J 829.] England and Europe. 493 



within three months, of that ministry, for which he was even at that hour 

 straining every nerve. But v/ords, though tossed to the winds by the 

 man who spoke them, rapidly and fatally verified for the empire. 



All was overlooked ; and the premiership in the hands of the Duke of 

 Wellington was hailed as the assurance of a return to the old noble 

 principles of Englishmen. The trickeries of the miserable race gone 

 by Avere to be expunged from the ways of public men. Government 

 was not to be, in either its men or its measures, a vulgar imitation of the 

 machinery and mimics of a Christmas pantomime — transformations from 

 black to white, and adroit freaks of a harlequin, who had gained all 

 his object, when his mummery was honoured with the laugh of the 

 House ! pasteboard heroism, and clap-trap dignity, were to be at an end ; 

 and the country was to contemplate the work of substantial vigour and 

 substantial virtue. 



Among the highest sources of congratulation on the change, was the 

 perfect assurance that the Popish demands would now at last be treated 

 with the contempt that they so richly merited. We had found a premier, 

 whose popular strength was so palpable, that he must scorn the purchase 

 of faction ; who had seen the wretchedness and ruin of foreign countries 

 laider Popery ; whose own efforts had been perpetually paralyzed by the 

 gross superstitions, or insolent repugnance of popery ; and who, when 

 by the lavish waste of English blood the invader had been driven from 

 the Peninsula, saw his successes rendered nugatory by the worse enemy 

 that he had left behind ; had seen Spain, flung by the priesthood into the 

 hands of France ; the king whom we had restored, all but unfurling the 

 standard against us ; and the brave men who had fought side by side 

 with us for that restoration, flying to overtake our march, as a refuge 

 from popish persecution, and begging their bread through the world. 

 But the conviction was founded on more than circumstantial evidence. 

 The words of the Duke of Wellington were on record. In the debate 

 of 1827, he pronounced unequivocallj^, that the admission of a Papal 

 influence into any protestant state, was incompatible with its security, 

 and that " all his foreign experience had taught him that no sovereign 

 " even of a Roman Catholic country, Avas enabled to govern his people, 

 " without the aid of the Pope !" — At that hour he was prepaiing to carry 

 the Catholic question ! ! 



It is but a dreary task to follow the course of this policy through its 

 long and subterranean windings ; we must leave to others the develop- 

 ment of the melancholy mortality of public character ; but for those who 

 can be indulged by calculating how rapidly the frame and substance of 

 human fame may sink into a mass of decay and repulsiveness to man, 

 we knoAV no more comprehensive lesson than the past and present esti- 

 mate of the premier. Two years ago, his was the most honoured name 

 in England. On the continent his reputation was scarcely inferior. 

 And what is he now .'' The accomplice of the Peels and Dawsons. 



The artifice of the system which was to force the " Atrocious Bill" vi])on 

 the nation, has long been exposed ; and it is the last bitter triumph of the 

 friends of the Constitution, that the artifice has rewarded its inventors 

 only with utter disappointment ; that the sufferance of Popish faction by 

 the English cabinet, has only accumulated their public difticulties ; that 

 while it has not added a single poj)is]i shilling to the struggling finance, nor 

 a single popish heart to the loyalty of the empire ; while it lias, on the 

 contrary, given that confidence to faction which brawlers and pretended 



