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SHEPHERD.

They hae gotten their general orders-and a' the leaders ken weel hoo to carry them intil effeck. The phalanx is no' breakin' into pieces noo, like cumstrary cluds-ae speerit inspires and directs a' its muvements, and it is deploying, Mr Tickler, round yon great hie-kirk-looking rocks, intil a wide level place that's a perfect circle, and which ye wha hae been here the best pairt o' a week, I'se warrant, ken naething aboot; for Natur', I think, maun hae made it for hersell; and such is the power o' its beauty, that sittin' there aften in youth, hae I clean forgotten that there was ony ither warld.

REGISTRAR.

"Shaded with branching palm, the sign of Peace."

SHEPHERD.

Aye, mony o' them are carrying the boughs of trees-and its wonderfu' to see how leafy they are so early in the season. But Spring, prophetic o' North's visit, has festooned the woods.

TICKLER.

Not boughs and branches only—

Shepherd.

But likewise furms. There's no a few mechanics amang them, sir, housecarpenters and the like, and seats 'll be sune raised a' round and round, and in an hour or less you'll see sic a congregation as you saw never afore, a' sittin' in an amphitheatre-and aneath a hanging rock a platform-and on the platform a throne wi' its regal chair-and in the chair wha but Christopher North-and on his head a crown o' Flowers-for lang as he has been King o' Scotland-this-this is his Coronation-Day. Hearken to the bawn!

REGISTRAR.

I fear it will soon be growing dark.

SHEPHERD.

Growin' dark! O you sumph. This is no the day that will grow dark -and though this bold bricht day luves owre dearly the timid dim gloaming no to welcome her to sic a scene-and though the timid dim gloaming has promised to let come stealin' in by and by her sister, the cloud-haired and star-eyed Nicht, yet the ane will gang na awa' as the ither is making her appearance for day is in love wi' baith o' them, and baith are in love wi' day-sae 'twill be beautifu' to see them a' three thegither by the licht o' the moon a perfect chrysolite"-and the sky abune, and the glen aneath, and the hills between them a', will be felt to be but ae Earth!

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(END OF ACT FIRST.)

Printed by Ballantyne and Company, Paul's Work, Edinburgh ̧

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NOTHING can be more remarkable, or fraught with more important political instruction, than the present state of this country, and the aspect of parties in the middle of the second session of the Reformed Parliament. If any person will take the trouble to consider the temper of the public mind, and the language of the popular leaders, at that period, and compare it with what he now sees around him, he will hardly conceive it possible that he is living in the same age of the world; and still less comprehend the causes which, in so short a time, have led to so violent a transition, and converted the impassioned supporters of popular power at that period, into the violent enemies of democratic pretensions in this. If the language of public men, and the objects of party ambition, have changed, how much more has the public effervescence diminished, and how immeasurably different are the prospects of the country now, from what they were at that disastrous epoch! Much matter of consolation is to be found in the retrospect-much instruction as to the progress of political change in a free state-much light as to the quarter from which alone, in a crisis such as we are undergoing, ultimate salvation is to be obtained.

It is now just two years since the

VOL. XXXV. NO. CCXXIII.

Reform Bill was virtually thrown out by the vote of the House of Lords on Lord Lyndhurst's motion, and the Whigs returned to power after a resignation of a week, on the shoulders of the revolutionary party in the three kingdoms. Let any man revert to the language, the hopes, the terrors of that moment, and he will hardly believe his own senses if he reads, or his memory if he recollects them. It is hard to say whether the Whig nobility, the public press, or the Radical orators, were foremost in revolutionary language and anarchical measures. Resistance to the payment of taxes was openly recommended by those whose rank, property, and consideration entitled them to step forward as the leaders of the people; the swamping of the Upper House by the creation of eighty new Peers was fiercely advocated, and incessantly pressed upon Ministers, by the whole popular part of the public press; treason and sedition openly spouted forth at public meetings, in every great city of the empire, amidst thunders of applause; the emblem of Revolution and anarchy, the tricolor flag, paraded amidst insulting thousands, to whom the glories of the English standard seemed unknown; the Queen of England reminded, amidst radical yells, that a fairer head than hers had rolled un

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der the scaffold; a run with infernal activity kept upon the Bank, which in three days brought society, in this vast commercial state, to the verge of dissolution; and vast assemblages of organized men convened in the great manufacturing towns, for the avowed purpose of overawing both the Crown and the hereditary branch of the Legislature. All this was done amidst tumults of applause from the public press-the Whig leaders and the popular meetings, the whole nation resounded with revolutionary projects-menacing language was in every liberal mouth-Government itself was at the head of the movement-Bristol burned for three days, as a sample of what commercial opulence had to expect from popular fury-the sack of Nottingham Castle warned the Aristocracy of the fate which awaited them-the whole foundations of society appeared to be torn up, and England about to be delivered over to the whirlwind of anarchy, which had so recently laid waste the neighbouring kingdom, and consigned the accumulations of ages, the institutions of centuries, to

one common ruin.

Two years have passed away, and what are the prospects of a country then, to all human foresight, on the borders of a convulsion fraught with unexampled horrors to all classes? That the danger is over, no one will assert; that the seeds of ultimate destruction are not sown, no wise man will affirm; but that the progress of dissolution has hitherto been much slower than was anticipated, or than the progress of the French Revolution gave us reason to expect, is now abundantly proved by experience. The great institutions of society, though seriously menaced, still exist; the Church is hitherto untouched, and its enemies, despairing of success in open hostility, have reverted to the insidious project of undermining it, by sowing the seeds of discord in its protecting Universities; the Funds, the Corn Laws, the right of Primogeniture, the House of Peers, are threatened in deed, but not overthrown; and the Radical body in the Legislature, how formidably soever increased by the Reform Bill, can as yet be kept in subjection by a cordial union of the two other great parties in the State.

It is no small matter, that two sessions of Parliament have been nearly got over-the two sessions likely to be the most perilous, from the heated state of the public mind when it first assembled, and the extravagant expectations which were afloat as to the unlimited blessings which were to descend upon society from the Reform Bill-without any of the great institutions of society having been overthrown, or any farther important change having been made in the constitution than the immense one which that Bill effected. It is no small matter, that the fierce collision of parties has exhausted itself, without blood having been shed, or property confiscated;-those cruel and irrevocable measures, which so often render the progress of disaster irrepa rable, by mixing up private revenge with public passion. It is no small matter, that while the progress of conflagration in Great Britain has been so slow, the downward progress of the Revolution of the Barricades has been so rapid, that the fumes of Republican enthusiasm, by which so many of the strongest heads in Britain were then swept away, have been drowned in blood, and the downfall of the mild and constitutional sway of the Restoration followed by a military despotism so oppressive, and a prostration of freedom so complete, that even faction can allege nothing in its defence, but the necessity of extirpating the very principles on which itself is founded. All this is in the highest degree consolatory; and if it does not afford reason as yet to conclude that the seeds of ultimate ruin were not sown by the Revolution of 1832, it at least demonstrates, that the strength of the patient is resolutely grappling with the disease, and gives ground for the hope, that Great Britain may yet surmount the crisis, and evince, in a green old age, the vigour of the constitution which had so long survived so dreadful a malady.

But if the slow progress hitherto made in revolutionary measures, and the vigour of the resistance opposed by the Conservative party to their progress, affords subject for consolation, how much greater is the comfort to be derived from the altered temper of the public mind, and the cooled language which even the ad

vocates of the Movement now put forth upon all the great subjects that agitate society! That is the material feature; because the influence of public opinion is now so great, and the multitude who are brought to bear on public affairs so immense, that it is in the views and feelings of the great body of the people that we must look both for the elements of power, and the shadows which coming events cast before. Now nothing is so extraordinary as the change in this particular which is observable not only in the organs of general discussion, but the opinions of private men. Open the public and once popular prints-the Times, the Globe, the Morning Herald, or even the Courier; and you will find the Whigs now coercing and chastising their former allies with far more severity than the Conservatives ever used towards them selves in the days of their revolutionary triumph. All that was then urged with such irresistible force of argument, and such total want of success, against popular orators, democratic unions, political agitation, public credulity, and republican ambition, by the Conservative organs who had the courage to face the tempest, is now poured forth with an unblushing effrontery by the sycophantic renegades who direct the Ministerial press, against the very men who raised the Whigs to power. As much as they formerly adulated the rabble, do they now reprobate them; as much as they once applauded agitation, do they now condemn it; as much as they then supported Revolutionary, do they now occasionally cling to Conservative principles. The inconsistency of such men is a matter of no sort of importance-the material thing is, that such is either the altered state of society, or the changed temper of the public mind, that they are obliged to have recourse to so disgraceful a dereliction, and feel that Government can go on on no other than Conservative princi. ples. Can it be wondered at that the really sincere and zealous republicans, the men who use revolutionary language, not as an instrument of party, but a means, as they blindly imagine, of social amelioration, are utterly disgusted by such conduct, and openly avow their pre

ference of the Conservatives, who have always opposed, to the Whigs, who have supported only to betray them?

But this is not all. Society is composed of individuals; public opinion, of which so much is said, is nothing but the aggregate of the thoughts of private men, the loud reverberation of what you hear at the fireside, and discuss at the social board. Now, judging by this standard, how great is the change of general thought within the two last eventful years? We speak not of the decided republicans, the hardened Jacobins, men whom no experience will convince, no suffering reclaim; they will live and die the same, roaring out for equality alike amidst the smoke of the Barricades as the ruins of Lyons; insensible to suffering, inaccessible to reason, equally when the Bastile, in the outset of their transports, unfolded its six inmates, and St Michel, in their close, enveloped its six hundred victims. But abstracting from this insane and irreclaimable class, who fortunately are still a small minority in this country, how great is the change of opinion among the numerous body who were seduced by the flattering language and lavish promises of the Liberals, and now have had their eyes opened to the practical tendency of their measures! If you speak to them of the Whigs as compared to the Tories-of a reformed, as contrasted with an unreformed Parliament, they will probably still revert to their former delusions: but upon the necessity of resisting the Movement in the abstract, putting down O'Connell and the Irish dismemberers, resisting the Trades' Unions, and getting society back to its old and tranquil form, they are as Conservative as heart could wish. They would, therefore, be the first to condemn, in no measured terms, the principles, if uttered by others, which they themselves put forth with such vehemence two years ago. Every person must have seen numerous examples, in his own observation, of this change; men of respectable character, and even eminence in their respective professions, but who, from defect of historical information, were unable to discern the fallacy of the sophisms by which they were assailed, and

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were in consequence swept away by the Reform torrent, and now exert themselves, too often in vain, to avert the serious consequences to themselves and their children, which the levelling principles, which then acquired so fearful an ascendency, have produced. It is the return of this numerous and estimable class, if not to the name, at least to the principles, of the Conservatives, which forms the grand characteristic of the last six months, and opens more cheering prospects to the country than any which have dawned upon it since the fall of the Duke of Wellington's administration.

The effect of this change has been most conspicuous in all the elections which have taken place since the general one which was determined by the Reform mania. Out of sixteen contested elections which have -occurred, eleven have terminated in the triumph of the Conservatives, four in that of the Radicals, and one in that of the Whigs. The narrow majority at Leeds, the marked defeat at Dudley, the still more memorable and decisive overthrow in Perthshire, indicate the increasing dissatisfaction at their conduct even among the new constituencies-the men who were called into political life by the Reform Bill. The change in opinion among the clothiers of Yorkshire, the ironmongers of Staffordshire, and the ten-pounders of Perthshire, have been equally remarkable. Great must have been the disappointment, enormous the amount of previous delusion, bitter the sense of present mortification, which in so short a period as eighteen months could have produced so extraordinary a result. If a dissolution were to take place now, it is impossible to prophesy the result with any sort of certainty; because much would depend on whether any captivating and delusive topic could be presented to the public fancy but in the absence of any such extraneous aid, there appears every probability that the present constitution of Parliament would be essentially altered; that the Radical party on the one hand, and the Conservative on the other, would both be materially strengthened; but that, with the exception of thirty or forty close boroughs or counties in their own interest, which they contrived

to keep out of Schedules A and B, the Whigs would be utterly annihilated. Such a result is now, we believe, generally contemplated, and by none with more conviction of its likelihood than the Whigs themselves. Such a result, ensuing so soon after the transports of the Reform Bill, is extremely remarkable, not merely as a most important stage in our own history, but as a memorable fact in political science. We have now arrived at that stage of the progress, when facts of sufficient importance have occurred to warrant some conclusions, and a slight anticipation can be formed of the nature of the journey on which we set out during the darkness and delusions of the Reform mania.

That the disease with which we have been, and still are afflicted, was the true Revolutionary fever, must be obvious to the most careless observer. The symptoms by which it was attended, the restless desire for innovation by which it was preceded, the total disregard of experience by which it was distinguished, the public terrors by which it was accompanied, the extravagant hopes to which it led, the guilty ambition which it generated, were all the symptoms, and the worst symptoms, of Revolutionary passion. Nor is it only by the expression-of thought and feeling that the existence of this dreadful malady, to a most alarming extent, has been demonstrated. The conduct, the public acts of the Radicals, have amply vindicated their title to the execrable distinction of being classed with the Jacobins of France, by future and impartial history. If half the measures which they have proposed, and supported with their whole influence and ability, both in and out of Parliament, had been carried into effect, they would ere now have torn the empire in pieces, and precipitated us, beyond the chance of redemption, into the gulf of Revolution. The Irish demagogues would have dismembered the empire, and established an independent legislature-in other words, a hostile Republic-almost within sight of the shores of Britain. The English and Scotch Revolutionists would have pulled down the Church Establishment in both countries, and delivered over a Christian State to

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