20 DECEMBER 1834, Page 12

BEWARE OF TORY BELL-WETHERS AND TORY MAKE-BATES!

In the name of peace and good-will, haul down that Tory flay! PARIS, 17th December 1834. " I cannot conceive any existence under Heaven (which in the depths of its wisdom tolerates all sorts of things), that is more truly odious and disgusting than an im- pment, helpless creature, without a consciousness of any other qualification for power but his senility to it. bloated with pride and arrogance, calling for battles which he is not to Sght, contending for a violent doniloion which he cau never exercise. and satisfied to be himself mean and miserable, in order to render other, contemptible and wreteliedT—Burhe's Portrait of a Tory Bed-trether.

ever raised the Continental nations so eagerly on tiptoe, or stirred up But the grave, personage has, in his wisdom, been pleased lately to unfurl on the combination of letters is universally regarded as a bad,se of Toryism, the aggressor in war, the make-bate in peace, and the front-rank cham- pot lords it over a nation of slaves, and the foreign oppressor holds in begun to fail him, and the victim contemplates his chains with anguish beams, feel as when a cloud of hail or sleet, in a dubious day of spring- seeing it prematurely deformed by a lurid atmosphere that assimilates tolerance, usurpation, coercion, insolence, abuse, and misrule, there is

" And lean-look'd prophets whisper fearful change;

are met together for the interchange of thoughts in the language of imperious faction against one's will and better judgment, is slavery ; Europeans.to war with a people whose cause is identified with your own, is bru-

" A fearful hope is all the world contains:" tally Muscovitish ; to shed blood and squander treasure that your but that is a hope of better days, of wrongs redressed, of freedom by enemy may profit by your damage, and preserve the profitable wrongs, law, not of coercion by the sword, of active industry undefaced by war which you are just now moving heaven and earth to take from him, is and unfleeced by fiscal extortion, of the pacific rivalry of skill and in- worse than pelican abnegation ; to involve yourselves in million-de- . telligence, and of the cooperation of once hostile and belligerent states, vouring wars, in order that, in the tumult and exasperation and high- in the production and interchange of whatever can contribute to solace flying Toryism incident to such struggles, your passions may be heated, the heart and enlighten the mind of man. Nothing can anywhere hap- your judgment confounded, and your vision obfuscated, until you sink pen of a nature to affect this hope, but is of necessity felt throughout into passive instruments of injury to yourselves and of fortune to the vast chain of civilized humanity, in all its manifold and wide-spread those who fleece and rough-ride you, is beyond imagination stupid and ramifications. asinine. Yet all this paradoxical madness are you ready to commit— This universal bent and determination of the European mind, is the this world's wonder are you like again to become—this monstrous pay- true philosophic consolation of the patriot, amidst the rubs, reverses, mg and fighting automaton are you certain a third time to enact in the and apparent backslidings which particular nations are doomed to expe- presence of both worlds—unless you haul down that Tory flag. The rience ; and is often all that remains to cheer the closing existence of very Muscovite slave, treading on Poland, will erect his head and ex- men whose whole life has been a seemingly fruitless combat; with pre- claim, like the filthy Cynic of Sinope, " March, march !---i I am not judice, selfishness, and misrule. It is evident on the whole, that the so bad, after all, as that one.'" great tide has set in strongly towards amelioration ; and though contrary "But this were downright lunacy ! ".—granted : "mere insanity ! " blasts may often drive the waves in an opposite direction, and all to con- most true : "impossible, utterly 'mpossible! "—not so, gentle country- temporaries seem to have been running backward, yet shall the next men, unless the thing that has been cannot possibly be that which is to .generation find by comparison that the tide has never ceased to flow in be. When in 1634 your grandsires bearded royalty, and swore flatly its own direction. " Resistance !" " Reparation !" " Conservation !" not to come down with so much as twenty shillings arbitrarily imposed; —these moppers-up of a flood, these repairers of abuses and preservers when, following up their resistance to prerogative, they some years after of dry-rot, fling themselves like corks or casks on the deep, conceive went into a long war that has left traditions of civil bloodshed in every they govern and stop and change the current of human passions and town and county in the island ; when, again, in 1688, they sent abroad .imagination at their will; and see not that, though they may raise a a whole family of princes for discovering pretensions less exorbitant, momentary splash on the surface, they are borne along even with the and cheered on each other into successive wars against the most power- rest. But such philosophy is not the consolation of the people, who ful monarchy of the Continent for abetting those princes and their pre- are alive only to the splash ; and this late bourasque beyond the Channel tensions ; if a gifted seer had denounced unto them, that within little is even now filling their minds with dark visions and their hearts with more than a dozen years of the last of these wars, you shall be found corroding anxieties. A word, a name, a banner—the outward and cutting the throats of your Transatlantic brethren, dragooning them visible sign—is all that is discernible to a foreign people : this banner with Hessian sabres, scalping them with the tomahawk of the savage, .a month ago was Liberty, this word was Peace, this name was Re- to establish in your own favour these very pretensions, this same title form ; and the nations of the Continent were glad at the sight and the to arbitrary taxation ; who would not have cried out, and with reason— sound thereof; for though neither freedom nor reform had place "Peace, thou prophet of Baal, the thing is impossible ; horror like that among them, it was a consolation to think that these sacred treasures was never known ; report not so ill of human nature. Is it the sons of suffering humanity were deposited beyond the reach of the despot's of our fathers who should do this thing? The Americans are our fel- sword, in that impregnable fortress of men's rights—the island-home low-citizens and brethren, sons of Freedom, who is our own mother; and birth-place of Liberty. That word, that name, that banner, is their interests are our interests, their rights our rights." If the Tory

changed: it is now War instead of peace, Force instead of right, Abuse make-bates could achieve this miraculous work of hatred in 1774, what instead of reform ; and freedom, the first of national blessings, sole reasonable assurance have we of their inability to execute an undertak- foundation and pledge of all the rest, seems unto Continental eyes to ing of malevolence in 1834, which it concerns their very existence in be expiring in her last retreat and strongest place of refuge. But no, power to effect, and which demands no miracle to bring to peas?

friend, it is NOT TOO LATE--it is NEVER too late for long-winded, ludo- When, after the Tory war and loss of America, your fathers betook " They hasetdone all they could to alienate your minds from your own kindred [and mitable nations. Trust a British heart, that by sympathy of blood can yuur neighbours]; and if they could excite maim) xnutaan in one or the parties feel what is passing .in British hearts ; trust that long-breathed people, towards the other, they seemed to be of opinion that they bad goon half the way which held out unwed through two disastrous Tory wars, and when towards reconciling the quarrel."—Id. of Tory Make•batet. thought to be at the last gasp, reentered on its original career of m- ils; that imperial style which in French is grandiose, and in English formation, fresh of wind, as though, Antwus-like, it had imbibed new bombast, NAPOLEON, when the gathering of the Austrians on the strength from its fall. How many years is it since a Marquis Minister

Danube drew him off from before the White Cliffs, announced to the insulted the nation by pointing to the Continent everywhere overlaid grand army in a grand bulletin, that " England had uttered a shriek for

her existence, and that the Continent, alarmed by the shriek, was pre- by the Holy . oly Alliance, and demanding what prospect there was for in Great Britain 2—( You see, People, what is to be earned paring to put itself in arms." No shriek from beyond the Channel by twenty years' campaigning and eight hundred millions of debt D-

fear and hope so widely throughout the multitudinous swarms of the to which, by a most righteous doom, that statesman condemned himself, contains the last Minister that was not obliged to European world, as the sight of that ominous banner which an aged trim his sails to a fresh breeze, and submit to the influence of a prin.

British shores. It is nut that the name of IVELLINGTON inscribed ciple denounced ex eathedni as impossible. What ! and after fifteen thereon is in itself of such miraculous potency; but that particular years' run in the same direction, which has ended by bringing the People

into Parliament, where the voice of a nation is beard above the din of and symbolical of a course of Continental policy which is to league corrupt interests, are we to heave-to, lie by, expect another breeze, and Britain with the military despotisms, and make l trust to the schoolmaster ? But this confidence is a stranger to Conti-

Great ier once again nental bosoms, and it may be also to Englishmen who have been siren- pion at all times of oppression and misgovernment. Wherever the des- gers too long to have retained unimpaired the feelings of natives. To

all these, Toryism is a bugbear and the WELLINGTON a scarecrow :— ye

his clutches a people of another tongue, there is joy and there is die- projecting feeotr a ingdapoyie;,to-morrow the " importunate " birds shall perch on its

may ;—the jailor rejoices in his consciousness of a security that had and eat the grain under the " maxima formido " of its scarlet coat.

and despair. Wherever a people have shaken off the yoke, and stand To the gallant people here, however, it is neither bugbear nor scare- crow :but simply the red rag that provokes the bull to wrath, and stimu-

erect in freedom, even as when God first made man in his own free lates him to lash with b is tail, stamp up the soil with his hoof, and threaten image, there are presentiments of danger, sinkings of heart, and forebo- svith his horn. 0 People ! take down that banner, unless you purpose dings of that which is to eome. Those who thought that the sun of to quarrel with a nation whose incipient cordiality and friendship for freedom was risen on the Western world, and that the human race vou has been the despair of despotism ; and whose resumption of were to prosper there ever more and more under the kindliness of its hatred and hostility would be its triumph. That name was subscribed

tide, saddens the field and makes the frame of man to shiver. Those to a treaty of capitulation, violated by the judicial murder of a hero, unforgot (though among Frenchmen) to this very day, and unforgiven

to whom that light is hateful, as a sun-beam to a nest of owls, exult at (ride the words of General EXCELMANS in the Chamber of Peers). the Western horizon to the pitchy darkness of the East. Wherever a That name is coupled in their hearts with defeat, spoliation, and a dynasty restored by foreign bayonets. That name is an insult to a brave prayer is breathed for the good of mankind, for peace, for freedom, for

people overborne by its enemies, and burning to lose in new victories instruction, for justice, for economy, for amity among the sons of men, the memory of past disgraces. Though, unlike you, short of memory there is sadness and despondency: wherever there is pride, bigotry, in- for evil as for good, the Frenchman never remembers so long ar feels triumph and exceeding gladness of heart. so deeply as through the medium of a wounded pride, or—if you are malignant enough to say it—of a mortified vanity. Is there a gene-

Rich men look sad, and ruffians dance and leap,— roes heart, an ardent imagination, a breast filled with patriotic zeal,a The one, in fear to lose what they enjoy; soul that flies forward to a glorious future,--and many such there be in this The other, to enjoy by rage and war: land, though for the moment weighed down by the superincumbent load These signs forerun the death or fall of kings." of a sordid igoisme,—to every such heart and soul and imagination, It is hard that the condition of mankind should be at the mercy of that name inscribed on your seats of power and command, is an unre- any man's caprice, or that any set of men, in court or camp, should be muting instigation to hatred and revenge. Remember, they see but able to exercise at pleasure so wide an influence over our bosom's the outward and visible sign; the inward feeling cannot be appreciated peace : but the movements of a great people, whencesoever originating, or known. You may be inspired with genuine cordiality for a people, can at no time be indifferent to surrounding nations, and least of all in your fellows in the race of liberty, intelligence, and social amelioration; an age when the whole civilized world is bound by common interests but they will see in you only a people to pay down the millions it is bid, and sympathies as with an " electric chain," by which the shock felt in and to march, stand, and fight, wherever the Horse Guards direct, even one is communicated successively to all. The intercourse of people as in the old time. Not but that you might go a campaigning once with people, the study of each other's language and literature, and the more—" the fond ally, that fights for all and ever fights in vain "—and reciprocal communication of ideas and sympathies, have been so general enact Toulouse and Waterloo over again, to the infinite contentment and so uninterrupted in these latter times, that a high spirit, the love of of tithe-fed pluralists, right-honourable placeinen without service, and liberty, aspirations after improvement, and hatred of wrong, abuse, and contractors and loan-jobbers swelling into lords at your expense. If you oppression, are no longer exclusively either British, or American, or are weary of the ways of industry and the pacific triumphs of art and French; they are German, they are Spanish, they are Italian ; they are civilization, you could roam abroad again, or plunder and forage on the the inspiring and predominating sentiments, wherever two or three deep, as in the days of your freebooting grandsires. Only to serve an themselves to healing the won d. it hail intbated, ate' lamina; together the parcels of the British empire that were 1 ; when, by eivilie 'fresh activity to industry and seeking out Hese sources of national weelth, by uniting eiti tens ot !intim to host ile taYacein t be bonds of Christian siniity, revising legislation. and among ode r Unlit ovemente projecting the grand Reform reserved for yonr-elves to eccomplish, they seemed to have at length fallen into the road matbsed out by God fi r the mach of natious, and from which their evil pueeions—personitied end reamed in Tory- ism--alone led them astray:4 a prophet or dreamer( f dreusns, lied inti- mated that within some ten or twelve years thenee, they should be leagued with every despotic power on the Continent—she leaders in a bloody and unprovoked war eg (hist their nearest neighbours, for doing that which their own grandfathers had first exemplified, and carrying into execution the very reforms, judicial, political, and ecclesiastic, which they had been themselves meditating ; who svould not have ex. claimed—" Tusta! %we are not such fools as alt that : it is for us to look to the correction of our own grievances, without minding in ain't man- ner our tieighbours deal with theirs we do not see what advantage could redound from our internieddling in other folk's business to any- body, but to the wolves, who have already once had their will of us, end fleeced and decimated the flock to their heart's eoutent : we have not forgotten their doings in America ; and it is a silly child that burns its fingers twice at the same candle. E.' Terri earernus." And yet the Tory bellwethers and make-hates had mice again their will of the flock, and .fleeced it to the tune of eight hundred millions.

Peoplel as long as that flag, hoisted over your heads in your own despite, bolds out a signal and an entouragemeta to every banished despot who has a restoration to hope by foreign bayonets and foreign gold; to every usurper that is on watch for the moment of riveting the old chains on an emancipated people; to every military empire that seeks aggrandizement by involving Europe in the confusion of a general war; to every arbitrary powcr that for self-promotion is meditating the ruin of all governments wherever is the least particle of liberty ; tinally, to every nation and party whose hatred the Tories have won you, and which is burning once again to be upsides with you by land and by sea ; you are not only exposed to the risk, but are every moment in imminent and hardly avoidable hazel d of u third time falling into the same miserable pit.

Abroad are a hundred points of contact where yo`er peace, your well- being, pair commerce, your good name as freemen, your reputation as Britons may be mieeked : and are the people at home, your own dear Tories, now wriggled into power to complete the ruins of all those gifts of God, if you are good enough to let them, so little known for the talent of finding out those points, and dexterously steering the vessel so as just to run foul of them ? Turn hut your head an instant sway from your affuirs, or,like the Prince in the fable, dip it but one moment in a bucket of water, and you shall find yourselves in the thick of • grand European war, with all its accessories of loan after loan, tax upon tax, millions multiplied into millions, in defence of rates, tithes, pluralities, pensions, sinecures, close corporations, and closer boroughs, bribery, presagangs, flogging, dear justice or none at all, squirearchisd corn-laws and Tory legislation in Church and State. Venture then to talk of Reform, and you will be construed into traitors; the vista of your patriotic dreams will be closed by the gallows, tree; the drum will reply to your remonstrances, and the prison open to receive your persons. But great will be the satisfaction of the non-resident incum- bent of three rectories, no longer questioned about pluralities ; of the Lord Bishop, no longer ashamed to own his enormous revenue ; of the well-paid dc-aothing, whose unearned income is out of jeopardy; of the loan-jobber, contractor, el hoc genus omne, that grow into Peers and millionaires by "jobs to recompense the incendiaries of war," (Bertex); of Members of Parliament at liberty to carry on extensive business in the old line, and baiter, as before, vote against place; of the Horse Guards throng with accumulated business and authorized to flog at discret on ; of politica(' parsons, beating the drum ecclesiastic, and

preaching up " A Briton's duty at the present crisis ;" of country squires, preservers of game by right of the press-gang, and finding births in his Majesty's fleet for every countryman that keeps a lurcher ; finally,of arbitrary Tory etatesmen , gi yen up to their penchant for gagging, coercing, and suppressing ; empowered to govern Ireland by the sword, to dragoon it into rebellion, and then decimate it into subjection ; and

suspend your own Habeas Corpus, to plant a spy in every newspaper club, to convict you of banging a fowlingpiece over your parlour- chimney, and to amend your Reform Bill, until it is an instrument of corruption as commodious as the old Boroughmongering system whisk it supplanted :—" is it for this we are at war, and in such a war ?" (Bona& ) Finally, after bread has risen in price till it is uneatable—the poorest portion of your population been crushed out of existence, and your tradesmen, annuitants, and small proprietors offered up in holocaust to the great Tory God of War—you will have the supreme consolation of throwing up your hats in huzzas fora newts:itch of Kings and Emperors come over to pay you the honour of a visit ; and when the revulsiorts incident to a return to peace have ruined those whom the war had left standing, you will have only to begin thinking, again, of "correcting" abeses and crying out for Reform. If you would not trot round and round this vicious circle in an ever- lasting mill-horse rotation, lose no time, but haul down the Tory flag, and purge your Government of every particle of Toryism—" Hoc vero oecultusn, intestinum, domestieum inalum, non modo existit, verura edam OPPRIMIT antegnam PIIRSIICERE *Nue EIPLORARE POTVEEIS." ( CICERO, quoted by Buts )