a a ee 
6 Topic of the Month. 
. For the Monihly Magazine. 
_. TOPIC OF THE MON TH. 
: _ The Session of Parliament, 
‘ seen are two months in the 
’ year in which the British public 
have no room for seleeting the topic 
‘which shall be most interesting to 
them: these are the months in which 
the Senate begins and ends its annual 
Jabours. ‘To the one event we all look 
forward with the fondest hope. But 
‘almost in the same proportion that we 
Jook forward to the coming session 
with hope, we regularly look back 
upon the past one with disappoint- 
ment. We find that all those plans and 
promises, which look so fair and so 
fascinating at a distance, deccive us 
when they como near: like the devils 
in Milton’s hell, we snatch the apples 
fondly from the tree, but, like as they 
‘did, we find in ovr mouths nothing 
hut soot and cinders. We are like 
pilgrims travelling across the wide 
and thirsty desert of Sabara,—parched 
and: impoverished, worn out with 
fatigue, and wasted with thirst,—we 
Took toward every point of the inter- 
aminable horizon: we gaze upon the 
thirsty and unprofitable sand, and the 
fondness of our gaze converts it into a 
Tand, green with all the richness of 
vegetation, and lovely with streains of 
Jiving water: we hurry forward,—our 
hearts gain new life, and our limbs 
new strength; but the treacherous 
‘Paradise elides on before us: we 
xppreach the place where the date and 
the palm seemed to expand their 
-shade and display their clusters, and 
where the fountain seemed to send 
forth its stream; but, alas! the 
treacherous cnjoyments are still at a 
‘distance; they hang upon the verge of 
a horizon as remote as before: we 
‘ehace them, but they come not near, 
—ibe sun changes his position ; they 
are gone; and the darkness sets around 
ws upon one unbroken expanse of 
sterility. 
There is, as says Holy Writ, “a 
delay of hope which maketh the heart 
‘sick ;” and perhaps the sickness is not 
‘so speedy or so sore in any way as in 
Ahat of a political opposition. When 
the crown has so much inflaenc> as in 
this eountry,—when the underlings of 
‘office arc, as with us, so widely spread, 
'__when’ they meet a man at every 
turning “ef fife, and come, like the 
frogs in the land of Nile, into his very 
‘bedchamber,—then it is almost out of 
i 
‘[Aug. 1, 
the power of human nature to be 
proof against them. The old members 
of the opposition died away, and were 
succeeded by those who had their 
birth and education in times less pure ; 
and this concurred to give to their re- 
sistance of the ministers more the 
appearance of a ~~ weapon-showing 
for the sake of name, than an ear- 
nest and determined battle for the 
good of their country. To add to the 
evil, the opposition have not, since the 
days of Fox, bad any body who could’ 
be called a leader, or almost any 
principle upon which they were cor- 
dially and thoroughly united. Their 
efforts were consequently reduced to 
those displays of eloyuence called 
“field-days,” something analogous to 
the “sham fights and reviews” in 
which our tradesmen and yeomen 
were in use to show-off daring the 
war, for the purpose of delighting the 
maids and matrons of eur towns and 
villages with scarlet cloth and glitter- 
ing steel; but which condaced to no 
purpose of national strength and nati- 
onal prosperity ;—nay, which rather 
weakened the nation, by distracting 
the attention of the people from their 
work, and by relaxing and consuming 
the sinews of war. During all this 
lime, however, the rallying point of 
the ministers continued as clear in 
their view as ever; and, though they 
wriggled along towards it by different 
tracks, and with varied bias, still they 
contrived to get to it by some means 
or other. At one point of their course 
they were wide of each other; and at 
another there was a collision: but 
they still contrived to convene and 
repose together at the end; and this 
very inertia of their’s,—which is no 
more am active force than the physical - 
inertia of bodies,—kept them steady 
intheir places; so that, upto the close - 
of the session of 1822, any change in — 
the system was rather a matter of 
imaginary hope than: of real expee- 
fation. 
Events, however, which had hap- 
pened after the close of that session, 
eave rise to fresh speculations, if not - 
to better hopes. He who was on alk ~ 
hands reckoned to be the great dead- © 
weight upon liberal poliey at home, and 
\-ho, by his familiarity with the kings’ 
and ministers of the Continental states, — 
and who, from the favour into which ~ 
he had gotten with them, was supposed 
tu desire most the assimilation of this_ 
, country | 
—<——_ 
