The Liverpool Standard and General Commercial Advertiser.
Liverpool, Merseyside, England, 1833-04-05 00:00:00

THE LIVERPOOL STANDAh_fi.

THE MAGAZINES.

In our last number we noticed Fraser's, Blackwood's,
and The Dublin University Magazines, and we now pay
our respects to our Radical friend Mr. Tait, of Edinburgh.
The number fur April contains an article entitled "The
Whig Coterie of Edinburgh," wherein it is written
that,—

The Scottish Whigs persist in keeping up every sinecure ap-
pointment; they refuse to hear of further reforms; they strive
to keep on good terms with the Tories : it is all weakness and
ignorance of the world—no positively dishonest purpose. Raw
from their studies, they tremble to lay a reforming finger upon
the delicate machine intrusted to their care, lest it should
crumble in their grasp. Conceited of their own superior ac-
quirements; believing that all are in utter ignorance except
their old corrupt opponents, themselves and their toadies, they
doggedly refuse to hear of any person undertaking what they
fear to attempt. They are like a physician who would consult
all his authorities by the bedside of an apoplectic patient; care-
fully collating every passage with the symptoms of the dying
man, before ho attempted to relieve him. They feel not them-
selves the grinding of that penury which redundant taxation,
and a clumsy, cumbrous system of executive government have
brought upon the working classes; and they belieVe every man
who speaks from feeling an unsafe counsellor. He is excited,
and cannot reflect coolly. It is as though they should address
a friend, " My good fellow, you must allow that you, who have
a goad of red-hot iron sticking in your breech, cannot reason
so coolly on the matter as we who are free from all such appli-
ances and means to boot. It is absurd in you to deafen us with
your cries to pull it out before we have time to come to the
conclusion that such is the most eligible mode of procedure."
This is not dishonesty: but it is every whit as dangerous.
You may force a rogue to act right by pointing to the gibbet :
but pragmatical council walks with closed eyes over the preci-
pice. Again, it engenders public distrust. Public men must
be judged by their public actions : few have access, and fewer
leisure, to study their ruling motives, and to learn to pardon
them for their good intentions. That people with which they
disdain to form a nearer intimacy, will soon grow disgusted
with them. They will bear the blame of all the ill they occa-
sion, which is fair but they will also be accused of having
willed it, which is hard; for they have kind hearts, and. high
aspirations.
If they persist in their besotted obstinacy, they will form a
drag-chain of imposing strength on the motions of government.
Let us see : There are in the present Parliament Jeffrey, Mur-
ray, and Macaulay,—tongues of the trump.
*,

With this tail wagging behind him, in its tremulous pride, Lord
Brougham will be more likely to put on his peremptory in the
cabinet. He has been from youth a man more of brilliant,
comprehensive, and restless, than of solid parts. In the Spe-
culative Society he was one of those whose boldness was mainly
instrumental in calling down the indignation of the big-wigs;
and again, he was the one who most overlaid the character of
conformity he was called upon to assume. Such has he been
through life. His ambition is great, his conceptions noble, his
activity sleepless : but his power wants continuity of applica-
tion. He puts on too much at one time, and too little at an-
other. Forming bold ideas, and acting upon them with a start-
ling rapidity at one moment, he seeks the next to tread the per-
plexed paths of intrigue with the noiseless footstep of the cour-
tier. One day he beards his enemies with fierce denunciations;
and then for a week he is all conciliation, " the torrent's
smoothness ere it dash below." For a week he is the oil spread
over the vexed billows of the House of Lords, to restore the
glassy surface of that once waveless aristocratic ocean ; and at
the end of it, he breaks out into a Herculean frenzy, seizes poor
Sugden, as his prototype did Hylas, and hurls him far away
beyond human ken; or rather, by a more cruel metamorphosis
than any in Ovid, he, before our eyes, transmutes a man into a
bug. Such a creature of momentary and varying impulses—
over-bold the one moment, dangerously timid the next—fol-
lowed, as he is likely to be, by a numerous and talented body
of personal adherents, is a questionable coadjutor for a gbvern-
ment.

From another article, headed "Earl Grey," containing
a sketch of the life and character of that nobleman, we
also make some extracts :

To describe what minister 'Ought to be, is, perhaps, to link
together a set of incompatible and unattainable qualities which
have never yet existed iu one man ;—to suppose a congregation
of antagonist faculties, many of them rare in themselves, but
all still rarer in their combination ; a galaxy of lighti Which
have never yet appeared in one visible hemisphere. If, in order
to describe the beau ideal of a minister, we are to say, that he
must be at once wise and adventurous; cautious and ardent;
speculative and practical; with the power to generalize, yet of
minute knowledge ; patriotic and national, and yet dispassion-
ate and philosophical; intimately acquainted with the wants
and wishes of the people, and yet no slave to popularity or to the
popular voice ;—at once political economist and moralist; war-
rior and diplomatist; patriot and citizen of the world—if to de-
scribe a minister, we are to say this,—the reply we shall obtain
will be that of Rasselas, Prince of Abyssinia, to his friend Im-
lac, " Thou hast now proved it impossible that there should be
a poet,"—putting minister in the place of bard.
*Si

The fatal defect in the character of Earl Grey, and in that of
many of his colleagues, is not want of talent, but want of know-
ledge. He has lived long in a secluded and aristocratic retire-
ment, associating with none who were likely to. give him the
information most valuable to a minister; that is, of the real
state of the country which he is called upon to govern. Neither
conversant with modern statistics, nor with political economy,
he is unable to search into and discover for himself the actual
nature and urgency of the causes which are now agitating-the
body politic from top to bottom. It is not improbable that he
does not really see tile true reasons why his predecessor was so
suddenly overturned, and he himself made minister. It is cer-
tain, that most of his "order" have not the remotest conception
of these causes ; and if, of the few who have, there be One,
amongst his colleagues, it will be the better for his ministry,
precisely in the ratio in which that colleague is listened to.
That Mr. • Stanley is not the man, let Earl Grey be sure. To a
man, however, like Earl Grey, who has not, nor ever had, any
real knoWledge of the monetary concerns of the country, nor of
the state of commerce, manufactures, navigation, nor even
agriculture, as connected with that monetary system, it is diffi-
cult to show that the time has now come when all the resources
of these branches of industry can no longer contend against the
overwhelming pressure of the present taxes. It is most difficult
to convince a mind unused to such details, that, since the bill
of Peel came into complete operation, the weight of the debt
and other imposts is rapidly driving one portion of the nation
into a state of absolute destitution, and depriving the rest, save
those who live upon the taxes, less rapidly, but not less surely,
of such property as they possess. Lord Grey cannot but know
that the country is in distress and difficulty; but the extent of
desperation to which the country is reduced, it is More than
probable he does not know ; and, not knowing it, cannot con-
ceive the immense sacrifices and changes requisite to remedy
that state. Unaware that his situation is totally and altogether
without precedent; as an English minister, he will, unhappily,
on every emergency, look to precedent to guide him; and, of
necessity, derive from the experience of the past, now inappli-
cable, nothing but mischief and mistake.
Upon the whole, the probability is, that Earl Grey, great as
his talents undoubtedly are, is slot equal to the crisis in which
he is called upon to act. 'I here are certain periods in the his-
tories of all nations, when genius of the very highest order is
alone of use; and when a mediocrity of genius avails no more
than the utter negation of it, with whatever virtue of intention
it may he accompanied. That this is true of England at this
momentous time, every symptom conspires to prove; and it is
hardly possible to conceive of the present ministry that they
possess energy and talent adequate to the exigencies that throng
and thicken around them. It seems too certain that. Earl Grey
will go down to posterity as one whose genius and courage were
neither equal to his good intentions, nor to the perilous era in
which he lived; and that he will partake in the application of
that famous sentence of Tacitus upon Galba, " Uranium con-
sensu capax Imperil, nisi impe2-asset."