[ 10 ] [JAN. 



THE " NEW BILL." 



" NOLUMUS leges Anglise mutari" is a popular maxim with a certain 

 class ; but if understood as a general objection to all change, it is also a 

 very absurd one. It must sound more especially so to Englishmen 

 the history of whose country has been a continued series of changes 

 whose constitution has been framed and fortified by repeated alterations 

 whose greatest political blessing, indeed, is the yearly revision and alter- 

 ation of its laws. How long has the English constitution been set 

 above change and revision ? Without dwelling on the Catholic emanci- 

 pation, and the abolition of the Test and Corporation acts in the last 

 reign, we may instance the Grenville act passed in 1770, and afterwards 

 improved by Lord Grenville, which marked out afresh the limits of 

 elective franchise. The Bill to change triennial to septennial parlia- 

 ments passed in 1717, will be likewise admitted to be an important 

 alteration. The plan for severing the bond between the monarch and the 

 Upper House, by depriving the King of the privilege of creation, which 

 passed the peers in the reign of George I., but was rejected by the 

 Commons notwithstanding the wishes of the king, shews that the prin- 

 ciple of change was not questioned. It is also an undeniable fact, that 

 the very character of the constitution has a tendency to change, unless 

 periodically regulated : revision is requisite to maintain the stability of 

 its general principles. Some of its most important features have been 

 insensibly moulded by circumstances, arid not by statute; hence the 

 present necessity of actual revision. 



There is an objection of serious weight, in the opinion of anti-refor- 

 mers, against Lord John Russell's motion, which is daily and nightly 

 urged with proportionate vehemence in both houses of parliament, by 

 the opponents of the Bill, namely, that during the present excitement 

 it is not a fit time to weigh a matter of such importance with the calm- 

 ness it demands. Sir R. Peel, in the debate of Monday Dec. 12, and 

 in a very sophistical speech, if such clumsily conceived fallacies deserve 

 such a title, advances this objection. After complimenting the govern- 

 ment on their " deliberate conviction," he talks of " the hands of the ope- 

 rators trembling with the fever of unnatural excitement." The noble 

 Lord (Russell), he continued, " has spoken of a speedy and satisfactory 

 settlement of the question, as involving the welfare of all the interests 

 in the state. But his argument was of a singular character for it ap- 

 peared that as extravagant demands grow with the agitation of the 

 question, the only wise course was to grant those wild demands, and to 

 agitate on." " Wild and extravagant demands," &c. are fine words, 

 though not equally conclusive. There is an opposite, though homely 

 saying, relative to such imposing expressions, which the reader's imagi- 

 nation may probably suggest to him. It is worth a folio of argument 

 sophism and ambiguity are the characteristics of this orator ; we will 

 not therefore waste our time in discussing truisms with regard to him 

 but may merely remark, that ambiguity of principle is worse even than 

 ambiguity of language. But what after all is the weight of the argu- 

 ment against legislating now ? When have the most important changes 

 in our constitution been made, but at the time when imperiously called 

 for, and when the interest about them was at its maximum ? What was 

 the state of the country when Magna Charta was drawn up ? What was 

 the state of the country when the Bill of Rights passed ? The Bill 



