solution of Parliament.-Be it so! There is a measure of temerity that generally brings its own punishment. We could have wished that this crisis had been averted, at least, for another month. But the reaction of opinion has already been signal among all ranks of society; and we cannot but indulge the persuasion, that the intelligence and manhood of the country are already sufficiently roused, to carry us triumphantly through the struggle. It is, however, a struggle for which the union,-the hearty, cordial, determined union of all men, who value the blessings of constitutional freedom, or Protestant religion, or property itself, will be needed, for which all petty, temporary, selfish regards must be cast aside,-all the past wrongs of party and conflicts of opinion on minor questions must be forgotten. It is a struggle for life or death,—and it is the last.

The words of the Earl of Caernarvon,-himself a Whig, intimately connected with the party in power by community of sentiments on many subjects and long habits of personal friendship, but who, on this great occasion, by his manly and statesmanlike opposition, has well proved his title to the respect and confidence of his countrymen, this high-minded and eloquent nobleman's words, on the night of the 21st of April, have already found an echo in bosoms little accustomed to respond to the vulgar appeals of faction. We do not repeat them, we do not say, we adopt them ;-for it might not become us to apply the language of crimination to Peers of Parliament. But they are words that will survive their objects, and may haply yet prove their epitaphs. We scan no man's motives;—we denounce no man's motives. Those are matters which concern only the conscience of the individual; and it may be, that the authors of all this mischief are so bewildered by the intoxications of power, as to have lost all perception of the path of danger which they are treading. But this we will say, that if a set of men had deliberately and systematically applied themselves, had anxiously tried, by a long and consistent series of acts, to make good the strongest presumptive case against themselves, their efforts could scarcely have been more successful than have been those of his Majesty's ministers.

When hereafter it shall be told, that a British cabinet, taking advantage of a popular excitement-the result of recent privations, and of the contagious troubles of neighbouring states,were the first to light the torch of discord at a flame which they themselves had fanned,' and to cast it within the four walls of parliament;-that, having won the acclaims which cheered them on to office, by flattering the giddy frenzy of the multitude, and bought golden opinions from all sorts of men,' at the price of three pledges, two of which they should

have

have known it would be impossible for them to redeem, while the redemption of the third must endanger the foundations of the monarchy, that having done all this, they soon belied those acclaims, and forfeited those opinions, by the poverty of their performances, as compared with their promises, and the general rashness, inconsiderateness, and pitiable imbecility of their measures : -That then, as they were fast sinking under the weight of contempt and derision, while the angry passions, lately abroad among the people, had begun to subside, and were still subsiding from day to day, and when, by the acknowledgment of one of their own official organs, we were at peace, and prospering-with a thriving trade -with the country improving-with every thing going on safely and securely throughout society;'*-that, untouched by all this smiling prospect of peace and prosperity, they, in an evil hour, resolved on a last effort to retrieve their fallen popularity, by producing, in redemption of their remaining pledge, a Reform Bill, of which the enormities should not only far outdo their own promises, but, exceeding even the wildest dreams of their revolutionary patrons, cast a veil at once over all their preceding offences;-That this bill had been so ingeniously contrived, that, on the one hand, it must place their ancient enemies under their feet, and so secure themselves (as long as they might hold the shattered frame of government together) in the undisputed monopoly of the bounties and authority of the crown; while, on the other hand, it bound to their cause the awakened enthusiasm of half a million of subjects, whom it bribes with the franchises whereof their neighbours (the rightful owners) were to be deprived ;-That, even to the despoiled parties themselves-to those whom it virtually denounced as unfit to exercise elective franchises any longer-it held out the offer of another bribe, in the prolongation of their existing franchises for the term of their own lives; and, finding that not enough, proposed then, by a subsequent amendment, to continue the same to their children at the time alive;-That this bill, thus ushered into the world, little sustained by argument, and too complex and subtle in its bearings to be at once generally understood, they availed themselves of the general ferment which itself revived, to urge through Parliament, by every ministerial art and device, by the most scandalous invectives through the press on individual character and motives,-by denunciations of confiscation and massacre,' -by the audaciously unconstitutional use of the King's name, and incessant menaces of dissolution;-That, on one evening, to conciliate the suffrages of members for the second reading, the noble mover of the bill indirectly suggested to the Commons, that it might be very materially altered in committee, by stating that, Mirror of Parliament, Part LXXXI. p. 1070. Speech of the Attorney-General.

in

in case of such alterations being made as would deprive it of its efficacy, neither he himself, nor any one who might act with him, would feel themselves precluded from bringing forward, at a future period, those parts of the measure which might be thrown aside, and which they might consider to be essential;'-That, the bill having thus passed the second reading, two nights afterwards the prime minister declared in his place in the House of Peers, that by that measure he would stand or fall; and that he was determined never to give his consent to any alteration in it, which would render it inefficient for the attainment of the object for which it was intended ;'-That, finally, when defeated by a resolution of the House of Commons on that clause by which they proposed striking off sixty members from its numbers,—a clause whose only assignable object was the more complete extinction of the Tory party, they resolved, rather than abandon one jot of their blundering budget of injustice, to rush on this frightful alternative of dissolution, in the face of an excitement both in England and Scotland, as yet but partially allayed, and an imminent rebellion threatening from the side of Ireland:When all this relation shall go down to posterity,—and it shall be remembered, what England was when she was delivered into their hands, and what their empiricism and presumption at least endeavoured to make her,―let them not deceive themselves by imagining, that any tenderness for their weakness,-that any sympathy with those self-complacencies, which even the most reckless votaries of ambition can sometimes lay to their consciences, will preserve their names from that obloquy-those execrations, which in all times have been the ultimate reward of men, who, in a spirit of folly or of mischief, goaded on by a blind propensity to destroy, without capacity to create, have thought to build out of the ruins of their country a temple to their own vanity. We shall conclude with the words of an able writer, who, in speaking of the British constitution, thus expresses himself:

To say that it is a government short of perfection, is only to say that it is human; but its approach towards it is such, that every project to change it fundamentally should be entertained according to that ancient law of Charondas, which decreed, that any political innovator should appear before the public assembly with a rope about his neck, wherewith, if his project, after deliberation, was rejected, he should forthwith be suspended for his temerity.'*

Bates's Christian Politics, p. 283.

THE

QUARTERLY REVIEW.

ART. I.-Inquiries concerning the Intellectual Powers and the Investigation of Truth. By John Abercrombie, M.D., F.R.S. E., First Physician to his Majesty in Scotland. 8vo. Edinburgh.

1830.

THE study of the human mind has been long regarded by many intelligent and sober-minded persons as a pursuit of doubtful tendency. As a branch of education it is generally undertaken when the mind is unconscious of its strength or of its weakness, and when it applies itself with as much confidence to what is above, as to what is within its grasp. Like the first exercise of our bodily powers, the early efforts of the mind are feeble and irregular, running counter to the most sacred and best established convictions, and doubting of every thing but the competency of its own powers, and the soundness of its own decisions. The doctrines of a Supreme Being, of a future state, of the moral responsibility of man, of the spirituality of the soul, and of the existence of the material world, are all tried at the bar of human judgment; and if they are not wholly discarded as incompatible with the deductions of reason, they are so beset with doubts and difficulties, that they cease to be the incentives or the guides of our moral nature. Without its helm and its ballast, the shallow and frail bark of undisciplined reason, thus adventuring upon the trackless ocean, frequently discovers the error of its reckoning, and the danger of its course, and is glad to seek the shelter of the nearest shore.

As the judgment advances to maturity, and the sad realities of life force the mind into more practical channels of thought, conscience reasserts her dominion, the power of the world to come begins to put forth its holy influence, and the knight-errant of philosophy is transformed into the sober soldier of ordinary life.

Those who have experienced these effects in themselves, or witnessed them in others, will agree with us in thinking, that the philosophy of the mind can be safely studied only as an accompaniment to theology, or as a superstructure on the foundation of mathematical and physical science. The study of theology has a direct and immediate tendency to check the temerity of speculation, and to mortify the presumption of intellectual vanity. Its doctrines become powerful barriers against the excursive extrava

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