1831.] England at the Close of 1831. 593 



discharged labour; and for this the nation would gladly see the 

 Exchequer make its disbursements on no restricted scale. The opening 

 of new markets for our manufactures has been the boast of successive 

 administrations ; but nothing could have been a feebler policy. It 

 tended only to swell the number of the artizans at home. If, while it 

 forced the existing artizans only to move perpetual labour — if the pro- 

 cess had gone on, until the demand of foreign markets had turned every 

 man in England into a cloth-weaver — would the nation have been the 

 happier for it ? or rather, in what would it have differed from a collection 

 of culprits in the dungeon ? And this tread-mill prosperity would have 

 as rapidly extinguished the public spirit, as it would the personal com- 

 fort of the Enghsh people. The true policy then must be to restore 

 the people to that health of body and health of mind, which belong to 

 simple and natural occupation ; to give up the feeble and narrow 

 policy of urging the manufacturing career of England ; to think it 

 better to have, as of old, a nation of hardy yeomen, than a nation of 

 weavers ; to make agriculture the leading pursuit of the people ; and 

 leave machinery to work its way, and relieve human beings of the 

 miserable drudgery which perverts alike the mind and the frame of man. 



In agriculture there is room for all the population which machinery 

 can set free. There are a million of acres in England which might be 

 located with the happiest effect. In Ireland upwards of one third of 

 the whole surface, has been given over to utter neglect ; though every 

 square foot of that surface could provide for human life. Two thirds 

 of Scotland are uncultivated. The system of large farms, and the 

 enclosure of commons, is now beginning to be justly reprobated ; the 

 spade husbandry is done justice to, the allotment of gardens to cottages, 

 and the revival of the whole cottage system, are signs of a return to the 

 sound views of our ancestors ; and the time which sees England once 

 more what it was — the land of rural life — will alone see it the land of 

 peace, patriotism, and loyalty. 



Parliament meets on the 6th, the ministry are pledged to bring in a 

 Reform Bill, and to the same extent as the last one ; but with some 

 modifications required by their experience of the national feeling. 

 The future we must leave to settle itself; and imtil the Bill actually 

 makes its appearance, it must be idle to offer remarks on it. But the 

 popular violence on the subject must render all grave deliberation ten- 

 fold more difficult than before. 



It is not our purpose now to more than advert to the Bristol confla- 

 grations. Their atrocity has roused the fears of all rational men for the 

 results of any opinions, which, whether well-intentioned or ill, suffer 

 the people at large to erect themselves into either a legislative or an 

 executive. To Parliament alone the nation must look for council, and to 

 the King alone for putting that council into act. Deliberation is beyond 

 the physical means of a mob, if it were not beyond their legislative 

 capacity. Even where the multitude come together, with the best in- 

 tentions, they will be infected by the presence of ruffians, who care no 

 more for political objects than for personal honesty, and who can con- 

 template nothing in such meetings but their opportunities of rapine. 

 The Bristol reformers throw the whole guilt of the late melancholy 

 and criminal transactions upon the common thieves, who haunt every 

 city. Some inquiry must take place ; and it will then be seen how far 

 politics mingled with the rage for phijider, burning, and bloodshed. 



The foreign affairs of England still linger on. Belgium is still un- 



