destroyed by the voluntary abdication of their conservative functions.

We are aware, certainly, that the King has authority by law to create peers, and that he may therefore, to-morrow, if it shall be his royal pleasure, elevate the whole corporation of the city of London, with the members of the National Political Union to boot, to seats in the House of Lords. His Majesty, we know, by his prerogative, is in like manner the sole umpire of war and peace; and, if it shall seem meet to his wisdom, he may raise the revolutionary standard against every throne and altar in Europe. His Majesty, we admit, is vested with a discretionary authority to negociate and conclude treaties with foreign states; and he may, therefore, if he be so minded, bind himself by convention to admit a garrison of French troops into Portsmouth, or surrender Ireland to the sovereignty of the Pope. His Majesty is the fountain of mercy as well as honour; and may not only let loose all the felons in Newgate on any given morning, but invest them severally with offices of distinction. There are no bounds, indeed, to the atrocities, for which the latitude of the prerogative might afford a pretext to a profligate or mad administration. But those atrocities, though emanating from a power which the law acknowledges, would not on that account be in themselves the less unconstitutional and illegal. For a conclusive and unanswerable argument against the right of the crown to annihilate the decision of Parliament, by such an exercise of the prerogative as that under discussion, we must again refer our readers to the second edition of Mr. Escott's admirable reply to Lord Brougham.* As to its expediency,

*It is of the very essence,' says Mr. Escott, of a limited and constitutional monarchy, that the King should be subject to the law, nihil enin aliud potest Rex nisi id solum quod de jure potest. But there is also another principle of the constitution, which forbids us to impute wrong to the acts of the Sovereign, and expressly states that the King can do no wrong; and, in consequence of that most valuable principle, it necessarily follows, that all oppressious which may happen to spring from any branch of the sovereign power must be out of the reach of any stated rule or express provision. So that when men say there is no law to restrain the prerogative, and therefore infer that the prerogative may be used for the subversion of the government, they arrive at an erroneous conclusion, from the equivocal use of the words law and prerogative. They forget that law, in this case, means something other than what is written, and that prerogative can only fairly, and therefore of right, be exercised in compliance with that unwritten rule. They forget that there is no prerogative to do wrong, and that it is unlawful to attempt it.' Then, after demonstrating that it could be nothing else than a wrong, for a constitutional King to annul, by his sign-manual, the decision of the Upper House of Parliament on the merits of any new law that might have been proposed for their deliberation, he thus proceeds: But to what a degree, I ask, in the second place, is this wrong increased, when the law, thus sought to be violently and injuriously enacted, is itself a reconstruction of the governing power, and a fundamental change in the constitution of one House of Parliament?-when the Sovereign in a limited monarchy should appoint a House of Peers for the special purpose of remodelling the House of Commons, and thus at one

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blow

pediency, little need be said; for there is not one, we believe, even of the Whig party, who affects to deny, that the extinction of the House of Peers, as an useful and efficient branch of the legislature, must be the inevitable consequence of such a measure,— that it would become a precedent insuperable for overruling their authority in all future cases (should any such ever again occur), wherein they might presume to express a dissent from the judgment of the Commons,-and that, indeed, it could not be effectually accomplished, without dealing also a severe blow at the respectability and weight of the lower House itself, from whose wealth, and rank, and talent the reinforcement to the Lords must necessarily, in most instances, be abstracted. Notwithstanding, therefore, all our past experience of the temerity and recklessness of Earl Grey and his cabinet, and in spite of the whispers on this subject which are now daily assailing our ears, we cannot bring our minds to believe in the possibility of such a consummation, we are unwilling to impute, even to these Ministers, the audacious purpose of involving their gracious master in such an act of treason against the state,-in such a violation of the oath, by which he bound himself at his coronation, to govern the people of England according to the laws and customs' of this realm.

After all, however, the fate of the nation is in its own hands. If Lord Grey shall be defeated a third time in his endeavour to carry this measure of Reform through Parliament, his Lordship, notwithstanding the characteristic fidelity which he has shown to the motto of his house,* might possibly find it difficult to reconcile his longer continuance in office with his past declarations or his personal honour. And the practical question to be solved will then undoubtedly be, whether the mind of the country be yet sufficiently sobered, or will be so in the course of a few months, to bear the experiment of another general election, with a fair prospect of its returning a better House of Commons. From this issue it will manifestly be impossible to flinch. And we are not insensible to the great difficulties, which the effect of a year's misgovernment must necessarily entail on any parties succeeding his lordship in power. At the same time, it is impossible for us to look round us, without feeling a sincere and deep confidence blow destroying the legislature, to whose opinion it was the duty of his ministers to submit, should call another into existence to obey the mandates of executive autho rity? It would be unmixed despotism. It would not only be a wrong, but it would be such a wrong, that, on the morning after it had been committed, there would be no constitution in this country.-Reply to a Pamphlet, &c., pp. 70-72, et seq. We de sire, however, that our readers should peruse the whole argument in the original. Some excellent observations on the same subject will likewise be found in a small tract, entitled' Observations on the Constitutional Right and Expediency of extending the Peerage,' &c.-written, as it appears, by an advocate for the Bill.

De bon vouloir servir le Roi.'

in the reviving moderation and good sense of the English people. We say ' of the people,' not so much with reference to the mass of the population numerically taken, as to that portion of it by whose opinions alone in past times the administration of public affairs has been materially influenced, and by whose opinions alone it ought to be influenced. As to what may be the sentiments of a numerical majority, we care little. And, in saying so, we are merely denying our deference to the judgments of men, on a question which they must obviously be incapable of understanding." It was a saying, we believe, of the late Mr. Wyndham, that the minority ought by rights to prevail in all cases, for that the wise are always the minority!' Numerous, noisy, and incorrigible, however, as may be the faction of the radicals, that faction which, lately at least, constituted unquestionably the real and effective strength of the ministerial party in the country,-we have a right to assume, that, setting out of account the powerful and intelligent body of the anti-reformers, there is a large proportion, large even numerically considered, of the whole population, who at least have taken no deep concern in this question, and have never joined in its agitation. We have a right to assume, that the many whose names have never been affixed to revolutionary addresses and petitions, are at least the friends of peace and order. If we are asked, whether we can discern in such scenes as the Bristol riots any evidence of the reaction of public feeling on the Reform question?-we answer, that we look not to such occurrences for proof either of reaction or the contrary; for among the individuals who promoted those riots, we never expected any. But it is our firm belief, that these and other like disgraceful outrages have been the cause of much re-action in the opinions of sober-minded men, and have served to stir up many, even of the indifferent, to a sense of their danger. It is impossible, indeed, but to perceive the growing disquiet and disgust with which the measure begins now to be regarded by all respectable classes of men. Every election which has taken place since the general election (we do not even except that for Cambridge, where the Tory candidate was unsuccessful) has given token of a better spirit. The agricultural population in

* The Lord Chancellor was pleased to animadvert in terms of sarcasm on an observation of Lord Dudley about the sages of Birmingham and the philosophers of Manchester;' and to extol, in no measured terms, the superior knowledge of the 300,000 inhabitants of those places in the weightier matters of practical legislation.' Now we would submit, with great deference to his Lordship, that the construction of a new constitution is a subject as wide from what is commonly understood by the phrase 'practical legislation,' and as foreign to the habits of thinking of practical men, as any that can well be imagined. It is a subject, we contend on the contrary, profoundly theoretical, and only to be judged by minds disciplined to a certain degree by historical research and diligent reflection on the nature of man,

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all parts of the kingdom are now very generally, we believe, become sensible of their danger. The Protestant spirit is up in Ireland. And had the strength of the conservative party been displayed with the same energy throughout the kingdom a year ago, as it has lately been at the meetings held in Scotland, the Reform Bill would not now have been in existence.

But, however this may be, let us who know and prize the value of the blessings which we have enjoyed under the British constitution, do our parts stedfastly to the last, and leave the rest to God's good providence! It may be, that those blessings are not destined to descend to our children; but let us, at least, separate ourselves from all participation in the act which is to rob them of their inheritance, and leave the responsibility on the heads of those alone who have dared to initiate the crime!

INDEX -

TO THE

FORTY-SIXTH VOLUME OF THE QUARTERLY REVIEW.