THE 



j MONTHLY MAGAZINE : 



OP 

 POLITICS, LITERATURE, AND THE BELLES LETTRES. 



VOL. IX.] MAY, 1830. [No. 53. 



THE SESSION OF PARLIAMENT. 



THE national opinion of Parliament has for many years been settled. 

 We must speak of its original purposes with the homage due to a great 

 instrument of the Constitution ; of its former efforts, with the admiration 

 due to the highest powers of the human mind exerted for the highest pur- 

 poses of empire and liberty ; and of its present state as the place of se- 

 curity against arrest, the place of oratory to the Whittle Harveys and the 

 Humes, and the place of emolument and proh nefas! of power to the 

 Peels, the Herrieses, and the Goulburns. We must bear with those things. 

 The nation may yet see a change, and we shall rejoice when the time 

 comes. But whether the Nation deserves to see that change ; or whether 

 the "progeniem daturi vitiosiorem" be not the natural destiny of the British 

 empire henceforth, are questions on which we choose to give no opinion. 

 One point, however, is clear that the direction of the public mind has 

 been invested in authorities of another class than the formal harangues 

 of St. Stephen's j that the arena of all the great questions is now in 

 the public journals and periodical writings ; and that men glance over 

 the parliamentary articles without much more reverence for the mini- 

 sterial speeches than for the ministerial character. 



There never has been a session in which more important concerns 

 seemed to urge themselves upon the Legislature. Distress, undeniable 

 and extensive, among the most intelligent and active part of the English 

 population ; the manufacturers sinking into rapid pauperism ; agriculture 

 dejected; our foreign concerns in a state of singular confusion. Yet, what 

 has been done to meet those difficulties ? What display of legislative 

 wisdom has been made ? What great measure of manliness and know- 

 ledge has been put in act by the Ministry ? Nothing. Things have been 

 left to themselves. The manufacturers have been told that they are 

 without remedy, and are not starving, as they had the presumption to 

 suppose ; the agriculturists, that they are without remedy ; the foreign 

 concerns of England have been left to struggle as they may : Turkey is 

 dismembered : Russia is raised to a height of power which, as sure as 

 there is a sky above us, will, before the next generation, come down like 

 an avalanche on the pride of England. Portugal, almost a British province 

 by the wise policy of our former Governments, is at this hour almost an 

 enemy's country by the feebleness and palsy of our present one. The 



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