4138 
the throne, consider the people to be 
the nation, and the functionaries their 
responsible trustees ; and contend there- 
fore for the right of choosing, for them- 
selves, those representatives or deputies, 
who are to be entrusted with the pro- 
tection of their persons, properties, and 
privileges, and with the enforcement of 
that responsibility without which the offi- 
cial functionaries, they contend, instead 
of trustees, must inevitably become their 
task-masters.* But although each of 
these three distinct parties have long had 
a voice, though not an equal one, in what 
may.be called the Lower-House represen- 
tation of the diurnal and weekly press, 
yet in the Upper Assembly of Periodical 
Criticism the oracles of the two former, 
till very lately, have alone been heard, 
The desideratum in the periodical re- 
presentation of the political mind of the 
country is now, however, supplied by 
The Westminster Review, which has 
boldly commenced its censorial opera- 
tions, by arraigning the conduct, and 
analyzing the principles of its elder 
competitors, previous to its own intru- 
sion into that publicity of station in 
which, heretofore, its antagonists had 
claimed an exclusive, and, if the West- 
minster Reviewer can make his grounds 
of accusation good, in some degree a 
collusive rivalry. 
Under the head of periodical litera- 
ture (Arr. IX. of the fourth number, 
published in October), the Westminster 
thus characterizes its two aristocratical 
opponents,—the courtly, and the tempo- 
rizing; or, in other words, the Quarterly 
and Edinburgh Reviews. 
“ Agreeing in subservience to all those- 
motives which spring from the importunate 
demand of immediate success, and to all 
those which spring from the important cir- 
cumstance of their being addressed chiefly 
to the aristocracy, and aiming chiefly at 
* We have made no mention of the hack- 
nied distinctions of Whig and Tory, because 
in fact those distinctions seem to be going 
almost as much out of fashion in phraseology 
as they long have been in practical relation 
to the essentials of political principle. ’ 
Among those who still affect to call them- 
selves Whigs, there are some who, in point 
of sentiment, belong, more or less, to each’ 
of the three classes above enumerated. And, 
as for Tory, the only distinguished politician, 
whom we remember, for along time, to have 
taken to himself that name, is Sir Francis 
Burdett ; and his acknowledgment of such 
an appellation is, of itself, sufficient argu- 
ment of its total inapplicability, as a dis- 
tinction, to any subject whichis, in the pre- 
sent state ‘of affairs, of any vital import- 
anee, in political discussion. 
Philosophy of Contemporary Criticism.—No. XX XIX. 
[ Dee. I, 
their approbation and applause, the Edin 
burgh and Quarterly Reviews differed, we 
saw, in their being addressed to different 
sections of the aristocracy, the one to the 
section of the ministerialists, the other to 
the section of the oppositionists. We shall 
see, by the examination of the Quarterly 
Review, which wen ow propose to institute, 
to what divergence in their lines of opera+ 
tion, and what diversity of artifice, this ori- 
ginal difference gives occasion.” 
The writer of the article in question, 
however, admits that 
“ There are other differences of some im- 
portance, which are rather to be regarded. 
as incidental. The Quarterly Review (says 
he) has always displayed much more of the 
character of a bookseller’s catchpenny, than 
the Edinburgh. Its main resources have 
been books of travels, and books of poetry 
and amusement. Books of travels are re- 
gularly pillaged of all that is most entertain- 
ing in them, to make compilations,” &e. 
‘“‘ A majority of the articles in the Edin- 
burgh Review proves that they are from 
men with ideas; men of stored and culti- 
vated minds, even when the reasonings they. 
employ are fallacious, and the. conclusions 
to be rejected. An article to which similar 
praise can be applied, rarely, and at long 
intervals, appears in the Quarterly Review. 
The writers in that journal are almost 
wholly of two sorts, compilers from books, 
of travels, and mere Jittérateurs, men who 
almost rank with the lowest class of arti- 
zans ; who know little of literature, but the 
merely mechanical part ; whose highest am- 
bition is that of polishing a sentence; and 
who, feeling themselves incapable of making 
any impression by the weight and import- 
ance of their ideas, are perpetually on-the 
strain to do so by mere language, pomp and 
glitter of expression. We remark another, 
and still more radical difference between the 
Edinburgh and Quarterly Review. There 
is something in the writers in the Edin- 
burgh Review, at least some of the most 
distinguished of them, which shews that 
they are fit for, and have a leaning towards 
better things, even when they are lending 
themselves to the sinister interest which 
assails them. They do not indeed attempt 
to go before the public mind, to take the 
lead of it; and by doing so, to hasten its 
progress; they are too much afraid of 
losing favour to adventure any thing like 
this. But no sooner do they perceive a 
turning in the public mind towards any 
thing that is good, than they are commonly 
ready to fall in with the happy current, and 
have often lent to it additional velocity and 
force, The writers in the Quarterly Review 
pursue the directly opposite course. They 
seem to watch the earliest symptoms of any’ 
tendency in the public mind towards im- 
provement in any shape, in order to fall 
upon it with determined hostility.”” 
How far we agree with our Westmin- 
ster contemporary in. these discrimina-: 
tions, 
