on the diminution which has taken place in the expenditure of the country, on the reduction of the charge of the public Debt, and on the relief which you have afforded to my people by the repeal of some of those taxes which have heretofore pressed heavily upon them. "You may rely upon my prudent and economical administration of the supplies which you have placed at my disposal, and upon my readiness to concur in every diminution of the public charge which can be effected consistently with the dignity of the Crown, the maintenance of national faith, and the permanent interests of the country. "My Lords and Gentlemen; "I cannot put an end to this Session, and take my leave of the present Parliament, without expressing my cordial thanks for the zeal which you have manifested on so many occasions for the welfare of my people. "You have wisely availed yourselves of the happy opportunity of general peace and internal repose calmly to review many of the laws and judicial establishments of the country, and you have applied such cautious and well-considered re forms as are consistent with the spirit of our venerable institutions, and are calculated to facilitate and expedite the administration of justice. "You have removed the civil disqualifications which affected numerous and important classes of my people. "While I declare, on this solemn occasion, my fixed intention to maintain, to the utmost of my power, the Protestant reformed religion established by law, let me, at the same time, express my earnest hope, that the animosities which have prevailed on account of religious distinctions may be forgotten, and that the decision of Parliament with respect to those distinctions having been irrevocably pronounced, my faithful subjects will unite with me in advancing the great object contemplated by the Legislature, and in promoting that spirit of domestic concord and peace which constitutes the surest basis of our national strength and happiness." Next day, parliament was dissolved by proclamation, and writs. were ordered to be issued for the election of a new one, the writs to be returnable on the 14th of September. CHAP. VI. State of Parties at the close of the Session-Effect of the Revolutionary Movements in France and Belgium on the Internal Political State of England-Feebleness of the Ministry-The ElectionsState of Ireland-Disturbances among the Agricultural Population in many Parts of England-Meeting of the New ParliamentSpeech from the Throne-Discussions on the Address-Mr. Brougham's Views of Parliamentary Reform-Symptoms of keen Opposition to Ministers--Postponement of their Majesties' intended Visit to the City of London-Discussions in Parliament on that Subject-Majority against the Ministers on a Motion for a Select Committee on the Civil List-The Ministers resign-New Ministry formed by Earl Grey. TH HE progress of the session which had just closed, had broken up that alliance between ministers and the whigs, by which the former had been enabled to maintain themselves in office. The alliance, while it lasted, had only widened the breach between the government and the large and influential body of its former friends, who had been separated from it by its conduct in regard to the Catholic bill. The whigs, on the other hand, had been disappointed in all their hopes. They had served, but the due wages of their service had been refused: they had spent the session in keeping the duke of Wellington in office: at its termination they found themselves even farther removed from sharing office with his grace than they had been at its commencement: they looked upon themselves as cajoled and deceived; and they came to the general election in a spirit of bitter and determined opposition. To oust the ministry was now their avowed object, and whoever professed the same object was their friend. The hostility of the tories rested on different grounds, but it was equally formidable. Thus the ministry was forced to an election in face of the combined opposition of the two parties, by playing off one of which against the other, it had flattered itself with being able to retain its power. Yet the opposition was not stated on any special ground. No particular measures of the ministry were denounced as justly exposing it to condemnation, for in all its measures of importance the whigs bad borne a share. It was not accused of governing the country by an illiberal policy, for it had risked its existence to administer the panacea of Catholic emancipation, and had adopted all the modern doctrines of mercantile legislation. It was not held up to odium as being an extravagant and expensive ministry, for it had as far in retrenchment, as, to the great and more reasonable body of the whigs themselves, appeared to be prudent or practicable, and many of their leading members gone had characterised it as an honest and well-meaning government, until they discovered, towards the end of the session, that its good intentions did not go the length of calling them to aid in the administration of public affairs. The manifestos of the whigs attacked it on the ground of incapacity. The duke of Wellington, they said, was a mere domineering monopolizer, unfitted to conduct alone the civil government of the nation, and yet determined to be surrounded only by men of mean capacity, and dependent spirit, who would act as his unthinking tools. "The duke of Wellington," they declared, "must render himself far more precious than he has thus far done, even by all his great services, before the people of England will continue to submit to him as their ruler, if the only terms on which he will consent to trample upon them are the having such colleagues as lord Aberdeen to manage our relations with the Polignacs and Metternichs; lord Lyndhurst, to show how much worse the Court of Chancery can be conducted than by lord Eldon-by indolent incapacity, than by dilatory geniusand lord Ellenborough, incredible! to dispose of India. It is very likely that the duke of Wellington would be a useful and a popular member of any government; but he must consent to have significant figures with him, and not, by the vain effort of giving value to a row of ciphers, expose himself to the derision of the nation. The notion of the duke of Wellington alone being able to govern the country as prime minister, arose from the disunion of some parties, now no more-the want of decision in some individuals, now little regarded the dislike of office in others, now likely to be overcome; but above all from what was held necessary in the late king's timenamely, a firm man to control him. A king who had no childish fancies to gratify-who did not one day want to get rid of his wife at the risk of a civil war-another day to build palaces at the cost of a million-who had no minions to rule over him, and no personal spites to gratify, would never have required an unyielding minister to keep him in order; and the necessity of the duke of Wellington, as premier, would not have been felt. With the duke's failures abroad, and the deplorablestate of his parliamentary campaign at home, much of this supposed necessity, even during the king's life, had disappeared, and men had begun to find out that other qualities were wanted in a minister than those which any ignorant and obstinate, yet bold individual, possesses equally with his grace. But the demise of the Crown at once puts an end to all that remained of the delusion, restores to the country the chance, at least, of a respectable government; while, at the same time, it presents to the duke of Wellington the fair choice, of either ceasing to govern at all, or being content to govern with colleagues fit for the service of the state." These were the views put forth by the whig pamphleteers, and shewed clearly enough that they were ready to make common cause with any man whose aid might enable them to storm the cabinet. The offended tories did not act with them in deliberate or formal concert, but their influence operated in the same direction. They were equally anxious to oust a ministry which had betrayed and deceived them; and they did not consider with sufficient care, in what quarter the successors of that ministry were to be looked for. The rapidity of these events, and the complete triumph of the insurgent people over all the resources of an established government, infected every corner of Europe. In a short time the inhabitants of Brussels rose in insurrection against local taxes. Having succeeded, they extended their views to the destruction of the government, and the separa land. They repulsed the king's troops in an attack upon Brussels; they established a provisional government; they convoked a national congress; they declared the Netherlands an independent state; they excluded the house of Orange from the throne, and set about the election of a new king. All over Europe the popular notion seemed to be, that a populace had only to rise, in order to make armies and governments vanish. The spirit of opposition which was thus at work in all quarters, suddenly gained a mighty addition of strength by the events of which the Continent became the scene. Scarcely had parliament been dissolved, when the French government was 'overturned, in the twinkling of an eye, by a revolution of the Netherlands from Holtion as unexpected as were the measures which directly led to it. The French executive, finding that the new elections only increased the number of its opponents in the legislative body, suddenly broke in upon the constitution. By a mere royal ordinance, it abolished the liberty of the press, cancelled the existing system of representation, and fashioned for the kingdom a new system of election, which would produce a Chamber of Deputies more obedient to the royal will. Paris rose in arms against the unconstitutional decrees, and armed troops were opposed to an armed rabble. Misconduct and want of faith in the former, left the victory in the hands of the latter. The troops of the line refused to act; the guards, after two days' fruitless resistance in the streets of Paris, were forced to retire from the capital. The members of the Chamber of Deputies who were in Paris, assumed the government. Amid the acclamations of the triumphant and armed populace, they cut off. by their own decree, one-third part of the Chamber of Peers; they excluded Charles X., and all his descendants, from the throne; they made a present of their Crown to the duke of Orleans; and the royal line of the Bourbons were once more sent forth as exiles, to seek a retreat in a foreign land. In Britain, these events were hailed by the whigs with loud and clamorous applause, as the dawning of a new and glorious day in the history of man. Public meetings were held, to pass resolutions laudatory of the spirit with which the people of Paris had shaken off their encroaching despotism; deputations were sent to congratulate them on their triumph; and subscriptions were proposed, to relieve the families of those who had suffered in the contest. The people were specially called on to remark how little they had to fear from military power, since the citizens of Paris and Brussels had been able to set it at defiance; and how clearly they were entitled to be heard in the government, since it was so clearly in their power to make the government what they chose. The French government, moreover, had contrived to put it self completely in the wrong. No moderate-minded man could justify the despotic acts by which it had destroyed the constitution of the country, or blame the resistance which they had called forth. That resistance, too, had been confined to its immediate object much more successfully than could have been expected, where an armed populace possessed all power. Except during the actual fighting in the streets of Paris, no blood had been shed; property had been respected; the head of the government had been changed, but its monarchical form had been preserved, though with a new intermixture of popular elements. The excitation of these events, falling in with the period of the general election, acted unfavourably for the ministry in two ways. It was imputed to them that they had been privy to the despotic measures of the French government: that Polignac had been made minister by the influence of Wellington; and that the latter, if he had not suggested, had highly approved of his policy, though he might now dislike the rashness with which its execution had been attempted. The imputation was absurd; no sensible or fair man believed it; and the readiness with which the new government of France was recognized, shewed that it had been undeserved; but it served the purposes of popular declamation, and was made use of to press the necessity of forming a ministry which would encourage, rather than regard with unfriendly eyes, the course of popular commotion on which the nations of the Continent seemed to be entering. Many a good Englishman might wish to see the downfall of French, or Spanish, or Austrian despotism; VOL. LXXII. and all who did so were called on to labour against a govermnent, which, they were assured, would never aid the exertions of insurgent liberty in France, or Spain, or Italy. But a more mischievous effect of the spirit produced by these events was, that it brought upon the field the question of Parliamentary Reform in a much more prominent shape than it commonly appeared in. For several years that question had been in a great measure forgotten. During the present session, it had been brought before parliament, as we have seen, in various shapes; but in none of them had it excited any public interest, except when it appeared under the very modified forms of giving the franchise of a delinquent borough to a populous place, rather than to an adjoining hundred, or conferring the franchise on populous towns which were unrepresented. Now, however, the spirit of change was abroad, wild and indiscriminating. Nothing is easier than to persuade men that they are entitled to that which will gratify their self-pride, their vanity, and love of power, especially when they are assured that, to secure it, they have only to demand it. There was no difficulty, therefore, in getting up meetings, petitions, and addresses, advocating what was called reform, in every possible modification of unmeaning vagueness; but all terminating in this, that, however it was to be effected, the great mass of living beings was to be admitted to a more direct and powerful influence in the government of the country, and all vindicating this imagined right under the threat that its refusal would lead to what was termed "a convulsion"-that is, that the populace of the united kingdom [L] |