( 469 ) 



DESTRUCTION OF THE HOUSES OF PARLIAMENT. 



THE destruction of both houses of parliament by fire has been the 

 engrossing topic of attention during the latter half of the past month ; 

 and the greater part of the public seem to look upon it as a calamity 

 that is greatly to be lamented,, and to feel much anger at those by 

 whose carelessness (to impute the least culpable supposition) it has 

 been occasioned. Now we will neither dispute their blame, nor much 

 less the guilt of the incendiary, if such there were ; but we can by 

 no means join in the lamentations for the event. There are assuredly 

 but Reviews in. which it can be regarded as a loss the expense 

 entailed on the public for the reconstruction of those edifices, and 

 the loss of the records there contained : there are many reasons for 

 which it may be regarded as a good. 



It will perhaps be said that if there is not much to regret, there is 

 at least nothing to rejoice at in the event. We are by no means sure 

 of this. It may also be said that a new House of Commons might 

 have been built with the materials of the old, at a much smaller ex- 

 pense ; but the question is not what might, but what would have been 

 done. Now, though this question had been proposed already, there 

 was no general disposition shewn to meet it some opposing it from 

 respect to its antiquity, and others from economy. It is, therefore, 

 probable we should have gone on for many years with the late 

 building. Besides, there is a strange perhaps, not strange dispo- 

 sition in men to be unwilling to do that which, nevertheless, they are 

 glad to have done for them; and this not merely in cases of conscience, 

 where the reason is obvious, but in many of pure calculation like 

 the present. The same may be observed of the burning of the papers. 

 Though some among them may have been worth preserving, yet the 

 great mass of them were such mere lumber, that serious thoughts were 

 entertained of destroying them. This event has saved the perplexity 

 of indecision ; and probably no one individual in the kingdom will 

 be the worse for it. As to the pictures and other ornaments, they 

 seem to have been of no great value, and their very existence was 

 probably known to few. But there is one far more important and 

 interesting view of the subject than any hitherto mentioned. 



It is in a POLITICAL light, and with a view to the FUTURE, and not 

 the present or the past, that this can be looked upon as an event of 

 national, and we may add, of lasting importance, for either good or 

 evil to the kingdom. It might be for evil it is, we are persuaded, 

 for good. Had this happened ten years ago, it would have been 

 looked upon with comparative indifference, and have attracted far less 

 attention than the burning of the Custom House, or any large ware- 

 house. But happening just at the present time, after the greatest 

 political changes that have ever taken place in this country (with the 

 exception of the short period of the Commonwealth, which left no 

 trace behind it), it is impossible not to connect it with far greater and 



M.M. No. 107. 3 P 



