14 T1IK NEW TORY REFORM GOVERNMENT. 



to suffer petty divisions to weaken us. They are his (the Duke of Wel- 

 lington's) strength, and well does he know how to profit by them. Besides, 

 he is in the " forlorn hope/' and we may calculate upon a proportionate 

 measure of that daring and perseverance for which his character is, I rather 

 think, somewhat fuller security than for his conversion to a reformer. It 

 is his last throw. Such a man could never have taken office at such a mo- 

 ment without a determined design of sapping the bulwarks of the Reform 

 Bill. To my fellow-countrymen I would say, whether this man be first 

 minister or second, whoever of his associates come into power, whatever 

 their ostensible policy, he is still the presiding genius. Let us, then, reject 

 his promises, and despise his gifts ; if not, the wooden horse is already 

 within the walls. We have more to dread in Sinon than in the whole 

 force of the Greeks. We can have no good hope in any man's entire aban- 

 donment of his principles ; and an entire and unreserved change of the 

 whole morale of this individual is necessary to render him a trust-worthy 

 apostle of his new profession. Where, in history, have we one instance of 

 such political conversion, and how many others must have been t( obedient 

 to the heavenly vision," before his Cabinet can satisfy the people? Look 

 to his past measures, and opinions, and speeches; his sayings and his 

 doings in the Cabinet and out ; and if character is to go for any thing, let 

 us ponder on what we have to expect from so sudden a transformation be 

 yond the grand climateric. If we are not under the spell of the " Weird 

 Sisters," we ought to have a pretty shrewd guess of what is to be hoped 

 from a chief actor at the Holy Alliance, the defender of the Pension-List, 

 the stickler for Mother Church, the tooth-and-nail adversary of the Reform 

 Bill to the eleventh hour, the advocate of rotten boroughs, the chief 

 mourner for Don Miguel and the King of Holland, the traducer of the Dis- 

 senters, the opponent of the Irish Temporalities Bill, the Irish tithe co- 

 ercer, the enemy of Corporation Reform and Negro Emancipation, the eu- 

 logist of Austria, &c. &c. Can we suppose that the man who has given us 

 one coup de grace will not repeat the stroke if he can ? And, if at such a 

 time as this, when by ordinary firmness we may give him an easy over- 

 throw, we are slack, and split upon punctilios, and squabble with our best 

 friends, and so surrender to the wily] adversary the " Vantage ground, 

 what may not be feared when he has had time to fortify that ground, and 

 to swell the number of his forces by deserters from our camp?" 



