borough-purchasers, found themselves on the verge of destruction. And who are the borough-purchasers? The great merchants and bankers of London: the manufacturers of Lancashire the shipping owners of Hull, Bristol, and all the principal harbours: the West India proprietors, the Canadian merchants, the East Indian judges, commanders, and civil servants. The fact of their having combined to resist the bill, is the strongest proof of its ruinous nature; of its obvious tendency to close the avenues by which all these great interests have found their place in the legislature, and to vest an overwhelming preponderance in Parliament in the representatives of the lower orders in Great Britain.

This is precisely the rock on which all the republics of the world have hitherto split: the fatal vesting of preponderating power in the populace of a limited district, to the exclusion of all the other parts of the empire. Athens, Carthage, Sparta, Venice, Florence, Genoa, Milan, have all been ruined by the same cause the exclusive enjoyment of legislative power by the lower orders, in a particular city or district, without any representation of the other interests of the empire; the necessary consequence of which was, that on the first reverse they all revolted against the parent state, and it speedily found itself reduced to its own

resources.

With a magnanimity, on the other hand, as extraordinary as it was unexampled, the Romans, from the first foundation of the republic, admitted the conquered or allied states to a participation of the privileges of Roman citizens. They received in return the empire of the world. But for the virtual representation of the British dependencies, through the medium of the close boroughs, the British empire would long ago have been destroyed. That representation which Roman wisdom gave to the conquered provinces and colonial dependencies, fortune, or rather the providence of God, has given to the far more extensive and scattered dependencies of this vast empire over all the world, by means of the gateway which is now to be closed for ever. America was lost by refusing it a direct voice in the legislature the other colonies have only been preserved by the unobtrusive but spacious channel which admitted their repre

sentatives to the British Parliament. Nominally professing to extend, this bill is really destined to contract, the representation to base the legislature, not upon the empire, but the island: and in lieu of the collected voice of British prosperity from every part of the world, render it the organ of democratic ambition or urban selfishness in the populace of the heart of the empire.

It is not surprising that the close boroughs have been the avenue by which the talent, as well as the wealth, of the empire have been represented in all former ages. Great men never have submitted, and never will submit, to the degradation of mendicating votes from a venal rabble. Mr Canning never would have done so in the earlier part of his career, or before his contest at Liverpool had become the arena for contending faction through the empire. "In turbis et discordiis," says Sallust, says Sallust," pessimo cuique pessimo cuique plurima vis.". "Through all the discord of faction," says Thucydides, " I have uniformly observed, that the worst, the most dissolute and dangerous men were the idols of the populace, and invariably prevailed over men of rational or virtuous dispositions."" Enfin je vois," said Danton, when about to be led to the scaffold, "que dans les revolutions l'autorité toujours reste aux plus scélérats."* The same bitter truth was extorted from the witnesses of Grecian, Roman, and French democracy, in three distant ages of the world.

The other hemisphere forms no exception to the principle. Talent seldom seeks the American Congress. Men of honourable and upright dispositions disdain the servile adulation to popular sovereignty required of their representatives; and so low is the situation of a member of the legislature fallen in public estimation, that it has become a separate profession, forming an outlet to superfluous barristers and attorneys, who are paid a regular salary of seven dollars a-day, to defray their expenses during the sitting of Congress.

Could we suppose that men of great and powerful minds would submit to the degradation of becoming members of parliament for populous places, under such a system, the time of the representative would be so completely absorbed by attending to the demands and correspondence of his constituents, as to render him incapable either of the study

*RIOUFFE, p. 67.

requisite to form a great statesman, or of the attention. necessary to master all the multifarious objects which are presented to the consideration of the British legislature. Twenty years' previous study-unbroken leisure at the momenta mind unharassed by minute considerations, are indispensable to form an accomplished orator and statesman. The close boroughs have hitherto both admitted such men, and afforded them the leisure requisite to train their minds and discharge their duties. The representatives of populous places know whether their constituents afford them such leisure as is requisite for these purposes.

It is, accordingly, extremely well worthy of observation, how rapidly the character of the French legislature degenerated in proportion to the extension of the number of the electors; and what a deplorable ascendency democratic violence and intemperate character soon acquired over virtue, wisdom, or humanity. In the Constituent Assembly, chosen under the monarchical régime, was found a great mass of talent, more benevolence of intention and splendour of eloquence than perhaps ever was collected in one assembly since the beginning of the world. In the Legislative Assembly, chosen by the suffrage of every man in France, who was not a minor or a pauper, and worth the produce of three days' labour, the diminution of talent and increase of violence was most apparent. Lastly came the Convention, chosen after the 10th August, under republican institutions; and there Virtue, Genius, Eloquence, and Humanity rapidly fell beneath the incessant attacks of democratic ambition. Danton triumphed over Vergniaud and Roland-Robespierre over Danton-and the Reign of Blood terminated the career of visionary improvement.

It is another deplorable effect of a considerable accession of popular representatives to the House of Commons, that it would infallibly lower the standard of sense, and elevate the standard of popular flattery in that important branch of the legislature. When several demagogues are incessantly trumpeting forth the majesty, purity, and worth of the people-when the Press, adapting itself to the taste of the great body of its readers, is following the same base course of popular adulation-no member who depends on popular constituents will dare to hold the language of truth on any

question which excites the public mind. If he does, he will infallibly lose his seat on the next election. Few will be returned but those who promise submission to the public voice, and basely sacrifice their principles and independence at the altar of popular adulation.

66

We cannot better express the dangers of such a state of the representation, than in the words of an article-from the pen, we believe, of Lord Brougham-which appeared twenty years ago in the Edinburgh Review. There was in France at the time of the meeting of the States-General, no legitimate, wholesome, or real aristocracy. The persons, sent as deputies to the Assembly, were those chiefly who by intrigue and boldness, and by professions of uncommon zeal for what were then the great objects of popular pursuit, had been enabled to carry the votes of the electors. A notion of talent, and an opinion that they would be loud and vehement in supporting those requests upon which the people had already come to a decision, were their passports into that Assembly. They were sent there to express the particular spirit of the people-they were not their hereditary patrons, but the hired advocates for a particular pleading, they had no general trust or authority over them, but were chosen as their special messengers, out of a multitude whose influence and pretensions were equally powerful. In this way, instead of the great basis of rank and property, which cannot be transferred by the clamours of the factious or the caprices of the inconstant, and which serve to ballast and steady the vessel of the state in all its wanderings and disasters, the Assembly possessed only the basis of talent or reputation. The whole Legislature may be considered therefore as composed of adventurers, who had already obtained a situation incalculably above their original pretensions, and were now tempted to push their fortunes by every means that held out the promise of immediate success. They had nothing, comparatively speaking, to lose, but their places in that Assembly, or the influence which they possessed within its walls; and as the authority of the Assembly itself depended altogether on the popularity of its measures, and not upon the intrinsic authority of its members, so it was only to be maintained by a succession of imposing resolutions, and by satisfying or outdoing the

extravagant wishes and expectations of the most extravagant and sanguine populace that ever existed. For a man to get a lead in such an Assembly, it was by no means necessary that he should previously have possessed any influence or authority in the community, that he should be connected with powerful families, or supported by opulent and extensive associations; it was only necessary that he could obtain the acclamations of the mob of Versailles, and make himself familiar to the eyes and ears of the galleries of the Assembly. The prize was too tempting not to invite a multitude of competitors; and the Assembly, for many months, was governed by those who outvied their associates in the impracticable extravagance of their patriotism, and sacrificed most profusely the real interests of the people at the shrine of a precarious popularity.

"Mere popularity at first was the instrument by which this unsteady Legislature was governed; but when it became apparent that whoever could obtain the direction or command of it must possess the whole authority of the state, parties soon found out that violence and terror were infinitely more effectual and expeditious than persuasion and eloquence. Encouraged by this situation of affairs, the most daring, unprincipled, and profligate, proceeded to seize upon the defenceless legislature, and, driving all their opponents before them by violence and intimidation, entered without opposition upon the supreme functions of government. The disposal of the legislature thus became. a prize to be fought for in the clubs and conspiracies of a corrupted metropolis, and the institution of a national representation had no other effect than that of laying the government open to lawless force and flagitious audacity.

"It is in this manner, it appears to us, that from the want of a natural and efficient aristocracy, to exercise the functions of hereditary legislators, the National Assembly of France was betrayed into extravagance, and fell a prey to faction; that the institution itself became a source of public misery and disorder, and converted a civilised monarchy first into a sanguinary democracy, and then into a military despotism."*