The National Register.
London, England, 1819-12-06 00:00:00

No. 2.31.—V0L. XII.]

Political tirtrospra.

As the Legislature is now assembled, •and assem.
bled upon a crisis so extraordinary and important,
it is natural that tae eyes and attention of the coun-
try should be directed to their proccedirw with no
ordinary degree of earnestness and anxiety. The‘
Speech upon the opening of•the Session was filled
with nothing but topics of lamentation and mourn-
ing and woe. Discontent and Sedition, and Bina-
phomy, and fluctuation in the Revenue, formed the
grand expose prepared and submitted to Parliament
by the Ministers of the Crown of the actual state
of the country. Now we can only observe upon
-ouch a statement in finalise, that if there be any one
means of government more unexceptionable and in.
tangible than another, it is that ".Every administra-
tion or set of rulers, be they who they may, are
answerable, strictly and unqualifiedly answerable
far the condition both external and internal of the
country therpresume to govern." you may say
this measure is good, and that is bad, but if the ge
neral result of the whole body of our national
counsels be productive only of national calamity
and universal snaring, where is the man that can
be so wanting to common sense and to public justice
us not declare the Government, we mean that ad-
ministration, to be a bad one. A large part of the
community are equally unfitted and ind.sposed to
• trouble themselves with questions of public policy,
and an implicit belief in the authority of term to
whom the management of our public interests is
.committed, is thought to be, by many more, the
sale and great .criterion of English loyalty. But
we may now appeal even to Ministers themselves
-fn. a judgment on the fruits of their own adminis-
tration. All charges of calumny and detraction and
fuetious opposition are now at once wiped away.
Those who were attached to Ministers and unwil-
ling to believe a single word of the evils that exist
amongst us may now refer, not to Lord Grey and
Mr. Tierney, to Mr. Brougham and Mr. Waith-
man, but to those unquestionable sources of truth
and veracity, to Lord Liverpool and Mr. Vansittart,
-to Lord Castlereagh and Mr. Canning It was loudly
objected to the Whiga that in one short year of
power, with a war, which they bad 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 witb obligctions left by their predecessors,
wbich the public faith pledged and compelled them
to discharge ; they had done but little for the pub-
lic good. Whut have these awes 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 most imbecile pray for ? If these men ran yet
retain the reins of that paver which they have thus
used, and the guidance of that chariot whiele upon
their own chewing, is every moment in peril of being
dashed to atoms, at least act us hear no more of the
danger of unsettling the public mind. mai .leusening
the bonds of obedience due to rulers. But what
strikes us as the nmst extraordinary part of the open-
iug of the present Session is, that • the Parliameut,
has been expressly and notoriously convened in con-
sequence of the Manchester transactions; yet that
this great, amlave may safely assert, sole cause of ifs
assetublini:,. VS nut even once mentioned as a subject
of ormsideratiea, or even hinted at in the Speech of
tltp Prince The ceatmeet tun lac but this,