Whig ministry to obtain even moderate improvements, indulge in the hope that a Tory administration, in its anxiety to ingratiate itself with the people, would make concessions which Lord Melbourne and his colleagues either want the power or the inclination to effect. The Tories are willing enough to encourage an infatuation, by the aid of which alone they can hope for a return to power. But what are the concessions which from a Tory administration can be hoped for? Will they concede the ballot? Will they give municipal reform to Ireland? Will they establish a system of national education, from which all sects may derive benefit? Will they modify the corn laws? Will they abolish the rate-paying clauses of the Reform Act? Is there, in short, one single measure that the people would receive with thankfulness, that the Tories, while in opposition, have ever urged upon Government? and is it to be supposed, that when they have been lifted into power by the aid of Radical clamour, they will manifest greater sympathy for those, whom even now, when they need their succour, they never speak of in other terms than those of aversion and contempt ?

"Lowliness is young Ambition's ladder,

But when he once attains the upmost round,
He then unto the ladder turns his back,

Looks in the clouds, scorning the base degrees
By which he did ascend."

The Radicals are the ladder by which alone Toryism can mount into power; but let the upmost round be once gained, and the instrument of elevation will be indignantly spurned by the successful climber.

Again and again we would repeat it, think of the coming session but as a prelude to a general election, and muster for the fight, for on the struggle about to commence the weal or woe of our country will depend. If the Liberals be found divided among themselves, or if their zeal have cooled, the enemy may not indeed obtain a signal triumph, but the weak and vacillating character of the Government must continue, for the want of that support which the ministers of Victoria have never yet received from the people.

It is not, however, to the people alone that we would address our warning voice; ministers also must be up and stirring, if they would retrieve the ground they have lost in the confidence of their friends. They are anxious, we know, to appeal to the constituency of the country; but if in dissolving Parliament they choose no broad and comprehensive ground for their appeal, the issue of the trial cannot prove satisfactory. The bulk of our landed aristocracy are Tories, and our parochial clergy belong, with few exceptions, to the same party. The landlords and their clerical allies have countless means at their command to influence and intimidate the electors, and the latter cannot be expected to sacrifice their worldly interests without some intelligible object in view. Their zeal must be animated by the prospect of some decidedly popular measure, or they will scarcely brave the anger of those who have daily opportunities of inflicting injuries and withholding benefits. We have already said that the next general election cannot lead to satisfactory results, unless accompanied by the pressure of some strong popular excitement, and this it ought to be the aim of ministers to create by the proposal of a measure, the success of which all Liberals would by one consent declare worthy of a struggle. We know of but one measure, the announcement of which would unite the suffrages of the whole nation in its favour, and that measure ministers ought with the least possible delay to adopt as the palladium of their party-we mean the ballot. It has already been made an open question, and Lord Howick stands alone in his

eccentric opinion, that by making it an open question its eventual success has been rendered less probable. Lord Melbourne and Lord John Russell, we feel satisfied, are fully aware that the question has become one of time only, that it is one whose triumph may be delayed, but cannot be prevented. If so, is it the part of prudent statesmen to alienate or embarrass their own friends by throwing impediments in the way of a measure to which the affections of the whole country are indissolubly wedded? Let the ballot be made a cabinet question, and the cabinet that makes it so may fearlessly appeal to the people. The announcement of a bill to secure the independence of the elector by throwing the shield of secrecy over his vote, would rouse the country from one end to the other, and men would be as ready in 1840 as they were in 1831 to make personal sacrifices, when they felt that the prize to be contended for was worthy the efforts demanded of them.

If on the other hand, after floundering through a few unprofitable months, with a series of abortive measures, ministers venture to dissolve Parliament, what greater exertion can they expect from the constituency in 1840 than in 1837? Do they suppose that the éclat of the Queen's marriage will exercise any important influence on the constituency? Let them dismiss so visionary a hope. It is by the hope of future advantages, not by the recollections of past pageants, that large bodies must be stimulated to extraordinary exertion. In all small constituencies, as long as the open system of voting continues, electoral independence is not to be dreamt of; and the small constituencies are, in by far the greater number of instances, under Tory control. Numerous bodies of electors no doubt are in a position to exercise greater independence, but even of these there are few altogether beyond the reach of a little pestilential knot of local tyrants, who by well-combined measures have it in their power to offer much annoyance to their humbler neighbours. The moment any thing like public zeal or popular excitement is brought into play, all such vermin is immediately blown to the four quarters of heaven; but the return of calm weather allows them to gather again over the impure places, and this they never fail to do. That Whig landlords often exercise as much tyranny over their dependents as Tory landlords may be very true, though we do not believe it, for the sympathies of the people are so much more with those who are willing to abolish abuses than with those who cling to them, that a Whig landlord will less frequently have any inducement to play the tyrant over the political conscience of his tenants; but where a Whig landlord has the delicacy to abstain from all such objectionable interference, he often surrenders to worse tyranny those round whom his direct influence would act as a protection. The parson of the parish, the country attorney, the nearest justice of the peace, are in most instances in the interest of the enemy; and if a Whig landlord leaves his tenants to their unbiassed judgment, the minor instruments of oppression are ready to avail themselves of the opportunity to terrify the unprotected voter into their own fold.

All these active agents have been at work since 1831, to fashion the system introduced by the Reform Act to the same pernicious ends to which the old boroughmongering machinery was so long applied. It the meantime they have been seconded in their unholy endeavours by a power, which a few years ago no one would have expected ever to find enlisted in the cause of bigotry and political corruption. It is a most remarkable phenomenon, that the daily metropolitan press of England, which in 1830 seemed almost wholly devoted to the cause of public improvement, should since that period have passed almost wholly into the hands of those whose object it is to carry on the Government of the country for the benefit of an

exclusive caste.

This change has been gradual, but its consequences have been so momentous as well to merit a little attention at our hands.

There seems to be something monstrous in the spectacle of a free press prostituting its energies to the furtherance of a cause, the triumph of which would necessarily deprive that press of its freedom altogether; there is something revolting, something humiliating in the spectacle of the free press of a metropolis such as London, engaged in the atrocious task of fostering all the worst passions of the populace, of brutalising the masses, that they may become the more fitting instruments to their own degradation and enslavement. From 1828 to 1830 there was scarcely one daily London paper that did not raise its voice against the weak and worthless administration that had been formed on the ruins of Mr. Canning's cabinet. Yet many attempts were made, and much money expended, to establish Tory newspapers; the people, however, would have nothing to say to these rickety bantlings of intolerance, and after a brief and sickly existence they were rapidly consigned to the tomb, leaving the field occupied by combatants, who, if they did not always conduct themselves with dignity and discretion, were at least unremitting in their denouncement of political abuses. How stands the case now? Of the 45,000 newspapers daily printed in London, more than two thirds are under the absolute control of Toryism, and eagerly engaged in their task of resisting political emancipation. Since 1830, the Times, the Morning Herald, and the Courier, have successively become renegades from the popular cause; the Morning Post, at that time a paltry and despised print, has become a paper of influence and of wide circulation; and, strange to say, not a single new candidate for public favour has entered the arena, to occupy the place of those who have deserted their former principles. This melancholy change in the character of our daily press has not been caused by a change in public opinion, though we fear it has had the effect of warping that opinion materially. The change has been brought about by the superior tactics of the enemy, and by some sad blunders on the side of the Liberals. We will endeavour to explain this to our readers.

If it were gravely proposed to establish a government board for the superintendence of all the grocers' shops in London, with a view to the periodical publication of the precise number of pounds and half pounds of tea, sugar, treacle, figs, and other useful commodities sold at each, does it not stand to reason that a most unfair advantage would be given to a few shops, which owing to one circumstance or another, might have a larger custom than the bulk of their competitors? Man is naturally a gregarious animal; and it is notorious that people are constantly frequenting one shop in preference to all others of the same trade, merely because that shop is what is called fashionable, or has a greater number of customers. If, therefore, a list were published every quarter of all the grocers' shops, with an exact account of the number of customers that frequented each, such a list would have the effect of seducing away the customers from those shops where they were least numerous, and drawing them to those where customers already abounded. Nor would this be the only effect of such a list. The wholesale merchant would procure it, and study it very diligently, to ascertain who the grocers were to whom he could afford to give most credit, or to sell his goods on the easiest terms. The consequence would very soon be, that all the small grocers would get into the Gazette, and the "dons" would have the monopoly of the market, because small capitalists would be deterred from entering the field, by the difficulties they would have to contend with before obtaining a sufficient amount of customers to

enable them to compete, upon any thing like fair terms, with their more powerful neighbours.

Now this is precisely what our sapient House of Commons have done with respect to the newspaper business; but the effect has been immeasurably more fatal than that which a similar measure could have produced upon the community of grocers. The House of Commons have published from time to time what are called the stamp returns, which show the precise number of stamps purchased during the same period of time by each newspaper, and consequently the exact extent of circulation obtained by each. The effect of this has been precisely what ought to have been anticipated. It was shown to the public that one newspaper enjoyed a larger circulation than any other, and the public have ever since looked upon that one paper as the paper of all others; and, though every body abuses it, yet every body runs every morning to read it, because every body is anxious to read that which he supposes every body else to be engaged in reading at the same time. But it is chiefly the money paid for advertisements that makes it possible to sell for a few pence a newspaper with printed matter sufficient to fill several volumes, and to pay handsome salaries to, perhaps, twenty or thirty gentlemen of liberal education, whose duty it is to provide this daily literary repast. Now, when the public were made aware of the exact extent of each paper's circulation, they were taught to look upon one paper as a vehicle for publicity preferable to every other, and to that paper almost every advertisement was carried. Accordingly we find, that since the practice has prevailed of publishing these stamp returns, one paper has acquired a preponderating importance over all its rivals; that a number of papers of small circulation, having lost their advertising customers, have been necessarily discontinued; and that the prospect of a hard struggle, likely to be protracted for many years before any profit can be looked for, has deterred capitalists from embarking their money in an undertaking from which the returns are so extremely remote. Thus ten years ago there existed thirteen daily papers in London, though at that time the annual amount of newspaper stamps issued by government was under thirty millions; in 1839, the number of newspaper stamps issued will have been considerably over fifty millions, while the number of daily papers has been reduced to ten, and of these two have so limited a circulation, that their abandonment at no remote period is extremely probable. From this statement, the profitable nature of the monopoly, so clumsily created by the House of Commons, may be easily conceived. Of the stringent character of that monopoly, some idea may be formed from the fact, that NOT ONE NEW DAILY PAPER

HAS BEEN ESTABLISHED SINCE THE PUBLICATION OF THE STAMP RETURNS HAS BECOME CUSTOMARY.

The monopoly having been thus formed, and formed, we are sorry to say, by the clumsy contrivances of our own friends, the task of the Tories became an easy one. To have the public press on their side, all they had to do was to buy up the shares of the existing newspapers, and this is what they have been very diligently doing for some years past. Considerable sums have thus been expended; but it is doubtful whether, in a political point of view, the Tory party could have expended their money to better advantage. By securing the most widely circulated papers, they have not only had the satisfaction of loading their antagonists with daily abuse, but have deprived them of the means of replying with any effect to these attacks. The people have not, indeed, been converted to Toryism by these forestallers of the press; indeed, such a stultification of a whole people we hold to be almost impossible. Nevertheless, the daily repetition of scurrility has

produced its effect. It has divided the popular party, and inspired the masses with a distrust of their own leaders. Had Lord Grey had the hostility of the press to contend with, instead of being seconded in his patriotic designs by the almost undivided influence of that mighty engine, he would have been even more powerless than Lord Melbourne has been during the last three years.

This is a digression, perhaps; but holding as we do that the successful manœuvres of the Tories to acquire a property in the shares of so many of our leading newspapers has been the chief means by which the present apathy among the people has been brought about, a hasty glance at the present character of the daily press is not out of place, when we are considering the probable complexion of the coming session.

The session, then, will be barren of any immediate practical results. The Queen's marriage will, no doubt, be provided for in a satisfactory manner; for, though the Tory press has been "worked hard" to blacken her Majesty's character, yet these calumnies are not expected to work except upon the ignorant classes. The rabble of high and low degree form the audience to which the obscene ribaldry of the Post, Herald, and Standard, was addressed, when the unfortunate affair of Lady Flora Hastings was so ingeniously, but so disgustingly distorted, for the detestable purposes of faction. People of sense are not influenced by such transparent artifices; but people of sense, unfortunately, are wont to be in a minority at the polling booth. Although the mob, therefore, has been taught to be less enthusiastic in its greetings of youthful royalty than it was some eighteen months ago, yet the professions of loyalty on the Tory benches in the two houses of Parliament will be as unanimous and as hollow as on any former occasion. The necessary provision" for the Queen and her consort will accordingly be made, with much more profusion than will be at all necessary; for on such occasions peers and members of Parliament, as it is not their own money, but that of the people they are voting away, are apt to be exceedingly generous; indeed, we should not be surprised if, when ministers bring forward their proposal, some superlatively loyal gentleman were to rise on the left hand of the Speaker to censure the niggardly scale on which provision was to be made for the dignity of the crown, and to throw out a hint that, had the task been confided to Tory hands, majesty would have been even more bountifully furnished. This part of the sessional duties will no doubt be speedily and harmoniously disposed of.

A question of parliamentary privilege will occupy no trifling share of the attention of the House of Commons at its very first meeting. The House of Commons has been in the habit of late years of selling to the public at a very low price the valuable statistical and other reports, on the preparation of which many thousand pounds of public money are annually expended. The utility of these documents is thereby very much enhanced, and certainly it is but fair that the public should have access to works got up at the public expense. So popular a principle, however, is any thing but agreeable to the Tories, by whom the adoption of it has all along been censured. We need not occupy space by an account of the far-famed cause of Stockdale v. Hansard; and indeed one very material obstacle stands in the way of a discussion of its merits, namely, the difficulty of speaking of persons of the stamp of Mr. Stockdale, without laying one's self open to a prosecution for libel. There will be more than one discussion on this subject in the House of Commons next session, and perhaps the House will make a little bluster about the proper support of its privileges; but as the Lords will not side with the Commons in any struggle that may