upon it. But nothing has been done. The evil has gone on in the mean-time gradually making head, and has at last reached such a height, that Parliament must revise the whole subject boldly and systematically, and consent to such arrangements as may enable to discharge in a proper manner the liabilities it undertakes. Dog-in-the-manger habits-the not doing its business nor allowing any body else to do it-will otherwise sink its usefulness and popularity lower and lower every session. The three principal faults of Parliament, as at present constituted, for the formal management of business, are too considerable to admit of being evaded by sleight of hand. In the first place, it attempts too much. In the second, it attempts what it cannot understand. In the last, it takes no pains that what it does should be done well. The business, of which Parliament now claims and exercises the monopoly, has outgrown its machinery and powers. In point of quantity, there is a vast excess which it can never get through in any way, good or bad. There is much, which, looking at the nature of it, it must spoil by meddling with it, and of which other tribunals are the appropriate jurisdiction. What, after all deductions, it must retain, will be enough to satisfy all reasonable ambition, and more than enough to exhaust the industry it can possibly command. Before it can acquit itself with honour of this last,-its own specific duty,-it must recast several of its important parts, and learn the management of its tools, and call in the assistance of very different artists from those it has ordinarily employed. The bungling and scrambling way in which our statutory law is passed, like rubbish thrown out of a cart, is a national disgrace. A work called 'The Mechanics ' of Legislation,' by Mr Symonds, shows that in the manner we go about it, it could not, but by miracle, be better. Some excellent criticisms, which have appeared in the Morning Chronicle, on the 'Notices and Orders of the day' may help to contribute towards our amendment in this particular. But Parliament will have done nothing towards redeeming its past negligences, towards giving itself a chance of standing fairly before the public, or of doing justice to the good intentions it may possess, until it has entered fully and decisively into the whole subject,-lopped off a great portion of its work, and provided itself with fit machinery for a skilful performance of the rest.

After every mitigating circumstance has been allowed for, obstructed and lingering legislation will occasionally occur, for which there can be no excuse. At such times, it is a consolation to recollect, that, except in a few cases of pith and moment, it is but a small portion of the duties and of the blessings of good government which resides in legislative measures. There is no

greater and more usual mistake than in underrating the good which an honest executive can perform, independently of the Legislature. The Government, by its general administration of affairs, exercises its most universal and searching influence over society. But the Public Offices despatch their business without either gallery or reporters. The public, therefore, seeing and hearing nothing of them, takes but little interest in comparison of what it is they do. Countries, more in want of additional legislation than England or even Ireland ever can be, yet lose more happiness than any new laws could give them, by the evil eye which presides over the execution of the old. A bad government may keep up appearances; and yet it shall be eating out the core. While a liberal government, however thwarted by partial interests, shall be enabled, by making the best of the means in its possession as a government, and by turning every opportunity to account, to change the face and character of things. More may be made of indifferent materials, honestly and wisely applied, than of the best, designedly or ignorantly misused. Yet what materials for the successful government of a country are equal to a national good-will? Where a ministry has been able to earn that, legislation may be suspended with comparative impunity. For the heart is every thing even here. Their legislative measures may be thrown out. But the failure, which has evinced the favourable disposition, will become a bond of union and circumstance of endearment. Where this is the case, an administration would be abandoning duty as well as office, were it to decline continuing to serve the public in one capacity because it was invidiously refused the means of serving it also in another.

The character, temper, and harmony of even the freest people, take, more or less, the colour of the government, for good or for evil. The administrative authority of the state meets its subjects, in one shape or another, at every corner. Wherever it appears, it scatters abroad an infinite variety of hopes and fears, suited to almost every nature. Besides better motives, there are sordid interests for the sordid,-vanities for the vain,-and the instinctive prepossessions of ordinary minds in behalf of power and its possessors. In the application of these assimilating influences, governments are tempted to betray their trust, and to divide a people; making of them, in fact, two nations, with separate opinions and sympathies, instead of one. When a particular party remains in power for a long period, and has drawn a coarse and insolent line between its partisans and the rest of the community, as long a period almost, and something of the same policy, may afterwards be necessary to smoothe the inequalities it

will have occasioned,-to lower the hills and fill the valleys,—and to restore society to its proper level. This has been our own political history during the last half century. Take a single instance only. The number of Tory creations has put the House of Lords, in its Tory interests and propensities, out of proportion with the Commons. It is the mischief of this selfish favouritism, and of these haughty jealousies, which it is the first duty of a Liberal government to undo. The Tories had so firmly established the autocratier des bureaux in their own name, that incapacity for office was part of the definition of a Whig. Their own title to its rank, favours, and emoluments, was looked upon as a first principle. Hence the phenomenon of Whigs in place—a sight in which they could not believe their eyes; and hence perseverance in the appointment of Whig ministers, Whig bishops, Whig commissioners, &c., has been resented as the usurpation of an ancient prescriptive right. This is the real revolution. It is one by which their long monopoly of power, and their exclusive pretensions to loyalty and order, and competence for the public service, have been displaced. The Tories must abandon this exclnsiveness. They must learn that they are a part of the English people only, and not the whole; that there are other interests to be taken into account; other opinions and sentiments, other virtues and talents than their own. The tenure of office in popular hands has been far too short, and has been imagined, by the classes most subject to its influence, to be too precarious, for any visible counteraction in those quarters to have already taken place. Political exclusives cannot be converted, without a further apprenticeship, to the belief that liberal principles are not essentially plebeian; and that Episcopacy is not the only religion for a gentleman. A carriage has yet to get accustomed not to feel ashamed in the third generation of Dissenters. This general conciliation of all classes, is one of the gentle approximations which the presence and the usages of a Liberal government will favour, indeed, but which time only can effect. It must take place, more or less, sooner or later. The less frankly it is submitted to by the Ultras, and the longer they delay it, so much the worse for the public and for themselves.

We admit and lament the partial impediments under which English, but more especially Irish, legislation has lately suffered. What,however, has been the result?-Toshowthat the importance of having a trustworthy Administration rises in exact proportion to the faults which the Legislature may commit. The known principles, and active interposition, of the executive have kept the people in good heart; and have prevented the backwardness of the Legislature from blighting the prospects of the nation.

In this respect, England and Ireland have been sharers in the evil as well as in the remedy; but in different degrees: since, in the case of Ireland, the Legislature would do less, the executive has been called upon to do more. Mr O'Connell (whose good sense and directness of purpose have of late been above all praise) can tell us that the new laws must have been good indeed, which should do more for Ireland than Lord Mulgrave has accomplished by an improved administration of the old. The confidence of the Irish nation, in their existing government, has preserved them in peaceful allegiance and generous hope, notwithstanding the provocations artfully prepared by the wily leader of the Tories. We have blamed Mr O'Connell for trifling with the Union between the two countries. But Lord Lyndhurst and the party which he represents go infinitely further;-to the whole extent of the difference between union and allegiance. Supposing the Irish nation to be the aliens in blood, language, and religion' which he called them in his place in Parliament, no true allegiance can be expected from them, and, at the best, a litigious obedience only could be due ;-that obedience which the full heart would fain deny, but dare not. The Imperial Parliament might pass to-morrow every legislative measure which the friends of Ireland could name. But with a minister in power, of the opinions expressed by Lord Lyndhurst, all the optimist measures in the world, told ten times over, would not be of the slightest use. The state of humiliation to which the Roman Catholics had been depressed, and the domineering superiority which the Orangemen had contracted, are at the bottom of the characteristic difficulties of Ireland. The different parts of society must be brought closer and kindlier to each other. No government can be fit to govern Ireland for a day, which, in every step it takes and every word it utters, has not this object at heart. Unfortunately, the work must be long in doing. But in the preparations which it shall make for this glorious result, an Irish government will be best complying with, and most honouring the spirit of our age.

The difference between Ireland and the other quarters of the empire, is only a difference in degree. The policy which is imperative in one case, is also most seasonable in all. To secure it its true and natural effect, its source must be known to be in the heart, and its stream must flow through pure and trusted channels. It is a policy which neither the Tories, on the one hand, nor the Radicals, on the other, can successively carry out to the full length that is required. For although opposite parts of it are supported respectively by each, yet neither of them are yet prepared, on the ground either of intimate conviction, or of acknowledged expediency, to adopt the whole. The utmost reform that

the Tories have declared they can conscientiously originate, amounts to a sort of scratching on the surface of legislation→→ ploughing with a bundle of thorns-and nothing more. They dare not go deep enough to give the seed they pretend to sow a chance of developement and growth. Sir Robert Peel is an excellent administrator of commonplace affairs in ordinary times. But there cannot be a stronger proof of his mistaken estimate of himself, and of his total incapacity to understand the manner of statesmen most wanted now, than that he should deem his own formal and plausible attainments title good enough to speak of the inefficiency of others. On the bullion question he learned, it is true, at last, a little political economy from Horner. In criminal law amendments, he got a smattering of criminal jurisprudence from Romilly and Mackintosh. But the character of our politics has been grievously lowered in all ways, both in its intelligence and its honour, by the absence of all principles,—by tying ourselves down to the exigencies of the passing day,-by never looking, either before, to anticipate dangers, or after, to reap instruction. This is our characteristic sin. And no one

has been a more systematic sinner this way than Sir Robert Peel. What our legislation most demands at the present season is, principles-principles with no deductions from them but what are openly made, in cases where accommodation to existing institutions, or existing prejudices, is for the time the least evil of the two. Sir Robert Peel can perform and can explain the daily business of an office extremely well. But of all the great questions, the settlement of which this distinguished statesman has had within his reach, and with which he has tampered after his peculiar taste and fashion, is there one which he has really settled upon the broad basis of its own principles? We believe, not one. What has been gained by the contrary course? Only this. The practical man, the minister of expedients and expediency, was so long in shuffling with his cards, and so ungracious in his way of dealing them, that when he was forced at last to play them out in the cause of common sense and justice, the boon even of religious liberty, coming from his hands, has peared for a while to be a dubious and imperfect blessing.

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The policy of the Whig Government has been to bring right principles out into the light of day on their own merits; but to stop, in moulding them into measures, at the point where external obstacles, either in the frame of our institutions, or in the present opinions of important classes, made it, on the whole, desirable to stop. In this, the policy superintended by Lord Grey and Lord Melbourne is the same. The Whig Government has dug deep in many of the foundations it has laid. Within the space of