parte, in addition to the old Nobility;-and if, through their means, the vanity and ambition of the turbulent and aspiring spirits of the nation can be turned either towards military advancement, or to offices and distinction about the Court, the legislative bodies may be gradually made subservient in most things to the will of the Government ;— and by skilful management, may be rendered almost as tractable and insignificant, as they have actually been in the previous stages of their existence. On the other hand, if the discordant materials, out of which the higher branch of the legislature is to be composed, should ultimately arrange it into two hostile parties-of the old Noblesse on the one hand, and the active individuals who have fought their way to distinction through scenes of democratic and imperial tyranny, on the other-it is greatly to be feared, that the body of the nation will soon be divided into the same factions; and that while the Court throws all its influence into the scale of the former, the latter will in time unite the far more formidable weight of the military body-the old Republicans, and all who are either discontented at their lot, or impatient of peaceful times. By their assistance, and that of the national vehemence and love of change, it will most probably get the command of the legislative body and the capital;-and then, unless the Prince play his part with singular skill, as well as temper, there will be imminent hazard of a revolution-not less disastrous perhaps than that which has just been completed." -Vol. iv. pp. 64, 65. He was wrong in the alternative which he assumed as the most probable, but he was eminently right in his statement of the lesson which these events, properly deciphered, ought to read to the monarchs and nations of the earth. They are so full of grave instruction that we may be excused for quoting the following ex tracts: "The lesson, then, which is taught by the whole history is, that oppressive governments must always be insecure; and that, after nations have attained to a certain measure of intelligence, the liberty of the people is necessary to the stability of the throne. We may dispute for ever about the immediate or accidental causes of the French Revolution; but no man of reflection can now doubt, that its true and efficient cause, was the undue limitation of the rights and privileges of the great body of the people, after their wealth and intelligence had virtually entitled them to greater consequence. Embarrassments in finance, or blunders, or ambition in particular individuals, may have determined the time and the manner of the explosion; but it was the system which withheld all honours and distinctions from the mass of the people, after nature had made them capable of them, which laid the train, and filled the mine that produced it. Had the government of France been free in 1788, the throne of its monarch might have bid a proud defiance to deficits in the treasury, or disorderly ambition in a thousand Mirabeaus. Had the people enjoyed their due weight in the administration of the government, and their due share in the distribution of its patronage, there would have been no democratic insurrec tion, and no materials indeed for such a catastrophe as ensued. That movement, like all great national movements, was produced by a sense of injustice and oppression; and though its immediate consequences were far more disastrous than the evils by which it had been provoked, it should never be forgotten, that those evils were the necessary and lamented causes of the whole. The same principle, indeed, of the necessary connexion of oppression and insecurity, may be traced through all the horrors of the revolutionary period. What, after all, was it but their tyranny that supplanted Marat and Robespierre, and overthrew the tremendous power of the wretches for whom they made way? Or, to come to its last and most conspicuous application, does any one imagine, that if Bonaparte had been a just, mild, and equitable sovereign, under whom the people enjoyed equal rights and impartial protection, he would ever have been hurled from his throne, or the Bourbons invited to replace him? He, too, fell ultimately a victim to his tyranny:and his fall, and their restoration on the terms that have been stated, concur to show, that there is but one condition by which, in an enlightened age, the loyalty of nations can be secured-the condition of their being treated with kindness; and but one bulwark by which thrones can now be protected—the attachment and conscious interest of a free and intelligent people."-Vol. iv., pp. 68, 69. "The true theory of that great Revolution therefore is, that it was produced by the repression or practical disregard of public opinion, and that the evils with which it was attended were occasioned by the want of any institution to control and regulate the application of that opinion to the actual management of affairs. And the grand moral that may be gathered from the whole eventful history, seems therefore to be, that in an enlightened period of society, no government can be either prosperous or secure, which does not provide for expressing and giving effect to the general sense of the community."-P. 74. "The events to which we have alluded, and the situation in which they will leave us, will take away almost all those pretexts for resisting inquiry into abuses, and proposals for reform, by the help of which, rather than of any serious dispute on the principle, these important discussions have been waived for these last twenty years. We shall no longer be stopped with the plea of its being no fit time to quarrel about the little faults of our constitution, when we are struggling with a ferocious enemy for its very existence. It will not now do to tell us, that it is both dangerous and disgraceful to show ourselves disunited in a season of such imminent peril-or that all great and patriotic minds should be entirely engrossed with the care of our safety, and can have neither leisure nor energy to bestow upon concerns less urgent or vital. The restoration of peace, on the contrary, will soon leave us little else to do: and when we have no invasions nor expeditions nor coalitions nor campaigns-nor even any loans and budgets to fill the minds of our statesmen, and the ears of our idle politicians, we think it almost certain that questions of reform will rise into paramount importance, and the redress of abuses become the most interesting of public pursuits. We shall be once more entitled, too, to make a fair and natural appeal to the analogous acts or institutions of other nations, without being met with the cry of revolution and democracy, or the imputation of abetting the proceedings of a sanguinary despot. We shall again see the abuses of old hereditary power, and the evils of mal-administration in legitimate hands; and be permitted to argue from them, without the reproach of disaffection to the general cause of mankind. Men and things, in short, we trust, will again receive their names, on a fair consideration of their merits; and our notions of political desert be no longer confounded by indiscriminate praise of all who are with us, in a struggle that touches the sources of so many passions. When we plead for the emancipation of the Catholics of Ireland, we shall no longer be told that the Pope is a mere puppet in the hands of an inveterate foe-nor be deterred from protesting against the conflagration of a friendly capital, by the suggestion, that no other means were left to prevent that same foe from possessing himself of its fleet. Exceptions and extreme cases, in short, will no longer furnish the ordinary rules of our conduct; and it will be impossible, by extraneous arguments, to baffle every attempt at a fair estimate of our public principles and proceedings."-Vol. iv., pp. 84, 85. The selections given from the review of Moore's Life of Sheridan, are general meditations on the state of Parties, devoted principally to unfolding and illustrating the true position and real principles of the Whig party in Great Britain. The article was written in 1826, when the full of politics was so profound as to give no note of preparation for the tempests about to break, and before the death of Lord Liverpool had dissolved a cabinet which was apparently beyond the reach of assault. Although public opinion had made great progress since the days of the wars of the Revolution and the Empire, the Whig party seemed as far removed from power, and their adversaries as firmly seated, as they had been for forty years preceding; and the hopes of the friends of liberal government were rather directed to the conversion or compulsion of their adversaries, than to supplanting them in office. There had also grown into consideration what was then, and still is, termed the Radical party, flourishing under the expansive shade of Bentham and his Westminster disciples, and directing their censures then, as they sometimes do now, as bitterly against the Whig aristocracy, as against the Tories themselves. In defence of this middle party, standing on the ancient ways, and repressing the excesses of either extreme, this essay was composed. It is calm and philosophical-more so than it would have been had it been dated a year later, or indeed at any subsequent period-and demonstrates, with admirable clearness, the true vocation of the party, and the claims it possessed even on those by whom its prudence was considered timid, and its constitutional tenets as prejudice. We have no room to make lengthened ex tracts, but the following paragraph has something of sagacious prognostication, although the party, and our author himself, were doomed at no very distant period to experience a considerable mitigation of that rigour of exclusion which he so contentedly foretells. "In practice, we have no doubt, we shall all have time enough; for it is the lot of England, we have little doubt, to be ruled in the main by what may be called a Tory party, for as long a period as we can now look forward to with any great distinctness-by a Tory party, however, restrained more and more in its propensities, by the growing influence of Whig principles, and the enlightened vigilance of that party, both in Parliament and out of it; and now and then admonished, by a temporary expulsion, of the necessity of a still greater conformity with the progress of liberal opinions, than could be spontaneously obtained. The inherent spirit, however, of monarchy, and the natural effect of long possession of power, will secure, we apprehend, for a considerable time, the general sway of men professing Tory principles; and their speedy restoration, when driven for a season from their places by disaster or general discontent: and the Whigs, during the same period, must content themselves with preventing a great deal of evil, and seeing the good which they had suggested tardily and imperfectly effected, by those who will take the credit of originating what they had long opposed, and only at last adopted with reluctance and on compulsion. It is not a very brilliant prospect, perhaps, nor a very enviable lot. But we believe it to be what awaits us; and we embrace it, not only cheerfully, but with thankfulness and pride-thankfulness, that we are enabled to do even so much for the good and the liberties of our country -and pride, that in thus seeking her service, we cannot well be suspected of selfish or mercenary views."-Vol. iv., pp. 162, 163. The review of O'Driscol's Ireland deserves to be written in letters of gold. It speaks a voice of warning and of wisdom to the united countries, which at this day are singularly seasonable; and it is remarkable with what precision the essayist has portrayed the very results which are now threatening a dismemberment of the empire. We content ourselves here with extracting the following passages: Protestant Ascendancy is thus treated "They contrived, therefore, by false representations and unjust laws, to foster those prejudices, which would otherwise have gradually disappeared—and, unluckily, succeeded but two well. As their own comparative numbers and natural consequence diminished, they clung still closer to their artificial holds on authority; and, exasperated by feeling their dignity menaced, and their monopolies endangered by the growing wealth, population, and intelligence of the country at large, they redoubled their efforts, by clamour and activity, intimidation and deceit, to preserve the unnatural advantages they had accidentally VOL. I. NO. I. T gained, and to keep down that springtide of general reason and substantial power which they felt rising and swelling all around them. "Their pretence was, that they were the champions of the Protestant ascendancy and that whenever that was endangered, there was an end of the English connexion. While the alliance of the two countries was indeed no more than a connexion, there might be some truth in the assertion—or at least it was easy for an Irish Parliament to make it appear to be true. But the moment they came to be incorporated, its falsehood and absurdity should at once have become apparent. Unluckily, however, the incorporation was not so complete, or the union so entire, as it should have been. There still was need, or was thought to be need, of a provincial management, a domestic government of Ireland; and the old wretched parliamentary machinery, though broken up and disabled for its original work, naturally supplied the materials for its construction. The men still survived who had long been the exclusive channels of communication with the supreme authority; and though other and wider channels were now opened, the habit of employing the former, aided by the eagerness with which they sought for continued employment, left with them an undue share of its support. Still more unluckily, the ancient practice of misgovernment had left its usual traces on the character, not only of its authors, but its victims. Habitual oppression had produced habitual disaffection; and a long course of wrong and contumely, had ended in a desperate indignation, and an eager thirst for revenge. "The natural and necessary consequences of the Union did not, therefore, immediately follow its enactment and are likely indeed to be longer obstructed, and run greater hazard of being fatally intercepted, than in the case of Scotland. Not only is the mutual exasperation greater, and the wounds more deeply rankled, but the Union itself is more incomplete, and leaves greater room for complaints of inequality and unfairness. The numerical strength, too, of the Irish people is far greater, and their causes of discontent more uniform, than they ever were in Scotland; and, above all, the temper of the race is infinitely more eager, sanguine, and reckless of consequences, than that of the sober and calculating tribes of the north. The greatest and most urgent hazard, therefore, is that which arises from their impatience; and this unhappily is such, that unless some early measure of conciliation is adopted, it would no longer be matter of surprise to any one, if, upon the first occasion of a war with any of the great powers of Europe, or America, the great body of the nation should rise in final and implacable hostility, and endeavour to throw off all connexion with, or dependence on Great Britain, and to erect itself into an independent state!" * * * "One thing we take to be evident, and it is the substance of all that can be said on the subject, that things are fast verging to a crisis, and cannot, in all probability, remain long as they are. The Union, in short, must either be made equal and complete on the part of England-or it will be broken in pieces and thrown in her face by Ireland. That country must either be delivered from the domination of |