the

At the commencement it was popular beyond all former example, as being most unequivocally inevitable and just; and that popularity continued till its triumphant close. It is then impudently false, as well as egregiously absurd, to charge that war as a crime upon Government, and arraign Government for the distress which is unavoidably felt upon withdrawing from circulation the war expenditure, and the other changes incident upon a transition from the state of war to the state of peace; that distress too, resulting in great part from the fluctuation of fashions, from the extent to which machinery has been carried abroad as well as at home, from the blind avidity of our manufacturers and merchants, who have overlooked this fact, and glutted the market when they had no competition, from the state of the continent, impoverished by a grind ing tyranny and laid waste by repeated campaigns, and, lastly, from the state of the seasons, which is not more completely out of the control of Government than most of the other causes which have been indicated.

We have shown also that as the constitution of Parliament has not been the cause of the existing distress, so no change in that constitution could in the slightest possible degree alleviate that distress or otherwise benefit the people. If every office, sinecure, and pension, which the boldest reformer has yet ventured to proscribe, were abolished, the whole saving would scarcely be felt as a feather in the scale; and, as directly tending to exclude talents from the government, and confine places of great trust to the aristocracy, such an abolition would be most injurious to the commonwealth. They who seek to lessen the influence of the crown, keep out of sight the increased power which has been given to public opinion by the publication of the parliamentary debates and the prodigious activity of the press.-The first of these circumstances alone has introduced a greater change into our govern. ment than has ever been brought about by statute; and on the whole, that change is so beneficial as to be worth more than the additional expense which it entails upon us during war. This momentous alteration gives, even in ordinary times, a preponderance to the popular branch of our constitution: but in these times, when the main force of the press is brought to bear like a battery against the Temple of our Laws; when the head of the government is systematically insulted for the purpose of bringing him into contempt and hatred; when the established religion is assailed with all the rancour of theological hatred by its old hereditary enemies, with the fierceness of triumphant zeal by the new army of fanatics, and with all the arts of insidious infidelity by the Minute Philosophers of the age; when all our existing institutions are openly and fiercely assaulted, and mechanics are breaking stocking-frames

in some places, and assembling in others to deliberate upon mend ing the frame of the government,-what wise man, and what good one, but must perceive that it is the power of the Democracy which has increased, is increasing, and ought to be diminished?

Of all engines of mischief which were ever yet employed for the destruction of mankind, the press is the most formidable, when perverted in its uses, as it was by the Revolutionists in France, and is at this time by the Revolutionists in England. Look at the language which is held by these men concerning the late transactions, and see if falsehood and sedition were ever more audacious!' Perhaps,' says the Examiner, 'there may be a plot somewhere,-in some tap-room or other; like the plot of Despard, who was driven to frenzy by ill-treatment, and then conspired with a few bricklayers in a public-house, for which he was sent to the gallows, instead of the care of his friends! We feel,' says this flagitious incendiary, for the bodily pains undergoing by Mr. Platt, and think his assassin (unless he was mad with starvation) a scoundrel; and some of the corruptionists, who in luxury and cold blood can provoke such excesses, greater scoundrels! As if of all scoundrels' the man who can in this manner attempt to palliate insurrection, treason, and murder, were not himself the greatest. Mr. Cob bett goes farther than this: with an effrontery peculiar to himself, notorious as it is that the rioters were led from Spafields by the man who harangued them there, and that the tricolour flag which they followed, was carried to Spafields to be hoisted there for their banner, he says, 'it is well known to every one in London, that the rioters had no connexion whatever with the meeting in Spafields: And though the existence of St. Paul's Church is not more certain than that an attempt was made to murder Mr. Platt, whose recovery is at this moment doubtful, this convicted libeller has the impudence to express a doubt of the fact, for the purpose of making his ignorant readers in the country disbelieve it. The rioters,' he says, consisting chiefly of starving sailors,though they had arms in their hands, did no violence to any body, except in the unlawful seizure of the arms, and in the wounding (if that really was so) of one man who attempted to stop them, and who laid hold of one of them!" Another of this firebrand's twopenny papers is before us, in which he says that the ministers, the noblesse, and the clergy of France, wilfully made the revolution, in order to prevent the people from being fairly represented in a national council. It was they who produced the confusion; it was they who caused the massacres and guillotinings; it was they who destroyed the kingly government; it was they who brought the king to the block! And in the same spirit which dictated this foul and infamous falsehood, he asks, was there any thing too violent, any thing too severe, to be inflicted

VOL. XVI. NO. XXXI.

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on these men? He says that 'Robespierre, who was exceeded in cruelty only by some of the Bourbons, was proved to have been in league with the open enemies of France.' He asks whether the Americans gained their independence by quietly sitting by the fireside? Oh! no-these were all achieved by action, and amidst bustle and noise.' He says, 'the quiet fire-side gentry are the most callous and cruel, and therefore the most wicked part of the nation.' Towards the close of this epistle he says, I will venture my life that you do not stand in need of one more word to warm every drop of blood remaining in your bodies ;'-and a few lines lower he tells the journeymen and labourers to whom this inflammatory paper is addressed, that he has neither room nor desire to appeal to their passions upon this occasion. With equal consistency this firebrand concludes a letter to the Birmingham printer whose house was attacked by the mob, by expressing a sincere wish that no further violences may be committed on him;' and prints in the title-page these words in large letters, that all who run may read : A letter addressed to Mr. Jabet of Birmingham, showing that he richly merits the indignation of all the labouring people in the kingdom, and of his townsmen the people of Birmingham in particular.'

No city in the kingdom is at this time experiencing such difficulty and distress as Birmingham; for this obvious reason, that no other place received so much direct employment from government during the war. This great annual expenditure was suddenly withdrawn, and there are now nearly a fifth part of the population receiving weekly relief; the masters being no longer able to employ the men, very many indeed having been ruined themselves. This is a deplo rable state of things, but it has not been occasioned by any misconduct or impolicy; it is the plain unavoidable consequence of events over which no man or body of men could have any control. In such a case what is to be done? Any man that is not either a madman or a villain, must see that there is but one course, to mitigate the evil by giving as much temporary relief as possible, till new means of subsistence can be provided, by opening new channels of employment. To this accordingly the inhabitants have applied themselves with a zealous liberality of which no example is to be found in other countries, and which perhaps has never been equalled in this. Every parish, every religious congregation of whatever description, has its Benevolent Society. There are subscriptions for providing soup, for blankets, for clothing, for coats, for the relief of the sick, for women in child-bed, for the wants of infancy. There are above an hundred guardians of the poor, who go through the town, which is divided into districts for their superintendence, and see where relief is wanted, what relief, and that it be properly ap

plied. It is scarcely too much to affirm, that beneficence was never more liberally, more generally, or more strenuously employed, than it is at this time in Birmingham, where all who have any thing to spare from their own necessities, are doing whatever can be done by human and Christian charity for the relief of those who are in need. And it is to the journeymen and poor of this town at this time that Mr. Cobbett addresses himself, seeking to irritate and inflame them, by the most seditious language, and the most calumnious falsehoods, and telling them that they are coaxed and threatened, with a basin of carrion soup in one hand, and a halter in the other!" Why is it that this convicted incendiary, and others of the same stamp, are permitted week after week to sow the seeds of rebellion, insulting the government, and defying the laws of the country? The press may combat the press in ordinary times and upon ordinary topics, a measure of finance, for instance, or the common course of politics, or a point in theology. But in seasons of great agitation, or on those momentous subjects in which the peace and security of society, nay the very existence of social order itself, is involved, it is absurd to suppose that the healing will come from the same weapon as the wound. They who read political journals, read for the most part to have their opinions flattered and strengthened, not to correct or enlighten them; and the class of men for whom these pot-house epistles are written, read nothing else. The Monthly Magazine asserts that from 40 to 50,000 of the twopenny Registers are sold every week, and the editor thinks it his duty to assist the sale by recommending it to his 'liberal and enlightened readers. The statement may probably be greatly exaggerated, this being an old artifice;-but if only a tenth of that number be circulated among the populace, for it is to the populace that this ferocious journal is addressed, the extent of the mischief is not to be calculated. Its ignorant readers receive it with entire faith it serves them for law and for gospel-for their Creed and their Ten Commandments. They talk by it, and swear by it; they are ready to live by it; and it will be well if some of these credulous and unhappy men are not deluded to die by it; they would not be the first victims of the incendiary press. We have laws to prevent the exposure of unwholesome meat in our markets, and the mixture of deleterious drugs in beer.--We have laws also against poisoning the minds of the people, by exciting discontent and disaffection;-why are not these laws rendered effectual and enforced as well as the former? Had the insolence of the French journalists been checked at the commencement of the Revolution, those journalists would not have brought their king to the guillotine, and have perished themselves among the innume rable victims of their folly, their falsehood, their extravagance, and

their guilt. Men of this description, like other criminals, derive no lessons from experience. But it behoves the Government to do so, and curb sedition in time; lest it should be called upon to crush rebellion and to punish treason. The prayer in the Litany will not deliver them from these things, unless they use the means which God and man have intrusted to them for delivering us and themselves.

How often have we heard that the voice of the people is the voice of God, from demagogues who were labouring to deceive the people, and who despised the wretched instruments of whom they made use! But it is the Devil, whose name is Legion. Vox Populi, vox Dei! When or where has it been so? Was it in England during the riots in 1780? Has it been in France during the last six and twenty years? Or was it in Spain when the people restored the Inquisition?-for it was the people who restored that accursed tribunal, spontaneously and tumultuously-not the government, which only ratified what the people had done; still less were they assisted by that base engine of our corrupt statesmen, the standing army,' by which is meant the soldiers who fought and conquered with Wellington, as some of the city resolutioners have asserted with equal regard to truth, and to the honour of their countryWhat will not these men traduce! Vox Populi, Vox Dei!-Was it so in the wilderness when the people gathered themselves together unto Aaron, and said unto him, Up, make us Gods which shall go before us? Was it so at Athens when Socrates and Phocion were sacrificed to the factious multitude? Or was it so at Jerusalem when they cried, Crucify Him! crucify Him! The position is not more tenable than the Right Divine, not less mischievous, and not less absurd. God is in the populace as he is in the hurricane, and the volcano, and the earthquake!

What then are the prospects of the country under the awful dis pensation with which it is visited? and what is the course which the government and the parliament are bound, or competent to pursue?

Of distresses, such as now pervade the mass of the community, small indeed is the part which parliaments or governments either create or cure. The causes of them, as we have abundantly shown, either lie without the limits of human control, or have been carried beyond our reach by the tide of time. We cannot command the seasons whose unkindness has aggravated the pressure bequeathed us by a long and exhausted war; we could not annul the consequences of that war even if we were unsteady enough to recant its policy, or recreant enough to repudiate its glories. But what little might have been in our power (may we venture to say it?) has unhappily, perhaps inadvertently, been thrown away. In passing from