A Few Words of Friendly Caution to the Tories in the Two Houses of Parliament

the nations of the earth? Will you tell us that the late language of Mr. O'Connell, however "energetic, was "peaceable;" however "strong," was "respect"ful?" So much for the chance which existed that your Lordship would have been required to expose inconsistency in Lord Brougham's speech, had he delivered it in the course of the Irish debate.

But perhaps the Irish question is not included in your comprehensive, but most vague, indictment. Upon what subject, then, has the change, which “ you shall "be ready to discuss on a fitting opportunity," taken place? Upon that with which Lord Brougham is, above all others, identified-Education? Had Lord

Brougham desired an opportunity of exhibiting a change of opinion on that question, no man ever had more ample opportunity than was afforded him in the late Session of Parliament to do so. The nation was convulsed by a National Education controversy, in which the Church required aid against a most determined and unscrupulous opposition on the part of the Dissenters. Where was Lord Brougham, who had "bound "himself to the Tories" in their day of extremity? Was he (not content with damaging the theories of your friends whenever he spoke) determined to overthrow your prophecies by his very silence? By every rule of Whig logic, and according to every assertion of Whig veracity, he should have contradicted every thing which he had ever said respecting education, and come forward in his strength to champion the Church. It is, however, as far as your theory is concerned, equally grievous and remarkable, that he did nothing of the kind. the contrary, with a most perverse consistency with all that he had ever before advanced on the matter,-he spoke in the House of Peers, on the 5th of May last, in presenting a petition, as follows:

The Church, the Wesleyan Methodists, and the Dissenters, though all of them, respectively, very warm indeed in support of the principle of popular

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"education, though very anxious to extend to all persons sound instruction, religious as well as civil,though all, respectively, great friends to popular educa"tion--yet the baneful truth was but too manifest, that they suffered all their various efforts to be neutralized, "because each and all of these various classes preferred, "to the extension of popular education, one other object, "and that other object was victory over each other. Now, it was quite clear to him, "that until all the various parties chose to give up respectively somewhat of their various prejudices and "passions, arrived at the improved state of mind which "should teach them that it was a far higher object "that the people should be educated, than that sectarian prejudices and passions should be exasperated, or that "sectarian triumphs should be aimed at, it would be quite "impossible for education to make that progress which "it must make ere it became generally beneficial."

Let me trouble your Lordship once more to apply your ingenuity to the discovery of the points of difference, which no doubt ought to be most palpable, between this declaration and the following, made by Lord Brougham on the 21st of May 1816, on the subject of the Education of the Poor of London.

"Throughout the arrangements which I hope to see "established for the removal of ignorance and vice, "I trust that nothing will be admitted offensive to any "religious opinions, while care must by all means be "taken that nothing may be allowed to interfere with "the just privileges of our National Establishment."

Again, on the 28th of June 1820, his Lordship said

"A religious education is most essential to the wel "fare of every individual. To the rich it is all but every thing; to the poor it may be said, without a "figure, to be every thing. It is to them that the "Christian religion is especially preached. It is their special patrimony; and if the legislature does not

secure for them a religious education, they do not, in my opinion, half execute their duty to their fellow"creatures."

It would seem, my Lord, that the Education question is as barren of materials for your impeachment as the Irish. The task which you have undertaken gets "small by degrees, and beautifully less," as the inquiry proceeds; nor is there lack of hope that your prosecutorship may be, after all, a sinecure.

Respecting the Church Establishment, Lord Brougham has been uniformly as consistent as he has been on the question of Education. In the Honse of Commons, on the 22nd of May 1816, his Lordship made this declaration regarding Church property. "I am ready to avow "that the rights of the Church to the property it enjoys "are as sacred as the rights of individuals to their "estates or freeholds; and that the parson of the parish "has as good a right to his tenth of the produce of the "soil, as the body of the proprietors to the other nine parts." Again, on the 12th of May 1834, his Lordship brought forward one of those lucid and philosophical arguments in favour of Establishments for which his efforts in all the varied walks of human knowledge have been invariably distinguished. But as, of course, your Lordship did not bring your charge lightly, nor without a due study of Hansard, I shall not trouble you with the quotation at length.

Amongst the other phenomena which preceded the fall of your Lordship's party, not the least remarkable was the sudden conviction which seized on the minds of its leaders, of the surpassing beauty and worth of certain theories, which they had very shortly before treated with no great consideration, either in language or action. Of the schemes which so quickly rose into favour, the chief was the repeal of the Corn Laws. That project, though "the most absurd that ever entered into the mind of man," was not too absurd for a dying Ministry. As a political ophthalmia afflicted your

friends respecting Ireland, insomuch that Lord John Russell's lately paraded remedies of paying priests, alternate parliaments, abolition of the Church, etc. etc., were hidden from his vision till he had enjoyed the sharpening air of the opposition benches, so the great excellence of the Anti-Corn-Law agitation was revealed to you all too late. The Anti-Corn-Law movement" forms one of the great questions of the day-so important that your Lordship's destitute friends and late employers are seeking the aid of its advocates in obstructing the progress of legislation, to temporarily embarrass her Majesty's Ministers. If, then, Lord Brougham's change of principles is so glaring, we may not, perhaps, look for it in vain on the Corn Law question. Certainly the cause of Free-trade is as much indebted to that distinguished person as to any other man alive, the disinterested manufacturers, and equally disinterested ex-officials, not excepted. Has Lord Brougham changed his opinions on the subject of Free-trade? I grant that his Lordship has not competed with the cotton-spinners, the preachers of no religion, and the hired briefless barristers of the League, for the honour of the cheers of Covent-Garden Theatre. Nor has he, at the close of a life marked by the meanest niggardliness, given a reluctant donation to be spent, as those who spend it best know, in advancing" the cause," and the cause's advocates, and "giving cheap bread to the people," to wit, the underlings of the Anti-Corn-Law League. He has, throughout his career, however, been the consistent opponent of restrictions on trade. For his latest published opinions on the subject we have not far to search. On the 11th of May last, his Lordship declared that—

"He thought that corn was an unfit subject for taxation, and that if a tax was levied upon it at all, "for a revenue, it should be taken at the mill, or on "the farm, and not on importation, which raised the "price of the whole, while the revenue was taken only "on a part. He did not, however, think that the aboli

"tion of the corn-law would materially diminish the price of bread."

In the next opinion of his Lordship regarding Freetrade, there may, perhaps, be found more of the true cause of the virulence with which he has been, for some eight years, assailed by your Lordship's companions in misfortune than they have ever ventured to avow. If Lord Brougham had been content to follow the example of those pretended "leaders of the people," whom he describes in the following paragraph; if he had been content to forget that, fourteen years ago, he declared it his practice "to support measures which met with "his approbation, and to oppose those of a contrary tendency, let the one or the other come from whom they might;" if he had condescended to judge a proposition, not by its intrinsic worth, but by the fact of whether it originated with the Ins or the Outs, then it is probable that your Lordship's eloquence would have been reserved for some other great undertaking-some dignus vindice nodus unconnected with the fame of immeasurable superiors. Here is the opinion of Lord Brougham, as delivered on the 14th of March 1843, as well on the question of Free-trade, as on the conduct of its present advocates; those persons who are revelling at once in the countenance and cash of the Whig Peers. "A considerable step was taken by the Government, approved of by some, condemned by others, towards "the introduction, practically, of what we deem the "sound, wholesome, requisite doctrines of Free-trade. Well, how was this received by the zealots who profess to lead the people? Did they thank the Right Honourable Baronet for correcting an eightand-twenty shilling duty into an amended sliding "scale; an alteration insufficient, I admit, lamenting "its smallness, but yet highly approving of, and rejoicing in, nay, I will add exulting in it, as a step "towards the full development of principles I have

*Speech in the House of Commons, November 2, 1830.

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