It is for the purpose of enabling our readers to reflect for themselves on the characters and career of the two leaders of the Reform Ministry, and to retrace the measures by which that Ministry sought to purify the Constitution, and improve our Laws, that we now ask them to accompany us. Our sketch must be a mere outline, for the period of biography has not yet arrived; and we are far from wishing to anticipate it.

'The glorious edifice of freedom became, in two years, the most bloody tyranny of wild and cruel despots that the world had ever seen. The Gauls, whose military glory had departed, won victories without number, and planted their standards from Madrid to Moscow, under the conduct of the greatest Captain of modern times. The durable peace which was to bless the world, gave place to the most destructive contest in which Europe had ever been engaged; and England was placed by Mr. Pitt the foremost in that fierce conflict.

The mistakes of Mr. Fox and Mr. Burke led to no serious consequences. But the neglect and want of foresight of Mr. Pitt

and the founders of the new domacracy, who can wonder that the furious government of clubs and mobs should push their victory beyond the ancient frontiers, and propagate by

It is now sixty years since Charles Grey entered parliament. His first speech was greatly admired. The fire and correctness of his language, the force of his argument, the grace of his delivery, assured the House of Commons that a new champion of Whig were the fatal forerunners of the war which principles had arisen, whose voice would ensued. When the monarchs of the Conoften be heard in the battle of debate. The tinent meditated the conquest, and even accourse he took upon the Commercial Treaty tually effected the invasion of France, Mr. with France, was prompted by the distrust Pitt and his colleagues looked quietly on, of that power which, at that time, animated and saw, in the want of energy among the Mr. Fox. We must in candor admit and Allies, a reason for confidence and apathy.* lament, that those maxims of policy taught But when the French had shaken off their by Dr. Adam Smith, which bind nations to- invaders, and the combat was actually engether by the reciprocal benefits of com-gaged between the friends of old institutions merce, produced less effect on the minds of the Whig leaders than on that of Mr. Pitt. The great question, however, which was to shake England and disturb the world, did not arise till some years later. The French Revolution baffled the wisdom of the wise, and overcame the strength of the powerful. It is curious to observe the predictions of our greatest statesmen. Mr. Fox declared that the French had raised an edifice of freedom unequalled in any age or country. Mr. Burke, speaking of France, in February 1790, said, 'That France had hitherto been our first object in all considerations concerning the balance of power. That France is at this time, in a political light, to be considered as expunged out of the system of Europe. Whether she could ever appear in it again as a leading power, was not easy to determine; but at present he considered France as not politically existing; and, most assuredly, it would take up much time to restore her to her former active existence-Gallos quoque in bellis floruisse audivimus, might possibly be the language of the rising generation.'* Mr. Pitt, in 1792, spoke of peace for many years as the probable condition of England, and founded his financial calculations on that supposition.

Alas! for the predictions of statesmen!

* Burke's Works, Vol. iii. 4to.

arms the doctrine which arms had been used to overthrow? Had Mr. Pitt calculated on the unity, fervor, and military qualities of the French people; had he profited by the observation of Machiavel, that a people in the midst of internal dissensions gather, from the energy the contest inspires, the force to repel an invader; had he weighed the perils of an outburst of the French volcano upon the peaceful and enervated people of ancient Europe, he never would have allowed the invasion of the Duke of Brunswick. Had he threatened Austria and Prussia with the armed intervention of England, those powers would never have ventured upon the attempted conquest of France.

That precious time was lost. Mr. Pitt seems to have been infected, notwithstanding his own experience of 1788, with the fallacious theory, that England can behold unmoved the disorders and hostilities of the Continental powers. When, however, the phantom of French aggrandizement rose before his eyes; when treaties were violated, and Holland was threatened with the fate of Belgium-it was impossible

* See a Letter of Mr. Dundas in Burke's Correspondence.

The

to take any part free from peril. Mr. Pitt minority in the House of Commons was could not shake hands with the blood-stained small in number. The opponents of the anarchy of Paris. He could not, with his war were stigmatized as the favorers of a views, insist on the restoration of the Bour- foreign enemy; the friends of the laws and bons, and their absolute monarchy. He liberties of England were denounced as rushed into war, because he did not know the apostles of French Jacobinism. how any longer to remain at peace. He crimes of Marat and Robespierre, the worrushed into war without a plan or an object: ship of the Goddess of Reason, and the the powerful Minister of a great country progress of massacre in Paris, swelled the resolved to fight bravely, but ignorant of his tide of public indignation, and exposed the danger, and lost in the darkness of that advocates of peace to be swept away in the mighty tempest.

Mr. Burke was indignant because the English Ministry would not at once take up the cause of the Bourbons, and fight for monarchy.

torrent.

But Mr. Fox did not quail, and Mr. Grey stood by him to encounter the storm. Mr. Burke has borne his testimony to the abilities of the Opposition. Their courage was equal to their abilities. The speeches made in those days in Parliament, and in Courts of Justice, were acts of heroism. At length Mr. Fox grew dispirited by the hopelessness of the struggle; and, retiring to St. Anne's, expressed his delight at the exchange of the turmoil of political debate for literary ease, and the leisure of his beautiful gardens.

The second revolutionary war was not marked by the same features. Napoleon had given order and despotism to France. The Whig party had not only regained Lord spencer, Lord Fitzwilliam, and Mr. Windham, but had acquired the alliance of Lord Grenville,-r -more than an equivalent for the loss of the Duke of Portland.

Mr.

Mr. Fox, and with him Mr. Grey, took a different view. They thought, that even after the fraternizing decree of November, and the opening of the Scheldt, it was still possible to accept explanations from France, and maintain peace. Mr. Fox, whose abilities for the management of foreign affairs were unequalled, might probably have been able to accomplish so difficult an object. Mr. Pitt did not attempt it; he divided the Opposition, and nearly ruined his country. Mr. Grey, in the midst of the alarm which inspired the higher and middle classes, accepted a bold project, and unfolded it in a manly tone. He proposed that the House of Commons should be reformed. He thought, and justly, that when the constitution was purified and reformed, the In 1806 the Whig leaders, upon the people would rally round it with such truth, death of Mr. Pitt, came into power. zeal, and affection, that no fear of conta- Grey was first Lord of the Admiralty. Afgion from French principles need be enter- ter the death of Mr. Fox, he became Sectained. in 1793, and again in 1797, he retary of State for Foreign Affairs. The proposed in the House of Commons a plan ministry failed in their attempt to make of Parliamentary Reform. It was rejected. peace; their military and naval expeditions The Parliament which refused to reform the were unsuccessful; but they completely and abuses in its own body, pressed upon the finally abolished the slave-trade. Nor was people with the weight of an awful senate; their end inglorious. While they were wilthe safeguards of personal liberty were sus-ling to waive any immediate attempt to betpended; the crown was authorized to de- ter the condition of the Roman Catholics, tain the subject in prison without proof of crime; the press was curbed; public meetings were prevented; the laws against sedition were made more and more stringent. Predictions of French ruin were falsified; English credit was shaken; the paper money of the banks received a legal sanction; the public debt was enormously increased.

This was a period to try men's souls. The cry of the landed and the mercantile and the funded interest was in favor of the Minister. The Whig party itself was broken and separated, by the discordance between Mr. Fox and Mr. Burke. The

they refused to give a pledge not to offer advice to the King upon that subject, should their duty to the state require it. George III., who had obtained such a pledge from Mr. Pitt, instantly took measures for replacing them by the remnant of the Tory administration. The cry of No Popery was raised by Mr. Perceval, and with great success. A fanatical clamor called for the proscription of those statesmen who could harbor a wish for the removal of Roman Catholic disabilities. The general election of 1807 ended in the complete discomfiture of the Whig party.

During the following years, power was the pleasure of quoting at large his sentimore than once within reach of Lord Grey.ments upon Reform, delivered to an adverse But he never saw within his reach the means audience in an inauspicious time:— of carrying those measures of relief to the Roman Catholics of Ireland, by which that large portion of our countrymen might be placed on an equality with their Protestant brethren; and he steadily refused the bond-You are, my Lords, in a situation wherein it age without the glory of office.

the acknowledged imperfections of the branch|jections are of a truly Radical nature, and go together with the abuses which have rendered against the existence of all authority and conit less strong as a barrier for the people against trol whatever, except that which their own the encroachments of power. But as nothing hands have usurped. I need not remind your can be done on this subject without the concur- Lordships that these political heresies plunged rence of all the branches of the legislature, the country into universal anarchy, and had and as that which effects one branch concerns well nigh subjected it for ever to an arbitrary us all-as the question itself is of the highest government. Happily, by its own inherent importance to the nation at large-it is, my powers, the constitution recovered itself, and Lords, of particular consequence even to so gradually established and assigned to its various humble an individual as myself, that my opin- branches rights peculiar to each, but necessary ion on this subject should not be misrepresen- to the preservation of all, which, in the harmoted. I therefore am ready to declare my de-ny and co-operation of all its powers, have termination to abide by the sentiments I have been found to give the best practical effect to before expressed; and that I am now, as I was its principles, and to lead directly to that sysformerly, the advocate of a temperate, grad- tom of efficient government best adapted to ual, judicious correction of those defects which the spirit and happiness of a free people. If, time has introduced, and of those abuses in my Lords, any consideration more than anthe constitution of the other House of Parlia-other, could confirm me in the validity of this ment which give most scandal to the public, doctrine, it would be the concurrent opinion of at the same time that they furnish designing that great statesman by whom it is the pride men with a pretext for inflaming the minds of my life to have been instructed and informed of the multitude, only to mislead them from in the early part of my political career-I mean their true interest. To such a system I Mr. Fox; whose views respecting Reform I am a decided friend-wherever it shall be had frequent opportunities of ascertaining in brought forward, from me it shall receive an the course of many debates, and than whom anxious and sincere support. But as I never there never existed one who more fully underhave so I never will rest my ideas of salutary stood the principles, or more affectionately apreform on the grounds of theoretic perfection.preciated the blessings of the venerable conWhile I shall ever be ready to correct, by the stitution under which he lived. If, in his pofixed principles of the constitution, an admitted inconvenience where that inconvenience is practically felt, I continue to disapprove of all those general and vague speculations in which some men would wish to engage.

litical creed, there was one article which be held more steadfastly than another, it was, that while a system was practically good, he would always abstain from mending it by theories. And never, my Lords, can I forget 'It was an objection formerly urged, and his powerful observations, when, in his place which has of late by certain persons been re-in Parliament, he stated his conviction of the vived, against many of the best parts of our absolute impossibility of providing for all the constitution, and particularly against the pow-variety of human events by any previous specuers and privileges of the respective branches lative plans; for, said he, I think that if a numof the legislature, that they are not to be found ber of the wisest, ablest, and most virtuous enacted in any statute, or created by any writ-men that ever adorned and improved human ten document; but what such persons advance life, were collected together, and seated round as an objection to the practice of the constitu- a table to devise a priori a constitution for a tion, I have ever considered as one of its great-state, it is my persuasion that, notwithstanding est perfections. To this conviction I have all their ability and virtue, they would not sucbeen led by all that I have learnt from the ceed in adapting a system to the purposes rehighest authorities,-authorities, alas! with quired, but must necessarily leave it to be fitted whose presence and instruction we shall no by great alterations in the practice, and many more be enlightened; but whose talents, wis- deviations from the original design. And this dom, and constitutional learning, we all ac- opinion he was wont to illustrate by the familiar knowledge and revere. It is the folly and pre-but apt example of building a house, which, sumption of the present day to adopt a con-notwithstanding all the study and consideratrary doctrine-to decry every thing that is tion previously bestowed upon the plan, was not defined by statute-to deny all authority never yet known to supply every want, or to to any usage growing out of the principles of provide all the accommodations which, in the the constitution, if it happens not to be express-subsequent occupation of it, were found to be ly supported by written law. Nor is it now necessary. Nay, he used to remark, that howfor the first time that such dangerous errors have been propagated in this country by mischievous or misguided men; similar objections were once before urged, though from other quarters, against the powers of Parliament, and led in their turn to the triumph of persons who were equally enemies of all powers and privileges, in which ever branch of the legislature they might be vested-persons whose ob

ever fine to look at a regular paper plan might be, no house was so commodious, or so habitable, as one that was built from time to time, piecemeal, and without any regular design. To those principles of practical reform, so wisely enforced by that great sta esman, I am determined to adhere, and the acquiescence of your Lordships it is my duty also to solicit; again repeating, that the remedy I seek shall