NOTICES TO CORRESPONDENTS. We beg to acquaint our Contributors, that we cannot be responsible for the safe keeping of any short articles, either in prose or verse, which may be considered unsuited for insertion in our Magazine. Tyro, Libertas, Rusticus, and T. C. B. are inadmissible. There are one or two personalities in the article of " Academicus," which preclude our taking advantage of it as we could have wished. Such objections, however, are easily removed. We should wish to hear from him further, when his other occupations may permit. A BRIEF DISCOURSE ON GENERAL POLITICS. "Zeal for the public good is the characteristic of a man of honor and a gentleman, and must take place of pleasures, profits, and all other private gratifications. Whoever wants this motive is an open enemy, or an inglorious neuter to mankind, in proportion to the misapplied advantages with which nature and fortune have blessed him." These are the words of Sir Richard Steele, in a courtly dedication, (no very likely place to meet with truth,) yet we hold them to be just and honest, and applicable to all times, but more especially to periods when public affairs appear to be full of danger, and neither the applause of the multitude nor the favor of the government can be looked for by those whose zeal is not on the side of revolution. Such a period is the present, and we therefore feel it to be our duty to enter at once boldly upon the field of political discussion, although it is one in which we shall be obliged to contemplate a great deal that will give us no satisfaction, and to undertake the combat with the odds fearfully against us. We are, however, not appalled or disheartened; for we know that our cause is good-it is one not of party, but of principle-not of faction, but of justice. We do not want this or that man to be a Minister of a Crown, or a leader in the Parliament. We desire that religion may be respected and upheld, and its institutions saved from innovating and destroying hands-that the great political VOL. I. establishments of the country may not overthrown-that the wise and the be rashly disturbed, and ignorantly well-informed may be our legislators conceited, and turbulent parasites of a and governors, rather than the shallow, headstrong populace, drunk with religiple may be taught the value of rational ous or political bigotry-that the peofreedom, and the curse of popular licentiousness, and that every exertion may be made to better their moral and social condition. These are the objects who promote these objects are our poof our political aspirations, and those litical friends, by whatever name they may be called. We cannot believe that the majority of the British nation will long remain at enmity with such views part is taken-we had rather lose every as these whether they do or not, our thing in contending for them, than gain every thing else, while they were lost. tive and the ultimate objects with which Having thus stated the present moaffairs, we shall now enter freely upon we undertake the discussion of political the task which we propose to ourselves in the present number, namely, to lay present state of politics, and the probabefore our readers a brief view of the bilities for the future, for so far as we can calculate upon them. The Tory party-that party which absolute in Great Britain, and before seven years ago made its leaders all but which its opponents contended, without the slightest hope beyond that of R causing some inconvenience and embarrassment to a cause which could not be effectually impeded that party is now all but utterly demolished. None foresaw, seven years ago, the course which events were likely to take, and very few, up to the latest moment, could believe that the long-established power of the Tory party was to be shaken to its foundation; but now that the ruin has come, we can see well enough why it should have come, and there is no reason that we should not state plainly what we have too late discovered. The Tory party fell, because it deserved to fall. It had long neglected that, without which in this free country no party can, or ought to have a great and lasting influence, we mean the affectionate respect of the great body of the people. We do not refer to the rabble, or the brawlers who lead the rabble, but we mean emphatically the people the thinking mass, whom the Tories took little pains to instruct, and none at all to please. There was nothing like popularity in the system of their government: wrapped up in the forms of a kind of despotic official routine, which they seemed to think could never be seriously questioned or effectually disturbed, they put away the people from them with cold repulsiveness, and they took no pains to make a figure before the nation, such as might obtain popular respect, if not affection. They had official power, and were content with its possession-they took no pains to convince the people that they deserved it. They forgot or neglected the system of Pitt. They did not seek out intellectual ability, or encourage it when it came before them. They rather treated it with official superciliousness. There were no able writers, no gifted orators, encouraged and brought forward by the Tory government; much more ready were they to give them up as sacrifices to the enemy, than to reward them as friends. Men of ability and spirit were allowed no fair chance, for none but those who would become the hangers on of official or otherwise highly influential patrons, were taken notice of: nor was this disposition shown merely at head-quarters, it was the same throughout the country; and though there were, of course, many exceptions, yet the general character of the Tory aristocracy was that of re serve and exclusiveness. They held themselves apart from the class which is the strength of the country. It was not easy for men in the situation of the Tories, to find out the error they were committing, and the terrific danger that they were bringing upon the principles which, if fairly and judiciously maintained, would never have come into disrepute. Men with immense power to reward and punish, are seldom told of their faults, while there is never wanting to them a crowd of flatterers, who, partly from their base and cringing natures, and partly from habit, never cease to applaud even the most preposterous acts or opinions of those whom they deem it to be their interest to please. Thus it happened that the party made no preparation against the evil day; they had no notion of the deep-seated hatred that was borne them-no suspicion that many even of those who pretended to be their friends, yearned for an opportunity to feed fat the ancient grudge they bore them, and to exult on their discomfiture. At last came the explosion, and revengeful feeling against the Tories had its fill; but there is much reason to suppose, that even still the Tory leaders perceive not the error which alienated their old supporters-or, at least, that they do not regard their former conduct as erroneous. To this moment the English Tories do not dream, as a party, of cultivating the sympathies of the people, and making themselves strong in the respect and affection of the able and honest men of all conditions in life. But if the Tories were harsh, and cold, and unbending to the great mass of those of whom they might have made warm friends, they showed, during the last seven years of their power, no such sternness to the leaders of the Whig faction, or the plausible advocates of anti-conservative theories. Year after year did the dexterous flatterers of the Whig party, who had found out at length the weak side of the Tory magnates, cajole them into concessions, which were no sooner obtained than they were used as vantage ground to undermine yet further the Tory strength. The Whigs, after having found the fruitlessness of direct opposition, which alarmed the pride of the Tories, and put them upon their mettle, chose a different and much more successful method of wresting from them their ascendancy: they affected to be almost of one mind with the Tories, who, on their part, not to be out-done in courtesy, could no longer think of rejecting any proposition of such civil opponents; wonderful was the harmony and unanimity of the Houses of Parliament, while every bulwark of the Tory power was suffered to crumble away. His Majesty's Tory ministers, called the Whigs, with condescending jocularity, "His while the Majesty's opposition,' leading Whigs, lost no opportunity to speak of the "liberality" and "enlightened views," which distinguished the Tory measures. These measures were the several steps in which the old policy of Great Britain, by which she became the mighty nation that she then might well boast herself to be, was either abandoned or reversed. The laws for the encouragement of her manufactures for the protection of her trade and her navigation, were first allowed to be overthrown, and the ruin was crowned by yielding up the political supremacy of the Established Protestant Religion of the country. At last it came to this, that the Tory government was spoken of by its own supporters, as a Tory government acting upon Whig principles. This was the consummation, and the work was that of the Tories themselves-of the Tories, not yielding to the desires of the people, but offending the people, in order to catch the applause, and conciliate the favour of an insidious faction. These suicidal errors of the Tories were, however, not universal to the party, a portion of them saw and felt the fatal mistakes of the general body, and separated themselves from it in disgust. Unhappily, in their anger against those, who they believed had betrayed them, they did not perceive the advantage which they gave to an enemy more dangerous, because more actively willed, than the beguiled and unfaithful whigified Tories. They lent their aid to the Whig opposition; the opportunity was given, for which the Whigs had long laboured and watched in vain; they rushed in with an exulting cry, and presently avowed with fiendish mockery their determination to do such things, as, if they did not establish themselves in power, would certainly render it impossible We have thought it necessary to di- A counter-revolution, or years of political strife and agitation are the alternatives that lie before us. We are as yet upon the threshold of the dislocated political mansion, to which the reform act is the entrance. We do not know-the nation does not know-the government itself cannot calculate what will be the course of the parliament which has been returned. It is true, there have been classifications of the new members into Conservatives, Whigs, and Radicals. The ministerial journals are full of triumph, and those of the Conservative party full of despondency, as to the result of the elections, but beyond the general tendency to carry forward the tide of change, which has cast them within the haven of parliament, no man can predict the course of such legislators upon the great questions which will come before them. All who have given even the slightest attention to the study of the English |