experience, from what they have demanded in similar circumstances in France.

The confiscation of the great properties is one obvious resource which, under the pressure of such unheard-of suffering, Government, how anxious soever to avoid such a measure, will be in the end unable to withstand. It will be imperiously dictated to the twenty-one delegates from London, by their constituents, and supported by the cries of hundreds of thousands of starving citizens. It will be demanded, in a voice of thunder, by the majority of the 300 representatives of the boroughs of England. In vain will the county members, awakened, at last, by the tempest approaching their own doors, to the fatal consequences of their passion for Reform, strive to avert the catastrophe. Their doom will be sealed amidst the same shouts of laughter, and yells of Radical exultation, which were raised through the country on the disfranchisement of the nomination boroughs. The violent clamour of four or five hundred individuals, the victims of spoliation, will be drowned in the shouts of millions eager to share their spoils. The Radicals are already preparing for such an event. A paragraph has lately made the round of the public press, stating that Government is in possession of a list of fifteen hundred individuals, resident in and near London, whose fortunes would pay the national debt. The Radical newspapers are openly hinting at the necessity of some more equitable distribution of property than now exists. The thing is unavoidable, if political power is once thrown into the hands of the multitude by the Reform Bill. It is not in human nature, that, after a great victory has been gained, the conquerors should decline to take its fruits; that starving multitudes, with power in their hands, should die of famine, when those whom they have been taught to regard as their enemies are still possessed of the wealth which they have been so sedulously told has been wrung out of their labour. The demolition of the great properties, amid such circumstances of public suffering, would be a far more easy matter than the destruction of the ancient constitution has been to the present Reformers.

How, if such a measure of spoliation is brought forward

amid circumstances of severe and unmitigated national distress, is it to be averted, after the Reform Bill has placed absolute power in the hands of the tenants of L.10 houses in towns, and the owners of 40s. freeholds in the country? That the proprietors threatened with destruction will raise the most violent outcry, may safely be anticipated; but what chance has it of averting the catastrophe? Their resistance, it will be said, is the cry of the thief who is led out to the scaffold-the struggles of the robber, to avoid restitution of his plunder. Every man in the country will be told, that he is personally interested in supporting this grand measure of national retribution; the millions of starving poor will be fed out of the spoils of the boroughmongers; the working classes will at once be relieved from taxes, the harbours from customs, the interior from excise. We have seen what a tempest was excited, even amongst a prosperous body of freeholders, by the prospect of mere political power; what may be anticipated from the offer to starving millions of the substantial benefits of property worth eight hundred millions!

Let it not be supposed, that the peril which such a measure would occasion to their own property, would for a moment deter the £10 tenants from exacting from their constituents pledges to support this grand aristocratic spoliation; for the grand feature, the awful peril of the new constitution consists in this that an overwhelming majority is formed of persons who have no property. The Radicals let this out completely, when they unanimously declared that nine-tenths of the electors in boroughs throughout the kingdom were persons whom no landlord would trust for an arrear of five pounds of rent for six months. What have such persons to fear from a division of the estates of the aristocracy? Evidently nothing; but everything to hope.

There is no example, in the history of the world, of small proprietors ever resisting an agrarian law; on the contrary, they have invariably, in every age and country, been its most strenuous supporters. From the days of Gracchus to those of Danton, such ever has been the character of democratic movements. The little proprietors invariably act upon the principle, "Give us the spoils of our superiors, and trust

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us with the protection of our own estates: the sabre of the Sultan does not fall on the dust: the thunder strikes the palaces of princes, but spares the cottages of the poor." These were the maxims on which the Roman citizens, most of whom had landed property, acted, in so long contending for the agrarian law; and these were the maxims on which the French electors proceeded, when they supported the confiscation of landed property from the emigrants, to the amount of above five hundred millions sterling.

The circumstance which renders the occurrence of such extreme measures, it is to be feared, inevitable, if once the legislative authority is vested in the multitude, is, that the democratic party, when the catastrophe arrives, never ascribe it to themselves, but always to their opponents; and propose as remedies, not to stop short, but to advance more rapidly in the career of revolution. This is human nature. Men never have, and never will admit that their own folly has landed them in suffering; they uniformly allege that it has arisen from the opposition they have experienced. In every crisis of the French Revolution, the remedy uniformly proposed by the democratic and ruling party was, not to stop in the career of revolution, but urge on its advance. The greater the distress and the more poignant the suffering, the more violent are the revolutionary remedies which are proposed; and hence it is, that a career of revolution once blindly entered on, cannot be retraced, and that the severity of present suffering becomes the parent of yet stronger measures and more acute distress, till the extremity of disaster at length works out its own cure.

We already see this principle commencing its operation in this country. The uncertainty of the future, the prospect of convulsion, has even now produced a powerful effect on the employment of capital; the reservoirs which have hitherto fed the industry of the country are beginning to fail. This is loudly proclaimed by the Radicals themselves. "It is unnecessary," says the Spectator, "to dwell on the general stagnation of business occasioned by the suspense as to the fate of the Reform Bill. Every one who lives by his industry acknowledges that he feels in his own person a portion of the evil resulting from intense political suspense." "We venture to say there is hardly a tradesman in London

who could persevere, without ruin, in his present expenses, with his present amount of business of course, as the business of the dealer falls off, the orders to the manufacturer decrease; and, finally, the labourer suffers in his turn. To what such distress would probably lead, may be inferred from the actual state of mind of the working classes. Cease to employ agricultural labourers, and they may find food in the fields and barns near which they live; but throw out of employment a dense mass of manufacturing work-people, in such a state of political excitement as they are now in, and necessarily the rapid starvation of some will convert the rest into frantic wolves, who would pour into the districts where food was by any means attainable; and, yielding to a mixed passion of rage and fear, spread desolation over the land. What is true of the London dealer, is also true of every trade and profession which promotes industry and creates employment for labour. The very sources of wealth, accumulation, and production, are in the course of being dried up. Nature is inactive for a short while preceding her most terrible convulsion. In the political economy of this nation, stagnation and torpor indicate a coming earthquake." But what is the remedy which the Radicals propose for this admitted evil? Not to retrace their steps-not to pause in the career of innovation-but to advance in it with redoubled velocity, and adopt still more violent measures for the distress which their own changes have occasioned. It will be the same in all the future convulsions consequent on the innovations we have commenced; the suffering will always be ascribed, not to the revolution, but to the resistance it has experienced, and the remedy adopted the enforcing of more rigorous measures, and the sacrifice of some new and more opulent class in society.

Amidst such an unstable and ruinous system, how is the colonial empire of Britain to be maintained? The answer is obvious it will speedily be dismembered; and England, in addition to the destruction of its freedom and its prosperity, will have to mourn the loss of its immense colonial possessions.

When the news of the defeat on the timber duties was received in Canada, the most extravagant rejoicings took place. Ministers were hung in effigy amidst universal bon

fires, and the inhabitants fondly hoped that the insane measure of encouraging the industry of foreigners, instead of that of our own subjects, was for ever defeated. What their feelings now are, may be easily understood. They are penetrated with the most lively apprehensions, but by no means with the alarm prevalent in this country, because the remedy is easy-they have only to declare themselves independent, and the sway of the British multitude over them at least is at an end.

The taxes proposed by Ministers may convey a clear idea of the policy which will be imposed on our future Government by the sovereign multitude. They proposed to tax Cape wine ad internecionem, and diminish the duties on French wines; and to destroy Canadian industry, by lowering the tax on Baltic timber. Such conduct would be inconceivable, if it were not that history informs us that, in all ages, those who rule by the multitude are driven to similar measures to maintain their ascendency over them; and that the mob, for an immediate advantage to themselves, are always willing to sacrifice the interests of the remote dependencies of the empire. The mob of Paris, and of all the great towns in France, were clear for the law of the maximum in the price of provisions, though it brought immediate ruin on their country neighbours, and ultimate misery on themselves.

Three measures may be expected after the Reform Bill has come into operation; and which no wisdom or firmness, on the part either of Government or the Legislature, will be able to avert.

1. The duties on Baltic timber will be repealed. This measure will be warmly supported by the £10 householders. To such men, the prospect of getting the best wood at half its present price will be an invincible argument for such a measure. By this means Canada will be sacrificed; and a colony, possessing nearly a million of souls, taking off annually fifty thousand emigrants, employing four hundred thousand tons of British shipping, and consuming £2,500,000 of British manufactures, will be lost to the empire.

2. The protecting duties on East India sugar will be repealed, and the immediate emancipation of the negroes