ART. VI..-Spirit of Party. 8vo. London, 1827.

W E design to make here a few observations, by way

of sup

plement to the Article in our last Number, which has been in several particulars,* we are sorry to find, exceedingly misunderstood in some respectable quarters, as it has certainly, we are not surprised to remark, been grossly misrepresented in others of a widely different description.

The State of Parties, and the condition of public affairs generally, is, in some respects, materially different from anything ever known in this country. For some years, indeed ever since the termination of the wars arising out of the French Revolution, the opinions favoured by sound reason, and avouched by the practical test of experience upon all subjects of foreign and domestic policy, had been making a steady and sure, because a quiet and peaceful progress among the more intelligent parts of the community. As intelligence spread wider by the diffusion of knowledge, the dissemination of those opinions became more enlarged, and their operation upon all classes of society more efficacious. They had been making considerable advances both in France and England, during the period between the American and the French Revolutions. But the latter event had cruelly disappointed in its progress the hopes raised by its first fair prospects; and the horrors of the times of Anarchy, followed by the military tyranny of Napoleon, and the dreadful wars in which he involved his country and Europe, otherwise so deeply his debtors, had stampt all change with the most hateful characters, and accustomed men to confound reform with rebellion, reckoning the friend of freedom and improvement, one who would sacrifice order and peace, and all established institutions, to wild extravagant speculation-a victim as it were to the love of change for its own sake. The fall of Napoleon, and the peace that followed the French Restoration, finally put down those groundless prejudices against the safest course of policy, and made an end of the calumnies so long heaped upon the best friends of order and existing establishments-those who, by tranquil amendments, would destroy all the purchase that revolutionists ever can have whereby to

Among other mistakes, we find it ascribed to various persons, eminent statesmen and others, who, if they have ever seen it, which we know not, assuredly never could have seen it before it was published.

work their overthrow. Accordingly, the natural course of education and knowledge has silently been producing its fruits; sound and enlightened views of policy have been gaining ground; truth, no longer counteracted in its progress, has been making way everywhere; and wisdom, no longer overawed by noisy clamour or childish fears, has been teaching her lessons to a willing generation.

For some years of the period on which we are looking back, the Government of this country was intrusted to the management of men, who gave it a direction widely different from the course of public opinion, and conducted it upon all the principles of the most narrow and vicious policy, as if they alone, and the engine in their hands, stood still amidst the general advance of the age. While the Finances, and indeed all the internal affairs of the State were under the guidance of persons, whose notions were the refuse of the antiquated school; the Foreign Minister, though not by nature deficient in liberal feelings, and certainly gifted with no common talents, and, above all, with great sagacity, had, unhappily for his country and for his reputation, become intimately connected with the Continental Sovereigns and their chief Statesmen, and had imbibed from this intercourse a prejudice against free opinions, and a dislike of Constitutional Government, so strong as almost to renew in our political system, the exploded terrors about Jacobinism and French principles. All improvements in the Constitution of the Continental States were to be discountenanced as revolutionary: everything that could lead to a change, how slowly and peaceably soever, was to be resisted: the strong arm of absolute power was to be deemed the only security for the public peace; and the iron hand of military force, the only means by which that arm could work its destined end. These principles soon embodied themselves in the famous League so universally dreaded at first, then detested, and since despised, under the name of the Holy Alliance. Professing only to have the intention of keeping the peace, those combined Princes, extending their union over almost all Europe, guaranteed to each other, not only the integrity of their dominions, but the unchanged existence of all their internal institutions; and some of them having succeeded in reconquering their dominions from Napoleon, by the aid of their people, to whom they had promised a Representative Government, as the appropriate reward of a constancy worthy of freemen, Europe, with astonishment, saw those very Monarchs become parties to this combination against all improvement, as if for the very purpose of preventing themselves from redeeming pledges so sacred, and which had passed for so mighty a con

sideration. The wonder, however, stopt not here: The leagued Sovereigns made war at their pleasure to prevent the peace from being disturbed. Wherever a Prince was compelled or induced to adopt free institutions, the Allies marched an army to restore his absolute authority and his people's subjection; and the formal accession of England was alone wanting to make the sway of this grand nuisance universal; nay, to extend its claims, which were once actually preferred, over our own country. In all these unheard of proceedings, infinitely more dangerous to National Independence than the wildest fury of the French Republic, or the mightiest projects of Napoleon himself, it was a miserable sight to behold England, once the patroness of public freedom,-the enemy of aggression,-the refuge of all oppressed nations, stoop to become the willing witness, and even the unresisting tool of the most flagitious conspiracy the world ever saw, excepting, perhaps, the high crime last perpetrated by the same despotic Princes, the partition of Poland. Yet so it was; and such was the price we paid for our Minister having acted as our Ambassador, and kept the high company of Absolute Monarchs, and their unconstitutional and irresponsible counsellors. The tone, too, of those foreign Courts was imported into our Parliament and our Cabinet; it became customary to deride everything free and liberal as new-fangled, and low, and dangerous to good government; men extolled all the little drivelling notions of Austrian Hof-raths and Kriegs-raths, as sound, old, well-wearing maxims, and laughed at the doctrines of the New School, as wholly unknown to the warriors of Leipsick and Waterloo, or the negotiators of Vienna and of Aix. It is true, that our official statesmen had all this pleasantry to themselves; they made no converts in the country; they found neither sympathy nor support from the people; and as often as they attempted in Parliament to countenance their favourite topic, the sorry reception they met with, seemed adjusted in a nice proportion to its intrinsic merit, and the talents by which it was recommended.

Meanwhile, upon questions of internal policy, the liberal feelings of the country generally prevailed, even in Parliamentary divisions, over the narrow views of the Court. One after

another, the Government abandoned many of the most pernicious taxes and lines of mercantile policy, and at length, after long resistance, it adopted sound principles upon the important subject of reform in the system and administration of the laws. While its opponents were preparing new measures, and expecting additional triumphs at home; while its allies abroad were about to carry their aggressions on all national indepen

dence farther than ever, by the most iniquitous of all their measures for extirpating liberty; the melancholy event of the minister's decease, who had erred, we believe, much more from want of foresight and deliberate reflection in the early stage of the intercourse, than from any evil designs towards li berty at any period, gave a new and happier aspect to the face of affairs in this country, as far as the Government was concerned, and eventually produced a very sensible change for the better in the policy of other powers, and in the prospects of a large portion of the world. He was succeeded by a statesman of far more enlarged views, and more brilliant talents, his inferior certainly in some of the qualities calculated to gain a following in Parliament, but worthy of all acceptation in comparison of him, because unconnected with the enemies of freedom, and committed to none of the worst principles at least of later times, by which improvement had been stifled abroad and obstructed at home. Catastrophes very different indeed, but al most equally sudden, have now deprived the country of both those statesmen; and we may be enabled calmly to reflect upon their conduct and their merits, without heaping on the one unmerited obloquy, though, unfortunately for his fame, he died when events had brought the policy he was connected with to its lowest pitch in public consideration,-without raising altars to the other's memory, because we lost him when the system be maintained looked the fairest in all men's eyes, and dazzled them into a forgetfulness of all that had happened before.

The progress of liberal opinions was immediately and rapidly accelerated by the conduct, and still more by the language, of the Government in 1823 and the subsequent years. In a few months the disgraceful connexion with the Holy Alliance was at an end, and the further proceedings of that combination were so far checked, that it can hardly now be said to have any real existence. The recognition of the new commonwealths in South America, and the establishment of political as well as mercantile relations with them, very soon followed; the odious provisions of the Alien Bill were suffered to expire, and a restriction of little or no moment substituted in their place; and the most decisive steps were taken to defend Portugal, harassed by the intrigues, and menaced by the arms of Spain, for the crime of having accepted a Constitutional Government. At home, the policy so long recommended by the Liberal Party both in and out of doors, was as steadily and effectually pursued, as that which they had maintained to be the sound, and British, and statesman-like view of Foreign Affairs. Oppressive and impoli tic taxes were repealed, among others the duties on law proceedings; the principles of Free Trade were adopted in many im

portant cases, and the way was paved for extending them to all the parts of our mercantile system; some of the reforms in the Criminal Law, which Sir Samuel Romilly had so long in vain laboured to recommend, and which had been resisted with too much success till 1819, when Sir James Mackintosh, his follower in the same honourable career, carried a Committee for examining the state of that Code, were, on the principles of those enlightened individuals, taken up by their former antagonists, and received the sanction of the Legislature; nay, so harmless was the name of juridical reform become, and so popular its pursuit with both court and country, that the same persons stopt not there, but introduced improvements, though more limited in principle, into other branches of jurisprudence.

The effects produced by this fortunate and unexpected change in the conduct of the Ministry, upon the state and distribution of parties, both in Parliament and in the Country, were such as might have been expected, unless men had lost all regard for principle and consistency in their personal animosities, or in the worst abuse of party feelings. The Opposition lent their warm support to Government, as often as they saw a disposition to pursue the sound and enlightened policy always recommended by them. Far from the despicable, unprincipled inclination to discover faults in the manner of executing designs often suggested by themselves, and thus apparently save their consistency as to measures, while they continued their opposition to the men, they were even above the feeling of jealousy which would have kept inferior minds from coming forward to grace the triumphs of a rival; they scarcely ever, certainly never but where the necessity of explaining their conduct to the public required it, reminded either the Government or the country, how long they had supported the policy, now luckily adopted in the quarter most likely to give it effect. All the while, (and we speak of some years, certainly of the Sessions 1824, 1825, and 1826, but in not a few particulars of 1823 too,) there was nothing that indicated the least understanding between the parties who had been so long opposed to each other; no appearance of any intercourse in private among their chiefs; and we believe it is universally understood that no arrangement, nor any treaty for an arrangement, had been so much as talked of in any political circle of the least importance. Indeed one symptom must remove all suspicion on this head; whensoever the measures of the Ministry were objectionable, their adversaries were at their post, as ready as ever for the strife; few more vehement debates, or with more party animation, have ever been carried on, than the discussions on the Catholic Association in 1825; and even