]829.] The Forli/ Shilling Freeholders. 



on record — with the perfidy, furious passions, and irreconcilable 

 ambition, of the popish faction before their eyes, a majority of one 

 hundred and five English peers voted for the admission of papists into 

 the making of laws for Protestants ! The deed is done, and may God 

 forgive those by whom it was done. But we would not take the lot of 

 those by whom that deed was done, for the empire of mankind. They 

 have, in the dearth of all other means, attained at least one way of 

 making themselves remembered ; and the perpetrators of that deed, will 

 be marked to the last hour of England. 



It has been tauntingly said, that the predictions of the honourable 

 and manly portion of the Legislature have not been realized ; and that no 

 " earthquake has hitherto shaken the land." To the taunters we truly 

 reply, that the moral earthquake, a thousand times worse than the physical, 

 has come akeady — that there has been a shock of public reliance on 

 public men, that will never be recovered — tliat the name is now held to 

 be identified with desperate and selfish covetousness of power in the high, 

 and with desperate and selfish covetousness of place and profit in the low ; 

 — that the whole ancient spirit of respect for leaders is utterly vanished, 

 and the very sound of political profession, received with an indignant 

 smile — that contempt, deep, and solemn contempt, sits in the place of con- 

 fidence ; and that the whole mighty multitude of the religious, the rational, 

 and the patriotic, disgusted to the soul with the conduct of all parties alike, 

 are ready to take refuge in any new expedient v/hich gives a chance of 

 restoring the British Constitution. This great portion of the empire had, 

 from the beginning, looked with reluctance on the borough system and 

 the influence of Government in sending members to the legislature ; 

 but the unlicensed rage of democracy in France, compelled them to 

 suppress their reluctance, through the fear of exciting tumult within 

 their own borders. The obvious evils of the system were endured, in 

 preference to the possible excesses of a change. They looked to, at least, 

 one branch of our legislature, for the security of the Constitution. This 

 feeling has now been extinguished in an extraordinary degree. Blen of the 

 first rank have openly declared themselves ready to welcome " Radical 

 Reform." The most capricious ideas of change have been asserted to 

 be preferable to the system under which influence is now exercised ; and 

 it has been unhesitatingly received by millions of the nation, that if 

 Universal Suffrage were the law of election ; if the choice of the multi- 

 tude, head by head, had sent their representatives to parliament, the 

 popish question would have been trampled under foot, with the indig- 

 nation that belonged to an avowed " breaking in upon the Constitution." 

 Henceforth, if any great public emergency should arise — and who, in the 

 perpetual contingencies of human affairs, can doubt that such will arise ? — 

 the ancient strong hold will be no more — the embarrassments of authority, 

 will be no longer healed by the generous and willing interposition of the 

 people — ^the penitence of public men will be scoffed at — the principles of 

 ministers will be an object of incurable distrust; and the appeal to the 

 old and ardent feelings which so often rescued the State, will be 

 answered by pointing to a legislature polluted by the footsteps of 

 papists ; and asking, whether it is to perpetuate idolatry, and the power 

 of idolaters, that English Protestants are to peril their properties and 

 lives ? We may live to see the trial made ; and as sure as there is a 

 Heaven above us, those who abetted the "Atrocious Bill," those who either 

 seduced othei's into the measure, or suffered themselves to be seduced. 



