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THE DUBLIN

UNIVERSITY MAGAZINE

Literary and Political Journal.

VOL. XIII.

JANUARY TO JUNE.

1839.

RISTOR

500

SCORSAYS

DUBLIN:

WILLIAM CURRY, JUN. AND COMPANY,
SAMUEL HOLDSWORTH, LONDON.

MDCCCXXXIX.

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ON THE FIRST OF MARCH WILL BE PUBLISHED,

No. I.

PRICE ONE SHILLING,

(To be continued Monthly,)

OF THE

CONFESSIONS OF HARRY LORREQUER,

Late Captain in the 4-th Regiment.

WITH NUMEROUS ILLUSTRATIONS BY PHIZ.

DUBLIN: WILLIAM CURRY, JUN. AND COMPANY,

9, UPPER SACKVILLE-STREET.

AND ALL BOOKSELLERS.

The remaining Chapters of Harry Lorrequer will appear in the University Magazine at short

intervals.

THE DUBLIN

UNIVERSITY MAGAZINE.

No. LXXIII.

JANUARY, 1839.

VOL. XIII.

PROSPECTS OF THE BRITISH EMPIRE-RUSSIA-CANADA-LORD DURHAMGOVERNOR ARTHUR'S PROCLAMATION-DISSENT—ESTABLISHMENTS.

WELL, the tug of war is about to come, and the merits of the Reform Bill are about to be tested. The world will soon have an opportunity of comparing England under her old constitution, with England under her new. It will soon be seen, whether or not, England has gained any thing by the transformations which have taken place in her legislature; and whether her vigour, her wisdom, and her efficiency have been increased, by the headlong rapidity of her democratic movements; whether, in fact, in proportion as the strength of the executive has been diminished, there has, or has not, been a corresponding and a compensating increase in the wisdom and the worth of that portion of the legislature which is supposed to represent the people.

Let us not be mistaken. We do not entertain a doubt, that, for the framers of that measure, it has well accomplished its leading object. It secured to them a continuance of power. It enabled them to cling to office, when they must have otherwise been shaken off, with loathing and with scorn, by an indignant nation. It enabled them to glut themselves, and a voracious brood of followers, with gain; and to grin with a malicious triumph at their political adversaries, who stood before them naked and powerless, and incapable of offering any other opposition to their frantic counsels and destructive measures, than that of feeble and lachrymose expostulation. All this the reform bill has done for its framers. It has been, hitherto, a dutiful child. It has provided well for its parents. It has fed them with good things, until

their hearts grew as fat as brawn; and, in the very wantonness and intoxication of triumph, they have snapped their fingers at Providence. All this is most natural; but still it is not that which will satisfy the people of England. They were taught to expect that a new order of things would arise out of the peaceful revolution which was effected, as much superior to the old, as political honesty is to political corruption. They imagined that they were about to enter upon a new era of sound principle, and disinterested and enlightened legislation, which would put to shame the petty, borough-mongering monopoly by which it was preceded; and that, whereas the national honour, and the civil liberty of England, had before existed, liable to the mischances and accidents, by which they might at any time be extinguished or impaired, they were now about to be stereotyped in a new and an improved edition, which would transmit them, in unblemished and undecaying beauty, to the remotest posterity. We shall soon see how far this notion is likely to be borne out by matters of fact; and whether it has had its foundation in reason, or is to be regarded in the light of a national hallucination.

Russia menaces the East. Canada is causing some anxiety in the western part of our colonial empire. The former power, it cannot be denied, is the most formidable despotism in the world. In point of superficial extent, it spreads over 7,000,000 square miles, being a full ninth of the habitable globe, and numbers not less than seventy millions* of a hardy and warlike population; a

In 1820 the census gave a population of 56,000,000; supposing the increase to be but one-fourth since, the result must be nearly as above.

VOL. XIII.

B

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