19 MAY 1832, Page 20

MR. GALTS RADICAL.

IN all respects, this is a contemptible book,—contemptible in its object, contemptible in its ignorance, contemptible in its imbe- cility. The author, finding that in writing his book called The Member, he had unconsciously given a great blow to Parliamentary corruption, because he described what he knew in a somewhat happy vein of satire, has felt it necessary to make the amende ho- norable to his party. With a facility of girouetting, only equalled by the Head of the political sect to which Mr. GALT appears to belong, he has set to work to depreciate the character of the Ra- dical Reformer. In an evil hour of fleeting triumph, he dedicated the miserable stuff to Lord BROUGHAM, " late Lord High Chan- cellor." This was the kick of the ass, but lo ! the lion was not dead. Lord BROUGHAM is described as the head and front of the Radical Reform party,—great honour to him if he were so ; and the "one who has done so much to release property from that ob- solete stability into which it has long been the object of society to constrain its natural freedom." Poor man ! could not his party give him knowledge as well as the disposition to defame ? But such ignorance as could alone attribute hostility to the institution of property to Lord BROUGHAM, is the sole groundwork of this poor and catchpenny attempt to garble and misrepresent the doc- trines and intentions of the Reformer. Nor was ignorance in all its amplitude enough: the writer has availed himself of the lowest prejudices he could pick out of the scum of society, and envenomed the whole with a poisonous rancour, such as would seem to spring from bitter disappointment or corrupt expectation. In his foul . endeavour to paint the Reformer of the day, where can he have looked for a model? where can he have imbibed the spirit with which he has painted him? Did the man leave England under the patronage of the Six Acts, with a lively taste of a Spafields riot; and now on his return, seeing the triumphant career of Reforming principles, has he taken it into his noodling pericranium, that the world is all WATSON and HUNT? Probably this purblind novelist, seeing the latter in Parliament, and being driven to write of things he is utterly ignorant of, imagines that the Reformers of Parlia- ment are the disciples of the wretched offscourings of the pro- gress of light, the riotous mob-leaders of a starving population, who bitterly felt the pinchings of want, and thought that the pre- tending quacks who preached to them spoke of a full belly. Some such supposition as this is the writer's only excuse for his Radical : if it be not an approaching resemblance to some poor and cracked disturber like Dr. WATSON, it is not the likeness of any thing either on or under the earth. It so wants plausibility, that even the author's friends, the Tories, can take no pleasure in the portrait: it is an utter miss; and can make no one ridiculous but the un- happy author, who is becoming celebrated for his failures. If the Radical is not a Dr. WATSON or some such man, perhaps his likeness is to be found in some back settlement of Canada, or in some obscure Scotch village,—for these are in truth the only parts of the world's surface that Mr. GALT seems to have looked upon with human eyes. Some foolish and crotchety tailor or weaver, some addleheaded Spencean of Mr. GALT'S acquaint- ance, may perhaps entertain such sentiments, or converse in similar strains of wild nonsense ; and poor Mr. GALT may finey this is a representative of the modern Reformer. And we would pardon his ignorance if it were not joined with spite. For Mr. Nathan Butt, Mr. JOHN GALT'S Radical, is not merely a bad citizen, but a bad son, a cold-hearted friend, a wretched hus- band, and an irreligious man : now of a truth all these moral re- lations have about as much connexion with a reform in Parliament, or a desire for free institutions, as astronomy or chemistry,—and so the author well knew : but how, these omitted, was he to paint a Radical, of whom he knew nothing? with these, how easy to depict a devil.

A political partisan of any opinions, who carries the singulari- ties of individual character into the extremes of party-spirit, may be considered as a fair object of ridicule by his opponents, or at least by the unemployed writer or novelist, who, like the carica- turist, is waiting for a turn-up of the absurd, by way of a job : but he ought at least to understand the game, and in endeavour- ing to draw something like, not make as wide a mistake as be- tween an angel and a Yahoo. Failure, as we have before said of Mr. GALT, is the rule—success the exception; an innocent failure is entitled at least to compassion, but failure from a malignant at- tempt at a furious bite is only deserving of the scourge. r'No pros- titute muse ever deserved a cart-whipping from out the verge of ParnaSsus, more than the author of the Radical deserves banish- ing the realms of genius for the production of this ugly, rickety abortion. To the cavern of Taygetus with it, and let it be no 'more heard of !

We would give an account of the life of this Radical, and his .steps in the world, and his opinions, if it were not all so dreary and so dull, so puling and so feeble, as to defy abridgement. Ab- 'ridge a swamp ! we could as soon enliven our readers with views of a bog, or the varieties of a waste moor. The desert of unvaried sand has something fine in its vastness ; but when a London fog shall be pleasant in bottles, or ditch water worth keeping in draw- ing-room vases, then will we abridge or extract from such a book as the Radical.

Mr. GALT must really make a vigorous attempt to recover his lost ground. So many successive failures have disgusted the world: hope deserts the bookseller at last, and his customers having now so long turned away with doubt and fear from a new offering from his pen, it will require some effort of the genius he possesses to restore him from the condition of one merely trading upon an old name, to the proud position of a writer who never addresses the public without having something to say worthy of the attention of the world.