4T2 Histoiy of the English Landed Interest. 



minster Hall. But Topling, amongst many other financial 

 experts of the time, remembered that the deviation from this 

 principle had been aj^parently attended with the utmost suc- 

 cess. He therefore produced in a lengthy treatise " A Plan 

 for the Grovernment of the Currency." We have no space to 

 examine in detail his arguments, but suffice it to say that they 

 were adversely criticised by the reviewers, and almost entirely 

 ignored by the two rival interests.^ 



The time for academical discussion had gone by, and war to 

 the knife seemed the only course open to a community thus 

 impassioned. Apart from any speculation on its wisdom, the 

 determined attitude of the Tories at this crisis commands 

 the greatest respect. The old fighting seignorial blood of the 

 landed gentry was up, and they were determined to resist the 

 sequestration of their privileges as long as resistance was 

 possible. Only as a last desperate resource would they in 

 their dire distress occasionally look to the Whigs to construct 

 for them a bridge over which they might retire to a more 

 tenable position. But in the days immediately succeed- 

 ing the Manchester tragedy, while Lord John Russell was 

 suggesting a compromise which satisfied neither party, the 

 Tories were still acting on the aggressive, and by means of 

 the Six Acts, were vainly endeavouring to prevent the re- 

 petition of an expression of public opinion such as had just 

 strengthened their opponents' cause. " It is impossible," said 

 the Whig leader, '"not to see that there are two parties 

 dividing the country — both greatly exasperated, and both 

 going to extremes ; the one making unlimited demands, and 

 the other meeting them with total and peremptory denial ; 

 the one ready to encounter any hazard for unknown benefits, 

 the other ready to sacrifice lor present security those privi- 

 leges which our ancestors thought cheaply purchased with 

 their blood." ^ The sympathies of the Whigs with Conserva- 

 tive j)rinciples betray themselves in this timid speech of Lord 

 John Russell's at the very moment that their fear of the de- 



' Quarterly Review, sub vuc. " Savings Banks and Country Banks," 

 1825, p. 143. 

 ^ History of the Radical Party in Parliament, p. 139. Harris. 



