her geographical discoveries. This continues to be the state of things under George the Fourth.

Yet the personal character of this Sovereign has been more traduced and vilified than that of any other monarch or man. If the chivalrous homage with which the loyal and the brave were wont to encircle the throne, is no longer the characteristic of Britons, the ordinary sentiments of a British subject, and the common candour of a gentleman, are offended and outraged by the base and atrocious manner in which his Majesty's person and government have of late been attacked by contumelies and indignities from which the least in the country are privileged and protected. Every English gentleman puts his pen to paper, or his hand upon his sword, when his private peace and honour are invaded by a slanderer; he can challenge proof, he can repel falsehood, he can confront his accusers-but the King's majesty is the but at which every base fellow can shoot his arrows with impunity; and there is nothing which reprobate malice can assert that malevolent credulity will not believe and propagate. There is not a person of the commonest propriety of thinking, that can pass one of the numerous print or pamphlet shops in our streets without saying to himself-these things should never be in a land where the claims of justice are acknowledged, or the rights of man respected,

How then stands the character of the Monarch on the British throne? Is it to be measured on the scale of those selfish unquiet men, who prosecute an endless quarrel with rank and property, and all the fair and harmonious proportions of society; spirits that have no lot or part in the order and economy of life, -that " go to and fro in the earth, and walk up and down in it" to desecrate, demoralize, and, if possible, destroy it. Or shall we take his character from those who constitute what is called the Whig Opposition to his government;-from men that under the pretext of a constitutional jealousy, adopt for their selfish ends the vilest instruments; coalesce with principles the most profligate; and with a double treachery bribe the passions of the turbulent, that they may ride upon their backs to power, and then leave them to wallow again in the mire. Their royal master will never again take his character from these false friends. He was once in their mouths the most amiable prince in the world; and we do not forget that one who well interpreted their wishes to the nation was prosecuted for expressing, in terms that seemed libellous towards the reigning Monarch, an impatience for the happy hour when the Prince of Wales should ascend the throne, of which he was in all respects so worthy. The father then was assailed through the son, and the popularity of the Prince was grounded on his opposition to the

King. Was he then more estimable than he is now? Was he when all men, the Whigs especially, contended who should ex press his eulogy in the highest terms, a better man, than since he has filled the throne of his father, and trod in those steps, and adopted those maxims by which we stand at present, sharers indeed in the necessary results of a war of unprecedented length and expense, but in all that forms the real greatness of empire, the capital of the moral and intellectual world. The remnant of the Whig Opposition, whether old or new, have no vote in this matter: they are estopped. If, with an ill conscience they quote the father against the son, they quote him against them selves; they record their own conviction; they are stunned by the recoil of transactions too well remembered. Neither the Monarch upon the throne, nor the memory of the departed King, is within the jurisdiction of their praise or censure.

If we estimate the characters of our princes by a comparison with those potentates whom history records as best loved in their day, and dearest to the memory of after ages, those blemished patterns of excellence will plead for some allowance in behalf of men less free than others to follow their genuine affections, and greatly more obnoxious to the force of temptation.

Tried by the holy rule which inspired authority has given us, neither in kings nor subjects are the passions an excuse for sin : but let those who deem themselves privileged to censure the conduct of their Sovereign, ask their hearts how stands their own secret reckoning with their Maker upon the same accounts or how long, if their actions, like those of a prince, were exposed to observation, would their characters endure the scrutiny of man. We put this more particularly to the consciences of those men of rank and fortune, perhaps of dissipation, who affect to be offended with what, upon grounds little examined, they charge upon their Sovereign, because he is their Sovereign, or because he governs without them or their friends.

Men of practical observation, who wish to be right upon the merits of parties, and the great points of political controversy, without a lengthened inquiry into particulars, or the fatigue of comparing arguments, may in these days decide for themselves pretty safely by regarding the operation of the principle of mutual attraction by which the different classes of public characters coalesce. We will not say that persons of a particular humour in politics, at which our readers may guess, are knaves, or any thing like it, but this we may say, because the obvious fact will bear us out, that somehow or other, when we know a man to be a knave we may be quite sure to what politics he is attached, and when a man has cast off religion, he need not inform us respecting his sentiments on public affairs.

The political edifice in this country depends, under God, upon the moral basis upon which it stands; we are now in the predicament of being thrown entirely upon the right constitution of the public mind for support. Our condition is very peculiar history records nothing precisely similar in the state of any political society: for when and where has it occurred that upon the floor of a great and powerful nation the vital point has been openly contested, whether an economy built upon Divine sanctions were to have countenance, or to give way to a godless system of speculations, engendered solely by the selfish passions of our degenerate nature? The contest is critical and severe but it is consolatory to reflect, that virtue has some inherent advantages over vice; that it has, by a blessed and paramount arrangement, a settled tendency to accumulate power in society, and to prevail over any sort of power which is not under its direction. In the same manner as reason has a tendency to triumph over brutal force, and to give to man an ascendancy over the rest of the animal creation, so has virtue, by its celestial prerogatives, a tendency to acquire superiority, and a progressive enlargement of its power. It exerts this tendency by rendering public good an object and end to the members of a society; by inspiring diligence, recollection, and self-government; and by uniting men together in the bonds of mutual affection and confidence. We cannot doubt that in this country there is a sufficient proportion of virtuous men to give virtue its proper ascendancy if circumstances will permit; for much less force under the direction of virtue will prevail over a much greater, numerically and physically calculated, not under its direction. In this short and busy scene, virtue has not its proper latitude of operation; its doom is, therefore, to be for ever militant until it enters the triumphal portals of heaven to enjoy its allotment of seraphic joy and peace. But here it is the great business and policy of good men to improve its opportunities and advantages, and to obtain for it a sufficient area,―a stage on which it may have room and freedom to act its appropriate part.

That men who have nothing to hope from the dominancy of virtue, to which their condition and hopes bear an inverse proportion, should endeavour to deprive it of its natural advantages, and contract as much as possible its field of operation, is no matter of surprize; but it is a case of difficult solution when men of birth and fortune, for the sake of their minor game of politics, their objects of selfish competition, and the interests of their petulant quarrels, in which they fume and fret without even the sincerity of anger, or the substance of feeling, are found rash enough to unite with men in real earnest and of superior mettle in the work of demolition; to whose dire success they

can indeed largely contribute, but in which it is not for them to partake;-a success which will soon give a sanguinary repose to their squabbles for places, and as the earliest friends of revolutionary enterprise make their property glitter among the earliest trophies of its relentless triumph. No folly has ever exceeded the folly of those men of wealth and rank, who in this perilous crisis of human affairs, while the inundation is spreading towards their parks and lawns, when every motive of moral prudence puts them naturally upon the defensive, are still bent upon gratifying their puerile malice against ministers by throwing fresh supplies into the threatening element, weak indeed as to their quality, being still but water, but adding destructively to the mass, and the momentum. Are their capacities too short to take the guage of this ponderous and progressive accumulation, as a scale to determine the strength of that embankment which civil institutions, only strong with opinion to support them, have raised around their envied possessions? Is the folly of faction never to be cured but by its final and fatal success? Will it never open its eyes but to see its own consummation? Must its repentance always be the business of its last hours, when the lesson comes too late for amendment?

We have placed at the head of this article the several publications which have come accidentally into our hands, touching the great question which has taken into its vortex all the various political principles and projects of the day, with a view rather to justify ourselves in a general view of the state of the country, than with any design of giving our opinion on the question itself. We find it impossible, however, to forbear commenting upon some of the speeches with which we have headed our paper. Those delivered by the counsel for the Queen more particularly challenge our obvervations. Whatever may be their merit, regarded as displays of eloquence, we cannot but think them, if they are correctly reported in the above publications, as in many essential respects defective. To complain of their unsoundness would be scarcely fair towards them, the situation of the speakers considered: but we may be allowed to observe, that they have not what essentially belongs to the success, and is therefore a necessary part in the constitution, of eloquence-the appearance of sincerity. Mr. Brougham has committed the greatest fault that an orator can commit; he has renounced that altitude, he has come down from that elevation of which he should have been peculiarly zealous-the appearance of speaking, not as a counsel under the paramount obligation of his retainer, but as a man impressed with the justice of his case, the servant of his conscience, and the willing defender of truth. If Mr. Brougham's opinion be right, a barrister is privileged

or enslaved by his profession,-privileged above all the duties of his general relation to society in behalf of his client,-enslaved by being liable to be dragged at his chariot wheel through ways impassable to men of ingenuous and virtuous minds.

person

is

"He had before stated to their lordships-but surely of that it was scarcely necessary to remind them-that an advocate, in the discharge of his duty, knows but one person in all the world, and that his client. To save that client by all means and expedients, and at all hazards and costs to other persons, and, among them, to himself, is his first and only duty; and in performing this duty he must not regard the alarm, the torments, the destruction which he may bring upon others. Separating the duty of a patriot from that of an advocate, he must go on reckless of consequences, though it should be his unhappy fate to involve his country in confusion." (Speech of Mr. Brougham, p. 4.)

So horrific a proposition we cannot but think Mr. Brougham will not in his cooler moments be disposed for a moment to maintain. In maintaining it, however, on the occasion alluded to, he was guilty of a worse than gratuitous sacrifice of the oldest maxims of social virtue; for the sacrifice did his client harm. What could be the natural effect of such a declaration and avowal, but to rob all his efforts of the charm of sincerity, and to make his speech smell throughout offensively of the retainer. We will not affect to draw the line that bounds a barrister's privileges or obligations in respect to his undertaking or conducting causes, but we will venture to say in general terms that his duty to his profession or his client can never require him to act in direct opposition to his moral conviction, to the plain interests of society at large, and, least of all, so as to endanger his eternal welfare.

We cannot but strongly hold that a barrister is professionally bound to a large contribution of aid towards the success of those tendencies of collective virtue above alluded to as the true security of all free states, and preeminently of our own-the freest of the free.

Barristers would be more than men if they were not acted upon by the temptations to assume the franchise, to which Mr. Brougham has seemed to consider them as entitled, and we think it clear to every observer of the bar, that a certain indifference to the essential qualities of actions is not unfrequently the result of the marketable exposure of their talents. We would not therefore carry this evil, for evil it is, beyond the necessity of the case. It is surely much more safe and useful to remind men under this sort of temptation of their imprescriptible obligations to maintain the great landmarks of general justice, and moral rectitude.