revolutionary confiscation, the object, and the only object, which the designing leaders of revolution always had-the catastrophe which its deluded followers, whether in the Legislature or the country, uniformly asserted would never occur. Its present advent is the event, therefore, calculated to divide finally and for ever the reforming party; to unveil the designs of its Radical members, and to horrify the minds of its conscientious but mistaken supporters; to separate, at last, the wheat from the chaff, and demonstrate to the most enthusiastic followers of mere Reform, that whatever he may have thought or done formerly, he must now think and act differently; that, in Lord Ripon's words, "if he does not rest now, he never can rest hereafter."

The well-known French proverb, "C'est le premier pas qui coute," and the maxim of Roman justice, Majus et minus non variant speciem," are alike applicable to this question. Both point to the unspeakable peril, the enormous dan ger of following the supposed "spirit of the times,"-in other words, the desire of robbery-into its contemplated inroads upon the property of the Irish Church. If this door be once opened, if this barrier be once thrown down,-if this inroad be once permitted, no property of any sort is worth five years' purchase. The wolf which has once tasted blood, can never again be kept from deeds of slaughter. There is a natural repugnance, an unavoidable horror in nations, as well as individuals, at the commission of the first deeds of acknowledged injustice. The thief who has been bred to better habits, does not first lay his hand on his neighbour's purse, the assassin does not first plunge his dagger in an innocent breast, the seducer does not first complete the ruin of his victim, without a thrill of horror, without some compunction as to the awful course on which he has entered. Cæsar paused on the banks of the Rubicon; Napoleon himself shrunk before the majesty even of a revolutionary Legislature at St Cloud. But when the die is once cast, when the Rubicon is fairly past, the rest follows as a matter of course. Conscience is obli

terated; ambitious passions gain an irresistible ascendency; necessity drags them on. Quod prius fuit voluntatis postea fit necessitatis. They cannot recede if they would; they are impelled forward by a clamorous and highly-excited crowd in their rear; their personal safety (and that is the fatal thing) becomes wound up in continuing the revolutionary system. Instant ruin and disgrace stare them in the face, if they recede after they have fairly commenced the war on private property,-after their hands have once been sullied by deeds of injustice. There is no possibility of receding, therefore, after the precedent of revolutionary acts has once been established; and it was the profound, the heartfelt sense of this great truth, which led Mr Stanley and Sir James Graham to resign their exalted situations, rather than become involved in its commission. Well and nobly have they acted; an heroic sacrifice have they made, but a glorious recompense will they receive. Their names will be emblazoned in the archives of their country; and the patriot historian, mournfully but justly narrating the past, will joyfully rest on this splendid act, and enrol them among those who, if they once erred, have at least sought to redeem their fault,—who, if they were accessory to a ruinous measure, have at least proved that they are so from error of judgment, not selfishness of intention.

In every country, which the decrees of Providence permit, as the punishment of its sins, to be afflicted by the revolutionary fever, a crisis such as the present has arrived; and its future destiny depends entirely on the strength of the virtuous and Conservative part of the community, when nature has made this effort to cast off the load which is oppressing it. The secession of Burke and the old Whigs of England, in 1793, from the ranks of an Opposition, which, but for their secession, might have succeeded in rousing revolutionary passion so as to overturn the Monarchy; the retirement of Mounier, Neckar, and the early leaders of the French Revolution, indicated the arrival of the same crisis in the progress of the malady, which the resignations of Mr Stanley

and Sir James Graham, of the Duke of Richmond and Lord Ripon, announce in our present convulsions, In all these cases, the break in the once united and powerful Liberal party was occasioned by the same cause, and in all they offered to the nation the same opportunity of salvation. This cause was the law of nature, which in nations, not less than individuals, propels those who yield to sinful passions, from one indulgence to another, till, unless early wisdom checks their career, they fall the victims of their own extravagance; this opportunity is the break-off which the virtuous, but deluded, make from the reckless and ambitious, when the designs of the latter are fairly unveiled, and the peril of their career is clearly manifested. Upon the strength of the patient at this crisis, his future destiny depends. If his constitution is weakened, but not destroyed, he may surmount the malady; if his strength is gone, he will rapidly sink under its violence.

The crisis has arrived here; and we have good reason to hope that it has not arrived too late to enable us to struggle through the disease. Our nobility have not, like the French emigrants, basely fled from their country, and yielded up the land of their birth to guilty demagogues and infidel spoliators. Our landed proprietors have not withdrawn to the Continent, and returned with foreign troops to enthral their native land; they have not given their opponents the enormous advantage of representing them as the enemies of their country. Victorious or vanquished, they have remained at their post; disdaining to invoke foreign aid, they have trusted to their own efforts, and the justice of their cause, ultimately to regain the victory. This is the great, the decisive circumstance, which distinguishes our present convulsion from the French Revolution; and though we alluded to it in our last Number, yet it is of such vital importance, that it must again, and can never be sufficiently enlarged on. If our nobility and gentry had imitated the French noblesse, and abandoned their country at the passing of the Reform Bill, not a shadow of a doubt can now remain, that we should ere this have

been immersed in all the horrors of a Revolution. The motions made in the first Session of the Reform Parliament would have torn the empire in pieces. The Whigs, outnumbered by their allies the Radicals, would have been compelled to go into every revolutionary atrocity, or abandon the helm; the few Conservatives returned to Parliament would have resigned the contest, as the French Royalists did, in despair. Then would have appeared here, as it did in France, the utter inability of any branch of the Movement party to resist the Revolution, or coerce the allies whom they had raised up from the lower ranks of society to supreme power. The cry of treacherythe reproaches of their former allies

the stain of inconsistency, would with us, as it did with them, have paralysed all their efforts. The cry "Grand Trahison du Comte Mirabeau" would have sealed their fate. But the case is widely different in Great Britain. The great and powerful Conservative party have remained at their post, and, though for the time overwhelmed by numbers, they are still unsubdued. Having wea thered the first breach of the storm, they are gathering strength every hour. The reaction has come firmly, decidedly, indisputably, in all the higher and really educated classes of the State. No one can doubt this who looks about him in society. The false pseudo-liberality which was so common ten years ago, and which in its ultimate effects has brought the nation to the brink of ruin, has almost disappeared. With the exception of the holders and expectants of office, and their families or dependents, hardly a Whig is now to be seen in the highly educated classes of society. Among the young, the race is almost extinct, as Oxford and Cambridge have sufficiently demonstrated. Revolutionists there are, in small numbers, among such classes, in great numbers among the rabble of cities, and the desperate in fortune; and the Reform mania, though evidently subsiding, is still sufficiently strong to give the majority in numbers to the popular candidate in large towns, or manufacturing districts; but the growth of Conservative principles is so rapid among all the well-educated classes

of society, and the vast majority of the holders of property, as to render them already almost a match for their antagonists, in all but these corrupt fastnesses of democratic power. In the counties, every person must perceive that the tide has already turned. It is probably not going too far to say, that out of the 184 county members of Great Britain, 150 would at another election be returned in the Conservative interest. We do not say in the Tory interest; but in the interest of those who, however formerly divided, are now united in resisting the farther advances of Revolution; in the party of the Duke of Wellington and Sir Robert Peel, of Mr Stanley and Sir James Graham.

It is this circumstance, therefore, of the firm and resolute, the courageous and high-minded Conservative party, remaining at their post, and stemming the torrent of innovation by their example and influence, which distinguishes the English from the French Revolution, and is destined, it is to be hoped, to lead to a very different result of a similar convulsion in the two countries. The deluded Liberals-the hardened Revolutionists, have been the same in both; their language, their intentions, their measures, their hypocrisy, their selfishness, their irreligion, have been identical. If they have hitherto been kept from deeds of atrocity and blood, it is not from any efforts or power of their own to stop the conflagration which they have occasioned, but from the firm countenance, the resolute resistance, the growing influence of the Conservatives, that the exemption has arisen. No one can estimate the effect of the vigorous and patriotic stand which the enemies of revolution have made, in so many different quarters, since the Reform Parliament was returned. They are up and doing in every direction: hardly ever does a vacancy open, that a vigorous, and, to the Whigs, a most anxious contest, does not occur. The effect of their efforts has been already very great. In Perthshire, they have already won the victory for order and religion; in Cambridge, they have driven the Secretary for the Colonies to so narrow a majority, as clearly indicates, on the next occasion, a decisive defeat. At Edin

burgh even, the nest of Whiggism, the nucleus of the Scotch Liberal party, the fortress from whence the Edinburgh Review, for thirty years, has dealt its fire out in every direction, they have reduced the majority from 2500 to 500, and compelled the Attorney-General, the prosecutor of the True Sun, to supplicate the po litical unionists to save him from the disgrace of a second defeat; and the seasonable junction of 500 of their number alone gave him the victory. It is evident, therefore, that a very great change has taken place; and this change is likely to be still farther increased by the recent break-up in the Ministry-by the dissolution of that combination of deluded Conservatism with ambitious Liberalism, which, for the time, gave the Reform party so irresistible a preponderance, and the installation of the RADICAL RUMP in unmitigated sovereignty, over a nation beginning to awaken out of a trance of five years' duration.

The fact of division existing in the Movement party, the natural and inevitable result of the measures of spoliation to which they have been driven by their revolutionary supporters, and of the recoil of all virtuous minds at deeds of acknowledged injustice and obvious peril, is admitted, with loud lamentation, by the Movement journals. Take, for example, the Morning Chronicle of June 9;

"The Administration of Lord Grey, though it has gained in character, has lost considerable power. Mr Stanley has not only retired from the Cabinet, but thrown himself senselessly into the ranks of the High Church Opposition. The Duke of Richmond, Lord Ripon, and Sir James Graham, it is true, are no great intellectual or political loss to the Government; but it would be absurd to deny that this late section of the Cabinet attached to the Administration of Lord Grey a considerable class in the country of semi-liberal but conservative politics. In the meanwhile, the hostile posture of the House of Lords is transparently obvious. The Tory Peers possess a notorious majority of sixty votes. They can neutralize any legislative act of the House at any moment outvote the Ministry, and of Commons, when they discern a fitting party occasion. Lord Grey, on Friday, in his excellent and dignified speech, significantly stated his position: declare to your Lordships, that I experi

'I can

ence no great satisfaction in occupying my present situation. Give me leave to assure you, that it cannot be very agreeable to me to sit here, night after night, to see arrayed, on the opposite benches, a number of your Lordships, who I know, whenever called into a division, must decide the question against me. Nevertheless, I have persevered under all the difficulties and disadvantages incident to this state of things, in the hope that better times would occur.' Now, we ask, what rational hope is there of any such 'better times,' unless death, in the course of time, should remove an unusual proportion of the noble Opposition? The supposed necessity of Ministers to shape

their measures to the standard of the

House of Lords—the honest but at times mistaken anxiety of the House of Commons to uphold a liberal Administration, and exclude the Tories-have greatly prostrated the character of public men, and on a new election, might sacrifice some of the most useful and honourable members of the House of Commons. The votes on the pension-list, twice repeated -on the shortening the duration of Parliaments - -on the resolutions of Mr Ward the inefficiency of the Ministerial measures for the partial concession of the claims of the Dissenters respecting marriage and church-rates-and the absence of any Ministerial measures on parochial registration and free admission to the English Universities have made a deep and injurious impression on the public mind. The Liberal interest of the country is divided, instead of being arrayed in unison against the common enemy. It is not any reaction of public opinion towards Conservatism which has prevented many capable liberal members of the House of Commons from accepting official appointments, and which now holds many gentlemen in doubt; it is the disunion of the Reformers, really occasioned by the deplorable circumstances which we have above unwillingly but necessarily alluded to. And what is the only remedy? Can it be denied that the recent Ministerial changes have given dissatisfaction to the country? Can it be questioned that the present critical political position of parties requires the concentration of the popular powerthe aid and active support of every enlightened public man who can be put in requisition for the public service, and the confidence and support of the whole Liberal constituency of the kingdom?"

Like all faction partisans, this journal ascribes the changes in the prospects of the Revolutionary party, not to the operation of any general

causes, but their own unhappy divisions as if the division of a party, heretofore united, was not itself the strongest proof of the working of some common overruling cause, and any thing but the clearest indication of the advent of times when "the pressure from without" has compelÎed the hitherto united Reform phalanx to separate into two divisions; the one of which is disposed to go the utmost length of revolutionary movement-the other to stop short, and having conceded what they deemed the reasonable, resist the unreasonable demands of the populace.

The French, albeit greatly our superiors in the knowledge of revolutionary progress, are yet egregiously mistaken in their estimate of the causes by which it is governed, and the principles essential to its success. They constantly speak of it as a necessary progress; as a change which is irresistible; as a matter subject to the stern laws of necessity, and over which human efforts have no control. This fatalist doctrine originated with Mignet, Thiers, Levasseur de la Sarthe, and the other apologists of the Revolution. They adopted it because they could neither defend nor extenuate the horrors of the popular party on their side of the water, and thereascribe them to overruling necessity, fore they had no resource but to by which they thought they would wipe off the stain from individual characters. In this they have been followed by all the historians of the recent military events in France, who, whenever a victory is to be recorded of the Republican arms, let us hear nothing but praises of the valour, skill, and intrepidity of the French soldiers; but when a defeat is to be described, invariably begin roaring out about an invincible fatality and irresistible necessity. But a more absurd and perilous doctrine never was broached, and it is evident that it has had no slight influence in forming the minds of our leading statesmen to those extravagant opinions on the necessity of bending to "the spirit of the age," which is put forward as the apology for the spoliation of the Irish Church. In every age, there is to be found a bad as well as a good spirit, and thousands, perhaps millions, who will follow

the career of crime and revolution, in preference to that of order and religion, if they think they can do so with impunity to themselves. The spirit is strong in highwaymen for robbery, and in assassins for the wages of blood; in the brutal for intoxication, in the lustful for pleasure, in the indolent for ease, in the sensual for gratification; and if governments descend to such classes for their supporters or directors, they will find abundant reason to believe that the "spirit of the age' is in favour of the gratification of their passions. But if there is in every age a bad, there is also no less certainly a good spirit. The majority even in number, and a tenfold majority in courage, wisdom, and virtue, are ever to be found who are not inclined to such indulgences, who have struggled with the tempter, and come off victorious; who look forward to the future, and prefer ultimate good to present enjoyments; the brave, the energetic, the industrious. They form the basis of public prosperity; the pillars on which national honour, and safety, and welfare depend. Catiline declared that the spirit of his age was adverse to the tyranny of the Patricians; and he spoke truly, doubt less, of his companions: but Cicero found the spirit of the age very different in the Senate; and Cæsar at length demonstrated that it was in reality favourable only to military despotism. In truth, the spirit of the times, so far from being an irresistible current, independent of the exertions of human virtue, is liable to the strongest possible modification from the effects of courage or weakness, wisdom or folly, selfishness or magnanimity, firmness or imbecility. Perhaps never did the temper of the times appear more vehement and unanimous than in France at the outset of the Revolution; and yet we have the authority of Dumont, the friend of Mirabeau, and the author of the Rights of Man, for the assertion that its downward progress was chiefly owing to the personal weakness of the King, and that a more resolute monarch would speedily have established, in conformity with the wishes of a vast

majority of the nation, a firm constitutional throne, and utterly extin guished the revolutionary faction. It is success which makes such a faction powerful, because it ranges on their side the great but inert mass of the people, ever ready to range themselves with the stronger side; it is the concessions or weakness of their opponents which constitute their real strength. And if Earl Grey is not disposed to listen to so great an authority even as Dumont on such a subject, perhaps he may feel more deference for his favourite political guide, Napoleon Bonaparte." If Louis XVI.," said that great man, "had boldly resisted-if he had had the courage, the activity, the ardour of Charles I., he would have triumphed."*

No doubt, if Earl Grey resorts to the corrupted ten-pounders in great towns-to the spirit-dealers, wine vaults, brothels, and alehouses of London, Manchester, Liverpool, Birmingham, or Edinburgh—if he takes counsel of the Dissenting interest, or its active and bustling representatives in the London Convocationhe will find abundant reason to believe that the Church is in danger, and that the Government itself would be in danger, if it attempted to uphold it. So also would he find the London Police in danger among the flash-houses and dens of iniquity in the Metropolis-or the wealthy and industrious part of the community in danger, among robbers and vagabonds in every part of the world. But where does he find evidence of there being any general feeling of hostility to the Church, save in that single class, the urban ten-pounders, whom he wakened up to political life by the Reform Bill? Is it in the House of Peers, where, according to his own admission, a great majority is constantly ready to crush him, and, on a recent occasion, so overwhelming a manifestation of attachment to the Establishment was made? Is it in the educated classes of society? Let Cambridge, the centre of Whig property and talent-let Oxford, the long established organ of the Tory interest, answer. Did he find, in the recent enthusiastic installation of the Duke of Welling