& New Parliament. [Juny, 
late hours hazard the health, and perhaps altogether exclude the atten 
dance of some of your ablest members. e 
Of the Peers we say nothing. They have long been termed an hos- 
pital of incurables ; and every year or two brings a fresh accession of 
invalids. Strenuously as‘ they resist ‘ encroachments,’ no men better 
understand how to také a signal from the ministry. We only venture to 
suggest a resignation of the right of proxy, which surely is one of the 
grossest insults to common sense that ever was offered to an intelligent 
community. é 
This, then, is what the nation wants. This is the reform to which its 
efforts, open and covert, are tending to accomplish. This is what the 
common and cultivated sense of the country requires,—what the uni- 
versal interests of the community demand, from a constitution existing, 
if not instituted, for the very purpose of securing those interests. 
Well, this, it may be said, is perhaps sound and unexceptionable 
theory enough. Looking to the country as a community associating 
together for mutual advantage, such a scheme is congruous and con- 
sistent enough. But as things are now and have long been established, 
so extensive—not to say extravagant—a change, will occasion great 
and alarming derangements. An adjustment on these speculative prin- 
ciples must be attended with serious inconveniences, and therefore you 
must make out a strong, an imperative, an unanswerable case. Agreed ; 
and no difficulty have we. We appeal to the actual condition of the 
state. To say no more of the inequalities of representation, which we, 
however, deem a serious evil even independent of its direct conse- 
quences—Look at the state of our finances—a debt of eight hundred 
millions, an éstablishment of twenty, with a taxation of fifty-seven. 
Look at the unequal pressure of that taxation, thrown, not upon pro- 
perty, but upon consumption—sparing the. wealthy, and crushing the 
indigent. Look at the corn-laws favouring the landlord—at the pro- 
tecting-acts favouring the manufacturer—at the Bank, East-India, and 
other monopolies favouring the merchant, and all at the expense of ge- 
neral interests. Look at the condition of Ireland—poverty-struck by its 
blessed union with our generous selves—the few mercilessly tyran- 
nizing over the many—a handful of presuming bigots empowered to 
dragoon a nation for cherishing the best and dearest feelings of their 
souls. Look at the crown-lands, equal to the production of a million or 
a million and a half of revenue, returning not £10,000 perhaps—the 
advantage falling to the lot of favorites, and the loss made up at the 
expence of the community, Look at the general state of the laws— 
our criminal code, made for ene condition of society and administered 
to another; here unwisely severe, and there as unwisely indulgent; 
full of ‘obsolete but: unrepealed enactments, ever and anon started 
to life again by some ferreting lawyer, to the surprise of the judges and 
the perversion of justice ; insolvent laws confounding debt with crime, and 
‘misfortune or imprudence with guilt; game-laws to protect the amuse- 
ments of one class to the temptation and destruction of another; and 
smuggling-acts to oblige the manufacturer and monopolist, under the 
‘guisé of protecting the revenue :—our common-law untraceable or 
fluctuating, filling the purses of the profession, or by ‘its costly forms 
closing the doors upon justice herself; and our equity courts proverbially 
and exasperatingly ruinous. Look at our prisons—after all the painful 
