THE PEERAGE CONTROVERSY.
OUR subtle adversary the Standard appears to have formed the design of treating as as spiders treat flies : he courteously asks us for a plan of e'Peerage Reform, and when, in the frankness of our unsuspecting simplicity, we produce one, down he pounces upon us, drives us into a corner of his web, and proceeds to de- molish us in triumph and without mercy ! The argument between us, lie says, he has brought to "some- thing very like an ad absurdum conclusion ;" the absurdity, of course, being on our side, not on his. Still we could have wished, that, to diminish the odds at which we stood in the eyes of the Standard's readers, lie had allowed us the benefit of our own argu- ment entire : for, liberal as he was to profusion on last Monday in " Rixm Radicales " extracts from the Spectator, it so happened that the passages omitted when he copied the rest of our not very long paper on "Legislative Reform," were rather important to a right understanding of our views. That no misconstruction of the Standard, on this subject, may injure it with those who read the Spectator only, we copy our op- ponent's paper, in another page, without abridgment. Nay, more— if he is satisfied that he has really met and answered the case we put, he will have this advantage over us, that we leave him in possession of the last word, nearly : for we shall not restate the case at present, though we add a few sentences of "explanation," as they say in Parliament. 1. The Standard altogether begets what,. alone, we were in- vited to make out,—namely. that a pure Representative Govern- ment has no tendency to Despotism. The adverse rennet- lay in supposing that it would be "uncontrolled," it' the House of Peers were either abolished or rendered " less irresponsible than it is." Taking the extreme case of ertinetion nth thau ronstruc'inz of the House of Peers, since that option was offered to as—tak lug it in what the Standard, we thought. regarded as t he must un- favourable aspect— we she., ed, that instead of being unctud rid led, and hence despotie, the House of Cemmens would be very effeetu- ally controlled by the coloniluency. It might be said, indeed, that our plan was one of COMMOIM not of Peerage Relot in : but the Standard was preeluded from objecting, by the trims of his own hypothesis—we termed it Logi", fieive Reform. 2. We were not called upon to " clue" for the Monarchy or the Church. Our task was, /o show that the Remesentative Government, aceountable to and controlled by a entistitueney co- extensive with the permanent noel ests of I he whole nation, would not become despotic. The Standard has not proved that either the Monarchy or the Chun+ would be endangered. The super. Mums "trappings " of Monarchs would probably be abridged, and the crying abuses of the Church rammed : but the continued existence of both institutions, in respect and honour, would depend upon what even now must be considered as their best bulwark—a general persuasion of their usefulness. 3. The Standard's notions of property, and of riches, and of the peculiar function of a House of Lords Iti relation to them, form the puzzle of the week ; and we share in the common amazement which the contemporary prints have expressed. History has no example of a confiscation of property in a state of society nearly similar to that of England at the preseitt time, and of a Repre- sentative Government such us we have described. No separate plea was put in for "funded property :" what we said was, that, for the reason assigned, such an assembly " would not sanction any measure for defrauding public or private creditors."
4. The Long Parliament—the French Convention—the United States.
It is convenient, but not candid, to make the Long Parliament and the French Convention answerable for the excesses of the times in which they existed. The decisive measures • against CHARLES and his instruments did not grow out of Democratical institutions, but out of the abuses and detects of the Monarchical : they were a part only of the general and irrepressible movement against despotism. And be it remembered, that the House of Lords could not preserve the Church or the Monarchy : the war
which overthrew both was commenced,and for some time carried on, while the two Houses were sitting. Subsequently, the army gained a fatal ascendancy; but it would be idle to pretend that the House of Lords, had it existed, could have prevented that. The number of bodies among which the legislative power was divided, or the constitutional power of these bodies, would
not have made the least difference in CROMWELL'S proceedings. Al! civil securities become alike impotent under a military tyranny. If the Long Parliament was merely an instrument in the hands of the leaders of the people first, and then of the army, so we may
say of the French Convention, that it was called into being by the hatred of existing institutions, and the resolution to overthrow them, which pervaded the French people in 1789. So far from
having produced the spirit, which afterwards, when carried to
excess, was the cause of much crime and suffering, the Con- vention was summoned to allay and pacify it. It was the last
resource of Louis the Sixteenth and his Ministers ; and it delayed instead of hurrying on the catastrophe of the Monarchy and the Church, which nt eling probably could have saved.
As regards the United States, the example of that country is not appositely quoted by the Standard ; for there never was an Esta-
blished Church in the American Colonies, and the Kingly autho- rity was always feeble. That authority, such as it was, could not have been preserved by an hereditary Peerage; all the Lords in Christendom would not have reconciled the Americans to the Stamp Act. The fact is, that when the people of a country are stimulated, as the Americans were, to rise against the established authorities, the mere form of their government will neither deter them from attempting to effect a revolution, nor prevent their success.
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