The National Register.
London, England, 1809-11-12 00:00:00

REGISTER.

I

SUNDAY,

POLITICAL DISQUISITIOIi

isustiaka SIN Ei'Y-SIX.

•••••••111111..."•
e 3 • p.
THE MINISTERS.
' It is ixnponible to exhatist, or do adequate justice to this
exquisite subject. In our last we were able to trace no
-more than a taint outline of a groupe worthy the immortal
pen or RABELAIS, SWIFT'S caustic humour, or HOGARTHIII
pencil. It unites to the truly comic, one of the strongest
attributes of' the sublime; for can any thing inspire greater,
terror, than to see a man in a high state of intoxication,
mounted upon a spirited horse, galloping and spurring the
animal near the brink of some frightful precipice I In
contemplating this compound of impotent presumption,
and dotage hobbling upon stilts, we experience th9se op-
.pofite sensations Which SHAIE ESPEAR so frequently excites.
We laugh, weep, and are petrified with horror. The so-
lemnity of the Master of the Ceremonies must be 'put to an
excruciating trial, whenever he sees them make the
weekly appearance at Buckingham House, with All the 4
.burlesque of over-strained importance. if he maintain the
solemn deportment of his office; if he can refrain from
tittering, he possesses
.mOre rigid muscles than:6R +CU.
TVI himself. Heaveuknows, our laughing humour is but
of sluirt duratien, wheneier we examine thi: domestic cat-
riehturel To look at it long without„pain'; to:dwell up..
i 1 without disgust, implies a dereliction of every public
,;principle, and a perfect indifference to the honour mid'
:safety of the country. Has some convulsion effaced every'
;vestige of the occurrences of the last twenty tears? Has •
the memory of the Public been affected by the violence or
• the shock? Surely
iiome extraordinary phenomenon of.
this kind must have occurred, to reconcile with the ardu-
out situation the country is placed in, the existence of the
present Ministiy. if experience could teach, or the mis-
fortunes of others operste as an example, the British Ens-
*. pire, like some forlorn wretch in an hospital of incurables,
would not be abandoned to the wanton experiments of ig-
norant, unthinking students.

We cannot reflect upon the consequences of such bar-
barous levity, without apprehending a catastrophe more.
• alarming than the fall of a Ministry. If they are blind and
ruh, it is not fit the Public should lie so. It would be ti;
, poor compensation for the loss of freedom, and the ruin of
a mighty Empire, to tnow that the authors did not escape
• the general wreck.
_At
.is a deplorable truth, that.in pro-
: portion to the*Oillii OA people, their concerns havO
been, almostiovariably, ill-administered: How is it possi-
ble to accotiot,in any othei manner, for the disarpearance
-;014q-many powerful states? How explain the revolutions'
f, 01 Our age? .1a the early stagerof soc:.:ty, the minds of
thinking men,, too strongly impressed by the catastrophe
i'they'witnessed, attributed to supernatural vengeance, the
misery that.befel a people. This esplanation so completely
accords with the weakness and depeodent mate of man;
with the incessant changes In the moral and physical world,
that we can easily conceive how individuals, even of sitpe:
r•kii•-•.filp;

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12, 1809.

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'could fall info so extravagant an error.—

be a very convenient and very acceptable decr
trine, to an imbecile and corrupt administration, who might
foel no objection to impute to invidious fortune, the conse-
quences of their own incapacity. But if we examine our
own annals and those of our neighbours; if we turn over
the records of ancient times, and observe what is now
passing, we shall discover the s;iiiple truth, that the
prosperity of a State rises and falls in a proportionate ratio
to the capacity and virtue, or the depravity and impotence
of its Government. This is so obvious a truth, that it is
inconceivable how it should have been ever overloOked.
The Public cannot be so totally insensible to their inte-
rests, so humiliated by recent disappointments, so dis-
gusted
by a succession of incompetent Ministers, as to k-
come indifferent by whom their affairs are managed. A path/
increases the evil; vigilance and jealousy can alone coati.
teract .it. From the moment a people renounce the right '

ie • ending the conduct, and sanctioning the choice of
ts, they abandon es ery chance of seeing their
affairs entrusted to intelligent and upright Ministers. In-
trigue and sycophancy are intruded into places where merit
and probity might preside. Some fifty years ago, when the
country was tranquil and prosperous at home ; when the
different PoWers of the Continent were so nicely balanced,
endanger the security of the other;—even
istration.composed of materials like the
presen4 Might have involved the State in inextricable dif-
ficulties. In the midst of our highest prosperity America
was goaded into resistance and rebellion, and Ireland al-
most driven to the same state, by the ignorance and rash-
ness of the NORTH Ministry. • There is no nation upon
earth which Can produce so many examples huw much the
happiness of a people depends upon the wisdom of its Go-
vernment; and shall we, afttr so ,thuch experience in (Ms
awful crisis of our affairs, look on unconcerned, careless
about the future, while such impotent, hood-winked crea-
tures as PERCSVAL and his Associates, are nodding in the
first Offices of the State. .The Public must have lately
..be-
come proselytes to MAaoscr's fatalism ; they must have
discarded reason, and acknowledge the sovereignty of
chance,—if they are not. alarmed at the consequences that
-may result frpin the folly and incapacity of this Junto.
We sometimes imagine • ourselves transported to the,
island of Liputa,' and, introduced to the sittings of the
• (
Academy, when we exiniiiic the preceding'', and look
to co
,Appqin,t meats of the rem; 'Calsinct. S Wirt
lithe imagined. tiilt•this• 'child of his.caustic fancy would
one thiy, be realised to -his, native conotry. Nothing is
ivasoin4 ; even. a chief:fiapper is appointed in the Organ
. • . .
of /I:7ster CllOl.Eq. The idca ot
Coen nilters,_•iii Qrjetti)
iber, iS
tw,

NOV I EIS,
I nor intellects,)
This might lac
.4 • trine, to an MI