which the two bodies differ, from receiving some considerable alteration in the course of its adoption, according to the true principles of a mixed constitution.

But sup

There is another difference which may arise between the two Houses, or between the Crown and either. The affairs of the country may be intrusted to a Ministry whom the people and their representatives distrust-whose opinions are opposite to their own-of whose conduct aforetime they have had experience -from whom they will accept no measures formed to blind them with the vain hope of concessions wholly impossible, unless indeed a miracle shall have been wrought-in whose hands they are ultimately persuaded the direction of public affairs cannot safely, and ought not honestly to be let remain for a day. A vote of distrust in such a Ministry, and an application for its removal, is the course obviously to be taken by the Commons in such grave circumstances. And if the Crown and the Peers, whom we are supposing to be joined against the country, yield, and the Ministry is changed, the crisis is avoided and the conflict ceases. pose one House to approve while the other rejects this Ministry, and suppose the Crown sides with the former, then the Commons have but one course to take: The course which the whole principles of the Constitution point out-nay, which the duty of the Commons prescribes-is at once to stop the supplies. This is the People's right; this is the Representative's bounden duty. It is the safety-valve of the machine, by which explosions are prevented. To call it an extremity, is absurd. The choice of a Ministry in whom the people cannot confide, is an extremity, if you will; at least, it is one step made towards what is truly an extremity—a direct quarrel between the country and its rulers. The stopping supplies is no extremity at all; but the constitutional, the regular, the safe, and approved mode of avoiding extremities altogether, and of arresting in their wicked course those who would hurry matters onward to extremities full of disaster, possibly fraught with destruction.

It is sometimes said that the Crown can, by law, choose its Ministers, and that this power of refusing confidence, and stopping supplies, reduces that choice to nothing. No error can be more flagrant. The Crown has the power of making a Ministry, but not such a Ministry as the people will not have. Is it no power to have the selection among a great number of persons, because beside those, there are some excluded? Unless the choice falls on those whom the country has proscribed, and, in all probability, for good reasons, the course will not be taken of stopping the supplies. Within certain limits the choice exists; only it is not absolute and universal.

But it is sometimes said, let the Crown choose its Ministers,

and let the people judge only of their measures.

• Measures, not

men,' is the meaning of this doctrine; and a grosser deception never was practised upon the world. It signifies that the people shall, upon every occasion, have exactly the least possible benefit by all that is done; that the turn of the balance shall always be cast against the country, and for its enemies; that whenever it is possible for the government to avoid giving what the people have a wish for, and a right to, nothing will be given; that whenever, by intrigue, by balancing factions against one another, by spreading jealousies among the people's friends, or sowing delusions among the people themselves, the evil hour of reformation can be further postponed, it will be; and that, when it strikes, the redress sought will be dealt out with the most niggard hand, -a hand only to be forced open when, if kept close, it would be torn off. It means, that as all are aware how impossible it is for the people to be constantly on the alert, each interval of slumber, or of inattention, or of inaction, will be used to the profit of their enemies, and to their own, perhaps irreparable, injury. It means, that as resistance, either parliamentary or other, can only be expected on extreme occasions, all others will pass without a chance for the country. In a word, it means, that the people shall be governed, if not as ill as possible, at least as little well as possible; and that they who have a sacred and an indefeasible title, not only to be well governed, but to the best possible administration of their affairs-shall be not only ill governed, but as ill as the worst and most cunning court can venture to attempt-as ill as it dares for fear of an open or general resistance in the country-as ill as the courage of the one party or the patience of the other renders possible.

Thus, let us take the example of the last two years. Suppose the inconceivable proposition of the present Ministers then opposing Reform, had met with a favourable reception,-when, after trying all their efforts to defeat the Bill, those very men had the monstrous effrontery, in May 1832, to propose themselves as ready and willing to carry it. Suppose that the people, seduced by the wretched nostrum of measures not men,' and by their extreme desire of reform, had submitted to this most outrageous proposal, instead of rejecting it with the loudest yells of scorn and execration ever raised in England against any set of political jobmen-what would have been the result? What fruits would have been gathered from the dry stick, stole from the liberal hedge, and planted, but never watered, by Conservative hands? First of all-it is quite clear that the old Boroughmongering Parliament would not have been dissolved in December, 1832. It was, indeed, far too liberal for them; but the Parliament to be chosen under the Reform Bill, must be ten times worse-so, in

the choice of evils, the lesser would have been preferred. Then what would they have brought forward next Session? One measure, wrung by the hard necessity of the times from the liberal Ministry, would very certainly have been proposed, and cheerfully, by their successors the Irish Coercion Bill. That they could have prevailed on the Parliament to pass it, is not quite so clear; but with what other measures would they have followed it up? We have only to cast our eye over the great plans brought forward and carried by the liberal Government, to be convinced how little chance the country and its colonies would have had of beholding any of them, at least in their present shape.* All of them were bitterly opposed by the Tories-pertinaciously resisted in every stage-some of them even mutilated by them in the Lords. Whoever believes that they who eulogized West Indian slavery, declared for the Irish hierarchy as an article of faith, pronounced the East India Company worthy of all trust in its commercial as well as political concerns, and avowed themselves the friends of all corporations, would ever have set the negroes free-abolished ten Irish bishoprics-thrown open the China trade destroyed the Company's Monopoly-and torn up by the roots the Scotch Burgh System-whoso believes in these things, verily he must have a faith capable of removing mountains! But even if something had been done by them in order to keep the country quiet, can any living being doubt that the measures would have been as nothing compared with what the liberal Government boldly devised and steadily persisted in executing? Let any one ask himself but two questions, and he will at once perceive the vast difference between 'men' and 'measures.' If a government won't bring forward a plan, how are you to force it? And again if you bring forward the plan, what chance have you of carrying it against the government, even through the Commons, but still more through the Lords? At all times the folly, or the knavery of this cry about 'measures, not men,' has been sufficiently notorious; but infinitely more now when the public is not, as of old, only to wait and to discuss the plans brought forward by the Ministers. In those older days there might appear to be some ground for the doctrine; but now the demand is for right and salutary and requisite improvements; and what Opposition can force on these? Take but the instances of the

* A striking instance of the difference between Whig and Tory reforms has just occurred. The Ministers have made a parade of Ecclesiastical Courts Reforms, bringing in a bill, which, it turns out, had been brought in, and printed by their predecessors a year ago, and forgotten among their greater measures.

things which were done out of Parliament by the Ministers in 1833. Would the Tories have issued one Commission to examine the best means of digesting the Law into a Code, and another to probe, with a firm, unsparing hand, all the abuses of all the 400 Municipal Corporations? The loud clamours raised by them and their partisans all over the country against this measure, answer with sufficient distinctness this question.

But, perhaps, there is yet a plainer and a more powerful appeal to be made upon this absurd doctrine to some of its most respectable supporters. We allude distinctly to Sir Francis Burdett, one of the oldest and steadiest friends of Reform, and one whose recent conduct has given all liberal men sincere pain, for his own sake, much more than for that of the cause he has been injuring-because himself he may seriously damage-the cause never beyond the passing hour. Sir Francis has first asserted that he only will consider of measures, and that he cares not who are in power. He has next asserted that the Reform Bill makes it quite immaterial who are the ministers, and even who are the members returned to Parliament. This last and most incredible position, we understood him, from prevailing report, to have avowed, and to have acted upon, during the General Election, in more places than one, though certainly not in Westminster, where he might have applied it with some appearance both of sincerity and disinterestedness.

Now, upon the first of these extraordinary tenets, we would propose a very simple question to this great and tried champion of Reform, and it is suggested by his now holding that the Reform Bill makes it quite immaterial how we are governed. Suppose, at the end of 1830, the Tories, instead of declaring against all Reform, and professing to consider the boroughmongering Parliament as the perfection of political wisdom, had given one or two petty improvements-say, for instance, members to Manchester and Birmingham-would not Sir Francis have been quite content, nay, pleased? Would he not have said, Here is a 'pledge—an earnest of good things? Here is a measure at any 'rate; and so we have Reform, what can it signify from whose hand it comes?' Well, he and the few who agree with him, disliking party, and looking not at all to men, would have supported the Tories, and maintained them in power, would have opposed all motions which could displace them, and would have kept the Whigs out of office. That is perfectly evident; there is no question about it at all. Then let Sir Francis Burdett only see what he would have done-what he would have prevented for what he would have been accountable. Let him now, if he has the nerve for it, examine what mischief he would have occasioned-what good he would have obstructed-for what ruin to Reform he

would have been answerable. Why, he and his precious doctrine of measures, not men, would only have prevented and frustrated for ever the obtaining of a real Reform-would only have made the rule of the boroughmongers everlasting-would only have stopped all improvement, and confined all change to the gaining some half-dozen members for some two or three of the unrepresented towns! Suppose even such a thing had been conceivable as the Tories proposing a larger measure,-when the Commons threw it out, would they have dissolved-would the Tory men have dissolved the Parliament in April, 1831, to carry it through? Would they have forced it on the Lords in May, 1832? Let Sir Francis Burdett reflect-let him rouse himself-let him make an effort to awake; then let him see the dangers he has escaped -the yawning precipice he has passed in his slumbers—a gulf in which he was so near overwhelming for ever the whole hopes of himself and all Reformers. No thanks to his principle of measures, not men, that the fate had befallen all our hopes, which we have now faintly endeavoured to describe. He must, because he is an honest man, repeat what he has once and again confessed, that to the existence of a government composed of honest and zealous Reformers, the country owes the blessing of the Reform Bill; that without them it never could have been obtained. But why is such an admission of men, not measures, or rather, of men, as well as measures, to be only true in this one instance ? If it applies to the Bill, does it apply one whit less to the fruits of the Bill? What single reason that proves the Bill to have been obtained only through an honest and popular ministry, is wanting to prove also, that under a reforming ministry alone can it be expected to yield its proper results?

This brings us to the second, and much more incredible position of Sir Francis Burdett-that, having the Bill, we need give ourselves no care who works it, who rules by it, nay, who represents us under it.

On this we will only say, that if such be a true account of the matter, or any thing like it, the Bill is by far the most marvellous of all the products of human legislation; for it is a law made by men, to govern men, and to be executed by men, and which, nevertheless, works itself, independent of all human aid, and in defiance of all human infirmity. So laughable a proposition, we verily believe, never yet was uttered by any rational being before. Why, let Sir Francis only ask himself one question. Suppose the efforts of the Tories were to succeed in some of the counties and in the corrupt burghs, and they obtained a Tory majoritydoes he really believe that the Reform Bill would be safe for a year? A year? Ay, does he verily and indeed, think it would be