LORD BROUGHAM'S PAMPHLETS.

THE untiring activity of Lord BROUGHAM has somewhat relieved the languor following the excited weariness of the Parliamentary season, by two pamphlets,—one, A Letter on National Ethwation, to Me Duke of Bedprd ; the other, a reprint of his S'peeekes on the Administration of Justice in Ireland, with an explanatory, discur- sive, and aggressive Preface. The Letter to the Duke of Bedford contains a variety of discus- sions, personal and political, after the writer's manner ; but its ob- ject is to justify Lord limns:11AM fOr giving up the Education ques- tion into the hands of the Ministry, and to advocate the necessity of some compromise with the Church on the subject of teaching. Since, argues Lord Baorousm, the late vote of the Lords is con- clusive against our gaining an Education Bill in which equality of religious sects is admitted, we had better have instruction for the people by a mode whore the Established Church has some influ- ence, than no instruction at all. If men were actuated only by reason, candour, and honesty, this argument would be valid; and even taking humanity as it is, there has always seemed to us some- thing more of carnal temper than conscientious scruples in the viru- lent opposition offered by different religions to their followers mix- ing together at schools, and to a clergyman of one or another per- suasion making his appearance in the room ; as well as to the de- mand for the whole Bible being put into the hands of children, the whole requiring to be read with caution and an enlarged perception even by grown people. On the other hand, there is no doubt that indiscreet zeal, sectarian pride, and various motives quite as un- praiseworthy, sometimes induce teachers to tamper with their pu- pils. and it' not precisely to convert them, to imbue them with a dislike or contempt for their own sect, and even for their natural guardians. But the subject is not one to be settled by pure rea- son: it is a matter of feeling, opinion, and prejudice ; and we doubt very much whether any " compromise" will avail. However, let us have the terms in all their details, upon which every thing must depend.

The reprint of the Speeches is a proper and judicious act to rescue them from their fugitive state—not merely on account of the importance of their subject, but for the new and sober character in which the author appears. He is still indeed an advocate, but the advocacy is not obtrusive. The orator is mild, calm, and judgelike in tone; close in argument ; and in style less lengthy and involved than usual. His Reply, burked by the reporters on account of the lateness of the hour, is one of the happiest things he has done. Brief, as two o'clock in the morning and .f house giving strong symptoms of impatience with the preceding speaker required; thoroughly conclusive in all the points he touched upon ; with Some happy Personal touches, and a most effective, because apparently an extempore though elaborate, reply to Lord PLUNKET on the constitutional power of pardon- ing—which he truly showed, front the current of authorities, was not in its nature a power to be exercised at the mere will or whim of the Crown, and had never been so considered. If the subject has interest enough, a cheap edition would give the British people an idea of what " the Tail " call good government. The PretItte is inferior to the Speeches, though it has good points. The author falls upon the " anonymous writers of' news. papers, generally engaged, sometimes hired, by one of the con- tending parties to blacken the other," in a spirit too much resem- bling their own : in defending his consistency, he " fights all his battles o'er again :" but he makes some hard hits at the Whigs; and he throws out a bait to Lord GREY to bring him forward next session on the Constitutional question of the " Bedchamber quar. rel" and the use of " the Queen's name."

In the tit;sits we are about to offer, we shall select them indif- ferently from Pamphlet, Prelim:, or Speeches.

LORD MELBOURNE.

Mv noble friend really could not resist this, his besetting sin, of constantly holding cheap all men and almost all thin.es. That is his way. Also, it is his

way to bring out roundly, and sotto:tit:Ise rteelltly too, whatever passes through

his mind. This it is, among other and higher 1ivali ties, flat makes him so agreeable a debater here, and so delightful e eieeptedon elsewhere. The humour

is hi: own, and it is racy and pungent. N'it re Teeter of subjects or of persons,

out it all eomes—no matter who is by, ny win en it hurts. Ile gives mirth, and he sletres it too, largely enough.* It is generally one word for his audience, and two for himself; one laugh from them, and twa front himself. So on he rolls, with his lively and careless speech, or his 3 et livelier and inure careless conversation. (kind sense and good humour are lways at the bottom. No gall—. not a particle of self-conceit—is anywhere to be found. If other men are little respected, Ile is himself never set up in any invidious contrast, but seems to be as little thought of as any of those he handles. Some startling paradox, to pass fin. proffiund and sagacious originality—emit! sweeplug misanthropy, to show deep and penetrating knowIalge of hunitet noture—nothing can be more ag.reeabh.•, though, very often, nothing el111 lie L.SS correct. —Reidy.

WHIGS Or THE OLDEN TIME ON THL SOVEREIGN'S NAME.

" While I pOSS,::'S the power of speech," said Lord I lewlek (Grey), 23d June I60;, " I must ever protest agffinst any thing so fatal as introducing the Monarch's name into discussion. If such a practice is permitted, throvell to the freeilom of deliberation ; but ffirewell also to the personal security oh' the 3lonavelt hini,elf. Arraying him as personally opposed to the 'Whig party, and calling on the COUlltry to decide beteeem tffien, endangers the King's per- sonal security. If I am an enemy of an Administration engendeeel in Court intrissie--if I am an enemy of an Administration composed of men differing from time another upon the most important questions—if I am an enemy of an Administration which does not possess the confidence of the country—if I an an enemy of an Administration, of the first mall of whom I will say nothing— it is because I ant convinced that such an Administration is pregnant with the greatest dangers to the King and to the Cons!it Mien." Lord Brougham, a few .years later, after enumerating the acts of' mispivern- ment chargeable upon the Tories, above all, their mismanagement or the war and their Walcheren expedition, says- " After all these confessions, their (Tories) only excuse—the only attempt they make to regain the confidence of the people, is to tell us ' that the King has reigned fifty years.' They have ruinet1 our allies ; they have failed in every plan ; they have brought us through slatighter and danger, wedded with misery, and weighed down with almost intoleratde burdens, to the very brink of destruction. ' But the King is very old,' and he has reigned above half a centtny.' "—Preface to Speeches.

THE REFORMED HOUSE OF COMMONS.

The whole, or nearly the whole legislative power, is transferred front the Lower to the Upper House. To the Lords' House it is, and not to their own, that the people turn their fitces. Out the proceedings in our Chamber the eyes of the country are fixed ; to the plain decisive judgments of our House, not to the vacillating, uncertain, half-whispered, half-muttered sounds which eseate the Commons, it is that the people of England give car. In our House is carried on the business of the Government of these realms, notwithstanding all the advantages which a representative capacity, a popular delegation, the power of the purse, the sole privilege of uttering the magical word "Money," confer upon our sister Assembly ; aunt us the miserable impotency of legisla- tion wit Ii which she is stricken hecomes daily more apparent, or at least the wretched condition of the few ricketty productions which she from time to time contrives to bring forth, in the intervals of her constant abortions, is dis- played to excite amazement while they site for pity, and are occasionally saved by us from perishing, the impression has now become universal, even in the Lower House itself, that the Lords, with all their faults, are an absolutely in- dispensable portion or the constitution, if, indeed, they are not for the present the real lawgivers and rulers of the etnpire.—LePee.

Tits FEELINGS OF LORD BROUGHAM AND 1,0111) GREY ON SWAMPING THE HOUSE OF PEERS.

Lord Grey and I went down to Windsor, in May 1832, and advised our gracious master to create a large number of Peers, we felt, deeply felt, the responsibility which we were incurring ; deeply felt how little such a measure could be justified unless in the last extremity- of affairs ; deeply felt hour atrocious would he the conduct of him who should attempt- to perpetuate his own or his party's power through the subversion of the constitution of his country. When impending revolution stared the Government of the State in the face, and the Councils of the State were without form and void, mud the • commerce or the State was within four.and.twenty hours of barter, awl no bands but our own were found able to take the management of public affairs, and the two Houses of the Legislature were iii irect and manifest and open collision ; even then, we were well aware that the remedy to which we had been most reluctantly driven, was only one degree less bad than the malady it was intended to remove. We felt that if ever it shoultt lie repeated, the constitution was gone. But sooner than resort to such desperate councils in ordinary times, with no collision between the Houses, no public opinion to urge us on, uuder no

pressure whatever upon us except the desire of perpetuating our own term of power, and destroying the influence of our adversaries, I venture to say Lord

Grey, I know I myself, would have consented to lay our beads upon the block, or suffer ourselves to be torn limb from limb by the same mob that attempted in those days the Duke of Wellington's sacred life h—Letter.

• This alludes to Lord MELBOURNE'S habit of chuckling over his own jokes before he utters them.

THE PREROGATIVE OF MERCY.

Mercy is a prerogative of the Crown, to be exercised in the same manner as all other prerogatives,—with sound discretion, by responsible Ministers, for the public good, not for the personal gratification of the Sovereign or his servants. It is, like all other powers in the State, whether held by the Prince, the Peers, or the Parliament, a public trust for the People's benefit ; and the bigher, the more important the subject matter of it, the more delicate is the trust, and the more cautiously, the more tenderly, the more deliberately, must it be executed by the Crown. *

I prefer, however, the authority of Dawkins; because, instead of keeping to generds he specifies the very principle that ought to govern the pardoning process. lie lays it down, that mercy is not to be shown but in cases where, bn due examinntion of all the ftiete, it shall clearly appear that had the law been able to foresee the particular circumstances, it would have excepted the offender from the penalties which it has denounced. It is not to be adopted because there itre fifty or sixty prisoners in the gaol, and the governor shall say, I have a mind to let them out; if we let some of them shake hands, lecture others on their future conduct, and they all go out, either in a tunes., as at Sligo, or in platoons day after day, as at Clomnel, the movement will improve the state of the country " Much less is it said that the weds may be cleared in one place, and left tilled in another, according as the Viceroy shapes his course on a tour.—Reply.

THE ORIGIN OF TOE NORMANDY MOTION.

I have more more than mice infirtned your Lordships how this motiou ori- ginated. I had supported the noble earl's (Roden's) demand of a Committee upon one only ground—the charges made, and never denied, respecting the A- minishation of justice, and especially that important branch of the judicial administration, the exercise of the prerogative in pardoning. In the Com- mittee, I confined myself chiefly to that portion of the inquiry. I appeal to all who served with me, whether I did not hold the balance, as far as it was in my hands, with strict equality and fairness botween the two parties, whether I did not subject the witnesses against the Government to full as strict an ex- amination as those produced in its behalf; whether I did not extend the same protection to the one class as to the other. But a mass of evidence was col- lated, of vast bulk, various aspect, and great hnportanee. We almost all deemed it necessary to give the !louse some report upon its contents; not ex- pressing any opinion but stating the substance of the proofs, and enabling seer Lordships easily to understaed tile result of our inquiries. We deter- mined, therefore, to furnish am abstract, which might embody the contents of the evidence, and serve as a key to unlock it. Several of the l'ilembers took each a department. My noble friend opposite, our Chairman, (Lord Wham- elide,) undertook the whole subject of the lliband consphaey, ; my noble friend near him (Lord Ellenborough) took the state of crime and the granti»g of panfins ; I undertook to form an abstract of the other matters relating to the judicial :ulministration, naturally enough, because that had funned the main object of my attention in the course of the long inquiry we hail con- ducted. When we met to consider these several abstracts, objections were raised, and raised by the noble lords who had all along defended the Govern- ment, of such a kind, partly as to expressions, partly as to omissions, partly as to arrang,einent, at almost every line, that it was quite manifest weeks and months would not suffice to agree upon ally report or abstract, or even any index at all ; and I therefore at once said that I found I haLl been wrong iu suppwing any thing ever could he agreed to ; and that those noble lords, who

were taking the objectio»s, had been right in stating that there ought to be no report, except merely laying the evidence upon the table of the House. But I added, that I should end'earour to supply the defect by a motion respecting the pardons of the Viceroy, which, in Inv estimation, was the most important subject of all by far ; and ;bat, as I had been driven by the supparters of the

Irish Covernment, from what I deemed absolutely necessary to the discharge of my duty, I should take the only course left for us, by moving your Lord- ships; and I pledged myself to make you masters of at least one branch of the evidence. This pledge .1 have to-day redeemed.—Rigy.