes by which the Divine Ruler of all intended his creatures to be governed-this grand experiment it is that the people of England propose to try. We have done with this Re

viewer!

THE

WILFUL MISSTATEMENTS

OF THE

QUARTERLY REVIEW.

EVERY one knows that "The Quarterly Review” arrogates to itself the protection of the Church and the guardianship of our morality, as well as of our literature. Will it astonish any of our readers to learn that, in its righteous office, this pious declaimer on the vices of the age and the sanctity of religion, has lent itself to the most perverted falsification of history, and slandered the characters of the dead for the amiable purpose of slandering those of the living? In its paper on "The Revolutions of 1640 and 1830," it has done all this with a strange and desperate dishonesty.

That paper professes to owe its title to a "very ingenious and well-written pamphlet," published by Mr. Murray, for the purpose of showing us what signs the history of antecedent periods had recorded for our guidance—and, as the author says, "of justifying the dealings of God towards man by showing that Providence has not left us without a guide." The Reviewer, in furtherance of the same pious object, but resolved, at the same time, not to attain it at the sacrifice of truth, tells us that, while "turning over Clarendon to verify the quotations of the pamphlet," he met with some additional passages, which seemed to him to make up a "wonderful and most instructive resemblance" between the present times and "the great Rebellion of 1640." This forms the staple of his article. Will it be believed that the man who could thus unblushingly profess such VOL. II.-17

honest scruples against taking the quotations, even of his own party, without an examination and verification of the original sources, would himself falsely misrepresent and misquote every passage on which he laid his hand, and only cease from misquotation and misrepresentation to show an ignorance of the times he writes of, if possible, still more deplorable and equally to be despised? "Of outward show elaborate, of inward less exact," he has given the letter, and page, and edition, of his pretended quotations. Out of his own letter, page, and edition, he shall be condemned.

"The first remarkable similarity," says the Reviewer, "is, that in 1640, as in 1830, there was elected a new Parliament."

We leave him in possession of this important fact. But then he goes on to prove a more wonderful resemblance

that they were both dissolved before they had voted the ordinary supplies, and that the dissolution was produced, in both cases, by a gross misrepresentation made to the Kings by their respective Ministers, as to the indisposition of the House of Commons to grant the supplies.

"Sir Henry Vane, the Secretary of State," says the Reviewer, quoting Clarendon, "had made to the King a worse representation of the honour and affection of the House than it deserved. By this means he wrought so far with the King, that, without so much deliberation as the affair was worthy of, his Majesty, in the beginning of May, dissolved the Parliament.""

Now we shall not quarrel with the Reviewer for saying honour, instead of 'humour,' though with the context of Clarendon it is of some importance; but we charge him with melancholy ignorance on this matter. It is sufficiently notorious that Clarendon is not the most accurate or impartial of historians, and needed no petty scribe to come after him, to interpolate or exaggerate his statements. In this particular instance, the noble historian is universally admitted to have unjustly aspersed

Vane; and had the Reviewer not been entirely ignorant of the evidences of that history, he must have known it. Nay, a few pages before, Clarendon himself flatly contradicts it; and in his collection of State Papers, the integrity of Vane is made broadly manifest.

The next charge is a little more seriously ridiculous.

"The first important measures proposed in 1640 and in 1830 were the King's revenue, or civil list, but the Reformers had in neither case quite made up their minds how much they would give him, and so they proposed, with all the expression of duty and affection to the King which can be imagined, and presented a grant of those Duties for a few months.'-Clar. vol. i.

p. 366.

"The forms which this business took were not exactly the same at both periods, from the differences of our modern practice, but the principle was the same; the provision for the King was in both cases delayed, and a provisional grant for a few months only voted."

It is scarcely possible to believe that any person could so perversely prostitute his pen as to write thus of one of the noblest among the noble assertions of the privileges of Englishmen-one of the greatest benefits we have derived from the virtuous struggles of our ancestors. Be it known that those "Duties," which the Reviewer would falsely have us to believe were the King's legitimate "Civil List," and which, he fraudulently asserts, our ancestors had restricted because "they had not made up their minds how much they would give him," were neither more nor less than the unlawful claims of Tonnage and Poundage, by which the lawless Charles had oppressed the merchants and merchandise of London, and for the repression of which the Reformers of 1640 received the thanks and blessings of their contemporaries, and have entitled themselves to the gratitude and admiration of posterity. Even Mr. Hume-no devoted partisan of freedom-does not withhold his praise from them for this; and we refer the reader even to his words. "The Ministers of Charles and of William," the Reviewer goes on-"though they had ineffectually at

tempted a budget, "-(this is false) "had obtained some supplies and this modified civil list, and it was therefore thought necessary by those crafty popularity hunters to conciliate and reward the people with a Bill of Parliamentary Reform."

And it is thus that this pert and shallow Reviewer speaks of the famous Triennial Bill, a measure to which the political reputation of its great originators had been pledged years before-on which they staked their political existence, and without which they could have had no check on the false and deceitful King:-"Finding that nothing less would satisfy his Parliament and people," says the Reviewer, quoting Hume, "the King gave his assent to a Bill, which produced so great an inroad into the Constitution.'" This is a false quotation. Hume does not say it was an "inroad " into the Constitution; he calls it merely an "innovation"—and distinctly says that, in his opinion, it supplied a defectthat it was grounded upon the old acknowledged Statutes of Edward the Third, and he ends by an emphatic testimony that "nothing could be more necessary than such a statute for completing a regular plan of law and liberty." Vol. 5, p. 263.

We are next favoured by the Reviewer with certain extracts from Hume-every one of them misquoted— describing the violence of the people and of their representatives in Parliament; and he goes on to tell us that Hume wonders that any of the Lords should have sided with the innovators.

"But the tide of popularity,'" says he, quoting that historian, "seized many, and carried them wide of the best-established maxims of civil policy.""

We will not stop to say that the Reviewer might as well have given us Hume's own words-"most established "for the truth's sake; but we charge him with deceit in omitting the next paragraph, and going on with his quotations. Why was he afraid to tell us in Hume's own words who and what they were among the Lords that supported the people, and the people's advocates, in that great crisis? Would it have interfered with the ob