378 Proceedings of the British Parliament. [APRIL, 



be approached, after all, the qualification being, that the approach be 

 made with delicacy ?" We hope that we are not misunderstanding the 

 Right Honourable Gentleman ; but more is to be said still. " An 

 enlarged view is to be taken of the effect of an unequal distribution of 

 that revenue upon the promotion of learning and religion." Then 

 comes a clause, which we must not pretend to explain. The Commis- 

 sion is to extend to " several other details/' We have heard of an oath 

 with an fc et ccetera," and have heard also of the postscript of ladies' 

 letters containing the marrow of the correspondence ; and these 

 ", several other details" appear to us of much the same comprehensive 

 nature. Yet the Minister's justification of his Irish measure, by the 

 commission lately issued on the English Ecclesiastical Law, seems to us 

 the worst part of the business. No man could know better that the 

 English commission strictly referred to the cure of those delays and 

 expensive formalities in the Ecclesiastical courts, which were, in every 

 sense of the word, a nuisance ; and which every man, who wished well 

 to the course of justice, must desire to see abolished. The attempt to 

 found the extraordinary measure of bringing the Irish church on its trial 

 before a ministerial jury, on the merits of a limited measure required by 

 public justice and personal convenience, is but we shall be con- 

 tent with saying, that it is of a piece with the diplomacy of the Minister. 



To turn to Foreign Politics. The French Chambers have exhibited 

 so refractory a spirit, that their session has been suddenly prorogued. 

 Their outcry was for the dismissal of Prince Polignac, and that, chiefly 

 on the ground that he had been appointed at the suggestion of the 

 British premier. Whether the charge be true or false, its popularity 

 shews the light in which our cabinet has contrived to place itself with 

 the influential part of the French people. And this disgust is the more 

 remarkable, from the recent advances to a more friendly intercourse 

 between the French and English generally, and from the obvious 

 importance of the close connexion of the two Governments, as the bar- 

 riers against the hourly growing and formidable ambition of Russia. 



But it is among Englishmen themselves that the liberties of their 

 country, and eventually of Europe, must find their security, or be 

 undone. With freedom in the people, and honesty in the Government, 

 the British Empire is impregnable ; with corruption and the spirit of 

 place in the people, and with artifice and dissimulation in the govern- 

 ment, the strength of Britain must be but a rope of sand. No matter for 

 its show of strength, the more gigantic its defences against the enemy 

 abroad, the more surely will they fall by their own weight, and crush its 

 defenders at home. The future projects of the cabinet we can have no 

 power to restrain ; we have scarcely the means to conjecture. But let 

 them be what they will, we must adhere to the one grand and saving 

 maxim, that upon the national virtue must, in the last resort of every 

 people, depend the national salvation. 



