The National Register.
London, England, 1819-12-05 00:00:00

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No. 232.—V0L. XII.]

SUNDAY, DECEMBER 5, 1819.

itetrospect.

that it is a sore suYect, about which the less that is
said the better. This silence might also be meant
as a significant intimation to the Ministerial party,
that it was a topic to be kept oul, of sight of Par.
Bement, and that no investigation, which it was
possible to ward off, should be admitted. This,
however, was a hopelest view. The Blood of Eng-
lishraten rant even yet be spilt without enquiry.
It was said by the friends of Government, that
they possessed information which it would, till
Parliament met, be premature to disclose, and
that the magistrates of Manchester were equally
ready to prove their justification. Now what
has been really done towards this? Why,
his Majesty's Ministers have protested in the first

As the Legislature is now assembled, and assent-
tied upon a crisis so extraordinary sad important,
it is natural that the eyes and intention of the coun-
try should be directed to their proceedings with no
ordinary degree of earnestness and anxiety. The
Speech upon the opening of the Session was filled
with nothing but tepicsof lamentation and mourn-
ing and wee. Discontent and Sedition. and Bias-
phemy, and fluctuation in the Revenue, formed the
grand czpote prepared and submitted to Parliament
by the Ministers of the Crown of the actual state
of the.eountry. Now we can only observe upon
such astatement in liming, that if there be any one
means of; government more unexceptionable and in.
telligiblethan another, it is that " Every administra-
tion or .set •of rulers, be (hey who they may, are
answerable, strictly and unqualifiedly answerable
. for the con/Lion both external and internal of the
country they presume to govern." You may say
-this measure is good, and that is bad, but if the ge.
ncral result of the whole body of our national
counsels be productive only of national calamity
-and universal suffering, where is the man that can
be so wanting to common sense and to.public justice
as not declare the Government, we mean that ad-
ministration, to be a bad one. A large part of the
community are equally unfitted and indisposed to
trouble themselves with questions of public policy,
and an implicit belief in the authority of those to
whom the management of our public interests is.
-committed, is thought to be, by many more, the
sole and great criterion of English loyalty. But
we may now appeal even to Ministers themselves
for a judgment on the fruits of their own adminis-
tration. All charges of calumny and detraction and
Callous opposition are now at once wiped away.
Those who were attached to Ministers and unwil-
ling to believes single wort of the evilsilfat exist
amongst us may now refer, not to Lord Grey and
Mr. Tierney, Io Mr. Brougham and Mr. Waith-
man, but to those unquestionable sources of truth
and veracity, to Lord Liverpool and Mr. Vansittart,
sto Lord Castlereagh and Mr. Canning It was loudly
ohjected to the Whigs that in one short year of
power, with a war, which they had -uniformly op-
posed, raging, with a weight of taxation which they
had never acquiesced in imposing, but now become
indispensably necessary to meet the common expen-
diture with obligations left by their predecessors,
which the public faith pledged and compelled them
-to discharge ; they had done but little for the pub-.
Ire goad. What have those men done -in the same
cause during a course of so many years as they have
been now in power, and with every opportunity,
every facility, every enjoyment of Parliamentary
support which the most meritorious could claim, or
the mostimbecile pray fur? If these men can 34-t
retain the reins of that .power which they have thus
used, and the guidance of that chariot which. Upon
their own chewing, is every moment in peril of being
dashed to atoms, at least let us hear no more of the
daager of unsettling the public mind. and loosening
the bonds of obedience due to rulers. But what
*tikes us as the most extraordinary part of the open-
lug of the present Session is, that the Parliament,
las been expressly and notoriously convened in con-
sequence of the Manchester transactions ; yet that
'this great, and we may safely assert, sole cause of its
assembling is not even once mentioned as a subject
ed. consideration, or even hinted ut in the Speech of
the Prince Begent. The comment can be but this,

place against all enquiry by Parliament—in the
next place they have in lieu of it printed and dis-

tributed to the .Mlewbera•

of the Magistrates, both previous to and soon after
the IGth of August, but without any
instructions, and without one single

donee on the other aide, and without

oporturiityorits being offered,. Lord

has made his own statements to the

_.-' • •

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[PRICE Sid..

ranged together on a political question, voted tisr
enquiry, and amongst those who did not,
there were several who merely abstained, from
the motive that other opportunities woul.l arise
of chewing their sense upon it, without mixing
it with oppposition to the Address.
A motion has „ken made in each. 'House ifi.c
an inquiry into the Manchester business, and
into the present state of the nation. It would natu-
rally enough be thought by the small number of
those that place any reliance whatever in the pro-
testations of Ministers, that this was what they
wished, but it is no such thing--they everted them-
selves to the utmost (and, we regret to say, suers's-
fully) 6, obtain oblivion for the past—they have
introdattail several Bills for the purpose of puttiv,
down Itlifitribey call sedition, but which is, in fact,
only a spirit of discontent arising from their mal-
The only one part of these Bills
tax upon
atougii