potic countries opinion has its weight: it dismissed Squillace from the government of Spain. In Turkey also we are told, that when the people are discontented, they set fire to a house. It is or was the custom for the Sultan always to assist at a fire, and thus an opportunity is found of telling him those unpleasant truths, which would never otherwise reach his ear. This to be sure is a strange method of giving constitutional advice.

The chief advantage, then, of a free government, is not the existence of public opinion, but that it is exerted in favour of the wholesome rights and established liberties of the people. Looking at the subject then in this point of view, I own, I doubt whether public opinion has increased so much in quality, value, and weight, as it has in bulk and velocity.

In the first place, it is very evident that esteem for constitutional learning, and respect for ancient forms and usages is very much diminished. This, no doubt, is owing to the increase of mercantile men, who have, not like our landed gentlemen and magistrates, the habit of looking into law-books, and referring to acts of

parliament. It is also partly owing to the pressure of great evils, which have sometimes made a necessity, real or supposed, of overlooking rules and maxims, to remedy an urgent danger. Whatever be the causes, however, the consequence is very grievous. The forms of Parliament and of the constitution, as has been before observed, oppose in themselves a great barrier to the strides of arbitrary power. The violation of those forms ought to serve as a signal that an enemy is in sight, and the people should be prepared at once to take part against a measure appearing under such inauspicious colours. This feeling, however, being now weakened, it is in the power of a minister to dispense with precedent and usage, whenever they stand in the way of convenience and expediency, and thus all the guards and outworks of freedom, on which her security so much depends, are yielded without a blow.

Another loss for the cause of liberty is to be found in the extinction of the race of the Pretender. As long as the Stuarts maintained their claim to the crown, the King was

obliged to make up in good government what he wanted in legitimate right. A great part of the church, and their peculiar adherents, allowed the doctrines of the Whigs to prevail, that they might exclude those of the Pope; they permitted liberty for the sake of religion. But at present, the King's advisers have no fear of a successful rival, and the church having been saved by the Whigs, think it consistent with propriety and dignity to calumniate them, and the cause of liberty itself. They have accordingly revived, in a less odious form, the doctrine of passive submission, and they have carried along with them that immense rabble, who think "the people are born with a saddle on their backs, and the King with a whip and spurs to ride them.”

There is another cause of the corruption of public opinion to be found in the enormous growth of our manufacturing towns. The people of these towns, having grown to sudden wealth; having lost, in the rubs of a steam-engine life, all the hereditary attachment to law and liberty, which every Englishman naturally inhales at his father's fire

side, have no guide or compass in their political opinions. It is a misfortune, too, that the greater part of these towns having no representatives, the people they contain never attend to the affairs of their country, with a view to any practical decision. Hence, their notions of government vary with every breath of prosperity or adverse fortune: at one time they indifferent when the whole constitution is menaced; at another, they listen to revolutionary plans and incomprehensible reforms.

There is another circumstance with respect to public opinion, which is of more importance than any. It is, that opinion has become much more sensitive, and men are more disposed to go to extremes than they ever were before. Since the beginning of the present reign, a popular party has appeared, which professes itself dissatisfied with the measure of liberty secured to us at the Revolution. Others have followed them, who, generally perhaps without any serious intention, have found pleasure in trying how far violence of language would be permitted. There has naturally arisen, in the

opposite quarter of the heavens, another party, who cling to ease and quiet, and would fain see political discussion silenced altogether. In times of great ferment, the dissensions of these parties become highly dangerous to all regular and sober freedom. Thus, at the beginning of the French revolution, Mr. Burke having got a hold of the public mind, raised a spirit of the most bitter persecution against all who did not approve of the policy of the war. The extreme nervousness of the nation made it unsafe to indulge any honest difference in politics. The minister, by instituting trials for treason, gave into and promoted the popular fury; and had it not been for Mr. Erskine's eloquence, it is impossible to say whether the lives of Mr. Fox and all the chief of his party might not have been sacrificed to the rage and fear of the alarmists. The demagogues of the day, on the other hand, lose no opportunity of exciting the people, in times of distress, to acts of outrage and rebellion. The quiet and well-disposed, and indeed all persons of property, naturally take the alarm. The panic is increased by miserable wretches, who imitate the language of demagogues, in