PUBLIC OPINION. , 417 



whatever measures are proposed will be merely opportunities for the 

 display of factious rancour ; and thus, in place of the interests of the 

 nation being attended to, a wordy warfare will occupy the session. 

 But this ought not to be. We have had plenty of talking during 

 the last two sessions, to serve us for an age at least. We want 

 business we wish to see the energies of the house of represen- 

 tatives devoted to nobler purposes than vituperation and empty 

 declamation. We want the great principles of Reform worked 

 out in a salutary fashion, and the defects existing in our social 

 system amended by the hands of temperate and rational men. 



It is to this we would direct public opinion ; we would withdraw it 

 from extremes. The Tory party, whether sincere or not in its pro- 

 fessions, cannot claim our confidence. Suspicion must ever haunt its 

 steps. We cannot believe that man's prejudices, views, and ideas 

 of polity can undergo a change so decided, and at once, as the 

 leaders of the Tory party would fain have us think that theirs have 

 done. The 



*' veteris vestigia flammae" 



must be stamped deep in their hearts, and they must ever have a ten- 

 dency to retrograde. Office may be to them the perfection of human 

 happiness, but if held under the surveillance of a suspicious House, 

 they must be sighing for other and by- gone times 



" Te tenet absentes alios suspirat amores." 



If a Tory government be thus unfit to cope with existing diffi- 

 culties, a Whig-Radical administration is equally objectionable. 

 We have seen the fate of the Melbourne Cabinet ; we shall see a 

 similar catastrophe if it be re-modelled. The whole weight of the 

 Church and the Aristocracy must, for years to come, hamper the 

 energies of such a Cabinet : it is in vain to mouth about the matter ; 

 it is so. If popular opinion could be bound down to the chariot- 

 wheels of such a government, the vox populi might and would keep 

 it in motion. This cannot be. 



" An habitation giddy and unsure " 



have they who place reliance upon the multitude. 



The great objection to a Whig-Radical government however is, 

 that it cannot command the support of the intelligence of the king- 



M.M. No. 4. 3 H 



