TOPICS OF THE DAY.

OBSTACLES TO THE PROGRESS OF REFORM.

THE heirs of the two rival factions of the last century are now avowedly leagued together in defence of the psceint parts of the

Reform Act, as their predecessors rallied round 011 Sarum and Cotton. The Whig Leader of the House of Commons proclaims its righteous intent to be that of giving the ascendancy to the Landed or Bread-taxing interest ; anal the Tories take especial care that this object shall be secured. There is a section of the House who repudiate this doctrine. They represent the People,

who supported " the Bill" in 1 s31 and Is..1-2 with very different notions; and imagined that the aim of its authors was to secure the just representation of all classes, not the selfish preleminance of any one. But this party is focble, from various causes. It is not that its numbers are small : fewer have been formidable to the most powerful Minister. Neither is it from want of talent there may be no first-rate men among them, but their antagonists are assuredly not their superiors it statesmmliko qualities. Their inefficiency arises partly from tile of skilful concert ; more

from the lack of proper self-reliance; a greater degree still

from the slavish dread of " in the " most of all from a consciousness that the partimlar fraction of the whole people whom the law invests with the clp;iee of lawmakers, would shrink from supporting them in a volIrse of tleeseughly isdepen- dent action.

The constituent body is unsound. Setting aside the remnant of the old rotten boroughs, and the purehascable freetm:n of the large towns,—setting aside also the grossly ignarant, of whom there are thousands who cannot so :ouch as read.—and taking only the better part of the electors, though not the very Lest, we fear it is but too true that even they are, to a large extent, habitually under some very unworthy inffiunices. 1. Jealousy of the present non-eleetors, and repugnance to their admission to the rights of citizenship. are prevalent among the Liberal voters, as they arc called. Hence, the Member of Parliament who labours to extend the suffrage, meets with little encouragement from his constituents: and the :tIinister who de- crees that the great body of the people shall be unrepresented, fiuds sympathy, not the less effectual because. the motive for it is too discreditable to he openly avowed.

2. An independent course of action, it is thought, night " let in the Tories;" and with many of the " respectable middle classes " this is sufficient for condemnation of an Anti-Ministerial vote. The dread of the Tories exists to a degree almost inconceiv- able. One might suppose that a national inetamorphosis must take place on a change of Ministry—that the spirit and vigour of the country would be paralyzed, and that Britons bold would crouch and crawl before the oppressor, assuming a Tory guise, for generations to come. This soul-debasing terror, surpassing that of ill-instructed children for the ghosts and goblins of the nursery, frightens multitudes into approval of conduct in their Represen- tatives, the most inconsistent, faithless, contemptible, and, with reference to ultimate consequences, the most absurd.

3. There is a class of professing Liberals who will do anything to " keep out the Tories," in order to retain the Government pa- tronage in the bands of the present dispensers thereat'. Some men, themselves untainted with selfish expectations ot' benefit, are nevertheless averse to any earnest opposition to the W hiss, simply because the Government patronage is now distributed in "a right direction"—that is, because Gonos, ELLIOTT'S, and Pio-Nit:Errs, get profitable places in Church and State, instead of SONIEUSETS, MBAR AVS, and BERESVORDS.

4. There are others who ding to the exist nu C.:ma:mule:it from the purely selfish expectation of picking up a portioll of the public money for themselves or their kindred. This expectation is not confined to persons of station and inauence, but pro ails to a ludi- crous extent among the obscurest. The transter of place and patronage from Tories to \Villas, is what most of the Whig Aristocracy understand " Retiom" to mean, or at any rat,' to imply. Few of them would have cartel about the snecess of the Reform Act, if they had not ceuplol oitli it the prospect gain. To these men it matters u t what the ine;),:nr.s Minis- ters arc, provided only that they L::11,•t.Te tt, ;A,p themselves in office, and provide tier needy yonnger sous and spinsters without fortunes. All the influence which they can exert or, the electors is in favour of the Government. The:- ate fir " union nos mg all Reformers,"—whieh being interpretca, means "pelf a hd patronage for inc and mine." With such, the " horrors of Tory lu;k,," the possibility of a return to which is so sincerely depreette0, means the negation of these advantages.

5. There is a very natural dislike to be in the min Irity. An inhabitant of London with di:!lculty commhe:als how strong this feeling is in provincial towns. For many years the Tory "friends of Government" lorded it ever men of " olj.‘etioaable politics." The Church was theirs, and so were the Co:poratiuns; every petty office in the town and mighl),,arhood was ;'.11ctl by Tories : to belong to the Liberal party wa4 a bar to !zooid society.

Now the tables are turwd. The 1.1.:Irge ot' ills:- loyalty is retotted upon the Tories. Tin. (1,4tlits tri,:mpli

have not yet paned upon the 1.ih.l,t1 :1,pc;ito. ivt a r,,!,- ration of ill,' It''giltio be see in the ME1.3t,1•1:71 tLo ,n!■ st it., el things to them most .;:t!lnig-.

Li. Atuong those on wheal fly: tno!ives last mentimed operlte

the Dissenters must be classed. The Whig Ministers are iMpported by many with a purely sectarian spirit. The Nonnon- formist leaders have ever exhibited a readiness to abandon high principle for the chance or in the hope of obtaining some petty advantage for themselves. They also enjoy the estrangement of the Church from the State, which to a certain degree exists under the Whig Government. For these gratifications of sectarian feel- ing, too many Dissenters are willing to barter the means of ob- taining national and general reforms.

Such are the principal motives—narrow, weak, mean-spirited, or corrupt—which induce no inconsiderable portion of the consti- tuencies, professing Reform principles, to support the present Administration, even in Unreform. By "keeping out the Tories," at whatever price, they expect to gain some small advantage for their party, their sect, or themselves. The motives are intelligible, though not high-minded. But are the men whom they influence wise in their generation? Are they taking the right course to secure that for which they sacrifice principle and the public weal ? We apprehend not. Whither it will lead, and with rapid pace, may be surely inferred from what it has led to already. The Tories will be in. They are far stronger now than at any time during the last seven years: they are nearer "in"—that is, to remain in—than they were when Mr. HUDSON was sent to Rome for Sir ROBERT PEEL, in November 1834. No human power, save that of an aroused public-spirit, can keep them cut. But the tendencies of the mean-motived constituencies, and their fit organs in the Commons, so far from rousing and sustaining public-spirit, are to depress it lower and lower. Within the last ten days, we have ourselves heard Members—not impatient Radicals, but sleek fol- lowers of the Ministry—declare, that if the Tories should get "in" after Christmas, they would not need to dissolve the Par- liament; for, being in, they 'would find in the present House of Commons a working majority of not less than one hundred !

During the late reign, the good dispositions of the Ministers, it was believed, were counteracted by the evil influences of the court. When accused of framing their measures on a Tory model, and of discountenancing their Liberal supporters, the ever- ready excuse was, that the King only wanted a pretence to recall the Tories. Any thing but that!—so the Whigs were patted on the back, and upheld by the Radical Members. The accession of VICTORIA made the Whigs all-powerful at Court. Instead of availing themselves of their improved position to advance the cause of Reform—in any sense of " Reform" but that of power and evil for themselves, as already mentioned—the Ministers have been emboldened by the possession of Court influence to throw off the mask of Liberalism, to take their stand on the abuses of the Reform Act, and to join the Tories in proclaiming the worst species of Conservatism, that of the Landed ascendancy. In point of fact, then, it is nolonger a question of keeping Tories out of office. The difference between Lord JOHN RUSSELL and Sir ROBERT PEEL is of practical consequence only to place-holders or place-seekers. Toryism is in ; and the contest is simply which of the two aristocratic sections shall have the profits of power. Real and wile Reformers would not shrink from the question—is it not more dangerous that Toryism, infecting every act of legis- lation and government, should be carried on under a Whig name and a Reforming pretence, than that Tories should do the same work en th(ir own responsibilities, and with all the stimulants to jealous vigilance which an avowed Tory Administration would create?

It has been counted as gain, that we have not lost ground ! Have we not? Did the leading Minister in the Commons ever utter —would any Minister have dared to utter—such speeches as those of the 20th and 21at of November, even a year ago? Would they have been tolerated in the spring of 1835? Have the Reformers gained our thing by the accession of a Whig Queen? To have kept their relative position, in the altered circumstances at Court, the Liberals should have advanced ; whereas they have fallen back, and so have lost ground both relatively and positively.

Need we recall the Reform ale, when Lord JOHN RUSSELL cor- responded with the Birmingham Union, and contrasted the " whist-yr of a faction" with the "voice of the nation?" Nay, long t :ore the (lays of the Reform Bill—in the last century —the Codlings put forth by Lord Joisx RUSSELL in the Ad- dress ,lehate would have been scouted. Fancy CHARLES Fox or SAML'EL WHITBREAD handling a Minister who had ventured to compniin of the inconrenience of discussing popular grievances on the first night of a session ! or who, admitting the existence of a grievance, bad proclaimed his resolution not to redress it !

When the existing constituencies grudge the extension of the franchise to others as capable of enjoying it as themselves, it would be prudent to bethink them in how many ways the dangerous en- mity of the unrepresented masses is provoked. The Bread-tax itself is nut more deeply resented, than the artificial regulation by which the electoral qualification is designedly placed for ever be- yond their reach. The time for making an amicable and beneficent compromise is passing—is almost passed. It is not in the nature of things that submission to the injustice should endure long ; the increasing intelligence and numbers of the injured forbid the no- tion that they can be kept down permanently. In the mean while, captivating, but, as we think, delusive and dangerous notions re- specting the rights of labour and property, are gaining acceptance

among them. towards the" privileged classes" is engen- dered: and in this invidious classification they include not only lorde and squires, but the productive capitalists of the manufactu- ring towns, dud all the buyers and sellers for profit—for whom, in- deed, they have a term.of special opprobrium, namely "shopocrala:' originally a Tory coinage, but now received with acclamation into the vocabulary of Working Men. The extent of the danger wilt not be ascertained till a formidable demonstration of the masses shall take place ; but any thinking person can understand that no slight risk is incurred by making the studied exclusion of the great body of the people from the franchise, however high their intellectual and moral condition, a fixed principle of the British Government.

These considerations must begin to weigh with a large proper- tion of the Reform constituencies. The delusion that in supporting Ministers they are struggling for Reform, will soon be at an end, Members will have been stripped of the excuse for temporizing, "the Reform Ministry in peril.' There is no such thing in exist- ence as a Reform Ministry. The MELBOURNE Government has thrown down the gauntlet to the People, and, denouncing the Ballot and the Extension of the Suffrage, takes its stand on the Landed interest, and relies for support on the selfish each". siveness of Conservatism.