TALLEYRAND, who for half a century, and upwards, reigned almost supreme amongst the wits and diplomatists of Europe, never said a better thing than when he designated the first events of a mighty revolution as the

beginning of the end." With him then rests the Hibernicism (if such there be) in our now making use of the converse of his proposition, to style the great victory achieved by the Conservatives at the last elections as the "end of the beginning;" or, in other words, the successful termination of the contest waged since the passing of the Reform-bill for restoring to Conservative principles that ascendancy in the government of this country which alone harmonises with the true spirit of the constitution, and the real character of the British nation. The voice of the people, which the Whigs, if consistent with themselves, should recognise as the “vox Dei,” has spoken out with trumpet tongue, and proclaimed, by an overwhelming majority, that the foundation-stone of a new regime is laid; or, in other words, that the “ beginning is ended."

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We mean not to indulge in any Pæan hymn of victory on the present occasion; for, though we have always been numbered amongst the most uncompromising opponents of the Melbourne ministry, we feel that it is very easy to be generous where we are successful, and consequently are not disposed to fling away the credit of possessing a virtue which it

VOL. XXIV. NO. CXLI.

costs us so little difficulty to practise. We are not inclined to treat the fallen favourite of a court as the mob in the days of Tiberius treated the fallen Sejanus,—

"Dum jacet in ripâ, calcemus Cæsaris hostem."

The task which we propose to ourselves is one which cannot fail to interest at once the philosopher and the historian, namely, to analyse the causes which have induced the people of this country to hurl from the eminence to which it had raised them the very men whom that same people had selected to adorn that eminence, and to whom, with some brief intervals, it had intrusted the reins of power for more than ten consecutive years. For ten years they have had the disposal of place and patronage, for ten years they have had a House of Commons moulded after their own principles; and yet, when at the expiration of ten years they appeal to the public-baiting that appeal with the most popular and exciting topics-the nation has flung them, almost contemptuously, aside. We cannot help thinking that the Whigs owe their downfal not so much to the nature of any particular measure which they brought forward, as to the opinion which so generally prevailed of their incompetency; and, secondly, of their readiness to adopt shabby means to prolong their continuance in office. We are sorry to be obliged to appear personal, but we cannot help it.

First, with regard to their incompetency. What is a competent ministry? Doubtless, one that has the ability to make its name respected at home and abroad,-one that truckles not to those who do not profess its principles, one that manages with economy, yet without meanness, the finances of the state,-one that has a firm grasp of power, and needs not to court the baser passions of the rabble, or bend to each gust of popular excitement,—such a ministry, in fine, as

"Non civium ardor prava jubentium

Mente quatit solidà."

Now the very fact of their being driven from the government is almost sufficient proof, that from the first they were in their very nature incompetent. They cannot say that the parliament was not one of their own summoning, they cannot say that their tenure of office was not sufficiently prolonged to enable them, by the immense patronage at their disposal, to strengthen all approaches to their fastness, by posting in the important avenues sentinels and creatures of their own. On the contrary, the patronage they have enjoyed has been without example for the time, save only in that which they took care to create. They cannot say that they were not at the beginning wafted into power on the full tide of popular favour; and if it has now ebbed, and left them stifled in the mud, surely this is almost proof sufficient that, when receiving power under circumstances so favourable, they must have been radically incompetent, when they have allowed it to slip from them, not by any sudden ebullition of popular feeling, which perhaps no ministry, however able, could withstand; but owing to a gradual want of confidence in them which has been growing up, not in a moment, but from month to month, and year to year. This may appear a singular, yet we think it a strong argument against any ministry. When the Duke of Wellington and Peel were forced to abandon office shortly after passing the Catholic Emancipation Act, they were forced to do so by the sudden and violent resentment of two extreme parties, many members of which are now numbered

amongst their strongest supporters. Again, when in 1835, Sir Robert, after an almost unprecedented display of energy, eloquence, and argument, was forced ere long to abandon office, he was forced to do so without having ever possessed a majority in the House of Commons; and in 1839, though summoned once more to the councils of his sovereign, he was never actually in office. The reform ministry, however, have no such pleas to bring forward. They once possessed the confidence of the country. That confidence has not been withdrawn hurriedly, or without a sufficient knowledge of the men. Gradually, but steadily, their majorities diminished, till at last they found themselves in considerable minorities. Still they lingered on, though they beheld their destiny nearly complete; and at last were forced, by a vote of want of confidence in them, to throw themselves on the country; and the countryat last thoroughly acquainted with them-utterly rejected them. We know no parallel in our history which so completely shews a ministry who became less trusted as they became better known.

We have stated (and few will disagree with us), that a competent ministry ought to be sufficiently powerful to resist the mean temptation of truckling to those whose principles are not in accordance with their own. Yet what a lamentable spectacle of subserviency has the Melbourne ministry exhibited! Its chief officer in Ireland openly denounces repeal, and those who agitate for that object; and yet it is notorious, that at the recent election for the city of Dublin, no canvassers were more active or more tyrannical towards the tradesmen who refused to vote for O'Connell, than the employés of Dublin Castle, and the hangers-on of the vice-regal court. The English character as a nation is a bold, manly, and frank character; and when they saw the man whose life had been passed in heaping on them every species of abuse, and rousing the worst passions of his ignorant countrymen against them, when

they saw this man, at once the object of terror and fawning sycophancy to those whose duty it was long since to have denounced him as a traitor, it is

not wonderful that each day which renewed the spectacle of ministerial weakness and subserviency should have diminished their confidence in those men whom they had raised to power. They could not have heard at one time the ministers denouncing the schemes of the agitator, whilst they accepted his support at another, without wondering at the unnatural union-this "moral centaur." They must have reflected, "This man's avowed principles are not the principles of our ministers. He advocates a repeal of the Union, universal suffrage, vote by ballot, abolition of hereditary peerage, annual parliaments, abolition of tithes, &c. &c. The ministry are opposed to him in all these points, and yet it is by his support that the cabinet is enabled to exist. They formerly stated that the Reform-bill was a final measure, and the country congratulated itself on having achieved, without civil war, so important a revolution. Yet since then they have surrendered to this man twenty-five per cent of the income of the Irish clergy; they have abolished the old corporations, attempted to alter the qualification of voters in Ireland as established by the Reform-bill, introducing a 51. rating instead of a 107. beneficial interest, and as hastily abandoning it to declare that, in their own opinion, an 87. rating would be preferable. We have seen them at last willing to overthrow those barriers of protection which had been wisely reared by a former government around our colonies and our home agricultural interest. We have seen, in fine, that each day, instead of converting him to their principles, is bringing them nearer to his." Hence the conviction must have been gradually and irresistibly forced upon the nation, either that the Melbourne cabinet had dishonourably acquired office by the avowal of principles different from their real, or else that this gradual approximation to the O'Connell creed was owing to their inability to maintain their own. In either case, ministers were impaled on one or other horn of this dilemma, and the nation kindly afforded them their choice. The opinion in most vogue appears to have been, that it was a weak cabinet-dying of exhaustion. There was no one terrible crash; the patient

was gradually going off-a case of inward bleeding.

We cannot, therefore, but consider that the union of the Whigs with O'Connell-a union so evidently formed for party, and not for national, purposes- -was a main cause of their losing the confidence of the people. It was certainly enough to stir the bile of a less proud race than the British, to behold their destinies and the virtual government of their country placed in the hands of a man whose hatred to them was open and avowed-the leader of a band of some forty political adventurers leagued together for the purpose of plundering church and state-men, not a few of whom might be seen in the metropolis occasionally reeling drunk on borrowed money to a late division from some obscure haunt of debauchery. There is a feeling even amongst the peasantry of this country, that their legislators must be men either of talent, principle, or acres. We remember Cobbett, dressed in his home-spun frieze coat, in the house, and right glad we were to see him; and a sprinkling of honest English farmers now and then might be useful to enlighten our gentry on sundry practical points; but of what use is a roué, devoid alike of honesty, intelligence, and property?

Let us be clearly understood. Were O'Connell's principles ten times more opposed to our own than they are, we could even then respect a ministry that openly avowed them and sought to act up to them; but a ministry which was only supported against the Radicals by the generosity of the Conservatives, and which in turn supported itself against the latter by truckling to the Radicals, whilst seeking to disavow their principles, though accepting their support-such a ministry, we say, was totally unfit to wield the destinies of the first nation in the world, and during its existence won from us, what alone it has retained in its fall, our hearty contempt, in common with that of the intelligence and upright portion of the community.

We must not, however, devote too much space to the Whig and O'Connell alliance; for though it formed a great part of the weight which led to the recent divisions in both houses, and finally broke the back of the