CAN THE TORIES TAKE OFFICE AFTER ALL ? 599 



of lulling suspicion, already sufficiently awake, cannot for an instant 

 impose upon any man with a degree of reason above that of a beast. 

 " Measures not men/' is a maxim which, at the best, is something to 

 be affirmed of tailors and their vocation ; but when we know the men 

 when we have been made to feel their measures ; when we see the 

 late ministry dismissed with contumely and scorn what more natural, 

 proper, open, candid, than to conclude that they are not men whose 

 measures (opposed as they must be to those of their predecessors, or 

 why their dismissal ?) are calculated to be palatable to the nation. 

 Will the Tories satisfy the Dissenters ? will they pursue the reform 

 of corporations ? will they reform the Irish, will they correct the 

 abuses of the English, church ? Not they. Well, then, they are not 

 the men for the country. 



Now is the time that the nation must bestir itself in the persons of 

 its representatives. Now is the time, if ever, for the people to lay a 

 broad and a sure foundation upon which their rights and their liberties 

 may be erected for ever. " Government," says the writer quoted 

 before, " to define it de jure, or, according to ancient prudence, is 

 an act whereby a civil society of men is instituted and preserved, 

 upon the foundation of common right or interest ; or (to follow Aris- 

 totle and Livy), it is an empire of laws, and not of men. And govern- 

 ment, to define it de facto , or, according to modern prudence, is an 

 act whereby some man, or some few men, subject a city or a nation, 

 and rule it according to his or their private interest ; which, because 

 laws in such cases are made according to the interest of a man, or 

 some few families, may be said to be an empire of men, and not of 

 laws." 



In short, the question has been brought emphatically to this 

 whether the English nation shall be suffered to continue a free nation, 

 by the regeneration of its ancient liberties, provided for it by the 

 constitution of England ; or whether it shall any longer submit to a 

 ruthless oligarchy made up of a few families, and constituting an 

 empire of men, and not of laws. 



