Appendix to the Black Book, Chapter I.: General Principles and Practices of the Reform Ministry.

The Tories, or, according to their new designation, the conservators of abuses, have become, like the Jacobites, little more than an historical name. The mind and motive force of the country have left them, and it is impossible they can again exercise political power. If they are wise, they will seek obscurity rather than keep alive the remembrance of their misdeeds. They cannot complain that their reign was short, nor dissolution premature. They lived the full natural term of authority, that is, they survived till they fairly sank under the re-active energies of the corruptions they had patronized, and by which their sway had been perpetuated.

If we revert to the state of public institutions, it is manifest they could not have been longer carried on without the corrective of new principles. The seeds of decay had extended to the secondary as well as primary departments of administration. Abuses were not more rife in the church, public offices, and pension list, than in the courts of law and great corporations of the kingdom. Under a pertinacious system of non-inquiry and non-reform the gangrene had spread through the entire body politic. What is more, the Tories had lost their moral influence. A pretended respect for antiquity, a dread of innovation, and other plausibilities under which they had carried on their plunderings, failed to delude the community; it was found that the superstition of toryism, like other superstitions, was bottomed on mere selfishness and spoliation.

The Whigs succeeded under circumstances well calculated to inspire hope and confidence in the nation. First, they had been reared in the salutary school of adversity; with claims to power equal to their opponents, they had been long excluded from the sweets of enjoyment. Of course they entered office with a tempered and even humiliated spirit, and with no little ostentation of devotion to the popular will.

Secondly, they were bound by previous pledges; during a long course of opposition they had placed on record sentiments which they could not belie without the forfeiture of all claim to principle and character.

But the third and best guarantee of their conduct was in the state of the public mind. The people had been awakened to the defects of their institutions; they were unanimous and energetic in the determination that no pretext, no factious illusion, should avert their efficient reformation. While this spirit lasted, the Whigs could not swerve from the path of patriotism without endangering their official existence; and it was only as popular excitement subsided that their own zeal in well-doing abated. That such a change has come over them we will show by their acts; but before we do this, we shall advert to some leading measures as illustrative of the principles of whig government.

We pass over such acts as had no characteristic feature about them, and the course of which would have been similar whether directed by a whig or tory administration. Such were the renewal of the charters of the Bank of England and East India Company. The only thing we shall remark, on the agreements concluded with these great public bodies, is that ministers made an improvident bargain for the public; that they conceded advantages to these corporations, (especially to the Bank in the legal tender clause,) for which they ought to have obtained a higher price. That this was the case is proved by the rise in the price of the stocks of the two companies immediately after the arrangements had been completed. As respects the Bank, too, the opportunity ought not to have been lost of placing the whole trade of banking on a better foundation—of securing a currency of unchangeable value—and obtaining for the public not only the profit, but the security of a national circulation, issued under the authority and guarantee of the state.

The settlement of the West-India question is another great measure of the whig ministers. We pass over the ludicrous part of this business—namely, ministers first proposing to grant a loan of fifteen millions to the planters, and then suddenly transmuting the loan into a gift of twenty millions; let us attend to the principle of this transaction.

Had the planters a fair claim to compensation for the emancipation of their slaves? We say decidedly no. The ground on which the claim has been most plausibly defended is the fact that a vast property in slaves had grown up, if not under the sanction, at least under the connivance of acts of parliament, and that, as this property was about to be destroyed by another act of parliament, the owners of slaves had a just claim to compensation against the legislature, though none against the slaves themselves.

Our first reply to this is, that though acts of parliament had been passed to regulate the slave-trade, none had been passed recognizing a right of property in human beings. Quite the reverse; since it is a well-known maxim of the English law, that the moment a slave touches the British soil he is free, our laws repudiating the idea of a property in the person of an individual. Even a negro enlisting in the British army thereby becomes free by statute, (10 Geo. IV. c. 6, s. 37), as a native of England. Against the colonial legislatures the planters may have had a valid claim to compensation; they may have admitted a property in slaves, but the statute and common law of England are exempt from the opprobrium.

If government was right in its treatment of the planters, it has been unjust towards other classes. We will cite two cases in illustration. Under the authority of the law the great brewers acquired a valuable property in public-houses; by an act of parliament opening the beer-trade the property was destroyed or depreciated, and no compensation was granted for the injury sustained. Prohibiting the beer-houses to retail beer to be consumed on the premises will inflict great injury on their proprietors. Yet, though these houses were opened under the express guarantee of an act of parliament, and the property therein may be greatly impaired by another act of parliament, no compensation will be given to the owners for the loss they have suffered.

The property in newspapers has become a great property; it has been created under, and its value may depend on the continuance of the existing stamp laws. It is impossible to foresee what might be the effect of the repeal of the stamp duties, but whatever this effect may be, however greatly newspaper property may be depreciated thereby, we will venture to say the owners would neither ask nor obtain indemnification.

Why ought such different measures of justice to be dealt to the different classes of the community? We can only ascribe it to the aristocracy still predominant in the government. Members of the House of Commons, members of the Cabinet, were interested in the slave question; they were owners of slaves, and so their losses must be compensated! It was not, therefore, for the maintenance of a principle, nor to do an act of impartial justice, but for the maintenance of a caste, that a permanent encumbrance has been entailed on the country of upwards of £600,000 a year,—a sum equal to the taxes on knowledge, and one-tenth of all the money levied for the relief of the poor of England.

The same selfish policy, the same devotion to aristocratic interests, maintains the discriminating duties between East and West India produce, by which the people of England have been taxed four millions annually for the benefit of the trans-Atlantic planters.

An injustice or abuse ought to be abated without compensation. It is contrary to law, as well as reason, that a man should profit by his own wrong-doing. But the Whigs have been constantly doing violence to this principle; they have not sought to reform, but to buy up the fee-simple of abuses at their full value. They have sought to change, not lighten the burden. An overgrown salary has been commuted into a superannuation, and a sinecure into a pension. The maxim acted upon is, that whoever has once had the fingering of the public money shall for ever after be maintained out of the public purse. It is the principle of the poor-laws; let a man obtain a settlement, and he thenceforward claims support from the parish, and let a placeman once get into a government office, and he immediately and for ever sets up the pauper’s claim of being fed and clothed at the charge of the community. Some pensions have been granted on the most objectionable practice of the poor-law administration—namely, the allowance system. We have before us a parliamentary return of persons who receive compensation allowances for the loss of their offices until otherwise provided for; that is, while out of work they shall receive something less than full wages. According to this rule we are now maintaining a mass of tory ex-placemen. Mr. Goulburn receives £2000 a year; Mr. Croker, £1500; Mr. Planta, £1000; Mr. Courtenay, £1000; with many others. The condition on which all these pensions are received is that when they hold offices—that is, get into full employment—their pauper allowances shall cease. But why did not the Poor Law Bill abolish state allowances as well as parish allowances to the able-bodied but unemployed poor. Is it not as reasonable that John Wilson Croker and William Goulburn should have made provision for the vicissitudes of life out of their earnings as Jem Styles and Matthew Dawson?

In their Judicial Reforms the Whigs have gone on the tory maxim, that the holders of sinecures in the courts of law shall receive full pecuniary compensation. But we must protest against its justice; we can never admit of ‘vested rights’ in public abuses; we can never admit that the holders of life or reversionary interests in abuses in church or state are entitled to their full yearly value like the holders of a copyhold or freehold estate. But this favoured class seem even exempt from the changes in the value of property to which other classes are liable. Sinecures, whether lay or spiritual, are no longer sacred in public estimation—they are depreciated in value—they are, in fact, exposed to entire confiscation by the progress of opinion; yet they still continue to be bought up by government at their full nominal worth, in lieu of being extinguished by a compromise or dividend. In this way the great legal sinecures held by lord Ellenborough, the duke of Grafton, and others, ought to be got rid of. But the late reforms in the Court of Chancery have established a mischievous precedent. The monstrous sinecures of £11,000 a year, held by the rev. Thomas Thurlow, were purchased by an equivalent life-annuity payable out of bankrupt estates. The purse-bearer to the lord chancellor, and other officers in the court, were compensated in a similar manner. Lord Brougham received, as an equivalent for the loss of a portion of his sinecure patronage, an addition of one-fourth part to his retiring pension, making it £5000, in lieu of £4000, the highest sum paid to his predecessors.

Lord Brougham is a bitter enemy to the Poor Laws, as encouraging idleness and improvidence; but why does he countenance the application of principles to himself which he reprobates when applied to the less instructed portion of society? What is his pension but a compulsory rate levied on the community as a provision for old age, a large family, or scarcity of employment? These are, in truth, the very pretexts on which it has been justified. By a loss of patronage it is assumed his lordship has not the same means of providing for his children, and his pension is deemed a provision to fall back on in old age or when unemployed. But surely this “great Westmoreland pauper” might provide for the casualties of life out of his enormous income as well as the poor man out of his wretched pittance. As to absolute want of employment there does not appear much to apprehend, as lord Lyndhurst has overcome that difficulty by descending to a chief-justiceship after being chancellor; or why not even descend to practise again at the bar, after the example of chief-justice Pemberton. At all events there seems little need of a pension: the practice of granting pensions to ex-chancellors is one of the excrescences of the “Pitt and plunder” system, and ought to have disappeared with the first session of the Reformed Parliament.

By-the-by we might as well remark here on the enormous salary awarded to the lord chancellor by his whig friends, and which his lordship, up to this time, has condescended to receive. We do this without any personal ill-will, for we will readily admit no one deserves to be better paid than lord Brougham. But we look to principle and former professions. On examination before a parliamentary committee lord Brougham remarked on the almost impossibility that some of the tory ministers should not have been favourable to the continuance of the late war, seeing it added so enormously to their official gains. Lord Eldon was cited as an instance. Upon an average of three years during the war his lordship’s net income was £19,233, and in one year, 1811, it was £22,737. (Parliamentary Paper, No. 322, session 1831.) Lord Stowell lost £8000 a year by the cessation of hostilities as judge of the admiralty court. Even the king lost by the peace, as he had no longer the plunder of the droits of the crown and admiralty to supply his extravagance. It is inconceivable men would act so detestable a part with their eyes open, as to continue the miseries of war for mere official spoil; yet as lord Brougham most justly observed, “human frailty operates so, that without stating to ourselves the points we are erring upon, our interests work upon us unknown to ourselves.”

Now is lord Brougham more favourably circumstanced than his predecessor? Is he not surrounded by the same interest-begotten motives of action? By the establishment of the Bankruptcy Court his duties are considerably less than former chancellors; yet, allowing for the change in the value of money, his emoluments are greater than the average emoluments of lord Eldon during the war, and he has a retiring pension equal to the salary of the president of the United States of America. It is hardly possible, therefore, that he can see great defects in a system by which he so greatly profits, or be zealous in the reform of abuses. Hence his procrastinated, illusive, and abortive legal reforms. During the four years of his chancellorship not more has been effected than would have been effected under a tory or any other administration. The defects in our judicial system, and the chaos of absurdities in the statute and common law of the realm, continue unredressed. Even the Court of Chancery is still pre-eminent for delay, cost, and circuity. And why not disintegrate the mass of incompatible duties in his lordship’s own office, by separating judicial from political functions, and removing the opprobrious farce of appealing from lord Brougham on the bench to lord Brougham on the woolsack? A love of patronage, of power, and emolument, are the lurking motives.

In their Ecclesiastial Reforms the Whigs have been singularly unsuccessful, and the second session of the reformed parliament has terminated without any substantial improvement being effected either in the Irish or English branch of the United Church. It would occupy too much space to exhibit at length the abortions in principle and detail that have been propounded, still it is essential to give the reader an outline of what has been proposed, as illustrative of the views of ministers on church reform and indicative of future proceedings.

The Act (3 and 4 Will. IV. c. 37.) for regulating the temporalities of the Irish Church was the chief measure of the first session. By it the number of bishops is reduced from twenty-two to twelve, by the union of sees as the present incumbents die off. After the death of the present incumbents also, the enormous revenues of some of the sees are to be reduced; that of Armagh from its present amount of £14,500 to £10,000; that of Derry from £12,000 to £6,000; and all the other sees which may be worth more than £4000 to that sum. The exaction of vestry cess is abolished. So is also that of first fruits, in the stead of which there is to be imposed upon all livings above the actual yearly value of £300 an annual tax, varying in its rate according to the value of the living. Lastly, the leases of bishops’ lands are to be converted into perpetuities, by which it is supposed a sum of £1,200,000 (it was originally calculated at three times that amount) will be realized. The fund arising from these prospective reductions and savings—for mind, it is all in future—is to be vested in commissioners, consisting of six prelates of the Irish Church and the Lord Chancellor and Lord Chief Justice of Ireland, and under their direction it is to be applied to the augmentation of small benefices, the building of churches and glebe houses, the meeting of the expenses hitherto defrayed out of the vestry cess, and other purely ecclesiastical objects. The fund so created it is calculated will ultimately yield a revenue of £155,000 a year.

Upon this first measure of reform two observations may be made. 1. It effected (with the exception of the see of Derry) no immediate reduction in the enormous revenues of the Irish clergy. 2. With the exception of the vestry cess, amounting to about £35,000 a year, not a single farthing is saved to the community; an enormous sinecure church establishment is still left to levy the same amount of revenue from the industry and property of Ireland. So far, then, as the people are concerned, the reform is totally valueless; it saves nothing for the poor, for education, nor for local improvements.

In lieu of a measure of this sort a very different proceeding was demanded. A crisis had happened in the affairs of Ireland; by what may be termed the natural course of events, the clergy had lost their tithes, and the church, instituted for the benefit of the people, had become alien and useless to them. Here, then, was an opportunity for getting rid of the entire grievance. Abolish the Irish Church as a national establishment; share among the clergy the remnant of property which events had left to them; let them have life stipends out of the produce of the bishops’ and other church lands. In lieu of tithe let a land-tax be levied for the maintenance of the destitute, for education, and for the extinction of those territorial rights which are the great obstacle to the reclamation of the bogs and wastes of Ireland.

By such a plan of reform the ecclesiastical establishment, which has been the principal source of impoverishment and civil strife, might have been made the great instrument for improving and tranquillizing the country.

Two other acts were passed relative to the Irish Church; one for effecting a compulsory composition for tithes payable by the landlord, and the other empowering government to make advances to the amount of one million to such of the clergy as had not been able to recover the tithes due to them, to be repaid by five annual instalments. The landlords are now the parties from whom the repayment of these instalments may be demanded, who have of course their remedy against occupiers of the soil. It is not improbable the money advanced to the Irish clergy will never be repaid except out of the pockets of the people of Great Britain. But we must leave this to come to the schemes introduced last session for the extinction of tithe.

First it was resolved, before any final arrangement took place, the law itself should be restored, and the right of the clergy vindicated by enforcing the payment of tithe. In the execution of this preliminary essay, that noted person the Right Hon. E. G. Stanley most signally failed. After bringing into play all the resources of his vast genius—after employing horse, foot, and artillery, to collect the pigs, poultry, cattle, and chattels of the peasantry, the most energetic of secretaries could only raise £12,000, and this after an expenditure of £60,000. Failing in this project, the next position assumed was that whatever might be the fate of tithes, the landlords had no right to a farthing of them. This was lord Althorp’s own explicit, firm, and decided declaration. Mr. Littleton followed with his celebrated resolution of the 20th of February, for the conversion of tithe into a land-tax, payable to the crown and redeemable by the landlords, the produce of such redemption to be invested in land for the benefit of the clergy.

To this proposition the objections were weighty and manifold. First, the policy of tying up in mortmain a mass of real property in the hands of the church or government, was not sanctioned by the experience of history. Secondly, the making the clergy stipendiaries of the state would not tend to elevate their office in public estimation, and gave a sanction to some of the popular notions respecting them. Lastly, it was not likely many of the Irish landlords would have money to spare to redeem their tithes, poor as they were known to be, and burdened as their estates mostly are with mortgages and settlements.

To surmount these difficulties the Great Agitator came forth, July 30th, with his famous proposition for at once giving a bonus of 40 per cent. to the landlords on condition that they would, in place of their tenantry, charge themselves with the payment of the remaining 60 per cent. of tithe. The plan was that the clergy should abate 221/2 per cent. of their full due,—namely, 21/2 per cent. for the expenses of collection, and 20 per cent for better security. Every incumbent therefore would receive 771. 10s. certain in lieu of £100 nominal income. Of this 771. 10s. the sum of £60 would be paid by the landlord, and the remainder, 171. 10s., be charged on the consolidated fund, that is, on general revenue of the empire. Ultimately, indeed, it was held forth that the difference of £17 was to be paid out of what is called the Perpetuity Fund, that is, the fund already alluded to, arising from the sale of bishops’ leases in perpetuity; but as this fund is not likely to be realized during the present generation, it may be concluded that the tax-ridden people of England and Scotland would be saddled with the payment of nearly one-fifth of the tithes of the Irish clergy!

The plan we have last indicated is that which passed the House of Commons, but was rejected by the Lords as too unfavourable to the Church; but a plan more favourable to the Church and less favourable to the people is not, in our opinion, likely to be again submitted for their acceptance.

That it was favourable to the clergy may be easily illustrated. By the defection or hostility of the people tithe had become extinct as a property, as much so as if it had been swallowed up by the sea or an earthquake. Under such circumstances were not 771/2 per cent. a most bountiful equivalent? In our opinion it was too much. Few persons would give £77 for £100 tithe even in England, to be saddled with its insecurities and the expenses of collection. Many landlords would gladly accept £77 certain, indisputable, and in perpetuity, in place of a nominal £100 of their rents. Whether the Irish clergy were entitled to anything may be doubted. They had lost their property by the course of events, and how many other persons have lost their incomes by the vicissitudes of the times without receiving compensation? To wit, those who have been ruined or injured by tamperings with the currency, the Bank Restriction Act, and the reduction of the Five and Four per Cents. Stock of the National Debt. Government showed no sympathy for the sufferers in these instances, though it was, in fact, the author of their misfortunes. We repeat, then, that the tender to the Irish clergy was most liberal—more liberal, we are sure, than will ever be again offered.

Let us next advert to this plan of ecclesiastical reform as it would have affected the community. It is of importance to examine it with attention, as it may be made the foundation of ulterior projects for the extinction of tithe in England.

Two-fifths of the tithes were to be at once swamped in a bonus to the landlords. This was the most indefensible part of the scheme. If there were any point on which all men were agreed, it was on the fact that, come what might, no portion of the tithe ought to devolve to the owners of the soil. This was the Chancellor of the Exchequer’s own explicit and apparently unchangeable declaration. Next to the clergy no class was so deeply interested in the settlement of the tithe question as the landlords. It gave value, peace, and security to their possessions. In lieu of a bribe they ought to have made a sacrifice. But the source whence the bribe was to be taken outrages belief. It was not to be taken from the vast possessions of the Irish Church, but to be charged on the general revenue of the empire. Of the £40 out of every £100 to be given to the landlords, nearly one half was in great part to come out of the pockets of the dissenters of England and presbyterians of Scotland. Here was ecclesiastical regeneration with a vengeance! In lieu of the reform of the rich sinecure church of Ireland opening new sources of public revenue, it would have entailed additional burdens on the community. The question of the secular appropriation of the surplus wealth of the church was perverted into a question for appropriating more money for its maintenance—and of which a whig aristocracy, who had with alacrity adopted this new scheme of public spoliation, and who are among the principal landowners of Ireland—and the rest of an absent proprietary, who had been the chief causes of the miseries of the country—were to have the sole benefit and advantage!

One of the most objectionable measures of last session—Poor Law Bill excepted—is the Civil Offices Pension Act. This act is founded on an act passed during the odious administration of lord Castlereagh. In 1817 the call for retrenchment was loud and unceasing, and in order to silence the popular cry a committee of the House of Commons recommended that certain of the most obnoxious sinecures should be abolished. But as this took away a portion of the corrupt matter at the disposal of the minister, it was proposed that the crown should be empowered to grant certain equivalent pensions to its adherents in lieu of the abolished sinecures. Accordingly the 57 Geo. III. c. 67, provided that all the chief and subaltern officers of government, from the first lord of the treasury down to the clerk of the ordnance and first and second secretaries of the Admiralty should be entitled to retiring pensions, varying from £3000 to £1000 per annum.

This, it must be confessed, was an odd mode of economical reform. The sinecures were abuses, and ought to have been swept away without placing another equivalent abuse at the disposal of the crown. The principle assumed was that sinecures were the property of our hereditary legislators and their dependents, and as this property was taken from them they had a right to be provided for in some other way; that either as sinecurists or pensioners they were entitled to a perpetual maintenance from the public!

Upon this bill of 1817—so base in its origin and so indefensible in principle—the Whig act of the present session for granting pensions to themselves is founded. The Act 4 and 5 Will. IV. c. 24 provides that the first lord of the treasury, the secretaries of state, the chancellor of the exchequer, first lord of the admiralty, president of the India board, and president of the board of trade, may each claim £2000 a year pension after two years’ service at one or different times; that the chief secretary of Ireland and secretary at war may claim £1400 a year after five years’ service, and that joint secretaries of the treasury, vice-president of board of trade, under secretaries of state, first and second secretary of the admiralty, and secretaries of India board, may each claim pensions from £1200 to £1000 for terms of service, varying from five to ten years.

Neither the public press nor the radical members of the House of Commons appear to have taken notice of this extraordinary measure of a reform ministry. We shall, however, offer a few observations, first on the extravagance of this provision, and, secondly, on the principle of placing such a power of rewarding the high and efficient officers of government in the hands of the crown.

According to the act, the first lord of the treasury, after two years’ service, may claim a pension of £2000 for life, and the president of the board of trade a like sum after the same term of service. Supposing now these officers forty years of age, and that they retire from office after two or three years and live to the age of eighty they will receive, exclusive of interest, £80,000 of the public money, or £40,000 for each year of actual labour. A pretty reward this to lord Melbourne or Mr. Poulett Thomson for submitting for a couple of years to the drudgery of public life, exclusive of their official salaries and patronage while in office, and which we should have thought ample remuneration.

But why should the power of rewarding public services be vested in the crown, and not in the House of Commons? It is plain enough that it is only the favourites of the court or of the ministers that will receive pensions under this act. No servant of the people, however necessitous, will ever be benefited by it—only the parasites of power. It is in fact bribes for servility, so much additional influence to the crown, and a further provision for titled pauperism. Lord Brougham, however, concurred in the measure as well as the duke of Wellington, and the chief objection to it entertained by earl Grey was, that “it did not sufficiently enable the crown to reward public functionaries.”

There is another observation connected with this extraordinary provision of the Whigs,—namely, that it holds out a temptation to ministers to desert their employment without reasonable and adequate occasion. We do not mean to insinuate that the chance of £2000 a year for doing nothing was the cause of the retirement of lord Grey, Mr. Stanley, and sir James Graham; we do not mean to say that they acted from the same unworthy motives that lord Brougham says the paupers do—that they prefer one-half or one-third wages in idleness rather than whole wages and industry; still, as the same learned personage remarked, selfish motives do exert such an unerring influence over human conduct, unknown even to the parties themselves, that it is impossible to say to what extent they may have influenced the individuals mentioned. It cannot be denied that during last session ministers were always ready to withdraw from office; indeed, having made such a comfortable provision for themselves, and having placed in lucrative appointments their relatives and dependents, they had scarcely any motive longer to undergo the toils and anxieties of official life. They had, as the late premier recommended the bishops to do, put their ‘houses in order,’ and were prepared for the worst. The threat of retirement was really the talisman by which they governed the country. If the independent portion of the House of Commons was likely to prove refractory, a ministerial ‘strike’ was held in terrorem, which instantly procured implicit obedience.

Now to those honourable Members who really consider the services of lord Althorp and colleagues essential to the government of this great empire—a necessity we confess we do not ourselves perceive—we would vouchsafe a word of advice. Why do they not take away from ministers all temptation to retirement?—why do they not obtain the repeal of an act which holds out a direct inducement to withdraw from office, and apply to them the same principle they are seeking to apply to the poor, that those who do not work neither shall they eat—at the public expense!

As our purpose is not to present a detailed history of the Whig Ministry merely to illustrate principles, we shall only indicate minor delinquencies. Of this sort was the grant of a pension of £2000 a year to Mr. Abercromby. The appointment of this gentleman to a Scotch sinecure judgeship of the Court of Exchequer, just on the eve of its abolition, was itself a mere job; and then on the reduction of the court to settle the honourable member on the country for life was an indefensible mode of providing for a friend totally unworthy of a reform government. Of the same character, or worse, was the creation of a new office for Mr. Macaulay—his father and other relatives having before been provided for—with a salary of £10,000 a year, and an ample retiring pension after four or five years service, as a means of paying him for half a dozen clever speeches, reviews, and party pamphlets. Not less objectionable was the appointment of sir John Byng to the governorship of Londonderry—a sinecure of £1200 a year. The Russo-Dutch loan and the guarantee given to Otho, king of Greece, were measures of questionable policy, by which a serious burden and responsibility have been imposed on the country. Then, one cannot forget their defence of naval and military sinecures—their opposition to a revision of the pension list—to the abolition of flogging in the army—to naval impressment—to the repeal of the septennial act—the stamp duties on newspapers—and the introduction of the ballot.

The measures on which the Whigs may justly pride themselves are their Reform Bill, their economical reductions in the public expenditure, their improvement of the constitution of the Scotch Burghs, and their foreign policy. They have also instituted many salutary inquiries into the civil and judicial administration of the country. But their foreign policy, next to the reform bill, is their proudest boast. They have not only preserved peace—so essential to the thorough reform of our institutions and the progress of constitutional liberty abroad—but they have severed the country from its tory connexions with the continental despotisms, and united her destinies to the free governments of France and the Peninsula. The union of the naval power of Britain with the military power of France is the guarantee of peace, or, if war should come, of victory against Tyrants!