SECOND SERIES OF THE LETTERS OF A REPRESENTATIVE TO HIS CONSTITUENTS.

THE last session of Parliament was distinguished beyond all others for the uninteresting,, unsatisfying, and wearisome charac ter of its debates. Something of this may be assigned to the want, in all its Members, of true oratorical as distinguished from rhetorical genius,—that is, the power of clothing apt, large, and elevated thoughts, in language fitted to their extent or majesty,

as opposed to mere skill in debate, or to the ''(rift of saying smart things, or to the knack of talking fluently and finely. Something

must also be attributed to the stale and worn-out nature of the subjects which engaged the attention of the Legislature, and on which it would have been difficult for genius, and quite impossible for our Parliament men, to say any thin°. new. But the funda

mental reason of the dulness of the debates, is to le found in their hollow and unreal nature. The great talk of 1837 was

worse than "the form of mock debate" denounced by the philo sophic satirist; for it was not to terminate in executing a predetermined plan without regard to the reasons alleged, but every one

felt it was to end in nothing. The critic knows that even in the

lightest work of fiction or fancy the most fatal fault is unreality—a substitution of forced notions clothed in sounding words for senti ments and language natural to the subject matter. And if this resultless phrase-spinning excite contempt or indignation in a work of pure literature, we may judge what its effect must be in a national council, where every speech should have a tendency to settle a course of action. The habits of the people may indeed prevent them from perceiving the fault, but natural instinct enables them to feel it. "They may not blame, but they sleep." The character of the session of' 1837, must necessarily in a Measure determine the character of any running commentary

won it; and the Second Series of Colonel THOMPSON'S Letters to his Constituents is unequal to the First, in the comprehensiveness of some of its subjects, and in the substantial nature of all. The "Representative," too, seems fortunately to have been influenced by the general sluggishness, and his present book is less bulky than his former one,—for when there was nothing to say, he had the judgment to say nothing. In other respects we prefer this Second Series; far it exhibits in great perfection the author's essential characteristic—the power of quaint and humorous illustration ; and it showa the impressions which the conduct of the Ministers left day by day upon the mind of an able observer, and the gradual steps by which Colonel THOMPSON arrived at the conclusion of their hollow hypocrisy, and the certainty of their eventual downfal (though, in company with most other politicians, he dreamt that the King's death was to strengthen their power very considerably fur a while—that is, till they knocked it down). The Letters also enable their reader to see a good deal of the party workings of the House, and of the things which really interest our legislators,—and these are private bills and personal squabbles. They will, moreover, in the words of the preface, possess some interest" as a record of Parliamentary proceedings during a session remarkable for the surrender of the Liberal cause into the power of its enemies." As the point of some of the extracts depends upon the period when they were written, we subjoin their dates. The following shows how early the Colonel became suspicious of the Whig CORDOVAS.

"The fact is, the Ministers, with the genius of Spanish generals, are running their heads where they know there can be no results, as the means of avoiding running where there might. They have no intention of committing themselves irrevocably with the Cultism of the country ; and in consequence they are found among the stoutest resisters of any extension of popular success on the sides where it is practicable. They are nursing the chance, in the event of any untoward accident to the popular cause, of placing themselves on the benches of the conqueror and leaving their companions to what may follow ; and there, in all probability, we shall find them in the end. ‘Vith the exception of their Spanish prototypes, no set of leaders ever dispiayed such a fixed resolution to do nothing to the real detriment of the public adversary, such is perpetual craning into the enemy's ranks to see that lie takes no harm, such a vigour of determination to oppose every man who proposes pullin a brick out ef the old defences of the hostile party, or planting a hedge-stake in the road by which they must come back "_22a Feb, nary lc37.

PROPHETIC GLI3IPSES.

" But the serious inference froin this speech of the Ministerial officer, [the Aitorney.General, on Prinfogenitured is that the present Government have no real desire to attack the institutions hostile to the interests of the People; and that where they do move, they are unwilling Calibans, acting under some pressure they are afraid of. The end of which will be, that they will first let down the country into the hands of a Tory House of Commons, and then be roused bs the apparition of some other Administration, whose prime necessary of existence will be disclaiming all connexion with the present ineu."-314 April 1837

BURDETT'S APPEARANCE ON HIS REELECTION.

"On Friday some extraordinary scenes were presented in the House of Corn. mono, in consequence of Sir Francis Burdett's reelection for Westminster. The district committees and gentlemen volunteers were invited by advertisement in the newspapers to assemble at Charing Cross, to be ready to receive the sue cessful candidate at the hustings, and afterwards to accompany him to his residence. It would appear that his residence ' included the House of Commons; for the procession took him, with footmen and chariots and banners, to the floor of the House; and I found the lobbies occupied by his infantry bearing his colours, to such an extent that I hail difficulty in making city was:into the House. If this had been done by the Radicals some years ago, it Would have been construed into treason, and we should have had a green bag mid a suspension of the Habeas Corpus. Auden I want DOW, la to authenticate the precedent, in hopes it will not be long before the Radicals appeal to it. I wanted to get somebody of older standing than myself to say as much, between joke and earnest in the House; but they were all skimmed milk.

" When the new Member advanced to the table, the Tories cheered to bring heaven and earth together. The Liberals reserved their fire for the moment when their quondam ally seated himself upon the Tory benches, and then the explosion was more tremendous still.

" There is no use in denying the consequences which may result from this tergiversation of one of the most trusted constituencies in the empire ; saving always the credit of the minority, who stoutly resisted. The defection of the Saxons at Leipsic was nothing to it. Instead of For this we may thank Adam,' read ' Westminster.' It was the struggle of the upper against the middle classes ; and the middle classes, or a too decisive portion of them, beet utterly blenched and given way, before the united powers of interest and fudge. Every aristocratically dressed man you meet, has a broad grin upon bis countenance : it is as if the captain of the French Guards, who volunteered to go out with his company and put down the Revolution, had returned ttiumplimt from his enterprise. " In eases of this kind, the hope is from reaction. Conceal nothing, soften nothing. Tell the people everywhere, that the flogged pertinacious refusal of the Whig Ministers to allow the vessel to advance an inch with the flood, has ended in her being carried out to sea with the ebb, and that if the people are to recover their own, all is to do over again. It was plain it would come to this; and if it was escaped now, it would be to come some other time. The Whigs are bent upon seeing that ' new heaven and earth,' in which their lot and portion will neither be happy nor definable."-13th May 1837.

COMMITTEES OF TIIE HOUSE.

" All that historians have written or poets feigned,—including Jefferiert, John Bunyan, and the State Trials,—after making a certain necessary deduction in point of positive violence for change of times and circumstances, is but a feeble expression of the reality of the imperfections which attend a Select Committee of the House of Commons, as the tribunal for determining a question of this nature. It would be a mere cross-and-jostle match, mu which, after shutting out the public, every conceivable artifice would be put in action to intimidate, discredit, or keep out witnesses, and perhaps the decision of the Committee garbled after its proceedings were closed, and a false account inserted on the Journals of the House."-3d June 1337.

REFINEMENT OF THE HOUSE.

"On Thursday, Mr. Grantley Berkeley's motion for a Ladies' Gallery was negatived, by 116 against 02; the Government voting against the motion. Such are the leaders by whom, in this age of extending civilization, we are dragged through the dirt in the rear of foreign nations. The speeches. of the mover and seconder were responded to in a strain of low obscenity, which in a Mechanics' Institute or meeting of the working classes would have caused the instant ejection of the offenders ; and which in fact prevented the friends of the measure from inducing any debate. If the working classes accomplish their ambition of finding their way into Parliament, they will find what a descent they will have made in the social scale ; and have time enough to compare the pain of bringing home to their families the lively odour of indecency, with the former purity of their humbler associations. As in America described by Miss Martineau, so in England, the lower classes are the sound, and the higher the corrupted ; and in both countries, though with much less revolting circumstances in America, the tendency displays itself in ruffianism towards women. What a blessing in both countries would be a translation of the seat of power ; and bow unfortunate is any country whose institutions bring such dregs up to the top."—rith June 1837.

THE DILEMMAS OF A FINANCE MINISTER!

" A horrible thing is committed in the land. The Chancellor of the Exche quer says that many farmers are in the habit of putting their cloaks under their sitting.parts and so evading the law on the subject of taxed carts ; the law being, that the remission of taxation upon what, by an odd perversion, is called a taxed cart, because it is less taxed than some other vehicles, is to be dependent upon a certain quantity of blows to be received by the unhappy sitters, after the manlier of what your water borne men * and the schoolboys of the Grammar School if they adhere to ancient usages call cobbing,' without the merciful interposition of either springs or cushions. Upon the point of cushions, the law, it seems, is particular ; the insertion of a cloak, therefore, by a fat farmer, either under himself or his ' missis,' is an act of point-blank smuggling, and as such to be protested against by all authorities sacred and profane. Is it not contemptible, that the legislation of a civilized couutry should run into miseries like these, and all for the sake of keeping out a system of taxation whieh should fairly and simply tax the rich in proportion to their wealth?" —14t1u June 1537.

POINTS OF ETIQUETTE—HATS OFF.

" On Friday, Lord John Russell brought the concluding part of the Queen's Message before the house; but it was preluded by the introduction of the knotty question, whether certain .Members of her Majesty's Opposition took off their hats at the right moment on the reading of the Message the preceding day. The facts as they fell under my notice were briefly these. When the Speaker stood up, and it was understood that he was about to read a Message from the Queen, Monbers began to take off their hats, and some of them to try hats off,' by was of quickening the rest. The covered heads were soon reduced to those of two Opposition Members ; or I think there might be a third, who made a dubious and imperfect effort to adhere. The recusants showei. by their In Is and manlier, that they understood the call made upon them, and did not mean to accede. The Speaker called out ' .Membeis will be uncovered ;' and it was it till he had done so more than once, that uniformity was produced in the assembly. It is lucky the Member for South Durham did not happen at that moment to be preserving himself front car-ache by the natural use of his castor, or the question would have been complicated beyond all possibility of solution by human skill. "And, after all, it turns out that there was nothing more at the bottom than a persuasion that the first of the sounds ' Victoria Regina' was the proper nayword for gentlemen to know when to take off their bats. We were like recruits who take their muskets from the ground at the first sound of Shoulder,' instead of waiting for the word ' Urns,' which is the legitimate indication. And so falls to the ground the first suspected plot against the juvenile Majesty of Englaufl."-24th June 1637.

THE WHIG MINISTERS.

"The People's defence must be in themselves; for if the Whig Ministers had twelve legions of angels sent to their assistance, they would take it all out in increased resistance to the wishes of the l'eople, till they brought themselves • The Letters were addressed to the Reformers of hull, and published in the newspapers of that tun'', again to that mojority of twenty.three, which is the temperament at which they find it most convenient to nix', smite flow, elle frosts of loss of place on one hand and she hest of popular progress on the other."--1181/s Jn4,11807.