690 Notes of the Month on [Due. 



fourths of all laws are made ; and we cannot conceive how Mr. Justice 

 Parke, however given to story- telling and nonsense or Mr. Justice 

 Garrow, though the gout in his toes had bewildered his memory could 

 have laid down dicta which undoubtedly go to sanction all the experimen- 

 talists in human folly. But St. John Long is now to be tried again ; 

 and on the result of the trial will depend, whether we are to be inun- 

 dated by a race of pretenders, hazardous to life; or they are to be 

 deterred by an example which, to be salutary, must be prompt and 

 severe. Vide page 656. 



Reform must take place. The last Parliament made every honest man 

 in the country sick of the present state of things. Its whole composition 

 was so base; it truckled so scandalously to every successive administra- 

 tion ; barter and bribe were so palpably inscribed on its portal, that a 

 nation of common sense or common honesty could no longer suffer its 

 concerns to be transacted by such hands. Its dissolution may have saved 

 a serious catastrophe. But the present parliament, formed on the same 

 model, must be watched, and must be purified. It, doubtless, contains 

 individuals too high-minded to suffer villany to be passed by in silence ; 

 and so far, a reform is beginning to work ; but we must have the reform 

 more than theoretic. It must be secured by a change in the mode of 

 election, and by a general purification of the electors, and the represen- 

 tatives together. What is the present condition of Scotland? The 

 people have actually scarcely any votes. The whole is in the hands of 

 a few corporators, and the consequence is that the Scotch members are 

 always among the most inveterate supporters of et His Majesty's Minis- 

 ters for the time being." 



On the late debate, which flung Wellington headlong out of power, 

 what was the conduct of the Scotch members ? Out of the forty-five, 

 the votes for the Treasury Bench were twenty-nine ; against it seven ; 

 the remaining nine were absent. The Scotch talk much of their talents 

 and their integrity ; why does not the nation raise its voice against 

 such a system, and shew its spirit in something more like freedom and 

 manliness than radical harangues, and baubees subscribed for the mob 

 of Paris ? They have their victory to be struggled for nearer home, if 

 they will struggle for it. When shall we see the name of Dundas, 

 " name beloved of jobbers," exiled from all influence in Scotland ? 



The theatres are in full promise ; and tragedies, comedies, and operas, 

 are declared to be fluttering at their gates for existence, like the infant 

 ghosts in Virgil. Kenny is at his old work of translation, and gives us 

 Victor Hugo's tragedy of Hernani, which flourished for a while last 

 year on the Parisian stage. We should greatly prefer a farce from 

 either France or Kenny. No French tragedy ever succeeded in this 

 country, nor ever deserved to succeed in its own. The best of tfyem are 

 dull, dry, unvaried, and unnatural, all declamation-, all description, all 

 heroes and heroines, no men, no women, all stilts and stiffness, no action, 

 no nature. Hernani will do very well, however, for the living race of 

 tragedians. 



Macready is bringing out Lord Byron's Werner, which will not suc- 

 ceed. It may toil through a night or two ; but the original dulness of 

 the plot and the writing, will plunge it ten thousand fathoms deep, 

 where all the tragedies of the noble author went before or after it. 



