especially in moral matters, where the words, for the most part, standing for arbitrary and numerous collections of ideas not regularly and permanently united in nature, their bare sounds are often only thought on, or, at least, very obscure and uncertain notions are annexed to them. Men take the words they find in use among their neighbours, and that they may not seem ignorant of what they stand for, use them confidently, without much troubling their heads about a certain fixed meaning; whereby, besides the ease of it, they obtain this advantage, that, as in such discourses they are seldom in the right, so they are as seldom to be convinced that they were in the wrong; it being all one to go about to draw those men out of their mistakes, who have no settled notions, as to dispossess a vagrant of his habitation, who has no settled abode."

The experience of every individual furnishes daily proofs of the justness of these remarks. "What is orthodoxy," enquired a young lady of Bishop Warburton. "Orthodoxy," answered the prelate, "is my doxy; and heterodoxy is another man's doxy." Yet how much blood has that word spilt; how many dungeons has it crowded with captives; how many families has it involved in misery! What opposite notions have been attached to the word luxury. The ascetic bigot considers it to denote sin and vice; the political economist, to imply usefulness and virtue. What words are more vague in their signífication than "gentleman" and "respectability." Nothing, indeed, would be easier than to multiply examples of the uncertainty of language.

After Earl Grey had purified the House of Commons of the boroughmongers, the old watchwords of party, whig and tory, were almost totally superseded by the new terms of destructive and conservative. The modern phraseology is, beyond a doubt, much more expressive than the ancient: indeed, a whig was usually defined to be a tory out of place; but there can be no mistake about the operative meaning of the appellatives, destructive and conservative. The only question is, which of the two parties is most aptly characterized by these new terms? We all know that the oligarchy and the old boroughmongers affect to monopolize all the public virtue of the country, and now claim for themselves the title of conservatives; but it may be well to examine the value of their pretensions.

During the long period that this party was in power, they strenuously resisted every measure invoked by humanity or demanded by justice. They voted against the emancipation of the negro: they refused to admit the Roman Catholics within the pale of the constitution: they spurned the petitions of the dissenters, and maintained in full vigour the test and corporation acts and to crown their political offences, they not only opposed the slightest reform in the representative system, but their leader declared insultingly to the whole public, that the wit of man could contrive nothing so constitutionally perfect, as the principle of rotten bo

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roughs. These facts are matter of history: they will never be forgotten, but will rise up in judgment against the hypocritical impostors who dare to brand their opponents with the epithet of destructives.

The laws and institutions of all countries, being the work of men, necessarily partake of the imperfection of humanity, and therefore constantly require revision. The whig or radical party acknowledge this principle, and are determined to carry it out into full practical effect. They desire to march with the spirit of the age, and accommodate all political institutions to the altered condition of society. They know that if a nation becomes stationary, it will soon retrograde; consequently, they are solicitous to aid the onward movement of civilization by reforming flagrant abuses, and unloosening the chains of usage and prejudice. Surely, then, the whigs and radicals are the true and genuine conservative party, and their opponents the true and genuine destructive party.

The old boroughmongering faction thought, that they had made a grand hit, when their journalists coined the word "conservative." They knew it would tell among the timid, the imbecile, and the ignorant. If the liberals proposed to strengthen the church by abolishing pluralities, commuting tithes, or equalizing the distribution of the ecclesiastical revenues, they were rabidly denounced as destructives, and enemies to religion. If the liberals proposed to lower the duties on foreign corn, then of course they intended to destroy the working farmer; for, be it observed, this impudent sophism was conservative of the grinding rents of the oligarchy. If the liberals demanded a revision of the pension list, then were they denounced as destroyers of vested interests. If the liberals asked for some modification of the criminal code, or of the law of debtor and creditor, or for such change in the system of legal proceedings, as would render justice speedy and cheap of attainment, then indeed they were about to destroy the very pillars of the constitution. By such mean arts and base calumny have the successors of Earl Grey been assailed, and they have had their effect in some few county elections, where the ignorant and unreflecting voters have been deluded by a fallacy of language; but these momentary triumphs, in isolated spots, are no indications of the sterling and manly good sense of the enlightened and educated people of England.

If we substitute ideas for words, and sense for sound, we ascertain that a conservative is a weak, timid, well-meaning, but rather imbecile creature, who fears changes because his penetration is too contracted to see consequences, and who has not courage to redress a known evil. Α genuine tory is he, who perfectly sees the result, and very correctly anticipates from reform, that his own reign of power and plunder will be cut short; and, that he will be allowed no longer to fatten upon the public; therefore, under the assumed name of conservative, which, he hopes, will serve as a disguise, the genuine tory opposes reform. The

former character describes that section of society, who, if they had the sway, would put a stop to all improvement in education, science, and government; because, such improvements would be changes and innovations, and because their imbecility would not be able to determine the consequences of such changes. The latter character describes those who would, if they had the power, destroy the liberty of the press, and reduce every inhabitant of the United Kingdom to the level of a Russian serf.

The motto of toryism and conservatism is "Stand still:" the motto of whiggism and radicalism is "Move forward." The one party act on the stationary system: the other party adopt the progressively advancing system. The former resist the spirit of the age: the latter act in accordance with its dictates. Is it not then palpably evident that the measures of the whigs are the real conservative measures, and that the policy of the tories is the real destructive policy? By conceding the just claims of the people, the whigs have averted a revolution: whereas, had the tories remained in power, after the memorable eulogium pronounced by the Duke of Wellington on rotten boroughs, a political convulsion was inevitable. The principles of toryism are essentially exclusive and friendly to monopoly: those principles cannot co-exist with encreasing education had a struggle ensued, the bayonet would have met the mind and intellect of the people in the field, and brute force must ultimately have succumbed to knowledge. To the very verge of this dire conflict, the tories had goaded an exasperated people; from this imminent danger the clear sense of the king rescued the nation, by discarding from his councils the tory faction, and confiding the helm of government to Earl Grey, whose memory will be reverenced by generations yet unborn among the proudest and dearest recollections of national liberty.

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We have endeavoured in preceding numbers of this Magazine to establish, in a plain and popular form, the fundamental principles of government, insisting that they all flow out of natural law. If the opinions. we have put forward be correct, then political science can be reduced into a system, and be freed from the fallacies of language. What does it signify, whether you call a man a cavalier, or a roundhead?—a whig, or a tory?-a conservative or a destructive?—provided you affix a precise meaning to this political nomenclature. What the people are interested in, are sound and substantial acts, not empty words; and if the measures of a statesman produce the greatest happiness of the greatest number, he alone is worthy of public confidence, no matter in what cognomen he rejoices. There is, however, a fashion in language: a person who bears the name of Smith or Tayler is not esteemed so highly by the vulgar, as he who is called Fitzroy or Cavendish. On this point, the gullibility of the English is truly wonderful: the shadow alone attracts and rivets attention ;—the substance is utterly neglected. You have only to say that the church is in danger, and the poor dupes anticipate the destruction of

christianity itself. Why is this? Because they are deluded by the fallacies of language, and confound the church with the gospel, the human and mortal expounders of our faith with the divine oracles themselves. It was jocularly said of the late Sir William Curtis, that, when suffering under a violent attack of gout, a friend offered a prescription which he declared would effect a radical cure. "I will take none of it," said the tory baronet: his friend saw his mistake, and avowed, from his own experience, that the medicine was a sovereign remedy for gout. The baronet instantly rang his bell, and dispatched his servant to a neighbouring chemist to prepare the prescription. As a mere joke, the anecdote is not a bad one; but as an index of the spirit of our times, it carries with it an instructive moral lesson.

This preference of words to ideas, of sound to sense, is peculiarly an English vice. The word "trade" grates harshly on the ear of pride; every one now-a-days follows his "profession." profession." A nobleman's manservant, is my lord's " gentleman." Every corn-cutter styles himself a chiropodist," a fine sonorous Greek word signifying "a handler of the feet." Have we not the " kalydor," the " eau de millefleurs," the "odonto" and the "mineral marmoratum," and the "balm of Gilead?" We question whether Morison, the prince of modern quacks, would have sold one tenth of the pills with which he has purged his majesty's lieges, had he not styled himself "the hygeist:" but who could resist this seducing title, coupled with the "college of health," and the friendly caution against the subterfuge of the double R and the double S ? Did not a peer of the realm give his lordly title to two slices of meat enclosed between two slices of bread, known to all cooks by the name of a "Sandwich?" and did not another sprig of nobility dignify a gig with the appellation of a "Stanhope?" and who has not heard, that an umbrageous brimmed hat, formed in the shape of a punt, was called a "Jolliffe," in honour of its clerical godfather? and that a shaggy great coat, ycleped a Petersham, claims kindred with the illustrious house of Harrington. Such are some of the signs of the times, in proof of the folly of our generation, who suffer their judgment to be led astray by gross perversions of language.

Were this evil confined to the frivolities just noticed, they would only excite a smile of contempt: but the pernicious influence has unfortunately extended to political institutions, and it requires a vigilant correction. The ancient nobility of England,-men who have the largest stake in the country, who are immeasurably superior in every advantage and comfort to any foreign prince,—who have all to lose, and nothing to gain,— are held up to the people of England as destructives-as political suicides -and by whom? By a desperate and heartless faction, under whose misgovernment the country has been loaded with a crushing national debt, and whose fathers, wives, brothers, sisters, and mistresses are pensioned

on the industry of the mechanics! The only true friends of the people are denounced, as revolutionists; and the embittered enemies of the people are, forsooth, the only true supporters of the constitutional monarchy! Such is the fallacy of language!

ON thy fair shores where, from the labourer's hearth
To the proud palaces bright, marble halls,

Plenty's gold urn o'erflows; where artless mirth
On the charmed ear in songs of freedom falls,

Where peace and joy, serenely mild, have still
Entwined with ivy my unclouded brow,
Since first the image of thy white-veiled hill
I viewed, reflected, in the stream below.

Where, lonely, on the moss-clad rock's steep side,
Near mountain torrents that amongst Tannen foam,
Methinks at Xenophon and Plato's side

In sweet Ilyssus' myrtle groves I roam.

Where all absorbed in nature's scenes sublime,

On her my eyes, like bees on flowers, repose,

Sweet lake! where turns my song to that young time

When wilds untenanted thee deep enclosed.

Then rolled, where yonder in calm evening's sheen,
Geneva! now thy gilded towers appear,

The Rhodanus his waves dense groves between,

Wrapt in a gloom chaotically drear.

Then heard thy lovely, paradisial plains,

Where nature now her sweetest charms reveals,

Only the forest's deep appalling strains,

Wild beasts' and tempests' roar, and thunder-peals.

No blithesome song from the grape-gathering maid,

No harvest jubilee, no shepherd's flute,

No winding horn from forest, hill, or glade,

Hailed ruddy evening's star-sweet sounds were mute.

No village dance by Cynthia's silvery light,
No festal meal round Tell's loved monument,

No lovers strolled o'er groves where violets, bright
As those in Athens' vales, with green were blent.