THE 



MONTHLY MAGAZINE. 



VOL. III.] JUNE, 1827. [No. 18. 



THE NEW MINISTRY. 



" When I said I would die a bachelor, I did never think I should live until I were married." 



SHAKSPKARE. 



ALL questions and all differences, public or private, during the last 

 month, have been merged in the grand political question Are the prin- 

 ciples upon which the new Government has been formed defensible, and 

 is that Government likely to continue ? We think that the Government is 

 likely to continue ; and, without laying claim to a much greater share of 

 foresight than belongs to ordinary people, we may afford to say that the 

 arrangements which have lately taken place have done any thing rather 

 than surprise us. The " impossibility " of a coalition between any two 

 political parties would scarcely ever strike us as a very decided bar to their 

 immediate junction and alliance. Indeed, we should rather be inclined, 

 generally, as soon as we began to hear that such a connexion was " unna- 

 tural" and " unprecedented," to conclude that it was known to be 

 resolved upon. But, besides the ready and ordinarily available manner of 

 effecting political alliances the sacrificing "principle" to "place" a 

 means of reconciling differences perhaps more objectionable as unjus- 

 tifiable in the parties using it, than as likely to be astonishing to thinking 

 people at large there was another course by which an alliance was capa- 

 ble of being agreed upon between Mr. Canning and the Whig members 

 who have lately gone over to his support, which was no way degrading to 

 either party as men of honour, and highly creditable to both as practical 

 politicians and men of business ; the Whigs might agree to sacrifice not 

 " principle to place," but angry recollections and party feelings to " prin- 

 ciple ;" and this is the course which, we think upon cool examination it 

 will be found that they have adopted. . 



The abandonment of a " declaration," however even although it be 

 an unwise one is not a deed which can be performed with perfect impu- 

 nity ; and, indeed, at first starting, it commonly exposes the malefactor- to 

 almost as much attack and ridicule as the desertion of a principle could GO. 



M. M. New Series. VOL. III. No. 18. 4 D 



