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IN the last number of our publication we gave a succinct sketch of our political opinions, with that openness and candour which we conceive to have been equally due to our readers and to ourselves. We have put them so far in possession of our views, that, if they are inclined hereafter to accuse us of tergiversation or change, the matter may be brought to an easy and certain issue. appeal may be made to a determinate standard, to which no fair objection can be urged by either party. We shall desire no other arbitrator than our own previous declarations. Either we shall be convicted of duplicity and inconsistency out of our own mouths; or it will appear, that the expectations which have been formed with regard to our sentiments and conduct, were such as we should never even attempt to realize; that, if we refuse to go the whole length which may be wished, we only stop short, where we had always intended to stop; and that, where we are found not to be friends, we, at least, shall not be charged, with any colour of justice, as having ever been enemies in disguise.

We shall now proceed to state, with the same explicit distinctness, the manner in which we shall advocate the principles which we profess, or rather the manner in

which a real Constitutionalist will labour to support and promote those political tenets, which he conscientiously believes to be most compatible with his own personal honour, and most conducive to the welfare of his country.

It will be readily supposed, that we are not going to descant upon the eloquence and ability with which we shall write the profound information which we shall display, or the mingled treat of instruction and amusement, which we shall furnish to the public appetite. Whatever our talents may be, we see no reason either for pride or shame. We would say, with respect to talents, what Ovid has said with respect to noble ancestry and illustrious birth,

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The measure of them is allotted to us by Providence; the use of them only is our own. There are hundreds of men in this kingdom upon whose powers of mind and whose command of language we look with the extreme of admiration; but without one particle of envy. It is better to turn the little which we have to a good account, than to repine because we have no more. But of this enough. We have depended for our past encouragement, and we depend for our future success, not upon the roundness of our periods, or the beauty of our images, or the luminous arrangement of our sentiments, but upon that respectability and independence without which no writer, and more especially no political writer, can be long of use to himself, or to the community.

To secure this respectability and independence four things chiefly are required-honesty-consistency-courage-and moderation. Without these things a man may be a Whig or a Tory-a Reformer or an enemy to Reform-but we can hardly dignify him with the title of a Constitutionalist.

But every man, it will be said, would be thought honest; every man would be thought consistent; every man would be thought possessed of courage in a good cause; every man would be thought not deficient in temperance and moderation. Be it so. Our presumption then is the less in asserting the same claims.-But we have a few words to say with regard to the nature of these qualities; and the tests by which it may be distinguished, whether they are true or

false, genuine or spurious. We shall afterwards advert very briefly to the manner, in which a real Constitutionalist will unite them, in order to the attainment of those exalted aims, which he will always keep steadfastly before his eyes, and which, if he cannot grasp, it will yet be some pleasure to approach.

It may seem, indeed, but a strange kind of employment to expatiate at this time of the day upon the nature and value of political honesty. On such points, however, we neither profess nor expect to instruct our readers; but merely to remind them of what they know-or ought to know. Honesty is the first and most indispensable qualification of a politician as of a private individual. In public as in private life it is the best and truest policy. No tenets and opinions can have weight or currency for a continuance among mankind, unless they bear upon them "the image and superscription" of honesty. It is, in fact, a proud and inspiring reflection, that the greatest and most successful statesmen have been, after all, the most honest. The men, who have relied upon artifice and Machiavelism, have always found at last that they leant upon a broken reed. To say nothing of the internal comfort and satisfaction, which a good man must derive from the consciousness of honesty and uprightness; the hour is sure to come when, amid the reproaches of his own heart, and the contempt and obloquy which he experiences from others, the politician, who has swerved from the plain, straight-forward path, will have bitter occasion to curse his folly, as well as to lament his duplicity. He will discover that, when he forgot his duty, he mistook his interest. Remorse, if it be not the offspring of penitence, will yet be forced upon him by failure and disgrace. Cecil and Walsingham, Clarendon and Chatham, Fox and Pitt, all felt and enjoyed the advantages of undeviating integrity; while the windings and obliquities of such men as Lord Lovat have generally conducted them to the scaffold; and such men as Fouche and Talleyrand have had reason to know that cunning is not wisdom; and that their unquestionable talents could not keep them afloat upon the stream of influence and power, or prevent them from

being carried to the bottom by the dead weight of their dishonesty.

What truisms are these? Yet it is good for us to bear them constantly in our recollection. They are the great land-marks, of which if we suffer ourselves to lose sight, we shall tread upon bogs and quagmires, we shall bewilder ourselves in labyrinths, we shall fall blindly and precipitately into the pits of ruin; they are the beacons, by which alone we can steer our course either in honour or in safety. We would particularly address ourselves for a moment to such as are entering upon public life. If they are disposed, as many are, in the vanity and arrogance of their hearts, to laugh within them at political honesty, there will be a time, let them rest assured, when conscience will turn the laugh against themselves. They may think it a fine and creditable thing to treat the belief in the use and dignity of public virtue as the mere revery of the school-boy and the enthusiast; they may think that they display their knowledge of business and of the world, by being hypocrites themselves and treating the rest as hypocrites. But all this is deplorable ignorance; is a wretched and shortsighted perversion of intellect; is grievous and absolute infatuation. On this point let them rest assured, That history with all her volumes vast Has but one page.

Let them rest assured, that, without honesty, the longest course of success cannot make them great or happy; but that a casual and sudden disappointment may plunge them at once into the lowest depths of misery and degradation; let them rest assured that no public man has yet tried the experiment of deserting the standard of moral rectitude in his early life without finding himself wofully and fatally deceived in his calculations at the end of his career; and that, if they try it, they will ultimately and deeply suffer even in their worldly fortunes, and their worldly prospects, while they have no inward sources of pride and consolation to compensate the loss, and atone to them for the sacrifice.

What then is political honesty? Is it simply to have clean hands, to refuse a bribe, to utter no direct falsehoods, and never to betray the cause, which a man is pledged to

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