THE "HOP, STEP, AND JUMP" OF REFORM.
THE Standard charges us with dispensing hard measure to Lord's JOHN RUSSE.LL and ALTHORP, because they will not do every thing at-a" hop,. step, and jump" gait. When certain rubbiehy ground is to be .get OVC:r, perhaps the hop, step; and jump gait is as good as any other. • But We found no fault With the gait; — r wished: to prescribe its form: we only objected to the hop as a fidal position. When we saw Lord AL;rHoiit' standing . On one leg,ln Northamptonshire, and declaring. he .would resist any 'attempt .made to put down' the other,—More especiallY. When it was under- stood he had 'only begun the14; hy 'way. Of taking 'the vie certainly were griev.ed to perceive that he was destroYingall Ins Capacity for usefulness. Mr. STANLEY is tak:eti Under the eSpC- cial protection of the -Standard, because he too has partiealarly• Sworn never to set dawn the other foot.' He will have it that the " hop"- position is that to which the Ministry is pledged ; and If any of them should be hardy enough to proceed to the step, the country is threatened with Mr. STANLEY'S and Lord Biorlettaia's Ord BROUGHAM, whose " sentiments are known to coincide More nearly with those of Mr. • STANLEY than with the sentiments of any other member of the Cabinet") hopping off altogether: This, says the Standard, would at once sink the Administration. The thing likely to overturn this or any other Administration, is the resolve to itand.or move on one leg, • when all the rest of the world are pushing them On to the" step and jump,'—except a few Con-
servatives, who are hauling them in the opposite direction. •
• It is curious to observe the Standard's horror of that abomina- tion the juste milieu— . • " The only danger is of the formation of a jests milieu party : hut we rely upon the nu nliness of ti e British character, upon the intelligence," Fce. be.
Truly tie danger for the Conservatives is a juste :milieu. They do not fear the party they term Ultra-Radical ; for that party, as yet at least, has no sway in the country: their object is, therefore, by a pretended exaltation of the Ultra-Radicals, to play them off against the party of steady and rational . improvement—in the Standard's phrase, the abominable Juste Milieu. It. is this all- powerful and very enlightened- party, of which the country is the . electoral body, that shuts out hope from the Conservatives. Could they for one day procure the rule of the Mouvement folks to whom they pay so many Danaish compliments, they would then have-a chance, in the reaction that would take place. But under the reign of the enlightened lovers of improvement,—the adapters of ancient institutions to modern circumstances, the preservers of property but the protectors of labour, and the .distributors of egnal happiness, the hatersof confusion, the enemies of all injustice, the inviolable trustees of the People's universal rights,-:-under this reign, the Conservatives of Privileges have no room for _hope, 'tio chance of continued existence Humbug is dethroned; Privilege, his prime minister, bites -the dust. • Delusion • is stripped. of. his lion's shin, and the lion's share is snatched from his asinine grasp. To such a House of Commons as we have now, we trust, 'got, the interests of the whole People may be trusted-with tolerable confi- dence; and with an honest Ministry and a fair Representation, the talents even of Mr. STANLEY and Lord BROUGHAM Maybe spared, provided they should,-as their friend the Standard gives us to un- derstand, insist upon linking arm and arm and gcarigAff in the first position of Reform. The true "country" dance, however, cannot be danced but by those who know the whole three positions —the Hop, S ep, and Jump.
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