We thank Oroniensis; we have no fault to find with his communication, but its length. The Remarks on " Cain" are not sufficiently able for our miscellany. We thank Rusticus for the feelings which we are sure prompt him to notice certain Radical Rhyming, which occasionally appears even in some of the Sunday papers; but there is a shoal of little filthy versifiers, which are not worth bringing to shore to be destroyed by mere exposure. They are but shrimps and perriwinkles in the old gentleman's net for Pandemonium. We beg to assure a “ Little Moore” that we have had too much of his trash. Bottom also is too shallow for insertion. Cantab, Verax, and Viator are all received. We duly appreciate the sentiments and motives of An Old Friend, and he will find in our present Number that we have profited by his advice. A Farmer is informed that Mr. Hume, who figures in the House of Commons, is not the "Author of the History of England," nor is he the son of that celebrated man. Hume the Historian's name was David, and David's son was called Solomon-now Surgeon Hume, as every body knows, is no Solomon. The intentions of a Correspondent at Swansea, he will agree with us, when he reflects one moment, are better fulfilled in "the breach than in the observance." ERRATA in No. IV. In Notices to Correspondents, for dwarf in wind read mind. p. 229, line 7, col. 2, for folly read fancy. p. 231, line 7, col. 1 from the bottom, for wit read art. p. 233, line 28, col. 2, between the words "after" and "his" insert "this exhibition of". p. 240, commencement of line 1, after "or at least" insert "have excited". And in same page, line 36, for Commissioners read Commissaries. COUNTRY CONSTITUTIONAL GUARDIAN; AND LITERARY MAGAZINE. BRISTOL. 1822. Quid verum atque decens curo et rogo, et omnis in hoc sum. MARCH. HORAT. EPIST. L. 1. Ep. 1. ON POPULAR REFORM. TO THE RIGHT HONOURABLE EARL GREY. MY LORD, IN this age of political restlesness and popular pretension, the subject on which we now take the liberty to address you, is, beyond all comparison, the most important which can engage the attention of the wise and practical Statesman. It is, at the present time especially, above all others interesting, extensive and variegated as are become its different bearings upon the essential welfare of the nation. It involves, beyond a doubt, the guardianship in purity, of every thing valuable which our ancestors have bequeathed to us, and under which our national wealth, and liberty, and glory, have attained an advancement singular in the history of the world. But it is a subject also, which, in its very nature, is liable to excite and interest, in an extraordinary degree, the passions of men; and, though demanding, more than any other, the calm deliberation of disinterested wisdom, is peculiarly liable to be abused by the ignorant, the selfish, the falsely patriotic, and the disturbing visionary. In improving the character and condition, in searching into and regulating the deep-seated springs which controul the movements of the vast machine of a great civilized community, the pre sumption of the ill-informed and the feeble-minded appears, indeed, in the present day, to increase with the difficulties of its task. In our own country, unfortunately, this is peculiarly the case; and therefore such a brief enquiry, as our monthly pages will admit of, into the real nature and tendency of POPULAR REFORM, as now understood, and the duties which the prevailing agitation of it imposes upon every true Patriot, may serviceably assist, perhaps, in calming the too great effervescence, and removing the too common misapprehension with which it is embraced by its admirers. We address ourselves to you, my Lord, on this occasion, because, being the veteran and consistent champion of Reform yourself, you confessedly exercise a considerable influence over the minds of that large portion of your countrymen, who, under various modifications of opinion, are favourable to the same cause. We cannot help thinking besides, however painfully, that in much that is wrong and dangerous in those various opinions, your Lordship and that particular party in the State of which you are the respected leader, too fully participate; and that, in fact, you are unconsciously, it is believed, lending the aid of your great talents and name, * H h 2 and your partizans that of their property and popularity, to the furtherance of schemes which, we think, those of disorder, and a spirit of civil subversion. Reform, my Lord, in its legitimate meaning, is a word justly dear to every lover of his species, especially to every Christian patriot. Without its practical operation, unceasingly acting in the world, mankind would never, of course, have attained their present advancement in the means of happiness, neither could they ever proceed onward in the path of future improvement. Every thing connected with the social civilization of nations is liable to constant, though gradual change; their wants and their desires increase together with their capabilities of all kinds; the extension and complexity of their relations, both foreign and domestic, necessarily give rise, either to new institutions, or to the enlarged improvement of old; and thus the ceaseless stream of human progression requires constantly to be provided with, or must wear itself, channels proportionably suited to its volume, its direction, and its force. We hold this doctrine, my Lord, to be the true basis of all political wisdom, and we most readily admit, that as the greatest excellence of all free national institutions consists in their power of rectifying their own temporary imperfections, and meeting the well-ascertained demands of genuine public opinion, so the wisdom of every free government is best shewn in facilitating and directing, with caution, and firmness, and foresight, the exercise of such a power. It is under the guidance of this principle, my Lord, that we always view the great subject of Political Reform; and it is the light derived from hence, which, whilst it makes us regard with true pleasure every rational attempt to improve the liberty and happiness of our country, compels us to see the obliquity and folly of most of the innovating schemes of our modern patriotic Reformers. It is the fashion, your Lordship well knows, with a certain description of theorists, to talk much and confidently of the powerfully prevailing spirit of these times, and of the corresponding concessions due from Governments to their people. But these declaimers forget, in their intemperate reliance upon the reasonableness of the master principle which we have just advocated, that there is more frequent y abroad in the world a spirit of evil, which requires to be controuled and rectified, than a spirit of good which requires only to be favoured; and that both the origin, progress, and present character of popular reform amongst ourselves, tend conclusively to prove that it springs from the former perilous source. The French Revolution, my Lord, that scourge which, for so many years, has desolated Europe, and which has most seriously afflicted Britain also in her overstrained exertions to controul it, we take to have been the immediate parent of all the political evil-mindedness which now menaces society. "Hoc fonte derivata clades In patriam populumque fluxit." Previous circumstances, which it is needless to particularize, undoubtedly prepared the way for this extraor dinary convulsion; but the whole course of its extensively ramified and venomous progress has been attended with a corresponding dissolution of old popular feelings and attachments, and much more so of those, connected with the best preservatives of social happiness, than of those, which belonged to deteriorated and worn out institutions. It was the genius of discord, of despotism, and subversion which directed the fury of the storm; and the rapid succession of great and rade events which followed, doing ruffian violence to every hitherto venerable and respected association of the human mind, strangely unsettled the opinions of men, and in fact, broke deeply into the very elements of civilized government as then existing in the world. Every destructive passion indeed appeared to be let loose upon the European community, and at the same time so infatuating was the spirit of evil that was uppermost, and so disguised was it, and rendered attractive by brilliant atchievements, false pretensions, and shallow, but imposing, professions of liberality, that some even of the intelligent and high-minded among our countrymen viewed its progress with complacency, or hailed it, as eventually, to be theregenerator of every human government. Much, my Lord, as these misguided politicians have been betrayed by their favoured illusion, it was impossible nevertheless that so vast a politi cal power, as that of the revolutionary spirit of France, could be in general action for any considerable length of time, without producing some serious effects upon society; and those effects have been long recognized in increasing political dissatisiactions, and are now more clearly visible in the modern doctrines of Reform. tended to sour and render dissatisfied an unusually large portion of the popular mind. Each separate interest of the community also was destined in its turn to pass through the ordeal of depression and distress. A long train of circumstances, against which, under the favourite policy of the state, no human wisdom could have entirely guarded, had combined to produce this suffering; and no other remedy for it could, in any case, be found, except in the gradual operation of those other causes, which are always at work in society to rectify any of its temporary derangements, and to restore any disturbed equilibrium in its parts. It would be no difficult matter to trace, were it necessary to do so, the course of this democratic mania in England, from its first virulent appearance, nearly thirty years ago, to its present form. The strength of loyal and constitutional feeling, which is almost indigenous amongst us, resisted indeed the fatal infection, during a long critical season of public peril; whilst national antipathies, and common dangers, at the same time, favoured this fortunate resistance; but the British community, all the while, harboured within its bosom a determined baud of disturbers, who worked slowly but successfully in the evil cause, and who were ready to appear with additional confidence upon the stage of our domestic politics, whenever circumstances might seem to invite them to increased action, by laying open the public mind in any degree to their designs. The return of the general peace, and the serious embarrassments, both public and private, which followed it, presented opportunities too favourable to be neglected. The energies of the nation, peculiarly political and restless in its mind, and which events of the most stirring kind had for many years kept in the highest state of activity and excitement, were now turned inwards upon themselves; the eye of public opinion, in this its state of keen and piercing vision, penetrated with jealousy every part of our civil administration, almost from necesssity grown enormous in its expenditure, complex in its movements, and vicious in some of its details. Detections of abuses, and possibilities of improvement formed, in consequence, the favourite themes of public discussion; the legislature were expected, under hasty anticipations of pacific blessings, to remove, at once, every galling weight, and to remedy every unavoidable imperfection and necessary evil, which a long and trying æra of unprecedented national difficulty had produced; and the inevitable disappointment of these irrational hopes But these distresses formed the very element in which the revolutionary spirit delighted to live; and, in consequence, the ranks of disaffection became, and still continue to be, recruited from the depths of poverty. The selfish disturber, with the most quick-sighted zeal, pushed his gilded sophistry into every scene of these personal embarrassments, and unhesitatingly charged with their responsibility the calumniated laws and governiment of his country. Manufactures and agriculture, each in its successive distresses, thus administered fuel to his incendiary spirit, and enabled him to give such a shew of strength and popularity to his cause, misnamed that of Reform, as at the present time appears almost powerful enough to shake that old English sense of social security, which, of late years, it has been the peculiar happiness of this country to enjoy. Such, my Lord, briefly stated, have been the immediate origin and general course of the innovating mania of which we are treating. We do not pretend to enter, in any detailed manner, into the many subsidiary helps which its progress has derived from other peculiar circumstances of the times, or to point out, at present, how the state of the periodical Press of the country, and that of our political parties, have emboldened its spirit, and added greatly to its power. The two latter, indeed, form topics, it must be admitted, much too important to be overlooked in a discussion of this kind; but it may be better perhaps in the present instance, first to endeavour to appreciate farther the true nature of popular Reform from those more prominent features, which mark its chiefs, and the more active among their followers. In its progress down to the present day, its character, we have seen, has been bad; and a little observation of passing events must have convinced your Lordship, as well as ourselves, of the aggravated malignity of its present views. However specious indeed may be the general arguments in favour of Reform in the abstract, or however worthy of attention they may be, as applied to the partial wants of our own country, in the mouths of wise and honourable men; yet, my Lord, it is quite impossible that any real public blessing can be either contemplated or produced by such instruments and means, as are now busily at work to regenerate us. “ In eâdem re," says the Roman Statesman, "utilitas et turpitudo esse non potest." The most repulsive characteristic of the principal of our violent Reformers, and which peculiarly stamps this turpitude on their cause is, undoubtedly, their contempt of Religion, its restraints, its ministers, and its ordinances. Sedition and infidelity have formed an alliance, not altogether perhaps unnatural amongst us, though such as never before insulted the Christian world, except during the demoniac days of France. Your Lordship must have viewed this wretched confederacy with surprize and horror; for you could scarcely ever have expected, even with the aid of all your strange political experience, to have seen united enmity to God and your Country circulated and accepted as patriotism in England. Yet, my Lord, so it is in these our enlightened times; and no where more visibly, than in the heart of our great and enlightened Seat of Government, and among those who are most professedly pretending to elevate the character of their species. The absurdity, indeed, as well as the wickedness of these things is transcendently striking. When the feeble restraints of human law have been shivered in pieces, those of that Divine law, which alone is all-powerful to improve man's moral nature, and thereby to advance his social happiness, must also be broken asunder. And all this mighty ruin is to be completed in order to give additional dignity to that nature, and to extend that happiness. But let us mark a little the overt acts of this unhallowed alliance. Is it not notorious then, that the foulest blasphemy, prepared carefully for the taste of the ignorant and the vicious, is daily issuing from the shops of those, who are considered as the best champions of Radical Reform? Have not many of these depraved demagogues openly professed their disbelief of the Bible and the Saviour? Does not this profession run through, and give a marked character to all their political creeds? Do they not sedulously labour also, with dreadful consistency of purpose, to bring into popular contempt the established Religion of their country? Do they not revile its Ministers, sneer at and vilify its holiest ordinances, and hold it up to the hatred of a free and restless populace, as the natural and sworn enemy of their liberties. In short, my Lord, these admirers of Paine and democracy proclaim aloud, that the terrors of Religion are a bugbear, raised only to enslave mankind; that its hopes are visionary fooleries, taught only to cajole them, and that the Church of England, although unrivalled in purity and liberality, is only an engine of State-policy, maintained to support the abuses of degenerate power. And are not these truths, my Lord, forced as they are upon the commonest observer of the times, calculated to strike the Christian patriot with alarm? Do they not as irresistibily compel him to ask himself" what is Reform?" As certain infidel clamours of old compelled Pilate to ask "what is Truth 1 Must they not harrow up every honest man's soul with painful misgivings, who, for a moment, can be supposed, even nominally to be associated in the same cause with the fallen incendiaries of whom they are spoken? I admit, my Lord, that these audaciously disgusting manifestations of hopeless profligacy are confined to the most vulgar agents of reform. But unhappily, the spirit which prompts them is possessed of wider power, and power perhaps the more dangerous, because exerted zealously under captivating disguises, and under the influence of a false literary reputation. Your Lordship will immediately recognize the description of persons, to whom we allude. The metropolis especially is infested with the noisy and mischievous admirers of free-thinking sentimental Reformers. Their political creed consists in con |