at being excluded from it; we should rather say, his attempts to excite, at the same time, these two feelings in others, for he is probably, at least to a certain extent, permitted occasionally to pollute that society with his own presence for which he makes this grateful return.

For the purpose of destroying the respect of the lower orders for this society, our worthy radical proceeds:

"The number of men and women are pretty nearly equal in the world, the number of elder sons but small. Every man, says Adam Smith, has a peculiar confidence in his own good luck. Every woman, perhaps, in her good luck and good looks combined. Every one thinks that she has a better chance than her neighbours of securing a matrimonial prize; and if a daughter's generosity or folly lead her to prefer a younger brother, the superior sagacity and prudence of her mother will speedily set the matter right; access will be denied him, perhaps some history of a flirtation with another conjured up, or if he confide his wishes to the fair one's parents, she may not be informed of his proposal. In short, to use the language of political economists, the supply of wives exceeds the demand. Hence arises the noble science of matrimonial angling. The noblest and most amiable part of our species are turned into so many artificial flies to tickle and catch the human trout. Flimsy accomplishments are substituted for solid education; the adornment of the person for that of the mind; dress takes the place of literature; singing and dancing, instead of being regarded, one as a pleasant way of beguiling a cheerless hour, the other as a means of securing a graceful deportment, are ends seriously pursued for their own sake. While the mother superintends the maid or the milliner as she sews the gown on her daughter's back; while she watches with respectful deference Mr. Nesbit or Mr. Woodman, as he decks or disfigures her hair with the orthodox ornaments prescribed by fashion, or plasters the curls with rice water to her temples, her daughter's morals are left pretty nearly to form themselves, and her reading confined to fashionable novels or trumpery annuals. The whole soul of the mother is bent on securing the benefit of an establishment; no time is to be lost, the future is left to take care of itself; present attraction is all that is thought of. Conscious that

the chances are against her, the market being overstocked, no manœuvre is missed, no opportunity neglected, and much may be, and is, done by the good management of a judicious chaperon. The gaudy bait is skilfully played before the eyes of the destined victim; the finedrawn slender line is invisible; the simple object of these arts, perhaps just twentyone and fresh from college, sees and desires, thinks all is gold that glitters; he nibbles should some other sister of the hook interfere, and try to lure away the prey, falsehood and slander lend their aid to defeat her intrigues: just when the swain begins to think himself in love, the bait is withdrawn, he follows, and at last takes it. But with matrimony comes repentance. Scarce is the honeymoon passed, when he finds out the deception which has been practised; he discovers that, instead of an amiable companion, who can enliven moments of dulness as well as partake of the pleasures of gaiety, he has married an empty, selfish, heartless, frivolous person, who cares not a sixpence for anything but his fortune, and who looks upon him only as the peg upon which her establishment hangs. But it is too late so recede: he may, indeed, "flounce indignant of the guile," but the line of matrimony is too strong to be broken. The natural consequence follows; the gentleman amuses himself with a mistress, the lady with a lover. This may be thought a picture too highly coloured; but I do maintain that it is the tendency of primogeniture to generate this spirit of rapacity and artifice; it even tends to make sister rival sister, and perhaps a whole family pull caps for one man. May be, indeed, under the pressing exigencies of circumstances, a rich grocer or teadealer is admitted to purchase his admission into the ranks of gentility by taking some unsaleable commodity off her mother's hands. If no such thing as primo. geniture existed, if things were left to follow their own course, and permitted to flow in their natural channels, this disparity between the demand and supply would vanish; this urgent necessity to be the first in the field, and to secure the first rich fool, boy or booby, that might offer, would disappear; women would mate with their equals; and though Hyde Park might not exhibit so long a line of carriages on a Sunday, nor the opera so splendid an attendance on a Saturday, yet the number of old maids at Bath and of divorces at Doctors' Commons would be diminished."

There may be much abstract truth in these attacks, but none in their present application. Interested marriages are, no doubt, common; but we tell our author, and we ground this, perhaps startling, assertion, on long attention and impartial observation, that, generally speaking, the proportion of such unions increases exactly in the ratio of the poverty of the class in which they exist; and to such an extent does this hold, as frequently to have almost compelled us to doubt the existence, in the very lowest classes, of any other motive whatever.

For evidence in support of this we do not refer our readers to the Eclogues of Virgil, the Aminta of Tasso, or the Galatea of Florian, but to the source where we were ourselves instructed— the school of practical and patient observation.

But to return to our author. After a

very intelligible dissertation to prove how conducive it would be to public improvement to lay hold on all private libraries, galleries, museums, &c. for the state, and not to remove them from their present residences-far would he be from doing such a Gothic act-but simply to remove the owners from both, and to render the mansion and its con

tents public property; and showing in one place that to be sickly and profligate is the essential distinction of an eldest son, and the result of too much wealth; he soon after demonstrates, with equal force of reasoning, that these same things are peculiar to younger sons, and a necessary consequence of their poverty. He then kindly condescends to answer some difficulties that squeamish minds might suggest to the adoption of his system.

"It will be objected, I doubt not, that one class of society, the country gentlemen, would disappear from among us were this law or custom of primogeniture to be discontinued: but it may be questioned whether this would be an evil, and whether a subdivision of landed property into portions, sufficiently large, however, for the profitable employment of capital, is not greatly to be desired."

"I much doubt whether the country gentlemen, improved as they are since the days of Squire Western, are to be considered as a class in any great degree conducive to the public good."

"To the country gentlemen we owe the evils which the new poor-law bill was introduced to remedy; with them would disappear our game laws; and our corn laws would, perhaps, be more easily abolished. I believe them to be eminently unfit for the management of our jails; and, in short, were a national system of education and a well organized paid magistracy established, I think the proprietors and occupiers of land would speedily learn to manage their own matters better

than the best committee of the most active

country justices, and that the disappearance of the country gentlemen, instead of an objection, would be found an additional argument on my side. Nor should we by this be deprived of an aristocracy : the intelligence distributed through the country would not be diminished; far otherwise. The mansions, the palaces, the manors, which now are possessed by those who too often inherit the prejudices as well as the estates of their ancesfar greater ability and acquirement, who tors, would pass into the hands of men of would bring into agriculture some portion of that acuteness of mind and intensity of purpose by which the means of their purchase were acquired, and by which that which, though the most complicated, is the most neglected of our arts, might receive that scientific cultivation which alone can enable the British to compete with the foreign corn grower."

We shall make but one more ex

tract, for the purpose of warning those would-be Conservatives, who would rather cut their own throats quietly than fright those who wish to do them this kind office, and whose timely exclusion from administration has recently preserved the constitution from being sacrificed to the conciliating timidity of those friends who forget that public opinion will always follow a decided government, and has saved the Conservative party from being the subject of a verdict of felo de se, the probability of which event seems to have occurred to our radical when he wrote as follows:

"Now they must make their delicate and squeamish minds up to a little more of a real reform; for without it neither this nor any other government can go on; and if we get it, we must make up our minds not to care who gives it us. I should nowise wonder, friend Isaac, to find many of us even taking to some of the moderate Tories, if they would but

show a reforming spirit, and give up their ultra and Orange connexions. They are very stout when they take to a thing, and they don't stand at a trifle. Witness the Catholic question."

Ere we conclude we shall briefly notice one use of an established aristocracy, which may not have been so frequently observed as those we have mentioned. It consists in its affording a legitimate object of ambition, by which talent can attain rank without power. Of all tyrannies that of talent is the most dangerous. By tyranny we mean, of course, power not legitimately vested. Now, the object of the ambition of talent is a permanent distinction from the majority of society. The temporary eminence attained by each exertion of talent is obviously merely the means employed by the individual to attain the other. It is always a painful and galling mortification to talent to feel its rank depending on those whom it considers as its inferiors. Hence it is that republics whose territories are sufficiently peopled are perpetually involved in civil broils, and uniformly terminate in a despotism. There is no situation in them in which such a permanent distinction can be obtained. Men of talent and ambition are, therefore driven to recollect that that object can only be attained by possessing themselves of immense and independent power. The great movements of republics are, consequently, in general, convulsive, and are effected by the struggles of individual talent aiming at power. Those of a limited and mixed government, like that of Great Britain, on the other hand, are performed by the steady exertions of a great number of able minds, each of whom, having in view a distinct and authorised object, labours on, with that friendly disposition towards his fellowcitizens which results from the consciousness that his object is as generally approved as the means by which he attains it, and that jealous attachment to the constitution of his country which is the consequence of the feeling that on its permanence all his prospects depend. This is remarkably exemplified in a fact which has not escaped the notice even of our Transatlantic brethren, that what is called "rising from the ranks," or the elevation of individuals, by the mere force of merit,

from the lower to the highest stations in society, is not by any means so frequent in republics as in limited monarchies.

The reason of this is obvious,' and may be illustrated by what our readers must have often observed when a mass of persons are congregated to see some public show. If they are on a smooth slope, the weight of all above presses on those below; each feels conscious that he holds his place merely by keeping down others; while those others have not only the sense of their own inferiority of station, but the galling reflection that they are supporting those who are enjoying such advantages over them. This state of things produces a constant restlessness. Each feels that if he must be in a constant struggle, he may as well struggle to improve as to retain his situation; and everyone, consequently, looks on his superiors as tyrants, his inferiors as enemies, and his equals as rivals. But how different the result when a similar crowd is collected on a flight of steps. Here the elevation of one is of no injury to another; each is secure of his own place, and, therefore, under no necessity of exertion, nor disposed to any hostile feeling towards others; on the contrary, if a vacancy appears, they are ready to help up one from below to fill it up.

The fundamental error of all attacks on the system of an hereditary aristocracy consists in the supposition that a state of political or social equality is possible, or consistent with the nature or circumstances of man, either in a civilized or savage state. We are not called on to inquire whether, if possible, it would be even desirable. Our own opinion is, that it would be in the highest degree otherwise; that a state of perfect and permanent equality, if such were possible, must completely paralyze and destroy the faculties and powers of the human mind. And, in fact, such is the natural inequality of mankind, that if we were to suppose the whole race, at any one given moment, rendered perfectly equal, there would be, within one year after, as many degrees of rank as there are in our own constitution; with the important difference that those degrees would be limited only by, and consist in, the various kinds of power which the talents or circumstances of each had enabled

them to attain over others. The leading distinction between a republic and a monarchy seems to be this, that while the same distinctions of rank are produced in each by the unequal distribution of wealth, talents, and fortune, they are acknowledged in the one state, and rendered the secure reward of merit, offering to ambition a permanent emi

nence where its struggles may terminate, and which it may transmit to its posterity; which, being disowned by the other system, they are merely a temporary and precarious usurpation, to be maintained by force or cunning, at the expense of the hatred of all below, and the jealous suspicion of all above them.

THE POPULAR SECRETARIES OF STATE.

Ar last the Whig-Radical secretaries of state have got into parliament-and how? By what singular and signal act of a grateful and delighted public have these leading members of a ministry arrogating to itself exclusive popularity, been enabled to take their seats as legislators for the people? Alas! that they who made the Reform Bill, and then worshipped the idol that they had made-alas! that they should live to see such an event-and so soon too! The public did not show itself grateful-did not show itself delighted, but left the secretaries of state to struggle into parliament by the ignoble and back-stairs entrance of two boroughs conveniently vacated for the occasion, and one peerage, because no third borough was convenient or compliant enough to receive the Right Honorable Secretary for the Colonial Department. What a falling off is here! How different from what might have been! How different from what was expected! Lord John Russell was so satisfied of the extreme unpopularity of the Conservative administration, and so modestly conscious that upon him and upon his colleagues were the popular hopes fixed, that on this very ground he led the late opposition to battle. That respectable and united band of members of parliament, consisting of English ultra-Whigs and Radicals, all learned as John Gully, and liberal as Joseph Hume of Irish Papists, consistent and quiet as Mr. Daniel O'Connell, pure and independent as Mr. Feargus O'Connor- of Scotch "reformers,"

modest as Doctor Bowring, and meritorious as Mr. Gillon-all this various host fought under the banner of that great and mighty chief, Lord John Russell, because he was, or described himself to be, the darling and the champion of the people. Swelling with the thought to nearly the size of Mr. Sheil, or half the size of Mr. O'Connell, he proclaimed that Sir Robert Peel's ministry should be voted down because it was inimical to the people who loved and trusted him and his friends, and them alone. Within the house Mr. Grant snored his assent, and without (for even then the exsecretary for foreign affairs had been rejected in the county which in happier days he represented,) Lord Palmerston whispered to all the ladies of his acquaintance that Lord John was right.

The united, congenial, and respectable host of English free-thinkers and Philosophers," of Irish Papists and Scotch Independents," carried their first point. Sir Robert Peel's ministry was outvoted, and resigned. Lord John Russell and his friends took office, and then the time was come to prove before the face of an anxious and inquiring world that the WhigRadical ministers were indeed the darlings of the people. The three new secretaries of state were all commoners. Lord John Russell, at the time of his appointment, was member for the county of Devon-Mr. Grant was member for the county of Iverness

and Lord Palmerston had been member for the county of Hants. The act

of becoming ministers-an act for which, as has been said, their exclusive popularity was the ground and the excuse-vacated the seats of Lord John and Mr. Grant; the whole three had now to show, by the eclat of their re-entrance to parliament, the truth and justice of their pretensions to the exclusive favor of the people. The way in which this was shown was as follows:-Mr. Grant did not dare to go back to his county; a Conservative was returned in his place by the people, and admission was procured for him into the House of Peers by the influence of his party with the king; Lord John Russell did dare to go back to his county, but was beaten by an immense majority, and a Conservative was returned in his room. Colonel Fox, son of one of Lord J. Russell's colleagues in the cabinet, was then induced to resign his seat for the borough of Stroud, a place in Gloucestershire, with which Lord John has no connexion whatever. He was, however, elected on Colonel Fox's recommendation, and the gallant colonel was immediately afterwards accommodated with a place in the ordnance department. Lord Palmerston did not address any large constituency. There were half-a-dozen of the closest boroughs now left in England, talked of from time to time as likely to be vacated for his sake-at last one Mr. Kennedy, the only English member who voted with Mr. Dan. O'Connell in the House of Commons for Repeal of the Union, felt himself suddenly unwell, and found sitting in the house very inconvenient to him. He therefore resigned his seat for the borough of Tiverton, and, singular to relate, Lord Palmerston was immediately elected for that place without opposition. Thus did the three secretaries get into parliament; and looking at the means by which, and the manner in which they achieved that object, it is surely not too much to say, that no one can have any doubt as to the veracity of their assertions about the possession of exclusive popularity. No one can feel any perplexity of mind as to the fact of the great favor in which they are held by the people-that people in whose name they cast out the Conservative administration.

It is impossible not to admire the easy confidence with which, under all

the circumstances of the case, Lord Palmerston addressed the Tivertonians, upon acquiring the highly popular honor of being declared their representative. After reminding them of the great and glorious privilege they enjoyed of assembling in the "open air" to hear him declare his sentiments. He said "The circumstances under which he found himself there, were no less honorable to them than gratifying to him." Now, let us mark his exquisite reasons. He had no connexion with the county of Devon-he had never put foot within their beautiful town till the other day, when he obeyed their summons. (He must have meant the summons of Mr. Kennedy.) He had no claim on their good wishes, except those which were founded upon his public conduct and his political principles." All this was excellent: the only thing it wants is a statement of which set of political principles (for he has had several in his time) the noble lord wished to make the foundation of his claim to the wise and discriminating favor of the Tivertonians. Were they the principles of the Liverpool, or the Canning, or the Goderich, or the Wellington, or the Grey, or the Melbourne administration? for in all these did the noble lord serve, so continual has been bis zeal for the public welfare. The men of Tiverton ought to have asked him this question.

Another instance of his lordship's intrepidity on this occasion it is proper to record, in order that there may be a due estimate formed of the advantage enjoyed by the country in having such a Foreign Secretary. "The government of Lord Melbourne," quoth he,

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was suddenly interrupted in the career of reform which it was pursuing, (an invisible career, by the by,) and in November last a government took office, consisting of persons who, during the whole period of their political existence, had resisted every improvement, and from whose opposition had arisen all the difficulties which the reform ministry' had to contend with." Now, it so happens, that during at least twothirds of the "political existence" of "these persons," the very same Lord Palmerston, who thus speaks of them,

WAS HIMSELF THEIR SUBORDINATE or

THEIR COLLEAGUE, aiding and abetting whatever they did, whether it was "in resistance to every improvement" or