undoubted right of all the tax-payers in the kingdom; the people may surely be permitted to judge for themselves as to the use they shall make of their right when they shall obtain possession of it; and thus, we might, if we chose, dismiss this question without another word.

But, Sir, the cause is too good for its advocates to shun discussion upon it, at any time, or under any circumstances. In setting about to state the good things, which would be accomplished by a Reform, such is the crowd of objects which present themselves, that the difficulty is to determine where to begin and what order to pursue. But, if the Reform did no more than put an end for ever to scenes of notorious bribery and corruption, to all that meanness, lying, drunkenness, violence, fraud and false-swearing, which spread themselves over the country at every general election; if the Reform did no more than put an end to these, would that be no good? Talk of religion indeed! Circulate Bibles almost by force! Set up schools and societies to make the people more moral! Declare, as the Judges do, that Christianity is a part of the law of the land! And, at the same time, suffer to exist a system of election, which necessarily produces every species of crime known to the law, and every species of vice which is a mark of human degradation! The existence of this enormous evil is notorious to all the world. There is not a man in the country, who is not well acquainted with the horrid scenes of infamy produced by every general election; and, therefore, that man who pretends to labour for a reformation in the morals of the people, and who does not do his best to procure an abolition of this fruitful cause of all the worst sorts of immorality, must of necessity be a hypocrite, and, accordingly, ought to be held in detestation; for what can be more detestable, what more worthy of our abhorrence, than the conduct of a man, who professes an anxious desire to make the people virtuous, while he is, either actively or passively, giving his support to a system which he knows must, as long as it exists, fill the land with deceit, fraud, drunkenness, breaches of the peace, and perjury?

Without going a step further, therefore, here is a good quite sufficient to justify our endeavours. But great as this good would be, it does not surpass many others which would be the consequence of a Reform of the Parliament. It is now manifest, that the Government is embarrassed for the means of paying the interest of its debt; that the agriculture and trade of the country are ruined; that the shipping of the country are rotting. The question of our enemies points, therefore, to this: "Would "a Reform remove the embarrassments of the Government; would it "revive agriculture and trade and navigation all of a sudden ?" No. But because I cannot restore to life the valuable horse which my servant has killed, ought I to keep that servant, and give him the care of my less valuable horse which is yet alive? If a gentleman has a steward, who has brought his estate into dilapidation and nearly ruined both landlord and tenants, does that gentleman, when he takes a strict look into his affairs, keep the same steward in his employ merely because no new steward can replace his estate in the situation in which the former steward found it? No. In order to prevent total ruin, ruin to his children as well as to himself, he appoints another steward forthwith, and as soon as he can attend to any thing else, he takes measures to punish the knave, who has brought him to the verge of beggary.

It would be impossible for a Reformed Parliament to restore to affluence or competence the hundreds of thousands of persons who have lately

become insolvent. It would be impossible for a Reformed Parliament to find the means of paying away 60 or 70 millions a year. It would be impossible for a Reformed Parliament to prevent the mortality from taking place in cases where the mortal stab has been given. It is impossible for the present Parliament to pay much longer, the interest of the debt in full; and, a Reformed Parliament certainly would not attempt it. But a Reformed Parliament would do a great many good things at once; and, in the space of a very few years, it would restore the country to ease and happiness.

I. It would do away with the profligacy, bribery, and perjury of elections, and would thereby, in one single act, do more for the morals of the people; than has, since the system has existed, been done by all the Bible Societies and all the schools that have ever been set on foot, and all the sermons that have ever been preached.

II. A Reformed Parliament would instantly put an end to that accursed thing, called Parliamentary interest. Promotion and rewards and honours in the army, the navy, the church, the law, and in all other departments, would follow merit, and not be bestowed and measured out according to the number of votes that the party or his friends, were able to bring to the poll in support of this or that set of people in power. Thus would the nation be sure to have the full benefit of all that it needed of the best talents and greatest virtues that it possessed. It was from this cause, Sir, and this cause alone, that America shone so bright in the late contest. The world was surprised to see naval and military commanders spring up as it were spontaneously out of lakes and woods; and the people of England were utterly astonished to see their ships and armies either captured by, or fleeing in disgrace from men who had never before been heard of. But, if we had considered, that the President of the United States, had, in the choice of his commanders, the whole of the nation lying open before him, and that he had no particular interests to consult in the determination, we should have been less surprised. If he had had boroughmongers or members of corporations to consult in his appointments; if the lady of this man, or the sister of that man, or the father of another, and so on, had had the dictation of his appointments, the Porters and Decaturs and Chaunceys and M'Donnoughs and Jacksons and Browns, might have remained to till the land, while the protegés of corruption were letting in the legions of the enemy to devour its produce and enslave its inhabitants. This, Sir, is the people, to whose conduct and institutions we are to look. They are a people like ourselves in all things, except where our institutions have an effect different from theirs. What should make crimes so rare amongst them, and great public virtues and talents so abundant? Why should that soil more than this be fertile in great military and naval skill and courage, caught up, all at once, out of common life? Nothing but this; that there the executive is unbiassed in its choice, and has the whole of society to choose from; while here, there is a borough faction, whose pretensions and power supersede the legitimate power of the executive, a power which would instantly be restored to it by a Reformed Parliament. It is well known what heart-burnings there are in the army and navy on this score. Parliamentary interest is well understood amongst the gentlemen of those professions. Merit is a thing, therefore, little sought after, because worth very little when acquired. Of all the professions and ranks of society, none ought more anxiously to wish for a Reformed Parliament than the officers in

general, and even the privates, of the army and navy; and yet there are men so stupid as to suppose, that these bodies would present a great obstacle in the way of Reform. As ambassadors, consuls, &c., the Americans send their most able citizens, while ours consist of persons, chosen from the motives before mentioned. The superior talent of the American diplomatists is universally acknowledged. Indeed, what Englishman can refrain from blushing at the endless proofs, which the last twenty years have given to the world of this superiority, which is made the more conspicuous by the language of both countries being the same? Yet is there no scarcity of talent of this sort in England. But the talent, to be available by our executive, must have the borough interest at its back; and as that is seldom the case, we are exposed to all the shame which bungling agents never fail to bring upon a nation; and, notwithstanding that a tribe of underlings of greater talent than the chief are generally selected to accompany him, we have seen many of their public papers so obscure and so ungrammatical as hardly to have a meaning; to say nothing of the want of knowledge, of argument and of force which they almost invariably exhibit. All this a Reformed Parliament would put to rights. The best talents, would, in this important department, also, be called forth into the country's service. There could exist no motive for sending an unfit person on any foreign mission. Every person so sent would know that reward and honour would follow his merits, and that disgrace and punishment would follow misbehaviour. In the Church, too, the Crown, the Bishops, and even private patronage would be freed from this source of undue bias. Borough interest would no longer open the path to rich livings, while it closed them against learning and piety and true charity unsupported by that interest. And thus would it be in every department. And, Sir, would this not be a good? This good would operate instantly. It would be completely in the power of a Reformed Parliament to effect it; and it is hardly to be believed that it would be possible to find a king, who would not be glad to be thus restored to the free use of his lawful authority.

JII. A Reformed Parliament would, in the space of one single week, carefully examine the long list of Sinecures, Pensions, Grants, and other emoluments, of individuals, derived from the public purse. They would critically distinguish between those which had been granted for public services, known and acknowledged, or capable of being proved, and those for the granting of which no good reason could be assigned. They would inquire also into the duration of these several grants, would ascertain the aggregate sums which the parties had received in this way, would ascertain the means of the present possessors, would trace the public money back to its source, and would then adopt such measures thereon as justice might point out. And, would this be doing nothing? Would this be no good? Would it be no good to curtail this enormous head of expenditure? Would it be no good to leave a large part of this money in the hands of the farmers and tradesmen, in order to assist them in paying the poor-rates and other necessary taxes? Do you think, Sir, that it would be an easy matter to persuade a Reformed Parliament, that GEORGE ROSE ought to receive ten thousand pounds a year? Or that Canning ought to have received more than that sum per year while he was at Lisbon, whither he went, in part, at least, as it was avowed, for the recovery of the health of his child? Very proper, would a Reformed Parliament say, for you to go and endeavour to restore your child to health; but not very proper for you to be maintained

there as an Ambassador, while the King had no court there, and did not live in the country. And, a Reformed Parliament would tell him, that the people of England had no more reason to care about the health of his son, than about that of any pauper in any of the workhouses or out, upon an allowance on the Northamptonshire scale. A Reformed Parliament would, with great difficulty, be able to perceive the propriety of paying the amount of the Sinecures of Lords Camden, Liverpool, Ellenborough, and the rest of that description, and would be inclined to believe, that to put an end to these was a more likely way to keep labourers out of the poor-house, than collecting pennies out of the scanty earnings of those labourers to be put into George Rose's Saving-Banks. A Reformed Parliament would not forget to inquire why Mr. Ponsonby and Lord Erskine receive four thousand a year each, and are to receive it for life: why Mr. Huskisson is always to receive twelve hundred pounds a year when he is not in an office which brings him more than that sum; why his wife is to have a good fat pension after his death if she should outlive him; why Mrs. Mallet du Pan and William Gifford are kept by the public; why the Seymours receive such immense sums, and the Somersets; why Lady Louisa Paget and numerous other dames of quality receive incomes out of the public taxes. The why and the wherefore of all these items, and hundreds upon hundreds of others, would a Reformed Parliament scrupulously examine; and, having made their examination, they would, I imagine, lay the pruning-hook about them with some effect.

IV. A Reformed Parliament would, without a day's delay, set a Committee to work to inquire into the amount of the salaries of all persons in public employ. They would ascertain, whether the said salaries of such persons had been raised in consequence of the rise in the prices of provisions and labour, which took place some years ago. It would soon be discovered, that the salaries of the Judges, for instance have been doubled within the last twenty years, and that the ground, upon which the augmentation took place, was the rise in the prices of provisions and labour. This being the undeniable fact, and it being also undeniable, that the prices of provisions and labour have come down to their former amount, a Reformed Parliament, freely chosen by all the tax-payers, would say, that the Judges' Salaries ought to be reduced to their former amount; and, if any one grumbled at this reduction, a Reformed Parliament would call him a most unreasonable and unjust man. The same would be done with regard to the Police Justices, and other persons appointed by the Government. Great crowds of people in office would be dismissed wholly, and their salaries saved; but a Reformed Parliament would not be under the necessity of turning mere clerks out to starve. The fault has not been theirs, if they have been unprofitably employed. The expense of affording them a decent maintenance, in proportion to their talents and length of service would be trifling, and they would receive it, except in cases where their introduction or promotion had sprung notoriously from Borough interest; for between men thus fostered, and other men, a distinction would necessarily be made. More than a million a year of expense would thus be lopped off in a week, without any one act of cruelty or injustice. Let the spawn of the Borough-corruption return back to feed on the flesh that its parent has collected; but let the hard-working clerk and his family find food at the hands of national generosity.

V. Precisely the same principle would guide a Reformed Parliament in its reduction of the army, and its siftings of the navy. In all cases

where promotion or rewards could be traced back to the borough interest, the hand of a Reformed Parliament would be unsparing; but, to all meritorious men, of all ranks, it would show how liberal a people fairly represented can be. Be the cause, in which sailors and soldiers have fought, what it may, they have incurred no blame. Their wounds ought to be regarded, and so does the length of their service, as proofs only of their valour; and it would be one of the first principles of a Reformed Parliament to reward and hold in honour valiant men. A Reformed Parliament would suffer no man to be in a sailor's or a soldier's coat. If an impostor, they would whip him; if a real soldier or sailor, they would give him ample means to have house and home, and to be well fed and clothed. But a Reformed Parliament would see no necessity, I imagine, of a Commanderin-Chief's office, with an enormously expensive Staff. They would see as little necessity for supporting, at an enormous expense, academies where the sons of borough voters and other protegés are educated (in some cases under foreign masters) in the art of war, and who are thus, from their earliest youth, separated and kept as a distinct caste, from the rest of the nation. A Reformed Parliament adopting the maxim of BLACKSTONE, that all such establishments are abhorrent to the principles of the English Constitution, would support no such thing; but would look upon the nation as most secure, when under the protection of the arms of freemen, commanded by their natural leaders, the gentlemen of England, selected for their skill and courage by a king uncontrolled and unencumbered by borough interest and family intrigue. If possible, still less necessity would a Reformed Parliament see for Barracks, Fortresses, and Depôts in the heart of England. Such a Parliament would devote these places to demolition and sale for useful purposes. Rows of officers joined together by the arm, like chain-shot, lounging up and down the streets of towns, and thrusting the tradesman and farmer from the pavement, would be an object of which a Reformed Parliament would soon rid the country. Long swords, dragging the ground; lofty caps and brass helmets, tied under the chin; whiskers, muffs, tippets, jackets, bark-boots, false-calves, false-shoulders, and the whole list of German badges and frippery, would fly away before the acts of a Reformed Parliament, as the dust and dead leaves and rotten limbs of trees fly through the air before a thunder storm in Carolina; and we should once more behold the plain and warm English coat envelope the bodies that contain the brave and honest hearts of our countrymen. In examining the half-pay list, a Reformed Parliament would proceed, not so much with an eye to economy, as with an eye to impartiality; for, as to compassion, no man who has served as a soldier or a sailor ought to be exposed to the pain of exciting such a feeling. A Reformed Parliament would inquire upon what grounds such large incomes are awarded to some officers on the half-pay and retired list, whilst so very small a pittance is awarded to others. They would soon discover, whether the same person, in many instances, does not, in fact, receive emoluments under different heads and names of allowance. They would judge whether one man ought to receive, for no very distinguished exploits, as much as twenty other men, each of whom has been exposed to as much risk as that one man; and, whatever else a Reformed Parliament might do in this respect, certain I am that they would never suffer hundreds of midshipmen, who have faced death in a thousand shapes, to starve in our streets, or become paupers. As to this matter, a Reformed Parliament would first take care than an impartial distribution was made; and having seen that, they would rely