with a well-earned opulence and by the merited confidence of their fellow-citizens. Instead of this beneficial system of permanence and unity in the institution itself, and of succession, gradation, and probation amongst its members, we are to have the sudden elevations and depressions of mere popular elections. The lowest brawler in the mob to-day, if he has but paid rates for three years, may be a town-councillor to-morrow, and chief-magistrate the day after; while the orderly and respectable inhabitants will retire from the arena of promiscuous and vulgar competition, and leave the municipal offices and the handling of the municipal funds and patronage to noisy and needy demagogues.

But the bill, we are satisfied, is framed even less for municipal than for political objects. It is meant as a supplement to the Reform Bill; and as if that were not sufficiently democratical, this municipal reform is calculated to extend and complete the mischief. This is indicated by many circumstances, but by one in particular, which, even after all our experience of Lord John Russell, has, we confess, surprised us.

Our readers will recollect that the Reform Bill was at first recommended by its supporters as a final constitutional arrangement. This pledge was afterwards, somewhat jesuitically, frittered down by an explanation that it was final only as to those points for which it had specially provided; but on these points, the ministers reiterated their solemn pledge, that it was a final measure; and, in short, that its provisions were not to be disturbed.

Now, mark the honesty of these men!-In the Reform Bill there was introduced a special clause, preserving their elective franchise to resident freemen, entitled to that privilege by birth or apprenticeship. This was one of the only two or three decent, just, and salutary amendments forced upon the government during that protracted struggle. Lord John Russell was obliged to defer to the sense of the House and the country; but the petty mortification of that slight defeat rankled, it seems, in his little mind, and a clause was introduced in the Municipal Reform Bill-in defiance of the pledge we have before mentioned, and at the risk of opening again all the questions of franchise understood to have been finally settled by the Reform Bill-a clause, we say, was introduced, abrogating that part of the Reform Act, and depriving the freemen of the justice which even the Reform Act had done them. This was bad enough; but what will our readers think when they are told that this repeal was attempted, not boldly, openly, and honestly, but-sub silentio-so obscurely, so casually, that it might and would probably have passed undiscovered and unnoticed, had not Sir William Follett's legal sagacity detected the device! And what places the covert intention beyond all doubt is this-that Lord

John

John Russell, in the speech in which he opened the Municipal Bill, did not make the slightest allusion to the subject, nor say one word which could induce the House to suspect that so important a matter as the alteration of one of the most remarkable clauses of the Reform Bill-the second Magna Charta of our liberties, as it was pompously called-was to be repealed by a side wind-and by words so ambiguous, that none but a practised and astute lawyer could develope the secret intention. Was he covered with confusion at this detection? It seems not !—When, after this untoward discovery, he could no longer conceal the meaning of the clause, he tardily confessed, that such was the intention of the ministry; and the House of Commons, backing him by a large majority of Scotch and Irish members, repealed, in a bill for regulating corporations, this clause of the Reform Bill which had preserved to the freemen of England the rights which they had earned by their own labour, or inherited from that of their fathers. We will not trust ourselves to add one word of comment on these remarkable and undeniable facts, except only to congratulate Lord John Russell on this fresh instance of his consistency; and to rejoice, with the country, on its having a minister of such candour and talents, and with the House of Commons, on their having so judicious and trustworthy a leader.

We cannot, after all, believe that this provision, which to our understanding appears to be not merely wrong in policy but an absolute breach of faith, can be permitted to stand. If, from motives which we cannot appreciate, the House of Commons should, on re-consideration, persist in that determination, we know that there is yet another body which will see the danger of re-opening the discussions of the Reform Bill, and the injustice of depriving an humble but numerous and deserving class of Englishmen against the opinion of a majority of English representatives-of the rights of their inheritance and their labour and we trust that, on such an occasion, the House of Lords will see the propriety of acting, even now, according to its convictions. We are anxious on this point, not because we think that an injustice, more or less, can alter the character of the Municipal Reform Bill, or that this franchise itself can be, under the existing circumstances, of any real value to the poor men from whom it is to be taken, or to the general interests of the country, but because we feel a peculiar anxiety that the House of Lords should vindicate and assert that character of impartial justice which belongs to it, as the highest legal tribunal, and the best, and hitherto neverfailing, resort of the injured and oppressed.

There are other details of this bill of a similar character; but our business is not with such details-and what could we add to

the

the powerful and victorious union of eloquence and reason with which Sir Robert Peel and Lord Stanley have exposed its folly and injustice to every ear and eye in England except those of the ministerial majority in the House of Commons ?-and perhaps even that is no exception-for, however passion or party may swerve the votes of an assembly, there is a secret and internal conviction which is too strong for such trammels, and which has the honesty to admire what it has not the courage to imitate.

If it be asked why the Conservative party, so powerful in the Commons and so predominant in the Lords, seems disposed to content itself with these feeble palliatives and amendments, instead of opposing at once, and in principle, a bill founded on such inquiries, fabricated by such machinery, and directed to such purposes? ? Let the truth be told—these are no times for a false and treacherous delicacy-that in the House of Commons they cannot; and in the House of Lords they ought not, for anything short of an extreme and vital interest-risk a collision, which they are well aware their Radical enemies are anxious to provoke! For such an interest-for the existence of the CHURCH in Ireland, and consequently in England, for instance-all considerations of temporizing prudence must give way to higher considerations: but for less sacred objects, we most earnestly deprecate any proceeding likely to lead to a crisis, from which, in the present state of things, the most sanguine could not hope a successful issue, and of which, therefore, no man or set of men, in their senses, would incur the responsibility.

We speak not now on theory, reasoning, or foresight-we speak from recent and conclusive EXPERIENCE. The late experiment of a Conservative government, under Sir Robert Peel, was made under auspices and with prospects more favourable than we, a year ago, had thought possible. On the one hand was an imbecile and disjointed' ministry-discarded by the king, and universally and unexceptionably odious and contemptible' to the country at large; and, strange to say, most so to those who have been all along their strongest supporters-in whose severe language, and not our own, we thus designate the Melbourne ministry. On the other hand, was a Cabinet possessing the full favour of the Crown, the confidence of the House of Lords, the enthusiastic support of the vast majority of the property and intelligence of the country-nay, a larger share of general popularity than any minister since Mr. Pitt's earlier days has enjoyed. The head of the government and its leader in the House of Commons was the first man in England in all the requisites of a great minister; its leader in the House of Lords, the first man in the world. Their foreign policy, at once liberal and conservative, inspired general confidence abroad and at home: not a charge, not a whisper, was heard

against

against their capacity, their integrity, or even their liberality—not one objection to any of their measures, their projects, or their motives; even by their opponents they were admitted to be the ablest and-if they had not been called Conservatives-the fittest men to direct the public affairs. The elections held under such favourable impressions appeared at first sight satisfactory; and whatever might be the soberer judgments of those who looked below the surface-it cannot be denied that, according to all former experience and the standard by which the stability of political power had been hitherto measured, Sir Robert Peel's administration had a fair prospect of some degree of permanenceyet it vanished like a dream! It was beaten the first night, in the largest house that ever was assembled and on the most favourable question that any minister could have desired; it was beaten the second night on the address (an address, to no word of which was any objection pretended)—an occurrence which had never before appeared in the parliamentary annals of England; it was beaten on every point on which its opponents chose to beat it; and after a struggle, (which could, from the first defeats, have had no other object than to satisfy the country that all had been done that talents and character could do to avert such a result,) the Ministry-which had the confidence of the King, the Lords, and the Country, and even the respect of their very opponents-was turned out by the House of Commons; and the smaller fragments of the former 'odious and contemptible' ministry were replaced in office and all this for no ostensible motive-no acknowledged reason-except the vague words of Lord John Russell's letter to Mr. Abercrombie'a public principle required it.' The expression was indeed vague, but the meaning is now clear and precise-that public principle is DEMOCRACY-that principle which has ever been, when once called into action, victorious over all merely constitutional powerof which the present ministers are but the puppets; and which, in spite of them-in spite even of the House of Commons itself, (the majority of which has assuredly no such intention)—will ultimately and inevitably,-though at an interval of time greater or less, according to accidental and incalculable circumstances,overthrow the Church-expel the Aristocracy-usurp the Monarchy and seat itself in solitary despotism on the hereditary throne of all democracies-THE RUINS OF THE COUNTRY: which will, we say, infallibly pursue its natural course to its natural and fatal termination, unless it be arrested by some public principle of a totally different character, and a yet deeper power. Need we add that it is in the religious feeling of our Protestant countrymen, and in that feeling alone, that we can discover any remaining ground of hope?

ART.

ART. XI-Memoirs of the Life of the Right Honourable Sir James Mackintosh. Edited by his Son, Robert James Mackintosh, Esq. 2 vols. 8vo. London, 1835.

THE

HE most remarkable feature, we think, in the literature of the present day is the great and increasing proportion which biography, and particularly autobiography, appears to bear to the general mass of publications; and we cannot divest ourselves of a strong suspicion that this disproportion arises from circumstances which are indicative of some degree of deterioration in the public taste, and of abasement in the literary character of our times. Not that we deem lightly of the merit of a good biography on the contrary, our doubts are founded on the very opposite opinion. Our readers need hardly be reminded how often we have characterized biography, when adequately executed, as one of the most delightful species of reading, and certainly not one of the least difficult styles of composition ;-but corruptio optimi pessima-and there is nothing more easy and more worthless than a biography in the modern fashion. The eminence of the person-the splendour or utility of his or her life-the information it may convey, or the lesson it may inculcate, are by no means— as they used formerly to be-essential considerations in the choice of a subject. It would be extrajudicial (if we may use the expression) and therefore invidious, to mention particular instances but our own library tables, and the shelves of every circulating library, are filled with the lives of second or third rate persons to whom the honours of a special biography have been voted, either by those who deem it the readiest field from which a little temporary harvest might be gathered, or by the more pardonable partiality of private affection or friendship. Panegyrics, which would formerly have occupied a few lapidary lines on a tablet in the parish church, are now expanded into the greater but we fear less durable dignity of two or three volumes octavo. Each widow asks it for the best of men ;'

it is claimed for promising boys deceased in their nonage, and interesting girls in their teens; and whenever a man of any kind of notoriety-actor, author, painter, parson-happens to die, the London publishers find that there are two or three candidate biographers running a race for precedency; and a man's life has, within these few years, been actually announced before his body was deposited in the grave. Indeed what Arbuthnot so pleasantly said of Curl's avidity after the Letters of Persons lately deceased,' may, with equal truth, be said of modern biography,—‹ It is a new terror of death,'-for although these productions are generally meant to be very complimentary, the more frequent result is to leave their victim a smaller man-if the case be susceptible of

diminution