1831.] The Dissolution of Parliament. 475 



a public speaker, at the end of his first sentence. His very figure 

 could be atoned for by nothing but the most remarkable brilliancy of 

 powers. Meagre, mean, obscure-looking, and awkward, Lord John 

 Russell creates a prejudice at first sight, against every topic which he 

 touches ; and it may be pronounced as a House of Commons maxim, that 

 if you want to turn a promising motion into disgrace, you cannot trust 

 it into better hands than this little lord's. His only redeeming quality 

 is his diligence ; and yet, by the ill-luck that belongs to his nature, 

 this very quality only enlarges and gives publicity to his exposure. It 

 has urged him to try his pen at a novel, and thereby prove that he 

 could turn romance into dreary insipidity. It has urged him to write 

 a history, and thereby shew that he could make the most stirring epoch of 

 English liberty as tiresome as an old chronicle. It has urged him to the 

 drama, and thereby displayed a talent for alternate bombast and buf- 

 foonery, that would have been enough to have brought a better man 

 than Don Carlos to the block. 



And it was to this personage, to whose advocacy, as Heaven shall 

 help the cause, we would not have trusted the interests of a lame 

 chicken, that Lord Grey trusted the " grand measure," the " great, 

 healing, essential, vital measure of Reform !" Lord Grey is old, but 

 he is not yet either deaf or blind. All men know that, if it were the 

 object of a minister to destroy a public measure, it would be by the 

 double contrivance of decoying away an able advocate, and saddling it 

 with an incapable one. We see the precise steps taken, and for our 

 souls we cannot conceive any other cause for those steps, unless we are 

 to believe that Lord Grey has ceased to be the cold and subtle calculator 

 that he was through life, and has sunk at a moment into good faith and 

 dotage. 



There can be nothing now more unquestionable than that the public 

 opinion previously to the actual announcement of the Bill in the House, 

 was that the minister was only manosuvring to get rid of an incumbrance. 

 The common phrase in the clubs was, " Oh ! now that he has got rid of 

 Brougham, he will slip his neck out of the collar, bring in some milk 

 and water measure, and let the House dispose of it to its satisfaction." 

 Those surmises were so universal and so notorious, that nobody can now 

 doubt nor deny them. But the measure came in at last ; and to the as- 

 tonishment of the kingdom, parliament had never witnessed a proposi- 

 tion so outrageously radical in every point. Even radicalism itself 

 shrunk from it. Blacking Hunt protested against it, as going too far. 

 Queen Caroline's Sir Robert, every man who had prided himself on be- 

 ing deep in the spirit of the rabble, either desired " time to consider," 

 and waited " to see how the Bill would come out of the committee," or 

 gave some such sign of surprise at the enormity of the measure. Then 

 too, let us look at the rationality of supposing that it could ever be car- 

 ried in the existing House of Commons. The first thing it was to do, 

 was to cut away the seats of sixty-eight members. Will any man in his 

 senses believe that Lord Grey introduced this clause, with the slightest 

 expectation that the Bill would pass, with such a clause in it ? It may be 

 so, for we must leave the fathoming of Lord Grey's conceptions to him- 

 self. But we know, that if it were our purpose to have a Bill inevitably 

 thrown over the bar, we should conceive the introduction of such a 

 clause to be an infallible expedient. We cannot get rid of the con- 

 clusion. 



3 P 2 



