sharper than the censor's; it infuses its chastening leaven into our conversation; though it may not indicate the goal to which our actions tend, it fashions, with sober sumptuary laws, the measured gait and decent garb which they assume. There are fewer Chartres-there are more Tartuffes! Were some of the most immortal works of our literature written now, they would be branded with disgrace. Beaumont and Fletcher would be rejected from every reading-room; Fielding and Smollet would be voted intolerable; Richardson's Pamela, nay, even his Clarissa, once the idols of the starchest, would now be bywords with the loosest. The polished Pope would be abominably coarse; Shakspeare himself would be termed, in set phrase, "a melancholy instance of genius without decency or morals."

To call this verbal rigidity, this worship of forms, the wholesome purity of succouring virtue, would be absurd; to call it cant, would nevertheless be perhaps unjust. It arises, in some degree, from the competition of the Dissenters and the Churchmen-each wary and watchful over all that is external, since by externals men alone can judge; it arises also, perhaps, from the greater influence which women, modest women, have obtained in society, by an education which has fitted them better than their grandmothers to be general conversers and general readers; it arises, also, from the unintentional and unconscious example of the periodical press: for journals, as they have grown up into their present importance, address a wide range of miscellaneous readers. One newspaper is taken in by the Dissenters, another by Country Clergymen; most newspapers by masters of a family,-and nowa-days the young people read them. Decorous words. and common-place affectations of morality are therefore always safe, and often useful; and though their violation is forgiven in politics, such violation is rare indeed, except in a Sunday newspaper, upon points not confined to the scandal and the slander of party warfare.

These journals, popularly and daily read, insensibly form the taste of the public, and have certainly, principally by example, partly by the censorship of criticism, whether in conversation, the stage, or the books, tended

much to reform the coarseness or plain speaking of our ancestors. Hence, in many social respects, you will find public opinion in England moving with ease, spirit, and unanimity; while in politics and legislation, it is only on very rare and almost centennial occasions, that, by the blending of many of its streams, it assumes the flow and the force of deep waters.

Divided and subdivided as Opinion now is between the Popular and the Conservative parties, in order to predict which of its sections will ultimately so far exceed the rest in extent and strength as to carry the principles it espouses into irresistible effect, we must consider dispassionately which of the sections themselves have in them the greater elements of vitality and progress-whether the opinions of the landed proprietors, or those of the commercial and moneyed classes, are the more likely to prevail-whether the High Church will gain on Dissenters, or Dissenters on the High Church-whether the multitude will obtain greater power, or sink into greater apathy-whether the rising generation of literary men, active, energetic, and practical, will obtain more disciples and converts than the contemplative dreamers of the closet and the cloister. To me it seems, that if we could suppose the popular power really curbed into its appointed limits by the recent Reforms, the Conservatives must gain the ascendency in the State, and that the present electoral opinions would, before long, decide in their favour: 1st, Because, by the Reform Bill, the landed or conservative interest has an acknowledged preponderance over the commercial or liberal. 2dly, Because the system of open voting entails upon the smaller traders in all the towns where the liberal strength is greatest, sacrifices so withering, that they cannot be borne for a continuance. 3dly, Because the influence of numbers, which is and ever must be allied to the Liberal party, (that is, to the cause of the numbers,) is by the present franchise so maimed and crippled, that it cannot be easily and constitutionally brought to bear. And the unrepresented multitude, who, by connexions and sympathies, have a strong indirect power over the poorer electors, growing dissatisfied with the Whigs, and hopeless of concession from

them, have already shown themselves dangerously will. ing to bring in the Tories, not from conservative, but from revolutionary motives, partly to show their strength, principally to induce those farther popular changes, which they too blindly believe must be the necessary reaction of a brief Tory administration. 4thly, If the Tories were thus to seize, even for a short period, the reins of power, the gradual change of opinions, now noticeable in the professions, would be retarded and reversed by the lures of patronage; and a year would suffice once more to man the strong-holds of the Court and the professions with the opponents of the popular cause. But, 5thly, and principally, because a people, to keep its ground, must advance: it is the eternal law of states:-even a democracy must continue to deepen in its democratic elements, or it will ripen aristocracies or monarchies by its stagnation. The strength of the anti-popular principle lies in inertness; that of the popular, in motion.

You see, Sir, that I have written to you frankly and dispassionately: professing liberal opinions, and advocating the existing Government, I yet do not disguise the causes of their weakness, nor do I believe that I exaggerate the sources of their strength. Those sources are full of health and vitality; but I fear they may be neglected. No Government in this country has ever carried through measures so vast, with foes more formidable, in a time so short. In six years, the Reform Bill, the Municipal Bill, the mighty re-organization of independent labour in the New Poor Law, the transfer of the Indian trade from a Company to the People (munificent gift to commerce!) the removal from agriculture of its heaviest load, the Tithe (that tax upon improvement,) the schools for self-government in the establishment of Free Corporations, and all this while profound peace abroad, and no light economical relief at home. Match these six years of improvement with any sixty years in English -almost in European-history! To wish duration to a Government that has done these things, is to wish well to civilization itself. "But why, then," you will say, "are so many of you discontented; why do you yourself predict the probable decline and downfal of a Govern

ment that has deserved so well of the people? "" Because Governments must continue to lead and direct the movement they create; because they live or die with the principles upon which they are established. When William Pitt called into existence the anti-Gallican enthusiasm, his care was not to check, but to increase and continue it. He did not say, when it obtained him his majority, "So far has it gone-it shall go no farther!" He felt that he was the creature of the inspiration he created. All Goverments, to be powerful and brilliant, must carry some national enthusiasm along with them; none exist long upon sober judgment alone. The first care of Lord Grey was to check the enthusiasm which he himself had inspired; and which, if he had but appreciated and sustained it, would have hailed with rapture the very measures it afterwards received with indifference. The popular feeling, thus damped, could not be revived again; and the scanty majority of the next parliament was the legacy bequeathed by the administration of Lord Grey to the cabinet of Lord Melbourne. Again; the declarations of Lord Melbourne against further popular reform, especially the ballot, have deadened gratitude, by exciting, indignation; for the man who wants the ballot wants protection against ruin in some cases-loss in all; and when you give him other boons, but deny him this, you resemble the polite Duval, who stole your purse, but presented you with bons bons. The Government might not do more than they do now, it is not their acts, it is their words, that are railing the seal from their bond of office. To refuse the ballot, because it could not be carried, would be popular ground,-to refuse it because it is right to suffer, and sinful to be protected, is an insult to the sense, and a taunt on the affliction, of the complainant. Again; men feel in classes, as they act in classes. The moderate Radical class constitutes the great bulk of the Government supporters in the large towns,-the majority of the Government supporters in the House of Commons. Never did any party act with more disinterested motives; never did any party demand so little, forbear so generously, and give so much. They have not received from the Whigs the consideration and the courtesy that were their due; and if, as reformers, they have been benefited, as a class they have been affronted. VOL. II.-8

Lastly, we must observe that the distinctions between the Whigs and Conservatives are gradually becoming fainter and fainter, while those between the Whigs and Radicals remain in full force. Already the Irish Church Appropriation clause has melted away, already the Church Rate question is on the verge of the Invisible. But the Ballot remains stern, clear, and distinct-the mark of separation between the Government and their followers; and while it does so, the liberal party may serve under the Government, but without the excitement of hope or the energy of confidence. While this parliament lasts, the Government is probably safe; the next election will be a severe crisis and a probing test. It will stand or fall, not as it is supported by Radicals in Parliament, but in proportion as it has raised that enthusiasm among the people which can alone incite the traders to sacrifices of interest, and breathe the contagion of popular interests into the feudal air of subdivided counties and fifty-pound tenancies. But whatever its fate, and whatever its faults, it will be impossible for posterity to look back upon what it has achieved, and not feel astonished at its merits, and scarcely less so at its failures. Your institutions in France probably rest on the life of one man-your King. But that one man is the representative of a mighty order. Louis Philippe is a system enthroned. In his person the Middle Class takes the purple and the orb. Our institutions rest not with one man or one Government, because they are too complicated to be reduced into the control of one prevalent set of opinions imbodied by one set of individuals. But the danger to both countries is in that time when Governments of compromise shall fall by the violence of the extremes. vernments of compromise must, if true to their nature, be Governments of Reforms. Reform is compromise. Governments of extremes are never Governments of Reforms; they destroy or reconstruct: in other words, they revolutionize. With you, where Paris decides in an hour the fate of the nation, and where the mob is stronger than the aristocracy, revolutions may produce riots→→ even massacres, but never again civil wars. With us, civil war would precede revolution. Dii meliora!

I am, &c.

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