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By the time of the commencement of the great French Revolutionary war, the system of corruption was in full play. No deed, however disgraceful, was shrunk from that served the party in power, or enriched them as individuals. Laws and their penalties were set aside at the pleasure of almost any one in ministerial favour; for the aristocracy was now confident of having for ever rooted out the people from the constitution. Mr. Lambton, the father of Lord Durham, proved before liament that one Hoskins had been got out of prison, where he lay for infringing the lottery act, on bail, by promising to procure sixty votes for Lord Hood, the ministerial candidate for Westminster his bail was utterly worthless, but was accepted; and, of course, Hoskins disappeared. It appeared too, that one Smith, a publican in Westminster, who had been fined fifty pounds for violating the excise laws, had, for a similar promise to Lord Hood and the government, had his fine remitted. So freely did these daring ministers play fast and loose with the laws of the country.

"Everywhere bribery and corruption from all parties, and undue influences on the part of the government, were manifest; but it was in Scotland, the country of Rose and Dundas, that these latter influences were most openly practised.' 93* From the moment of the union with Scotland, the greedy poverty of many nobles and others of that country had added alarmingly to the flood of corruption. In 1711, only four years after the union, it is declared that the Scottish peers, almost to a man, began to show an eager disposition to be bought by the ministry: nay, Lord Oxford declared in 1712, but five years after the union, that the Scotch lords were grown so extravagant in their demands, that they were now come to expect a reward for every vote they gave. It was urged by the patriotic that there was imminent danger to the constitution if the crown were allowed to crowd the House of Lords with Scottish peers, notoriously poor for the most part, and still more notoriously venal; that they, and whole hungry clans at their heels, had rushed into places, and the names of George Rose and Melville, the friends of Pitt, were become more prominent than all the others for the mass of shameless jobs by which they had covered themselves with affluence.

The means of self-aggrandisement were boundless, for the public money was suffered to lie in astounding sums in the hands of different ministers. The paymaster of the forces had seldom less

* Knight.

than a million in his hands; and Lord Holland, the father of Fox, had half-a-million in his hands when he died. How long he had it does not appear, but it was not received for fourteen years afterwards; and the interest, as honest George Rose said in parliament, which amounted to another half million, was never accounted for. Such was the state of things which lasted to and through the last great war, the wonderful expenditure of which we have already described.

But it is not to be supposed that this course of crime and extravagance had been run without remonstrance; that no voice had been raised in defence of the Constitution. For a hundred years, from the first motion of Mr. Bromley of Norwich, and and Sir John Aubyn, for reform, the demand for reform was continued at successive periods by such men as Carew, Glynne, Sawbridge, Fox, Saville, Sheridan, Lambton, Grey, Fitzgerald, Millbank, Russell, Tierney, Whitbread, Erskine, Cartwright, Smith of Norwich, Lord Durham, the Marquis of Bedford, Burdett, Brougham, Denman, Althorp, &c. &c., but in vain. During the headlong period of war and domestic despotism, the Scotch reformers, Muir, Margarott, Skirving, and Palmer were prosecuted, and transported; Mr. Winterbotham, an American minister, was imprisoned two years for preaching liberal sermons; Horne Tooke, Hardy, and Thelwall were committed to the Tower, but acquitted on their trial: Sir Francis Burdett shared a similar fate. In the course of the parliamentary struggle for the restoration of the representation, it was shown by Lord Grey, in the address of the Society of the "Friends of the People," that less than 15,000 electors returned the whole house, instead of the adult males of 30,000,000 of people; that the franchise was totally out of joint, Cornwall and Wiltshire returning more borough members than Yorkshire, Lancashire, Warwickshire, Middlesex, Worcestershire, and Somersetshire united; and that a single English county returned, within one, as many members as the whole of Scotland. That seventy members were returned by thirty-five places where there were no voters at all, except hogs or owls could be counted such; ninety others were returned by forty-six places, in none of which the voters exceeded fifty, and so on. Mr. Byng, in 1783, had shown that the Tower Hamlets paid 34,000l. land tax, and yet were unrepresented; that the county of Cornwall paid 20,000l. less, and yet was represented by forty-two members. Cornwall, in fact, was the stronghold of rotten boroughs. Nay, Pitt himself declared that "this was no representation, nor anything like it; but a party of men employed by ministers and foreigners, under the mask

and character of members of that house." He protested that "it was a cabal more to be dreaded than any other."*

But "this cabal more dangerous than any other" ruled on, and with Pitt himself at its head, for many years. It ruled on to the end of the great wars, and amply justified Pitt's declaration. Never did a cabal abuse to such an awful extent a great nation —never did any other heap on its native land such a mountain of debts, crimes, difficulties, and miseries in full store for coming years. That war ended, and the whole of Europe, reduced again by our arms and money to arbitrary subjection, there remained but one thing for our aristocratic government to attempt; and that was, to put out the last spark of freedom amongst us at home. They made that attempt, and failed. In 1818 the whole people of England were groaning under the intolerable results of their gigantic efforts to do that for France for which France did not thank them. Distress everywhere prevailed; riots were frequent, from the high price of food, and the stopping of the works in the manufacturing districts; the Habeas Corpus Act was suspended; Mr. Hunt was addressing vast crowds in Spitalfields and other places, to petition for reform; and a bill was soon passed to put down these meetings.

In 1819 distress and tyranny seemed to have reached their acme. There was to be no cry of distress; that last consolation of the wretched, the power to complain, was denied at the point of the bayonet; and, had the spirit of Englishmen then been one iota less than English, the triumph of the_great_scheme of aristocracy had been complete the ruin of England had been consummated for ever, and all its long-earned glories laid in their grave. In vain would Alfred and Wycliffe, Milton and Marvel, Shakspeare and Bacon, Cromwell and Pym, Hampden and Fairfax, Newton and Locke, and all our radiant firmament of great souls and great names, have lived and acted for us. They would have become solitary stars in other hemispheres, lighting up other nations when that for which they fought and toiled was wrapped in actual darkness; and the Stuarts, Straffords, Lauds, and their like would have done their work, and have plunged us down into the herd of myriad slaves that vegetate on the face of the violated earth, not men, but the weeds which the armed heel of tyrany stamps into basest mire.

Castlereagh, Sidmouth, and Liverpool did their worst. The government was become thoroughly odious by its restrictions on the press, and on all constitutional freedom. By its employment of Oliver and other spies to excite the sufferers to riot, so that

*Parliamentary Debates, 1782.

they might be cut down by the soldiery, and furnish plausible reasons for fresh enactments of a tyrannous nature; by the Manchester massacre, and the persecution of the radicals all over the kingdom, amongst whom were Hone, Hunt, Cobbett, Sir Charles Wolseley and many others, most of whom were immured in different prisons, they brought the popular indignation to a

crisis.

Here the boundary of aristocratic policy was overstepped. The system of burrowing and cajoling had been abandoned, the mask had been thrown off; tyranny had dropped its stratagems, and its hollow phrases of "glorious constitution! free people!" &c., and stood forth in that naked and hideous form in which Englishmen never yet tolerated it.

The popular wrath arose. The aristocratic despotism affrighted, shrunk back, and, under the guidance of the whigs, retreated in 1832 into the magic circle of the Reform Bill. This once more flattered the people with the show of a constitution, though it artfully withheld the substance. It gave enough to soothe the irritated nation, but not enough to allow it to escape from aristocratic tutelage. It relaxed the reins, but did not remove them. With an elective franchise of 600,000 for 30,000,000 of people, it gulled John Bull with the idea that it admitted him to his own house, while he had not even got his head into the lobby. Like clever necromancers, the whig aristocrats waved their magic word-wand "extinction of rotten boroughs! extension of the franchise to new towns!" and all the old delusions were revived; John Bull got a paper document called the Reform Bill, and fancied it the genuine title to his estate. Aristocracy resumed its ascendancy, and to this hour holds the nation in the most perfect vassalage, spite of its most vigorous efforts to get free.

CHAPTER XXI.

ENGLAND, WITH ALL ITS LANDS, LEGISLATURE, AND DEPENDENCIES, THE POSSESSION OF THE ARISTOCRACY.

THUS we have traced the career of aristocracy in this country through all its tortuous course, from the entrance of the Conqueror in 1066 to the present moment-a period of 778 years. It is the most remarkable history of any corporate body of men in the world. Other bodies, such as priestly hierarchies, priestly sects,

the monks and knights, the Templars and others, have risen, exercised a vast influence, and have fallen again into poverty, annihilation, or decrepitude and mere partial life; but this body has sustained nearly eight hundred years of daring assumption of exclusive wealth, honour, and privileges, and that over the most freedom-loving people on the earth; and has established itself on their shoulders, as the most powerful and wealthy body of men since the foundation of the world. The aristocracy of Greece and Rome have nothing to show, in comparison with the splendour and dominion of ours. All other modern aristocracies have, as we shall take occasion to show, ruined their respective nations, and fallen with them, or have for their arrogance and effeminacy been reduced to insignificance or nothing. The British aristocracy, on the contrary, has only risen the higher from defeat, brighter from temporary eclipse, and more successful from the efforts of a great nation to take possession of its own power.

From the period of the Revolution of 1688, whence we claim the full possession of our constitution, we may be said to have lost it altogether. It became then the prey and the property of the most artful class of men, by the most artful and successful scheme ever devised. To the depth of that stratagem and policy by which the people were beguiled out of their constitution, that of the popish priesthood in the middle ages on the ignorant mass, or of the inquisition on the bodies and souls of Spain and Italy, were nothing. They had to deal with ignorant and slavish nations-our aristocracy with proud, active, liberty-loving ones; natures great and enlightened, but with the fatal weakness of being easily blinded by the reflex of its own splendour from the mirror of royalty and aristocracy-of being flattered to its own ruin.

The first epoch of English aristocracy saw it enrich itself by the monarch's bounty, but punished and reduced by the monarch's resentment of its assumptions. The second epoch saw it stand by the monarch, and fall with him. The third and last saw it with more than Ulyssean, with more than Machiavellian, with more than Loyolean cunning, draw an eternal warning from its past errors, assume the POLICY OF HYPOCRISY, and our own eyes have beheld its consequent and UNPARALLELED TRIUMPH!

While lauding the people's glory, it has accomplished its disgrace; while bowing in mock deference to its sovereignty, it has stolen its birthright! It has impudently picked our pockets while it has laughed in our faces, and pretended to reverence and obey John Bull, while it has laid him on his back, and taken his cash at its leisure. At this hour, spite of the Reform Bill, which was to annihilate its aggressions, it stands the great trium→