commerce itself;for our commerce would sink into its original com-parative insignificance, unless our manufactures enabled us to create at home articles, in exchange for which we may receive the raw produce or manufactured goods of other countries. The chief source of our national wealth is the industry and ingenuity of the manufacturing classes of the people: it is that ingenuity and that industry which chiefly impart to us the civilization, the wealth, the power, and the happiness we now possess,-which supply the means of maintaining our extensive establishments, and our eminent position amongst the nations of the world.

"One of the main branches of British commerce and manufacture, vast in its importance as a source of national prosperity, I would now particularly recommend to the favourable consideration of the House. Employing and maintaining half a million of people-dividing itself into an infinite variety of ramifications-diffusing its productions through the whole country-supporting an extensive export trade, in articles unrivalled, unapproached, and almost unattempted by any other manufacture in the world;-otherwise entitled to our anxious protection as giving an immensely increased value to the metallic productions of our own soil, by the simple application of human labour and ingenuity, which, so applied, add to the stock of national wealth in a greater degree than any other application of it, by converting materials of trifling intrinsic worth, and for which no equivalent is paid to the foreign merchant, into articles of great comparative and exchangeable value;-I have not hesitated to select it for the transfer of the elective franchise now at our disposal.

"This manufacturing and commercial interest, so varied, complicated, and extended-is connected with, and has created and collected together, large masses of the people. In a particular district,-and that the very heart and centre of England, one of these masses consists of four hundred thousand persons, in the midst of which, an enormous town-a sort of focus-has formed itself, containing a wealthy, industrious, enlightened, and loyal population.

"This prodigious capital-the whole of its own peculiar commercial kingdom-and the interests which engendered and now maintain them, are unrepresented-totally unrepresented amongst us, either directly or indirectly-actually or virtually; for no other town, sending Members to Parliament, has the slightest identity of trading interests with this community; so that such interests, important as they are, must depend upon the gratuitous and charitable attention of others, or, as my Right Honourable Friend on a former night expressed it,-upon the general justice of Parliament.

"Will any man-will my Honourable Friend the Member for Hertfordshire himself-contend, that such a community ought to remain an outcast from the scheme of representation, if the means of remedy offer themselves, as in this case, without trenching upon other interests; and that, not only without risk, but in conformity with the ancient practice and principles of the Constitution? Yet such is the town of Birmingham,—and now it is proposed by my Honourable Friend to eject Birmingham from this Bill, and bestow the two Members we have to dispose of not upon any unrepresented town, or even

district, but upon the Dukes and Earls of Bassetlaw, already represented twenty-fold!"

Mr. Tennyson thus concludes his unanswerable appeal in behalf of this great commercial community :-"Thus, Sir, the manufactures of Birmingham-being not only an important source of foreign commerce, but based upon, and more closely connected with, home-interests of every sort than any other ;-mainly dependent on the welfare of the agricultural population;-supplying domestic comforts and luxuries to all classes of the people ;-giving life and vigour and value to our mineral productions ;-engaging and supporting three times the population of the whole county of Nottingham, and fifteen times. that of the hundred of Bassetlaw;-I am not intimidated by the pretensions or the influence of this the aristocratical rival of a trading community so abundantly productive of national wealth and energy but I still seek for the town of Birmingham admission into the Constitution:-I implore for her, the signal advantage-the just privilege of distinct representation in Parliament.

"With her half-million of dependent population-with her three millions of annual manufactures-with her ten millions of active capital,-I submit it to the candour of my Honourable Friend, whether his hundred of Bassetlaw, with all its coronets, has any claims which could compete with these, even if justice, expediency, and the Constitution, would permit them to be heard?"

We regret that our limits will not allow of a more extended quotation from a speech which will live in the records of Parliamentary his tory, and that we cannot do critical justice to the able assistance afforded to Mr. Tennyson by Sir James Mackintosh. Sir James Macintosh aptly cited a poignant reply of Lord Dudley, in the Grampound debate, who, in commenting on an expression made use of in the House of Commons during that discussion, "that the practices connected with Gatton and Old Sarum were enough to call up our ancestors from their graves,"-wittily remarked-" No, our ancestors were well acquainted with such boroughs; they had their Gattons and Old Sarums like ourselves: but I will tell you what would have startled them, to have seen towns, greater than their London, without a single representative."

66

However, this question is again postponed to the next Session, and, in the mean time the administration may wisely consider whether they will, with grace and favour," bring forward, as a government measure, that which the patriotic (and eminently successful) legislator Lord John Russell will otherwise infallibly in a few years force upon them. The policy of such a cabinet measure cannot but be obvious to a statesman of the penetration of the Duke of Wellington. He has no pledges or opinions to Macadamise, and he cannot but see that the large unrepresented towns have a right to the elective franchise in the great original representative principle of the British constitution. We also affirm that Mr. Peel, on this subject, is equally a free agent. His ancient Anti-Catholic opinions and prejudices were never amalgamated with any resolutions against the amendment of the representa

tion.

It is singular, but we assert the fact without fear of contradiction, that Mr. Peel never " committed himself" on the subject of Par

liamentary reform. And if he had so committed himself would not Birmingham be entitled to the benefit of his bold and states, manlike defiance of the ultras on a recent occasion—that whenever convenient to him, or called for by times and circumstances, he would change when and where he saw fit? A liberal policy on the part of the government, on this important question, would, in connexion with the more extended proposition of Parliamentary reform, greatly strengthen the existing representation, It would satisfy large bodies of the unrepresented community by the extension of the franchise; it would form a practical experiment, as to the virtue of a more popular franchise; and by a timely concession to the people, ward off the demolition of that "Borough System," which must, "in the nature of things," soon be gathered to the tomb of the Capulets. An argumentum ad hominem may probably prove the most effective and successful logic. For ourselves, we must confess that the proceedings against this wretched borough of East Retford wear the face of most solemn ridicule. Unquestionably the claims of the non-represented towns ought to be considered and determined on a wider basis than the distribution of the aliquot parts of here-and-there a detected rotten franchise. So far we agree with the legal advocate of East Retford, Mr. Common Sergeant, who, in a speech at the bar of the House of Commons, on the 7th of March, 1828, delivered an argument in justification of the faux pas of his client, remarkable for its irony, ingenuity, and rhetorical subtlety. The passage we allude to we heard with unmingled satisfaction, and we regret that the speech has not been recorded in Hansard :

"Can any thing be more absurd than, if that great town (Birmingham) ought to have representatives, to wait till you catch such a man as Mr. Hanham, who has kept those things in his mind for sixteen years, and now comes at the end of that period to disclose the secrets of his employer and betray his trust?-Are you to wait till you find some coadjutor with whom you would be afraid and ashamed to be seen in a room by yourselves? Is that the mode in which this right of representation is to be conferred? It is a right belonging to the whole people of England, to be exercised on principles of equity and general benefit to the public, and you debase and pollute it by the company in which it stands. Therefore, Sir, I take the liberty of saying it is not against a particular borough, as it appears to me humbly, that the question ought to be directed. The question should be, as I humbly submit, what ought to be done for the public benefit, and if done on a comprehensive scale of action, let me take the liberty of suggesting that these inquiries are not calculated to teach purity-they may teach caution-they may teach persons to do the thing with more hypocrisy and art than they have done before: but, I ask, why should Manchester and Glasgow, and so many other great and important places, including Birmingham, remain unrepresented, because there is no person who has kept his list of paid voters for sixteen years, and is then willing to come and give up the letters he has received, and to help in the work of disfranchisement?"

Such has been the utility and success of the "East Retford Question" in calling into new life the great WHIG principle of the purer re

presentation of the Commons, and exciting the claims of Manchester, Birmingham, Leeds, Sheffield, and Glasgow. The consistent and judicious parliamentary exertions of Mr. Tennyson, aided by Lord John Russell, have eminently contributed to this great and paramount political end, and the country at large is correspondingly indebted for services most laborious and disinterested.

The state of parties, immediately caused by the Catholic and East Retford Questions, is singular and anomalous. A mariner in the billows of the Bay of Biscay, is not more perplexed to divine to-morrow's will of the wind and waves, than is the English politician to foresee the current of politics and personal power. The charm of Toryism, broken by the sudden dissolution of the Eldon administration, never can return. The scales of the patient's eyes have been removed; the people, we may say, the King, Lords, and Commons, are emancipated from the thraldom of the Ultra Tory witchcraft. The Commonwealth has other friends than those who so long and successfully arrogated and secured for themselves the good things of "Church and State." Watch words have lost their effect on the public mind. The country now seeks to be governed not by the Walpole, Pelham, Pitt, or Liverpool families, but by principles. This radical change in the opinions of the nation is daily becoming more confirmed, and, consequently, more active in its operation; its remote and approaching effects cannot be prognosticated. The schoolmaster is abroad, and wheresoever he walketh the light will break in. Resistance is vain; education is the steam power of the political element, and its application has no assignable limit.

The politics of Great Britain are at this moment remarkably dependent on natural casualities, on the life and death of individuals. What confusion might not the death of the king involve among parties? and what that of the Duke of Wellington? What would be the effect and influence of a Regency, an event not unlikely, perhaps not far off? And what coalition will take place immediately on the prorogation of Parliament? There are three great parties in the Legislature-the Ministers, the Opposition, the Ultra Anti-Catholics, or ministerial malcontents. The personal talents and votes of the administration are not the most powerful. In men of business the present administration is singularly deficient: Mr. Huskisson and his adherents have a jealous eye to this vacuity. The "Opposition," in all its discordant and various divisions, is more formidable in numerical, aristocratical, and intellectual weight than at any previous period: it has, however, no head, or common principle of action; and, perhaps, its political tenets are now slightly distinguishable from the principles of the Duke of Wellington's cabinet. In the majority of ministerial questions the Opposition, for consistency's sake, necessarily supports the government; this gives strength to the present cabinet. Still their numerical force when against administration, added to the sulky neutrality of the Ultra Tory malcontents, must ever endanger and weaken the ministry. A coalition, or a re-union, therefore, must immediately take place. We hoped that the removal of Catholic disabilities would have allied to the government many friends of liberal principles and party; but we know that intrigues have been going on, and are still in active operation, to restore the penitent Ultras to their patrimonial claims. Whether in or out, all must

see in the past, the present, and the future, the truth of Hume's remark, in his essay on the coalition of parties-" All human institutions, and none more than government, are in continual fluctuation."

THE EXHIBITION OF THE ROYAL ACADEMY.

AN injudicious pedagogue is he who metes the encouragement he gives to his pupils by the strict measure of the merit of their performances. Would he have them improve, he must watch the disposition to do better: he must even seek for excuses to allow a muscle or two of his magisterial visage to relax from its awe-inspiring rigidity; occasionally must he even affect a satisfaction which he cannot feel; he must applaud where he is more than half disposed to chastise, and bestow rewards which he deems, at best, but barely merited. Even with such indulgence will we regard the labours of the Royal Academy: we will follow the multitude in crying well done to our artists; we will commend the Exhibition as a good one, because it excels that of last season: nor will we examine how far the fulfilment of our anxious and longing desire to behold the establishment of a school worthy of the intellect and eminence of the country, is still distant. If we cannot indulge in hopes, at least will we suppress our fears, while we examine the contents of this display of national talent, not by what we wish that it had been, nor by what it might and ought to be, but by what similar exhibitions have been before it. With such a comparison in view, we fear not to commit an error-we can be guilty of no partiality, in pronouncing the Exhibition a good one. In the first place, our best Academicians in each of the three classes of art have contributed to the collection, works at least worthy of their previous reputation, and of companionship with their former productions. Wilkie re-appears on the scene laden with rich fruits, exotic, perhaps, but not the less luxuriant and savory on that account. Etty soars boldly, but on far surer wings than the Nephew of Dædalus-Turner is romantic, but he romances with taste and in the poet's spirit-Callcott is natural, but his nature is pure, refined, and beautiful-Constable is vigorous-Collins is brilliant-Daniell invests his Indian scenery with more than accustomed brightnessHilton interests, to say the least of his effort, in handling the pencil of Raphael-Howard displays his grace-Lawrence his ton and elegance-Pickersgill his spirit-Jackson his judgment. If Beechey, Phillips, and Shee, be tame, they are not more so than usual. Does Reinagle stand conspicuous in vulgar gentility—when was he otherwise? Or was Westall ever free from mawkish affectation? Soane is as splendid as ever, but not more absurd (could he be so?) than heretofore. Sir Jeffrey Wyatville in more than one display shows himself worthy of his architectural knighthood. If Chantrey never before exhibited a work so unworthy of himself as his bas-reliefs in the present exhibition; yet can it not be denied that his heads of Sir Edward East and Lord Stafford may compete with the best of his busts. Westmacott's Brahmin and Mussulman Moulah unite the qualities of