Proceedings of the British Parliament. 371 



to which a man may turn his experience. The premier knows that no 

 man fights with such reckless fidelity as the deserter. He has secured 

 them by bonds, stronger to such men, than chains of iron. If they do 

 not serve him through all extremities, whom can they now be suffered 

 to serve ? Can they take refuge from the bitterest scorn of their master, 

 or from the most repugnant work of his passions or his caprice, in the 

 lines of any portion of the commonwealth ? Which of them can go 

 back to Protestantism and the Constitution, with a chance of being 

 suffered even to hide their heads among the most obscure of the friends 

 of the British empire ? Can we imagine any man of them, however 

 self-condemned, and heart sick of the military insolence of head- 

 quarters, venturing to cross the House, and daring to supplicate for- 

 giveness, much less confidence, from the supporters of the Constitution ? 

 As well might Verres have returned to Sicily. 



But the first measure was complete in its kind. The Premier had got a 

 cabinet, such as he could have got no where else, and had tied and bound 

 them to his fortunes by a remorseless self-interest. His next purpose 

 is to get a parliament as remorselessly bound. How this is to be effected 

 is not for us to tell ; but we will forfeit every claim to public reliance, 

 if the Premier shall be defeated on the most trivial point of any 

 measure on which it pleases him to express his sovereign will, until the 

 last breath has gone forth from the lips of the present parliament. 



Had this servility any share of the deferential homage paid to 

 great ability in council ? Have the minds of those men been prostrated 

 before some of those illustrious emanations of consulting wisdom, or 

 dazzled by the sudden flashes of that intellectual brilliancy which pene- 

 trates through the clouds and obscurity of the Commonwealth, and 

 makes the national hemisphere thenceforth clear and open ? We con- 

 fess, in the most perfect sincerity, that we can discover nothing of these 

 palliatives that the idol has exhibited no power which should entitle 

 him to the worship even of such men. We call upon the most 

 strenuous advocates of the Minister, to point out to us any one act of 

 polity, foreign or domestic, which proves a leading mind. 



What is the state of our foreign relations ? At the death of Mr. 

 Canning, little more than three years ago, England was, unquestionably, 

 at the head of Europe ; all the great questions were submitted to her 

 as by right ; she was the supreme arbiter, whose suggestions passed for 

 law ; the paramount state, whose friendship was regarded as the first step 

 to security, and from whose displeasure the proudest state on the con- 

 tinent would have shrunk, as from something scarcely less than certain 

 ruin. But what is her situation now ? Russia is incontestibly at the head 

 of European affairs ; and the whole of that influence which the policy of 

 Pitt and his successors had conquered from mankind, by sagacious 

 counsel, by indefatigable effort, by generous hazards for all, and by the 

 still nobler instrumentality of labours for the diffusion of moral wisdom 

 and political benevolence through the civilized world, is transferred to 

 the brute supremacy of arms ; to a power, reigning over deserts and half 

 savages, remote from the intelligent part of Europe, almost relegated 

 by a decree of nature into barbarism, the last land to which a philoso- 

 pher would have turned his glance for the sparkling of that crown 

 which was to lord it over the jewelled diadems of Europe; Russia has been 

 suddenly brought forward into the centre of continental interests ; and 

 .the throne of England, magnificent with the spoils of a thousand years 



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