222 OUR SITUATION AND PROSPECTS. 



shall not only have commenced, but when its issue shall no longer be 

 doubtful, even to them ? " 



This is true but what is our situation ? We, professing to be the 

 children of light, can have no sympathy with them that walk in dark- 

 ness ; and we are persuaded that by far too much consideration has 

 been given to the suicidal tactics of the enemy, when our attention 

 ought rather to have been directed to the exercise of our own energies. 



Accustomed, as we have lately been, to changes and these in rapid 

 succession it is difficult to speculate on what may be the state of 

 public affairs when this paper shall meet the eye of the reader. We 

 have talk of an unwillingness in a certain quarter to sanction the 

 changes which are contemplated by the Irish Church Bill we have 

 talk also of kingly prejudices and partialities. Perhaps in no period 

 of our history have the prepossessions and antipathies of a court 

 been so freely proclaimed and discussed. For ourselves, we deprecate 

 the scandal, while we deplore the shame. The day has far receded 

 which recognized the " right divine of kings to govern wrong :" the 

 characteristic of our day is simply the impossibility of their governing 

 at all, unless indeed they govern for the people, aye, and with the 

 people. That any other principle, any one short of this, should be 

 avowed, is madness. The author of the pamphlet to which we have 

 just alluded, observes, that " a fatal mistake has been made by the aris- 

 tocracy, who have imagined that the only natural prerogative of the 

 people is obedience, while it remained with their rulers to fix the limits 

 of their independence. But it is time this delusion should be dispelled. 

 It is time the aristocracy should be told that the balance of inde- 

 pendence is in favour of the people. They, at least, have no political 

 confederacies, the object of which is to perpetuate a monopoly of 

 power : they have no hordes of ill-gotten wealth to defend from the 

 menacing attitude of invincible justice : they have no vices to screen 

 no acts to palliate or justify, at the expense of every principle of 

 honour and equity." 



And what is the motive which directs the opposition ? Let us sup- 

 pose that it is not the lust of power ; nor chagrin, nor disappointment ; 

 nor the love of display, nor the identity of partizanship. What, then, 

 is it ? Why, one would suppose, that if to none of these causes is to 

 be ascribed the cavil of the ci-devant Tories, the one cause must be a 

 derangement of their mental optics. They profess to aim at the good 



