MENT! Other noblemen, who have lived to make a true estimate of the Hibernian reformation of that period, will take care, we trust, to shun the rock on which Lord Rockingham split! How much of a piece at all times have been the palsying counsels and the insipid patriotism of pretended whigs! They were as busy in 1688, as in 1782; they deprived the political food provided at the revolution of the salt that would have kept it from putrefaction, to the end of time; so that in less than seven years, it had a very ill savour; in little more than twenty,rottenness had reached the bone; and, before the end of the century, this boasted nutriment of English liberty, was dissolved into a mass of corruption.

"The subjects which are protestants, may have arms for their defence suitable to their conditions, "and as allowed by law. The election of members of parliament ought to be free; and for redress of all grievances, and for amending, strengthening, and "preserving of the laws, parliaments ought to be held "frequently!!!" Nostrum of 1688.

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"The contractors' bill; the revenue officers' bill; Mr. "Burke's bill!!!" Nostrum of 1782.

But as the state physicians of 1805 mean, I trust, to be either," a wise and virtuous administration," or none at all; and rather to sacrifice their own personal ambition, than to see " the liberty of the nation," sacrificed to the crown; and as they know that " without a parliamentary reformation that liberty CANNOT be preserved, and the permanence of such an administration CANNOT be secured;" so we may confidently assure ourselves, that the first article of their conditions of serving, and a sine qua non of holding the reins of the executive government, will be A REFORM OF PARLIAMENT.

An agreement to "the discussion," is NOTHING. Well, if not worse than nothing. As one person once forgot to muster all his dependents; so another may forget to command his vassals. Should a " discussion" end like the "discussion" of 1782, what is the consequence ? Ministers must either resign their places or their honour. They cannot serve God and mammon. They cannot at the same time serve their country and the

borough faction. If that faction is to remain, the new ministers must either deliver up the people again, to the iron rod of the unprincipled apostate, or they themselves must become apostates as base; for "a wise and virtuous administration," the borough faction will never endure indeed it cannot. When fire and water come in contact, they cannot exist together; the fire either licks up the water and continues to burn; or the water prevails, and puts out the fire. But if the proper conditions be entered into; if it be agreed, that the matter of reform shall be left in the hands of the minister, to be disposed of as he pleases, we know that he may then equally despise the faction behind the throne and the faction of the boroughs; and that the standing army of parliamentary mercenaries may be broken, disbanded, and dispersed with contempt. If he have carte blanche he cannot be resisted. If he be firm and steady to his own honour and to the people, he cannot be counteracted, without having in his hands the honourable means of counteracting counteraction, and triumphing over perfidy.

To know that PARLIAMENTARY REFORMATION is a sine qua non with a patriotic opposition,would be highly gratifying to the people. For a call into action the people are impatient; an efficient staff at head quarters they desire to see; and to be well officered wherever they shall stand forth, is their wish. The rest belongs to themselves, and they are ready for their duty. Emulous of their naval brethren who incessantly seek, and know how to subdue,the combined enemies of their country at sea; the people at land, desire only to meet, that they may subdue, the combined enemies of their freedom. There is no need to metamorphose a single parish officer into a recruiting serjeant: at the voice of the sheriffs,the people will repair to their Runnimeads, to hew the borough fiend in pieces before the spirit of the constitution, as " Samuel hewed Agag in pieces be"fore the Lord in Gilgal." The same indignant mind which lately exhorted to chop off an offending claw, still breathes and burns for a completion of the work; for the annihilation of the criminal system.

Had I not other and substantial grounds for my opinion, still I should thus argue, because I am a man and an Englishman, because I have the same nature, and was born to the same constitutional inheritance, as other men and other Englishmen. If I feel according to the law of my nature, and reason according to the principles of the constitution, I know that such feeling and such reasoning must, by being known, become general. That those principles may gain on this occasion applicable method and force, I have, as you see, my Lord," written a book;" which "mine adversary,' and the adversary of the constitution I hope will endeavour to decry; for next to the commendation of those who value that constitution, the enmity of base men who set about to destroy it, is the most desirable praise; and I shall not easily be persuaded that my book merits this praise, unless it shall incur that enmity.

I write at a period, and on a subject, when the success of my book will have comparatively little dependence on reviewers of any description. Unless anticonstitutional reviewers can prevent the patriotism of the country appearing in public meetings, to abuse my book will stand them in little stead. If in the terse form of popular resolutions, public virtue shall circulate its principles, the instruction, the spirit will be electrically felt by every man without exception who either reads or thinks. I shall have gained my end, if I shall have contributed to give method and force to the proceedings of early meetings. If good they will be taken as models by those that follow; and the flame of reform will burst out, first here and then there, till it run through the nation. At every new burst of the patriotic fire, public spirit will grow more and more ardent, more and more conscious of its powers.

A mere book might obtain the approbation of honest men, who sighing over the state of the nation, and breathing useless wishes for amendment might lay it down again in despair: but if DUKES OF BEDFORD, if the leaders and luminaries of their country, in the genuine spirit of English liberty, energetically promote on the same principles popular meetings through the land, then, in the shape of resolutions, those princi

ples are instantly changed from a dead letter to a living spirit. No longer the mere opinions of an individual, attended with doubts of practicability, ceasing to be unembodied notions of desirable things little to be hoped for, and becoming real operative acts of our fellow-citizens with whom we are in perfect sympathy, they are now examples we burn to imitate, and deeds we are emulous to excel; they are sanctions supporting us in our duty against corrupt influence exerted to deter and to destroy us; assurances that our rights shall no longer be with-holden, nor our property be transferred to a usurping faction; they are pledges that an English people shall no more be insulted by official ar rogance, and that the time is at hand when their moral feelings shall not be shocked, nor their sense of decency outraged, by spectacles of loathsome prostitution in a house, which ought to be an unsullied object of their respect and veneration in short, virtuous resolutions of public meetings, are the efficacious stimulants to patriot exertion, and the healthful gales that waft the purifying flame of constitutional reformation, and a reviving public spirit, over a drooping nation.

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In generating a spirit of patriotism, public political meetings, provided they be honestly dealt with by those who propose the subjects of consideration, and the matter be judiciously stated, infinitely surpass parliamentary debates. These carried on by persons with whom the mass of society are not on a level, and heard only at second hand, excite, except on very critical occasions, but an imperfect sympathy; whereas those, in which the people themselves are the actors, have every requisite for causing the most powerful enthusiasm. He who personally listens, who personally applauds, and votes, and is the actual associate of the champions of liberty, and a real principal in the deliverance of his country, shares and feels, and tastes the glory of the triumph.

Not believing in any surrender of a besieged tyrant driven by his crimes to desperation; or in any conquest except that of direct breach, and storm, and overpow¬ ering force; so I hold it to have been fortunate that

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the Addington part of the ministry has retired, since now a powerful association of ideas, and all circumstances alike will conspire to arouse an injured people; for in the person of the commander of the body to be attacked, must not the nation see at once the supple slave of the Faction behind the throne, the vile instrument of the faction of the Boroughs, and the unprincipled apostate from reforming virtue; who is equally an enemy of the Crown, an enemy of the constitution, and an enemy of his country?

LETTER XXVII.

MY LORD,

IMPATIENT as Mr. Pitt and the factions have been

for the call of the French armies from the coast to the Rhine, their joy at this event may find a sad counterbalance of disappointment, in its effectually silencing them, as to the unfitness of the time now chosen for making a reform of parliament, and a removal of ministers, subjects of public discussion. Invasion being now removed to a distance, their objections to the time must now be the mere repetition of nonsense a thousand times urged, and a thousand times refuted: and to us this diversion of the French armies furnishes an interval of repose peculiarly favourable to our un dertaking; an interval which we shall be greatly deficient in our public duty if we neglect.

We live, my Lord, in awful times; and we seem by this very event, to be warned by Providence to provide ere it be too late, for our ultimate security, by a complete revival of our constitution, in all its energies, civil and military. After several years of war and bloodshed, which