two Christian powers are now operating, instead of the one which has revolutionized India. The second great chamber westwards, from the Tigris to the Sea of Marmora, is now not only under the operation of all Christian nations who trade to the Levant, but is actually taken under the surveillance of the great Christian powers. In this instance we see the slow but sure advance of European light. At the end of the last century, when France made a lawless invasion of Egypt, no interest was excited by that act, (apart from that of curiosity,) except in England, and there only from anxiety for India. Eygpt was shut out from the European balance of power. Now, creeping like a tide over a flat surface of shore, gradually the European system of diplomatic calculations has reached Egypt, Syria, and Asia Minor. Another generation will probably carry this tide beyond the Tigris; and if Persia should still exist at that era, she, like Turkey, will have her ruins propped up by a congress of European princes.

But whatever may be the fate of particular sovereigns or dynasties, nobody can fail to see in this regular succession and chain of European armies, (acting, observe, everywhere as organizing forces, not as blind conquerors) in these repeating telegraphs for carrying European influences over the whole of southern Asia, (that is, the whole of Asia not already in Christian hands,) that the great preliminary work is finished of posting and bringing to bear the machinery of a new civilisation. All the powers have taken up their positions. It ought to strike every man who fancies that Mahometanism (because better than idolatry) is compatible with a high order of civilisation, that it has never yet succeeded under any circumstances in winning for a people these results: 1. Civil liberty, or immunity from the bloodiest despotism. 2. The power of terminating from within any intestine tumults: nothing but the sword ever heals dissensions in the East. 3. Any such cohesive power as enabled a people to resist foreign invaders; military conquest passes like a gale of wind through eastern nations. 4. Above all, any

progressive state. In every thing the East has been always improgressive.

Now, in the certainty that this state of things must at length come to an end, and that the vast regions of southern Asia, (soon to have vast proportionate populations,) will begin to partake in the great movement of the human race as now occupying the two continents of Europe and America, we see a pledge of pacific counsels for both Russia and England. The ground is so vast, and Persia so much of a nearer temptation to Russia, that we see no opening even for a future ambition pointing to India. The petty objects of ambition that might have arisen on a more limited scale, are absorbed by the grander necessities opened upon each nation through the new civilisation which both have assisted to diffuse. Mere space is an obstacle to private objects. Russia, if she were even the conquering power that she is supposed, could not venture to leave Persia in her rear unappropriated. And in the additional certainty that neither nation is seeking, or could rationally seek, any territorial expansion, we see a far happier range of influence opened to each in the new duties which will arise out of their

new situations. The practical and the real will, in this instance, prove more splendid than the fanciful or the ambitious. As to any other influence of Russia, have we not all reason to be thankful that it exists? The whole of southern Europe is desperately and dangerously sold to levelling schemes of politics. Spain is probably on the brink of bloody civil struggles. The French people will not suffer any check to be applied from without. All of us are threatened by the contagion. In such a situation we do not seek for models of civil institutions in Russia. Her people are not ripe for such institutions. It is of more importance to us what will be the influence of Russia abroad. And then, considering the excess which exists in southern Europe to the whole politics of destruction, we have reason to think it happy for us all that in northern Europe exists an equal bias towards the excess of principles of Conservation.

No. CCCI.

TEN years have now elapsed since Lord Grey and the Whigs, on the 16th November 1830, were called to the helm of affairs, and a new system of government in every department communicated to the British empire. The consequences of this change, long obviated by the good sense of the people, or averted by the strenuous patriotism of the Conservatives, are now to all appearance about to fall upon

us.

It may truly be said, that the present period is fruitful in great events, and probably it will be still more instrumental in dispelling great illusions, than in the production of memorable achievements. The good fortune which in so extraordinary a way has hitherto attended the Reform administration of England, is now apparently drawing to its close; and, like the disasters which accumulated round the latter days of Napoleon, the consequences of our infatuation and our neglects, are now likely to fall upon us with accumulated force, and a violence which must either destroy the empire, or, dispelling its former errors, bring it back to a more sober and rational train of thought.

All the great delusions which have overspread the nation for the last twenty years, and changed its ideas and policy so much, that a stranger was at a loss to discover, at least in the ruling party of Great Britain, any traces of the former character by which the nation was distinguished, and in its external policy any relic of the wisdom by which it was once governed, are now at once producing their natural effects, and involving us

NO. CCCI. VOL. XLVIII,

in a maze of difficulties and perplexi ties, from which even the wisest cannot see our escape, and at the magnitude of which even the bravest cannot avoid feeling a certain degree of apprehension. To whatever quarter we look, whether to our financial system -our military and naval preparations-our foreign policy-our internal

government-or our ecclesiastical measures, the change has been equally startling and universal. And the consequences of our misdeeds seem to have been reserved for the special purpose of falling upon us at the same time, and with such concentrated force as to open the eyes of the most preju. diced, and bring home conviction to the most obdurate understanding.

The first grand delusion which overspread the nation, was that of Reform; and to its success all the others may be ascribed. We were told, and the majority of the people believed, that this grand healing measure would remedy all the evils of the state; that restoring, not altering the constitution, it would pour new life into the aged veins of the monarchy; that destroying the tyranny of the oligarchy, it would bring the policy of government into harmony with the wishes of the great body of the people; and that, drying up the sources of social misery and popular discontent, it would exhibit to the world the blessed example of a free, prosperous, and an united people. Ten years now have elapsed since these doctrines were first officially announced from the seat of government by Lord Grey's administration, and eight since they were practically carried into effect—that of

2 N

the passing of the Reform Bill. What has been the effect of this mighty change, now that its results have to a certain degree at least been tried by experience? Has the policy of government been brought into harmony with the wishes of the majority of the people? Have social misery, political discontent disappeared? Are the speeches of the demagogue-the torch of the incendiary-the spear of the traitor, unknown in the land? The result avowedly has been diametrically the reverse; popular discontent was never so wide spread or formidable since the masses of the middle class were installed in power; the Chartists have succeeded to the Radicals; the Socialists to the Dissenters; a sort of moody despair has seized upon the working classes at finding they have derived no benefit whatever, but suffered many injuries by all the changes from which they were led to expect so much the flames of Bristol, the sack of Nottingham, the plunder of Birmingham, the insurrection at Newport, have demonstrated how wide spread and bitter is the feeling of exasperation which pervades the mind of the working classes at the manner in which they have been deceived; and more blood has been shed and more misery inflicted in stiffling insurrection during the eight years that have elapsed since the great healing measure was passed, than during the one hundred and forty that had elapsed from the Revolution to that time.

The next great delusion which has overspread the nation for the last twenty years from the incessant efforts of the Whig party, and which, during the ten years that they have been in power, they have been enabled practically to carry into effect, has related to the subject of our finances. From the year 1786, when Mr Pitt, with prophetic wisdom, first established the admirable system of a sinking fund, down to the year 1813, when, under the pressure of a foreign warfare, the system was unhappily broken in upon, it was the invariable policy of our Government to set aside a certain sum yearly for the formation of a sinking fund, to be reserved as a sacred deposit, non tangendum, non movendum, even during the most pressing political necessities. Such was the wonderful

and beneficial effect of this system, that the sinking fund, which in 1786 amounted only to one million sterling, had risen in 1813, by the mere effect of unbroken accumulation, to fifteen millions sterling a-year; and at the same rate of progress it would by this time have been paying off above forty millions sterling a-year; and, as Mr Alison has demonstrated in his History of Europe, would have paid off the whole national debt by the year 1843. The extraordinary pressure of the years 1813 and 1814 probably rendered the appropriation of part of the sinking fund unavoidable; but, unhappily, the Whigs instantly seized upon the popular outcry which this temporary expedient afforded, and never ceased clamouring about the burden of taxation, till they got the people so far infatuated as to demand yearly the repeal of one indirect tax after another, till a revenue of five and forty millions sterling was surrendered to the popular outcry, and it was rendered a matter of perfect impossibility to continue the accumulation of any surplus in the hands of Govern. ment above the necessary expenditure. Notwithstanding this popular resistance, the Conservatives contrived, between 1815 and 1830, to pay off eighty millions of the public debt, and left to their successors a clear surplus revenue of £2,900,000 a-year. But with the accession of the Whigs to office an entire new system was introduced. Concession to popular outcry was the order of the day; and tax after tax was repealed till this surplus was entirely destroyed. The result, long concealed from the nation by the juggles of financiers, and the perpetual exhibition of fallacious books, has now become apparent, and has attracted the notice even of the most inconsiderate. All pretence of maintaining a surplus above the expenditure has now ceased. Since the year 1837 a deficit, constantly increasing, has been exhibited in the expenditure above the receipts; and in the year 1839 this deficit, in a nation possessing beyond any other on the face of the earth the elements of riches and national strength, amounted, according to the finance accounts, to the enormous sum of one million five hundred and forty thousand pounds. As if, too, to demonstrate how utterly

reckless our rulers were in regard to all such consequences, and how resolute they were, at all hazards, to maintain the show of economical measures at a time when they had wellnigh brought ruin upon the resources of the country, they selected this period for introducing the penny postage, and thereby sacrificed above eleven hundred thousand a-year of well paid revenue, which nobody felt and no one cared for; and the result has been that the nation, which, if Mr Pitt's financial policy had been adhered to, would have been burdened at this moment with scarcely any debt, and have been possessed of a clear surplus revenue of at least twenty millions a-year above its necessary expenditure, finds itself now saddled with seven hundred and sixty-five millions of debt, and a revenue sinking at so rapid a rate that the falling off of the year ending 1st October 1840, as compared with the one preceding, is £676,000, and on the quarter ending 5th October 1840, as compared with the same quarter of 1839, of £531,000, being at the rate of above £2,124,000 a-year!

Another favourite delusion, with which the Whigs for the last thirty years have blinded the nation, relates to its religious concerns, and, in particular, the management of the Romish population of Ireland. For 137 years before the year 1829, when a different system was adopted, it had been the fixed policy of this country to hold its religious institutions as finally fixed at the Revolution, and at all hazard to maintain the Protestant ascendancy over those professing the creed of the Church of Rome. The national policy in this vital particular was founded not merely upon a conscientious and bona fide conviction that the Protestant Church maintained the true principles of the Christian faith, and that, to support the Romish creed, was to desert the most sacred duty of Government-that of providing the means of public instruction in the true principles of belief to its subjects, but also of the long experience which the Government had had of the national character of the people of Ireland, and the experienced impossibility of trusting its barbarous and inflammable inhabitants with any portion of that self-government, which, as it is the highest prerogative and first privilege of man, so can be safely en

trusted only to those who are already far advanced in the career of civilisation.

In 1829, however, the Whigs succeeded, by dint of a clamour which they had maintained incessantly for nearly thirty years, in persuading the British legislature to overlook the obvious discrepancies between the intellectual growth of the different races of the empire, to confer the same civil rights upon all, and to remove all disabilities hitherto consequent upon the profession of a foreign and hostile faith. Immediate and lasting tranquillity, unbounded prosperity, and the rapid assimilation of the habits of the Irish poor to those of the English labourers, were confidently predicted by the promoters of this great change, and fondly anticipated by its reluctant supporters on this side of the channel. Religious difference, civil discord, were to cease in the Emerald Isle ; agitation was to terminate from the removal of its object; O'Connell, from the great agitator, was to sink down into a nisi prius lawyer. Have these effects been realized? Has religious animosity, civil discord, ceased in the Irish plains? Is murder and conflagration unknown in its fields? Has O'Connell sunk into a nisi prius lawyer, and are the adherents of the Church of Rome grateful for the emancipation they have received, to be now numbered among the loyal and faithful subjects of the British empire? The result notoriously has been in every respect the reverse; the misery and savage habits of the people continue unabated; upwards of two hundred and fifty murders, and conflagrations of houses innumerable, are annually committed in that frightful scene of desolation. O'Connell himself, so far from being sunk into a nisi prius lawyer, is at the head of a numerous faction, which fiercely demands the dismemberment of the empire; and the whole Catholic priesthood are arrayed in a league with him to sever the connexion with Great Britain, and subvert the independence of a country from which they have received such undeserved benefits.

The West Indies was another theatre on which the new principles of government, advocated by the Whigs, found an ample field for speculative change. Deplorable as the

evils of slavery, and especially negro slavery, ever have been, and ever will be, there were yet many circumstances in the condition of the sable population of the British West India islands, prior to the sudden emancipation of 1834, which promised a progressive and durable improvement in their lot. The slave trade-the execrable traffic in human flesh-had ceased to be carried on, under the auspices at least of the British flag; the African labourers of the West India islands were a stationary population; experience had proved that they could maintain their own numbers; the interests of the masters, now that they could no longer purchase slaves from Africa, were indissolubly bound up with those of the labourers by whom alone their estates could be cultivated; and such was their generally prosperous condition, that forty thousand in the island of Jamaica alone had acquired their freedom; and it was no unusual thing to see a slave, after living better than any labourer in Europe, lay by, out of the produce of the week, when he was allowed to labour for himself, from L.20 to L.30 a-year. Here, then, was a negro population gradually emerging, by the efforts of its own industry, from a state of servitude, possessing ample means of purchasing, by tolerable industry, its own freedom, and slowly acquiring the habits necessary to enable it at some future, though remote, period, to bear the excitements and submit to the labour of freedom. In 1834, however, the fatal spirit of precipitate innovation passed into these beautiful colonies; the insensible, but unhazardous process by which nature was there softening the asperities of servi tude, and preparing men for the blessings of freedom, was discharged, and emancipation, at a vast expense to Great Britain, within a few years was forced on a reluctant body of proprietors, and an astonished people.

The effects have been precisely what all persons acquainted with the character of the negro population, and moderately versed in the history of mankind, had so often predicted. The perilous experiment had totally failed: the negroes, relieved from the necessity of working, before they had ac

quired the artificial wants, and fallen under the moral chains which bind civilized man to continuous labour, are fast relapsing into a state of barbarism. Labour is so imperfectly performed, and at such irregular periods, that the produce of the British islands has sunk to little more than a half of what it was in 1834, when emancipation passed; and amidst in cessant reports by the stipendiary magistrates that every thing is going on well, and order and industry have resumed their sway, the extraordinary rise in the price of sugar demonstrates that a vast and ruinous deficiency has taken place in the supply of that ne cessary article, which is daily increas. ing, and promises soon to swallow up entirely the produce of those once rich and flourishing colonies, Nor is this all. Not only, between the rise in the price of sugar and coffee, and the interest of the L. 20,000,000, borrowed for the indemnification of the West India proprietors, is the British empire now taxed in a sum little short of three millions annually for the consequences of this uncalled for and most unstatesmanlike innovation, but the measure itself has, by the confession of its warmest advocates, been attended with unheard of disasters to the very negro race for whose benefit it was intended. It appears, from the able pamphlet of Sir J. Buxton, the wellknown and indefatigable advocate of the negro race, that the number of negroes who now cross the Atlantic is at least 150,000 a-year, or more than double what it was when Wilberforce and Clarkson first began their efforts in behalf of that oppressed portion of mankind.* Heartrending as this statement of the result of emancipation in the British West India Islands is, it yet considerably falls short of the truth; for it appears, from calculations made in the latest publications on the subject-an able article in the Edinburgh Review for October 1840, on Mr Buxton's work-that there is reason to believe that the number of slaves annually torn from Africa for Brazils, Cuba, and the other slave colonies of the New World, is little, if at all, short of 250,000 a-year. Their condition, too, it is well known, both in the passage