Page:The New Monthly Magazine - Volume 028.djvu/13

2 Remarks on the present Administration.

is one honest Tory in the country, however exclusively he may admire the existing constitution, who will not confess that it has some faults. Let a Tory once go to law, and if he not very rich, or very iniquitous, he will allow that it were better if justice might be had with greater ease, and at a cheaper rate: let him but be blessed with a teeming spouse, and touched by tlie admonitory girdle of a moderate competence, and he will confess that indirect taxes oper(illegible text) no charming direction, and that it might be as well to be governed without being impoverished. To become, however partially, a reformer, the man who feels for others need only enter a labourer's cottage, or walk through the streets of a manufacturing city; he who feels solely for himself, need only visit the gaols, whither little rogues are sent to become great ones, and where petty larcenies are grafted on the stock of felony and murder. Every one who has a shilling to lose or a throat to be cut, has an interest in the prevention of crime; every one who does not wrong another has an interest against the existence of abuses. Now, the misfortune of our Tory is, that in his love for his party he has made all amendment a party measure. His friends, when in power, dare not reform, even if they were inclined, because their very existence as a faction obliges them to insist that all reform is pernicious—if they are beneficial, they are inconsistent; if they relieve the country, they quarrel with their friends. Points of reform have been the very points of dispute between the Whigs and themselves; and to destroy an abuse is to abandon a principle. Thus, if the Tones have the desire to rectify evils, they are forced to abandon it; and we only accuse them of a fact which they glory in themselves, when we state that they have no wish to reform. Next, let us imagine that the Whigs are in power. By a misfortune similar in effect to that of the Tories, they have been pledged to their party, and to the country, not only on the subject of reform in general, but to reform on particular points. Now, as the Whigs are the weaker portion of the aristocracy, so, in older to support them against their more powerful foes, they require a preponderating share of public confidence. Suppose, even, that they had never lost their claim to this confidence by any charge of manœuvring or insincerity, but that they possessed it at the moment of their elevation, we shall see that it would be next to a miracle were they able to preserve it. It is the necessary consequence of party, that certain questions become to it of more importance than the principle from which the questions spring. A Whig does not say, "Make me a minister, and I will look into all abuses;" but "Make me a minister, and I will obviate this or that abuse in particular." Suppose now, that when the Whigs are in power, this abuse in particular is one that cannot be immediately removed; though nine hundred and ninety-nine others might be stricken from the list, yet this, the hundredth abuse, they must remove first; for this, and not the nine hundred and ninety-nine, has been made the pledge of their sincerity. We need not say that the Tories are aware of so awkward a position. The measure so inconvenient to treat, so impossible to shun, is thrust on the new ministers, while they yet tremble in the first footing of power; and hurried between the horns of a most implacable dilemma, experience proves that they must either preserve their principles and lose their places, or forfeit their principles by preserving their places. If