which it gave rise-betokens a singular disregard of the most remarkable facts now existing before our eyes. When he told us that the Revolution would prove a source of mischief and confusion, both in France and other countries, he proved a true prophet; but most people were ready to admit, that the French and their neighbours had much distress and disorder to wade through before the abuses could be destroyed which centuries had engendered; and it should be remembered, that he began by predicting just as confidently the annihilation of France, and, as a proof of practical wisdom, assumed in discussing our army estimates, that our great rival was blotted out from the map of Europe."

Then what shall we say of the final close of the drama? No one council of Mr Burke was ever followed, except in one or two absurd expeditions of emigrants, which proved fatal; all his principles were disregarded in carrying on the war, and by no one more entirely than by Lord Grenville in both his administrations; yet the Revolution ended in the destruction of the French military power, without a single one of the neighbouring States being revolutionized; and, worst of all for his authority, it has ended in the establishment of a rational, free, happy, and improving constitution in France, to the infinite advantage of her vast population, and the extirpation of the most odious abuses ever borne by any nation. Let us not deceive ourselves. Were Mr Burke now alive, whose name and authority are so familiarly cited in these discussions, he would be found an inflexible adherent of the most bigotted, silly and contemptible party to be found in any civilized state. He would be the steady and eloquent and uncompromising patron of the Ultra-Royalist faction in France; he would be fulminating unceasingly against every thing that has been done at the restoration; the Charter would be his abhorrence; the toleration of revolutionary titles to property, in his eyes, would be sacrilege against the Church, and robbery of the Nobility; the impunity of so many revolutionists, and the employment of some, would be denounced by him as a participation in regicide; the King, and those of his House who adhere to his Majesty, would be, above all others, charged as accomplices in parricide after the fact; and all France would be painted by his imagination, contrary to the testimony of his own senses, as plunged in the depths of hopeless misery. No man read a page of his immortal' and most eloquent and ingenious writings on this subject, without being convinced that such would be his position, and such his doctrines, were he now alive; and that his cry would be loud and unceasing, for an immediate and universal restitution of all property, of the old

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privileges of Clergy and Nobility, and almost all the old institu tions-subject only to such changes as a long course of gradual reformation might bring about in the lapse of ages. Such undoubtedly was Mr Burke, whose authority as a practical statesman we so often hear extolled,-as if no man had access to his writings, or could look at the events daily passing before his

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No man can read the Speech of Lord Grenville, and not perceive that he has imbibed notions nearly allied to those of Mr Burke, respecting the corrupted state of the English people, and the imminent dangers to which it exposes the stability of the Government. The maintenance of internal tranquillity during war, he ascribes solely to the coercive measures of which he and Mr Pitt were the authors; from the restoration of peace, he dates the increase of the mischief. Since that moment, its progress has been, he thinks, uninterrupted. Every successive period has brought only fresh menace, augment'ed violence, more open and more ostentatious defiance of the 'public authority in all its branches.' And earnestly he calls upon all who hear him, to reflect how rarely the history of any country has exhibited so rapid a progress of such a danger within so short a time.' That distress has been the cause of it, he broadly denies; it has only, he says, been the instrument. He paints the whole country as in a state bordering on rebellion. Our danger is no longer to be searched for in 'hidden consultations or secret conspiracies. It courts our notice-it obtrudes itself on our attention. We are daily 'assailed with undisguised menace, and are little removed from 'the immediate expectation of open violence.' To trace the progress of the evil, he says, is only to reflect on the history of the French Revolution, with which its conformity is exact. Qur agitators, according to him, have servilely, yet ostentatiously, copied all the proceedings in that story. The inundation of the country with treasonable and irreligious publications, has been the first stage in both these great convulsions. These have been industriously disseminated, he says, not only

* Perhaps an example or two, of a less general nature, may show how liable Mr Burke was to be warped in his judgments by moral causes, or personal feelings. He expresses, in various parts of his writings on French affairs, his alarm at the proceedings of the East Indian interest in this country; denounces all who have made their fortunes in the East, and all the diplomatic body over Europe, as essentially and naturally Jacobins; and especially warns the country against being overthrown by a Bengal junto!

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through cities and towns, but even spread into hamlets and farm-houses. Nor is the evil recent:-It has been of long continuance, though it has but recently reached the height of its enormity, and deluged the soil with blasphemy and sedition. -Mr Plunket, who only arrived in England at the meeting of Parliament, goes a step further than Lord Grenville, and bas discovered a truth, hidden from the researches of Englishmen, that blasphemies have been fashioned by miscreants into ⚫ primers for the education of children, to inoculate with this pestilence those helpless beings, while receiving the first ele'ments of knowledge.' The next step, it seems, of the English Revolution, was the same with the second stage of the French, thirty years before. Local societies were formed, clubs and unions of various descriptions, sedulously organ⚫ized and contrived for the diffusion of these impious and destructive doctrines, and the establishment of an extensive concert and cooperation.' And when, at last, by the unremitted effect of all this seduction, considerable portions of the ⚫ multitude had been deeply tainted, their minds prepared for acts of desperation, and familiarized with the thought of crimes, at the bare mention of which they would before have revolted, then it was that they were encouraged to collect together in large and tumultuous bodies, then it was that they were • invited to feel their own strength; to estimate and to display their numerical force; and to manifest, in the face of day, their inveterate hostility to all the institutions of their country, and their open defiance of all its authorities.'

Thus, too, Mr Plunket plainly descries a revolutionary project, ripe for execution; he sees that sedition and blasphemy are the instruments by which it works; that open force is to be employed for its accomplishment;' and while he admits the great body of the people to be sound; yet he apprehends that the attempt, though it may fail, will produce incalculable misery to the country:-For he argues, that the revolution in contemplation is not one upon any principle, or conducted by talents, or property, or rank; but a revolution for revolution's sake, to be achieved by letting loose the phy•sical force of the country against its constituted authorities, to take away the property of the rich and to distribute it among a rabble, previously freed from the restraints of moral and religious feeling. In support of this doctrine, he feels sufficient confidence at once to express his opinion, without waiting for evidence;' because he says that the facts are of public notoriety, known and seen by every man who does not chuse to shut his eyes.' Lord Grenville takes the

history of our Revolution, in like manner, from common fame and public notoriety; and stops not to examine documents.

Now it happens, rather unluckily, that the evidence brought forward by the Ministers to justify their violent proceedings, falls extremely short of all the assertions which these two speakers so easily draw from the universal notoriety' of the facts. They appear to have thought that the work of legislation should at once have been proceeded in, without any inquiry, either in a Committee, or by papers submitted to Parliament. They knew enough, it seeins, by means of notoriety;' and deemed it needless to go further! Unluckily, they who did go further, fared worse; for the documents contradict most of the great positions laid down by the Alarmists; and do not, in any one material respect, prove their case It is of essential importance, that we should advert a little more in detail to this evidence, in giving the History of this Alarm, as we formerly undertook to record that of the year 1817. If we shall ever live to see the country cured of its truly mortifying, we may say humiliating, propensity, to be the easy dupe of such panics as often as a tottering government finds its account in raising them, this salutary change can only be wrought by soberly reflecting upon the past, recalling to mind the stories told, and examining these at a season when, the panic having subsided, reason may be allowed to operate, and demonstrate their falsehood; or, at least, by showing that the event has disproved them.

There is a very material difference to be observed between the late alarm, and the others which have been industriously propagated in our times. In those former cases, the panic was deemed necessary to preserve the existing ministry. The course of public events, and, above all, their own misconduct or incapacity, had made the placemen of the day tremble for their patronage or power; they raised, therefore, a cry that sedition. threatened the monarchy; or that an invasion was impending, while a domestick enemy was ready to cooperate with France; or that the Church was in danger from the Pope; and, latterly, that property was in jeopardy from the Spencean Philanthropists And, under the cover of these delusions, they secured their own retreat from the difficulties of their situation, getting the country to rally round themselves, and requiting it, by leaving it in the same difficulties as before, with the loss of some branch of its liberties. In all these former cases, however, the unconstitutional acts, or violent measures, which were adopted in such emergencies, were only desired as a means of increasing

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the panic, not for their own sakes; and, accordingly, they were made temporary, because, in point of fact, their authors cared not if they expired and were forgotten as soon as they had served the turn of thickening the plot, frightening the timid, and making all good alarmists regard the danger of the existing administration as synonymous with the overthrow of the State. This was remarkably proved both in 1812 and 1817. In the former year, our commercial embarrassments, the silly and most mischievous policy pursued with regard to America, and the unexpected loss of the only able debater in the cabinet, conspired to shake the ministry to its foundation. Some discontents in the manufacturing districts, and the violent proceedings of persons combined against machinery, were made the ground of having secret committees appointed; and their Reports recommended several measures of legislation, under which it would be difficult to show that any thing has ever since been done. In a few months the whole was forgotten: and, at this moment, very few persons recollect that 1812 was a year of alarm. In 1817, the agricultural and trading interests were reduced to a state of unprecedented depression; and rational men generally required a change of men and of policy. Their demands were straightway met with a plot; and, as some variety was now absolutely necessary to season the thrice-told tale, an alarm was cunningly, but most clumsily raised, that a scheme had been formed to seize the property of the rich, and divide it among the poor. To discomfit the supposed authors of the conspiracy, bills were passed, on the usual Reports of Secret Committees. The British Legislature was actually reduced to the humiliating employment of enacting laws against some half dozen wretched fanatics, in the lowest stage of poverty and imbecility; and the country was desired to rejoice in having escaped from a plot to destroy it, by means of a revolutionary treasury of a few pounds, a magazine of bullets in the foot of an old stocking, and a force of cavalry, the mounting of which was to depend upon the supply of generous steeds to be drawn from our hackney-coach stands. In both these cases, the whole object was to keep alive the panic of the country until the panic of the ministers should subside; and the measures were only valued for their subserviency to this end.

It has certainly been otherwise upon the late occasion. A design seems to have been formed of at once strengthening the existing ministry by means of the alarm excited, and permanently abridging the liberties of the people, and increasing the power of the Crown. The danger to the administration arose principally from our financial embarrassments, and from the