REYNARD'S LATEST SUBTERFUGE, OR THE

TORY TURNED WHIG.

Rains, 23th January 1535.

" Taccia di Cadmo e Aretusa Ovidio;

Che se quello in serpente, e (paella iu fonte Converte pokando, i' non In' nvitlio."

" 11c glance.' at the slight shades of difference which existed between the Constitu. tional Whigs and the Tories (as they were called). and the dark grail which lay between all classes of Constitutional Reformers and those innovators who sought to break up the whole foundation of government. Ile said that the late Ministers war,; indebted to their opponents for the necessary support on all occasions where Con st.rraPire measures were to be carried against wild and visionary speculators; and in like manner, the new Ministry had a right to look for a similar support among honourable men, who appreciated the advantages of a just and powerful Govern- ment in contradistinction to a weak and vacillating authority, which was perpetually driven from pillar to post in search of sonic resting place."—Sir PLAUSIBLE.

NOTHING proves more convincingly the abhorrence universally enter- tained of Toryism, and the consciousness in the Tories themselves of their own evil odour, than the anxiety they evince to hush up the past, to forswear their own pedigree, and to confound their proper doctrines with those of a more reputable party. They who in 1815, and up to -the decided setting-in of the current against them, affected to rejoice in the name of Tory, now disclaim it as a stigma with which they are branded by their calumnious adversaries (" Tories, as they were called"), and secretly groan forth, under the weight of odium that attaches to it-

0 Tory. Tory ! wherefore art thou Tory ? Deny thy father, and refuse thy name.

This they are doing with all speed ; they are sneaking into the bastard denomination of Conservatives ; and exemplifying the profound wis- dom of the baby, that buries its head in its pinafore, and roars from behind it, in the hope of being taken for a lion. The device has all the innocence of childishness ; it imposes on nobody, and hurts nobody. It cannot even be looked upon as an unwarranted assumption of merit. The miser is conservative, and makes no boast of his tenacity ; so is the thief; so is any one who has aught to keep, be his title to it what it may. Nobody piques himself on doing what his nature prompts him to, and obeying a dictate of the most vulgar instinct. The Tories, no doebt, will not only keep, if they can, what they have got, but will

struggle hard, and go great lengths to defend it if attacked. The name of Conservative hardly does justice to their "moral energy" (Post or Standard), and resolution to die in defence of " all that is dear to them." Why not dub themselves Knights of the Bloody Hand, or Chevaliers of the Church Militant, or Conquerors of a hundred tithe-massacres, or any other glorious epithet significant of their " moral energy " and Conservative prowess in Church and State ? Pretensions so harmless and well-warranted can be gainsaid by none; no.one doubts them to be close conservatives of all they can lay hands on. When, however, in their efforts to divest themselves of the odious " old man," they would put on the countenance of a party with which they never had aught in common but perhaps the lust of power, and would pass themselves off, like jackdaws among rooks, for " Consti- tutional 111higs," they incur the risk of a rebuff such as a decent citizen in the street gives to the drunkard who offers to take him familiarly by the hand. If Sir PLAUSIBLE was not bemused in ehampaigne, and un- derstood what he is reported to have uttered, en petit comite, at Tam- worth, let him, before be again roars from behind his pinafore, con over the following lesson from a writer who has devoted a portion of his useful life to developing the principles of the Whigs and the Tories ; and who, in the Sixteenth Chapter of his Constitutional History, has thus generalized the results of the investigation. " These parties differ above 411 in this respect, that to a Tory, the Consti- tution, merely as such, is an extreme point, beyond which he never ventures to look, and from which he holds it impossible ever to depart; while a Whig regards all forms of government as subordinate to the public good, and conse- quently subject to modification, when they cease to answer their ends. Within these limits, to which he confines himself as religiously as the Tory to his narrower circumscription, the Whig, rejecting all useless innovations, has a natural tendency to, and the Tory a marked arersion for, all political amelio- ration. The one insists with pleasure on the liberty and rights of the human race ; the other declaims on the evil of sedition and the rights of kings. Though both admit as a common principle, the maintenance of the Constitution, yet the one has particularly at heart the privileges of the People, and the other the prerogative of the Crown. Accordingly, it is possible that passions and events may conduct the Tory to set up a despotism, and the Whig to overturn the monarchy. The first is an enemy to the liberty of the press and to free inquiry ; the second is favourable to both. In a word, the principle of the one is conservation, that of the other amelioration."—From GUIZOT'S Translation of Hallam. Absolute monarchy, then, in the estimation of a Tory, and in the terms of HUME ( Essay VII.), is the euthanasia of the British Constitu- tion; and what is here theoretically laid down, the Tories have prac- tically exemplified in their long reign,—continued, with few and brief interruptions, from BUTE to CASTLEREAGH; under whom, by favour of 4‘ passions and events," the principle was pushed to the furthest extent of Tory audacity and English long-suffering, and there was but little to -choose between a British and a Bourbon monarchy. The Whig prin- ciple followed up, and favoured in like manner by passions and eventa, .conducts to Republicenisin ; and this, in the sense of that party, is the euthanasia of the British Constitution. Without stopping at a fact too notorious to be insisted on, that ninety-nine out of every hundred in the two islands would unhesitatingly vote for the rude democracy of the Americans, our kinsmen, in preference to the tender-hearted aris- tocracy of the semi-barbarous Muscovites, it appears that the two prin- ciples, thus acknowledged to tend in diametrically opposite directions, have by the optimism of Sir PLAUSIBLE been descried moving on ami- cably together,--a bottle-bred delusion, doubtless, such as used to trouble the optics of HARRY DUNDAS, when he saw two Speakers where his Premier could not see one. Through this medium, the ".shades of difference between the Constitutional Whigs and the 'furies (as they are called)" appear to be " slight ;". and on this imagined conformity of two principles, that actually turn their backs on each other, and move off in opposite directions, Sir PLAUSIBLE conceives " lie shall be able to conduct the Government of the country." Alas, poor country ! to hear it spoken of as a thing to be led up and down like a blind beggar by his dog, one might believe that the People of England were really comprised in the " three tailors of Tooley Street," so facetiously al- luded to by the Tamworth orator. But if Sir PLAUSIBLE were not appointed merely to prate for A power that skulks in the background, and to throw a civilian's cloak over the boot and spur, which it bides from none but those who will not see, his reading in illosTesquizu might have taught him that the Constitution is hors de page ; and that the questions now agitated do not touch that boundary, which Whigs respect like men of sense, and Tories worship with stupid idolatry, as their god Terminus. The great constitutional question, as Sir PLAU- minx himself observed some weeks ago, has already been settled (if he and his do net unsettle it again). The Whig has already removed that boundary stone (and was abused as a monster of impiety for so doing, by the Tory idolators) ; he has already laid his hand on the ark, and modified what had " ceased to answer its end." Safe, therefore, within the wider sphere, which he has prescribed to himself and purposes to respect, he is at liberty to obey the dictates of good sense, and follow his " natural tendency to amelioration," without fear of overstepping limits which allow him adequate scope, and which the matters immediately pending do not even approach. The niischief, therefore, of the Whig Adminis- tration, constitutionally speaking, is already perpetrated. As, however, nothing is more common than for two disputants to at- tach very different ideas to the same term, it is possible that Sir PLay- sint.e may have been misled into conceiving the questions of the day to be constitutional, by the peculiar idea which a Tory may be supposed to connect with the word constitution ; and it may serve to clear up the -

ambiguity, to state what is the Whig interpretationof that word, and in what sense it is taken by the Tory. The former, then, understand by constitution, the sum of the securities, established by the prudence of a na- tion, for the administering of justice, the equalization of burdens, and the protection of right against force, wherever and in whomsoever resi-

dent. The famous balance, if it be actually in return natant, is precious

only inasmuch as such an equipoise of powers is a security (among others) for the objects specified. Now the Tory has practically shown

that he understands by constitution the sum of the contrivances, invented by the knavery of a nation, for pampering the few at the expense of the many, and spunging industry for the benefit of idleness. The follow- hug questions, therefore, which the 1Vhig looks upon as purely adminis. trative, are in the To sense of the word highly constitutional ; and this may account for Sir PLAUSIBLE'S confounding in his imagination two characters which have always warmly disclaimed relationship. Both, says Hast.ast, "admit as a common principle the maintenance of the Constitution ;" what each understands, then, by this term, is a question to be asked, before the identity rejoiced in by Sir PLAUSIBLE—that great reconciler of contradictions—can be established.

CHURCH REFORM, in England or Ireland, is not a Whig constitu- tional question : for it does not concern the Whig class of securities that one man should sow and another reap ; that the drone should have three livings and the worker not one ; that the clergy of a million Protestants (granting them to be so many) should be quartered upon seven million Catholics, and take their blood when their purse is not forthcoming; and that the Churchman should tithe the Dissenter, and repay him in disqualifications and exclusions. These being gross anomalies in an order of things constituted to equalize burdens and protect rights, the Whig, if he think herein at all of his constitution, is only the more impatient to obliterate blemishes which show its working to be very little consistent with his theory. But to a Tory, it is a highly constitutional question, as its connexion with his constitu- tion is as intimate as that of the blossoms or fruit with the tree they grow on. The " new Ministry " are, therefore, clearly entitled to the support of the Whigs in their defence of these golden apples, which hang so appropriately on a tree intended by the Whigs to yield justice and right. And if the Tories, by way of a sop to the Dissenters, put forth a Church Reform which saddles the revenue with ecclesiastical impositions in lieu of rates or tithes, they " have a right to look for the support of their opponents" in a measure so ingeniously " Con- servative" as to give the very grievance itself for the remedy. And if, after consenting to divide the booty more equitably among themselves, by way of acknowledging " such an effort" (Standard) of self-denial on the part of the reverend claimants, the Tories should move in Par- liament a " liberal addition "—that " something found wanting to com- plete the scheme of religious instruction" (Standard), the Whigs, in like manner, are bound to help in hanging more golden apples on a tree which they have all along said bore already more of that sort of fruit than was consistent with longevity.

Neither does a Whig make a constitutional question of CORPORA- nom REFoRm; for he does not see how his balance of power is affected. by municipal bodies filling up their own vacancies, and spending in riotous living and election bribery the funds bequeathed by the bene- factor, or levied on the citizens. But it is a very corner-stone in the Torv's constitution, and the removal of it might bring his system tum- bling about his ears ; for as it is in the Tories that these corrupt bodies live and breathe and have their being, and to the Tories alone they look for a prolongation of existence, wherever such bodies have.aile- quate means of influence, the visible expression of political opinion there has invariably been a Tory Member. Consequently, a reform of this civic corruption would materially affect the ingredients of the

House of Commons, and considerably abate the leaven of Toryism that enters Into its composition. The Whigs, therefore, cannot too highly

appreciate" a " Conservative measure" for maintaining these strong- holds of their adversaries. They are bound in " honour " to support SirPratesiet.e's "just and powerful Government," in this respect, against the Reformers ; and to resist that unfortunate tendency of theirs to amelioration, which makes their " authority" so " weak and vasillating," as well as that love of analogy, which would enable them to carry into municipal the principle they have laid down in Parliamentary elections —a principle, too, which has already worked so well for them in the Scotch municipalities.

1110-rrane and NAVAL REFORM is equally remote from any bearing on the Whig's constitution ; which be designs should stand fast in the love of the People, and not need to be supported by the sabres of an aristocratically disciplined army. He has no interest in preserving subordination by the lash, or manning the fleet by kidnapping. lie lias been always known for his profound respect for the person of the citizen : in his younger days, be kicked violently at the bare notion of a standing army ; and his hatred of martial law, among other disgusts, led him, once upon a time, to propose easing Majesty of all Horse Guards business, by his famous Militia Bill. The "marked aversion," on the contrary, of the Tory for the mass of his fellowmen, is richly gratified by the practices of flagellation and kidnapping, and by the de- pression of merit. His constitution, moreover, demands a well-flogged army to upholdit ; its foundation not being laid on the intelligent ad- hesion of men and citizens, but propped up by unreasoning sabres and unintelligent bayonets. The Whig, who is weak enough to love his kind, who dwells with pleasure on their rights, and believes man to be r.n improveable animal, and a soldier or a sailor to be a man actuated by human motives, would take away the lash, and give free course to merit, from corporal up to colonel ; and substitute better pay and kinder treatment for a compulsory service, inconsistent with the rights of which he is the self-elected champion. These again are among the "slight shades of difference" that harmonize the principles of " Con. stitutional Whigs and Tories (as they are called)," in the apprehension of the Tamworth Premier.

The Tory, of necessity, regards RETRENCHMENT as a " great con. stitutional question ;" for in proportion as it is carried into expenditure, the Government means of corruption are diminished; and what with the growth of responsibility on the one hand, and the decay of influential matter on the other, the Commons of the nineteenth may become, like 'those of the seventeenth century, altogether untoward, to the utter souring of that " sweetness between his Majesty and them " (Sir Den- LEY CARLETON, Vice-Chamberlain to CHARLES the First), which is so flattering to the palate of a Tory. But the Whigs, who are perverse enough to consider " all forms of Government as subordinate to the public good," cannot but rejoice in the decline of an influence which corrupts the House of Commons into an instrument of public evil ; and therefore, argues Sir PLAUSIBLE, they must make common cause with the Tory champions of the prerogative of corruption and the " right of kings," against the " wild and visionary speculators " who would prevent the corruption, and so " break up the whole foundation of Government."

To optics not looking through the magic medium of vinous vapours, it is equally difficult to see how a party combating under the banner of Right and Justice, can behold with patience whole hordes of placemen and pensioners preying on a revenue levied, in large proportion, on the eatables and drinkables of the most numerous and the worst-endowed class of the community. The "new Ministry," therefore, who, with the exception of Sir PLAUSIBLE, (honour to at least one Member of the Tory Administration that maintains himself !) divide among them some 70,000/. a year of public money, and have quartered their troops of lords and ladies on the People, " have a right to look for support" on this eminently Conservative question, "among honourable men," who are the more interested in perpetuating this contumelious burden on the Nation, as having themselves, to their credit be it said, little or no share in the plunder (Examiner). If the Whigs in power mortified all who believe in virtue and patriotism by standing up for this abomi- nation, the secret of their so doing is now well-known ; and Whigs out of power are at liberty to follow their virtuous inclinations, and redress a grievance which, if not the most oppressive, is at least one of the most galling to a free people.

On the subject of FOREIGN POLITICS, the Whig and the Tory are notoriously in a perfectly entire good understanding. The " splendid Church Establishment," the " blood-bolted " and tithe-fed dignitary, the pensioner's plunder, the placeman's unearned salary, the corpora- tion's embezzlements, the Government's means of corrupting Church and State by sinecure appointments and translations, the Tory fac- tion's power of intimidation and unblushing use of bribery, can, it is notorious to a proverb, be defended, in the long run, against "wild and visionary innovators," only by getting up a general war, and silencing complaint by a trumpet and drum. Now the Whigs, passing by the mouth of Earl GREY an unqualified condemnation on the whole war- policy of the Tory reign, and insisting on the necessity of a total change therein, cannot but be strenuous aad consistent supporters of an Administration that is actually undoing their Continental peace-work, undermining what they have set up abroad, and renewing the bonds of cordiality with military despotisms, whose interest is to embroil West- ern Europe, and from which the Whig Government had begun to de- tach us. The Whigs, too, who consult the public good as the sole end of government, cannot but admire the brilliant profusion which spends at the rate of seventy-two millions a year, for a term of twenty- five years, and makes millionaires of a few, while it pauperizes a nation. This question, that so intimately concerns the meal-poke and pot-au- feu of the poor, will necessarily combine the suffrages of those who have a tendency to love the mass of mankind, with those of a party who hive a " marked aversion " for "amelioration."

Even the three questions which bring up the rear of Reform in the middle of the nineteenth century, and which are securities against future misgovernment, rather than cures of existing evils, are not so deeply constitutional as to affect that "common principle," in which alone, according to a better judge than Sir PLAUSIBLE, the Whigs and Tories find a print de reunion. The BALLOT, that bug-

bear of the Tories, is but a different mode of taking the suffrage% which the Reformers have already given, and which the Tories would gladly take away from the citizens. And, doubtless, Whig hostility to

this reform will have been immeasurably increased by the audacious bribery and intimidation to which the 'furies owe their recent successes

in some smaller constituencies ( which ought to be eslarged or sup- pressed), and in sonic counties particularly exposed to squirt:archival and

spiritual intimidation. EXTENDED SUFFRAGE, too, is a question merely between the Commons and the constituency : it affects the composition of the House, but does riot necessarily alter the balance, or interrupt the general harmony, unless the other two powers of the. State grow rampant, as they appear disposed to do, and provoke a col- lision, but yore le pot de fir! As for TRIENNIAT. PARLIAMF.NTs, they were the enactment of the young days of the Whigs, when, full of courage and confidence in the strength and purity of their principles, they held responsibility to be the only true foundation of good govern- ment. It was in their dotage and decrepitude, after the possession of power had depraved their minds, that they prolonged the term, and enacted SEPTENNIAL PARLIAMENTS. Now, purified by long years of exclusion, and by late experience feeling themselves to be without power unless backed by powerful constituencies, they will become wiser in their generation, and draw closer the bonds that unite them to the community. They will not stand hesitating on the brink of that "dark: gulf " which a vinous imagination, within closed doors, has affected to draw between the Whigs of 1626 and 1688, and that later class of politicians, who directing their views to the future, conceive that " by- gont s would be bygones," and call themselves simply Reformers, without reference to former divisions of public opinion. The Tories, who are painfully sensible of the " dark gulf" which lies between them and the People, and which will not " tamely endure a bridge " for those " spirits perverse" to " pass to and fro, and tempt and punish mortals," would be charmed to put the Whigs in the same dolorous predicament : but the latter, who, as they have recently found, can only rise to power on the shoulders of the People, and can only maintain themselves there by the unremitting' support of the People, will decline the honour of the Satanic post, and will leave the " just and powerful Government " to shift for itself. The above, it must be added, are the reflections of a Whig only en taut que Whig: there are, it is to be feared, but too many wolves in sheep's clothing, or Tories in Whig disguise, that will doff their fleeces and show their carnivorous teeth. on the first opportunity. But the majority of the Whigs are Whigs indeed, in whom there is no guile, and who, though lambs, yet — carry anger as the flint bears fire; That much enforced shows a hasty spark."

They have not forgotten their late unceremonious extrusion from office, and cannot be insensible to the impertinence of the Tamworth discourse, which insults them in the very moment of craving their sup.

port. Certainly "they" (the Whigs) cannot " appreciate " too

highly " the advantages of a just and powerful Government—i. e. a Tory one—in contradistinction to a weak and vacillating authority, perpetually driven from pillar to post in search of a resting-place ;" the poor thing thus buffeted to and fro being intended to stand for the Whig Government. Alas ! Sir PLAUSIBLE, this ingenious idea of taking your adver- saries on what you think their tender side, to wit the constitutional one, will not avail. The only constitutional question was the one on which you and they were at daggers-drawing, and on which—God be for ever praised—they and the People gave you a signal beating. Your

prognostications as to the working of this horrible innovation upon the ark of our holy Constitution, have proved you a prophet descended in right line front Balsam, the son of Beor. You qualified Reform in Parliament, as you now qualify the ulterior views of the Reformers, in the subordinate questions of Municipal, Administrative, and Eccle- siastical Reform. haves a " wild and visionary scheme "—an innova- tion that was " to break up the whole foundation of government ;"

whereas, unhappily, the Tory bottom has not been so totally damaged, as to disable the present head of Administration from himself giving

the lie to the late head of Opposition ; and to render another interpo- sition of the People obviously unnecessary for finally shutting the door of office on their intruding enemies. The Whigs, who look upon " forms of Government as subordinate to the public good," are wisely disposed to modify them, whenever the pressure of public opinion becomes—as it may henceforth he expected to do once every fifty years or so, till all is righted—irresistible. A

Whig Government is the safety-valve that prevents the blowing-up of the vessel ; and their prudence, therefore, is indubitably bound to strengthen the hands of that " just and powerful Government," whose protracted existence will inevitably bring on such an " interposition of the body of the People" as will sopite the controversy between Whig and Tory, by for ever removing the subject matter of the debate.

In short, Sir PLAUSIBLE, your outcry against "speculation," "inno- vation," is too stale to do service. It might pass for good state craft under the WALPOLE and PELIIAM Administrations, but will not serve A.D. 1835, when men are too old to be divested from attending to their . purses by the cry of fire! fire ! from the pickpockets.

" They (the aforesaid Administrations) complained both in Parliament and in their pamphlets, of a general spirit of insubordination, and of a tendency to Republicanism, which, they said, was spread extensively among the people. It is certain that the tone of popular language countenanced, in some measure, those exertions, though Ministers greatly exaggerated them, in order to spread an alarm among the upper classes, and FURNISH ARGUMENTS AGAINST THE REFORM OF ABUSES."—HA ELAM.