varied channels of public thought. Their activity and energy in this department was unbounded, and soon began to produce a marked change on the sentiments of the high and educated classes. While the excitement of the war continued, this alteration was not generally perceived, and the great majority of the nation was carried enthusiastically along with the splendid tide of national glory. But no sooner had the cannon that hailed Wellington's victories ceased to thrill every British heart with exultation, than the incessant and daily influence of the press was perceptible, and it became evident to the most casual observer that the tide was setting rapidly in, in favour of liberal principles.

This tendency was increased, to an extent which has never been sufficiently appreciated, by the influence of foreign travelling upon our young men of all ranks, but especially upon those of the higher and noble classes. Travelling has a natural tendency to increase the liberal principles of every intelligent mind; but this salutary influence was swelled to a dangerous degree, by the excessive admiration which Englishmen everywhere found existing among the most ardent and enthusiastic in the Continental states, for the free institutions of this country, and the aversion to tyranny which they contracted from the example of its operation which so many despotic empires afforded. The dangers of revolution and democracy were past, and matter of history; those of despotism were present, and matter of observation. Hence the one sank deep in the minds of the thinking few, and the other guided the thoughts of the inconsiderate many; in other words, the one affected the tens, the other the thousands. It became a matter of common observation, accordingly, that, whatever the political principles of a young man were when he set out to the Continent, he always returned a Whig or a Liberal; and numbers of the most important men in the country, who stood by the vessel of the state during all the storms of the French Revolution, had the mortification of discovering that the inheritors of their titles and fortunes had abandoned all their political principles amidst the flattery of French liberalism, or the smiles of Italian beauty.

Meanwhile the Tories remained universally, and to an extent which now appears almost inconceivable, negligent,

as to the press at least, of their cause. They reposed in fancied security on the laurels of Wellington and Nelson ; the cannon of Trafalgar and Waterloo yet echoed in their ears, and the ascendency of the government, which had achieved these immortal triumphs, seemed established beyond the possibility of overthrow. Among the numerous close and startling analogies which the progress of the English has to that of the French Revolution, none is more remarkable than the complete delusion which existed in both countries as to the stability of the institutions and the government, against which the press was directing its unobtrusive but incessant warfare. The English Tories reposed in as complete supposed security on the edge of the volcano which burst forth in 1831, as the French nobility did on the surface of the stream of fire which enveloped the state in 1789.

Not only did they make no attempt to stem the current which was setting in so widely and fearfully in favour of innovation, but they seem to have thought that they could afford to give every indulgence to the enemy. They even sported with the passion for innovation, as if it had been a harmless or inconsiderate element in society. The ministers of state took the lead in the insane career; and Mr M'Culloch commenced his lectures in London in favour of the modern dogmas of free trade and metallic currency, with Mr Canning and Mr Huskisson as disciples! It became, accordingly, proverbial at that time, that the Tories were becoming Whigs; that they gave up everything to their political adversaries, and secured a majority, or rather extinguished opposition, in the House of Commons, by adopting all the suggestions of the Opposition. An article, often written. with ability, appeared in the Edinburgh Review; it was immediately praised to the skies in all the Whig journals ; its principles were adopted in all the Whig coteries; any opposition to it was stigmatised as the height of illiberality and ignorance; and in due time, bred between Whig rashness and Tory credulity, a legislative measure was proposed, and passed amidst the acclamations of both parties in Parliament, and the deep and unheeded execrations of all the reflecting men in the country. Mr Canning contrived to elude Lord Brougham's sarcasm on this point by the well-known story of the Thunder in the theatre; but it

was not on that account felt to be the less true, or the less characteristic of the temper of the times.

Had this rage for liberal opinions and legislative innovations been confined merely to matters of opinion, the evil day might have been for long postponed; and although the hold which the Whigs had got of the press, and the inconsiderable effort made to resist them in that department, must in the end have secured for them a revolutionary triumph, the catastrophe would probably not have occurred so soon, had not the Tories, in the spirit of conciliation and concession to the movement party, and without being in the least aware of the consequences, adopted several of their suggestions, which not only struck deep into the established interests of the country, but utterly alienated the affections of those great and important bodies in the state, the trading and agricultural classes, on whom they had hitherto mainly depended. It is hardly necessary to name them; they constitute the leading feature of legislation for the last fifteen years: Free Trade, the Change in the Currency, the Reduction of the Duty on Spirits, and Catholic Emancipation. All these measures emanated from the Edinburgh Review: they were all sedulously nursed in the Whig circles: they were all lauded to the skies in the liberal journals, and they have all proved destructive to the best interests of the country.

Admitting that Mr Smith's argument is invincible, and that Free Trade, if it could be begun de novo by all nations without any previous interest being affected by the change, would be the most beneficial for every branch of industry, the question presented to the British Statesmen was, whether it was practicable to introduce this great alteration in a country where an anxious system of legislation, for 200 years, had established numerous and important interests under the system of protection; where millions of men were dependent on the exclusion of foreign competition; and it was at best extremely doubtful, whether any other nation would act on the system of reciprocity, and give to our manufactures any share of these advantages which we yielded to theirs? This nice and delicate question, which Mr Smith pronounced more than doubtful, as applied to this country, the Free-Trade party, without the least hesitation, decided at once in favour of the innovating

theory. Under the tuition of Mr M'Culloch, and the auspices of Mr Huskisson, the Free-Trade system was forced on the country against the wishes, and in spite of the remonstrances, of all the practical men engaged in manufactures or commerce. Their petitions were disregarded, their anger derided, their complaints thrown over the table inquiry was denied; when complaining of starvation, they were referred to the exports and imports, and assured they were in a most prosperous condition. Amidst the general applause of the Legislature, the praises of the Liberal press, and the mutual compliments of the Opposition and Ministerial benches, the harsh measures were forced on the country; and the consequence was what might have been anticipated from any considerable, sudden, and uncalled-for political changes. Other nations drew closer and closer their laws of exclusion as we relaxed ours. Distress and discontent became general in the manufacturing districts, and the fatal idea generally prevailed among them, that the great interests of the country were not represented, and that British flesh and blood were sacrificed to the theories of cold-blooded political economists.

To augment the evil, the great changes in the currency in 1819 and 1826 were carried into effect at the earnest recommendation of the Whig leaders, and by the influence of the liberalised Tories in the Cabinet. The effects of these disastrous changes are well known. Never, perhaps, did legislative innovation inflict such deep wounds on society; and never, without revolutionary confiscation, were such widespread and sweeping convulsions in property introduced. In a few years whole classes in society were destroyed debts were augmented in a fearful progression : the national embarrassments became overwhelming individual distress speedily terminated in insolvency: the holders of property constantly found it getting cheaper on their hands; and fortunes of the greatest magnitude melted away under the ceaseless falls in the value of the produce in which they consisted. This terrible change, too, was forced on the country by the Whigs, and yielded to by the liberalised Tories, in defiance of all the remonstrances of the commercial classes. In Scotland alone, by a unanimous and

unprecedented exertion of the nation, the change was averted, and a system, tested by a century of experienced benefits, was saved from destruction by the hands of visionary innovation. Cobbett clearly saw the consequence of this prodigious change. He has declared, that the moment he heard in America that the Bank was to resume cash payments, he ordered his goods to be packed up, and his family to prepare to return to England: convinced that the cause of Parliamentary Reform, hopeless heretofore, was now certain of success. The event has proved that he was not mistaken

in his anticipations.

The unfortunate measures thrust upon a yielding Tory Administration, by the incessant clamour of the Whigs for the reduction of the duties on beer and ardent spirits, produced consequences hardly less ruinous to the national fortunes. If they did not directly affect the public wealth, they led to effects destined to be ultimately still more disastrous by the demoralisation introduced among the labouring classes, the life of intoxication to which they habituated them, and the unrestrained indulgence of passion which they introduced. These fatal changes not only undermined the foundations of social order by destroying the restraint of private virtue, but they tended directly and immediately to foster the spread of anarchical principles, by the seditious and atrocious publications to which they incessantly exposed the minds of the least educated or qualified to judge of the community. Tempted to the ale-house by the desire for drinking, they found their minds exposed there to a poison not less inflammatory and ruinous than the ardent spirits which wasted and destroyed their bodies. A furious and deceitful press was to be found in every ginshop and alehouse, incessantly dealing forth calumny, abuse, and misrepresentation, against everything sacred, or venerable, or useful in society; and while their frames were weakened by copious potations of spirits, their principles were destroyed by the insidious inhaling of political falsehood. Thence, in a great measure, have sprung those fierce and menacing Political Unions, which have recently usurped almost the whole authority of the state, and threaten soon to reduce the fair realm of England under the thraldom of Jacobin clubs and incendiary societies.