TOWN AND COUNTRY POLITICIANS.
PARIS rules France, but London is subject to the country: :When, of late years, has any important political movement ori- ginated in London ? We recollect no instance of the kind. Re- form owes nothing to the metropolis which was dead to the ques- tion, when the counties, before the Three Days of Paris, were ousting their old Tory members and choosing Refbrmers instead. Whatever the Duke of WELLINGTON lost by the dissolution, was taken from him by the reforming spirit of the counties and country towns. When the pamphlet attributed to Lord (then Mr.) BROUGHAM appeared, London was astonished to learn that the new Parliament would be addicted to Reform. Of the sym- pathy of this nation for the French, when the latter defeated their borochmongers, little or none was shown by London. The meet- ings in the metropolis " to congratulate the brave people of Paris " were comparatively poor things, both in numbers and spirit ; while the crowds who assembled in Scotland, Lancashire, War- wickshire, Dublin, and other outlandish parts, made themselves respected by their numbers, their unanimity, their promptitude, and the fervour of their zeal. SWING, too,—and what lie did for Reform, bringing good out of evil, will be told one day,—he was a countryman all over, the very "bold peasant" on whom the Boroughmongers had always reckoned for aid in keeping down their old enemies the smoke-dried London Radicals. Then, the Political Union of Birmingham, which frightened everybody with its bold bearing, and spread the spirit, not of discontent, but of resistance, over the North of England and eTeat part of Scotland, —did not the Cocknies get up a thing with 33 a similar name? and were they not fain to take Irish O'CONNELL for their chairman ? and did not the mimic Association dissolve after one meeting? The LONDON Political Union, indeed!—its very name was a contradic- tion in terms. Cocknies love money ; and people haVing money, who come to London, love to be fashionable : but as for enthu- siasm in politics, they leave such folly to the provinces; and as for union, they are never united, hut, like . sheep, by a common. fear. • Next, compare the proceedings of town and country as to the Reform Bill. At no time durin the debates was there a crowd in Palace Yard : columns would not hold the names of distant towns and villages in which the people have assembled in crowds to meet the mail, and learn the result of every important debate. When the Bill was read a second time, London made no sign of joy : in the country, even to ttie furthest extremities of Scotland and Cornwall, ringing of bells and illuminations told of the plea- sure, and the resolution also, of the people. The political torpor of London extends for at least thirty miles round Bow steeple ; for, within that distance, we haie heard of no marked enthusiasm for Reform. When London knew that General GASCOYNE had carried his proposal for altering the Bill, she was a little sad, perhaps, but silent and listless. Busy Birmingham, on the con- trary, instantly repeated what she had said not long before, viz. that she was ready to support the King against the Borough- mongers "with a hundred thousand men in arms;" just as the people of West Kent and East Sussex had before threatened to " march" with Colonel EVANS * in support of his Majesty and his patriotic • Ministers. Then, in the way of preparation for the elections, what did London before the dissolution ? No- thing. Yet how easy was it for the citizens to have ousted Mr. WARD, who offered to resign after his vote against the Bill, and to have elected a Reformer during the Easter recess. The Southwark people, too, might easily have fixed the vote of Sir ROBERT WILSON in favour of the Bill, if they had treated the Knight as the Warwickshire electors did their slippery member, Mr. DUGDALE. When HUNT belied the working classes, saying they disliked the Bill, what did the London operatives ? Nothing; *Colonel EVANS is gone to Preston, to oppose that poor, ignorant, ill.judging creature, HUNT. He is a man of daring spirit and good military skill. Whilst in the North, he should ascertain what is likely to be the humour of the people in case the Boroughmongers should become traitors,—which seems not improbable. The closing scene in the Agitation Parliament, wbea the Royal prerogative was almost resisted by physical force, is not forgotten.
whilst the work-people of Leeds, Sheffield, Birmingham, and Man- chester, assembled and disowned HUNT, whose effigy the Man- chester people burnt on the field of Peterloo. Whilst the metro-
polis thus slept, as if there had been no prospect of a dissolution, the provinces were on the alert, calling meetings, selecting future members, and subscribing money, with a view to the General Elec- tion, which appeared inevitable to all whose anxiety for Reform led themsto think earnestly on the subject. The patriotic election subscriptions of Lancashire, Leicestershire, Nottinghamshire, and. Cornwall, alone, amounted to 25,000/. &fore the dissolution. How• much, at that time, had been raised in London ? Nothing ; unless we reckon the subscriptions of the Parliamentary Candidate So- ciety, of which all but about 1081. came from the country,
Facts without end might be adduced, to show that London,, when compared with the country, is destitute of political spirit.. We do not pretend that the metropolis takes no interest in politics;.
we are only drawing a comparison,—of which the result is; that political movement originates with the country, and that the me- tropolis only follows the lead of the provinces, slowly and ineffi- ciently.
This phenomenon requires explanation. The capital being the centre of wealth and intelligence, the seat of the Legislature, the
very heart of the body politic, ought, one would suppose, to move in mighty throbs, causing but pulsations in the extremities ; and it is just so in France. But there are diseases of the human frame which seize upon the heart first, and ultimately affect the whole body through the medium of its noblest part. Such is the state of England. London is the stronghold of monopolies —the centre of evil influences. Here the aristocracies of wealth and fashion rule tyrannically. In London, if a man be poor, he is so despised, and therefore so eager to become rich, that his mind is not his-own before any who can gratify his long- ings. In London, a rich man, and more especially if he he young and ambitious, will sell his soul for admittance to what he calls " the best society,"—which means the circle next above his own. In London, there are a thousand aristocracies, great and smailr' each of which is built on monopoly, and on a system of grades, which teaches men to crawl and climb instead of thinking soundly and acting conscientiously. There is the boroughmongering one, which rides over all; those of Threadneedle and Leadenhall Streets, with their Directors, each of whom may influence five hundred better men than himself; that of the Law, with its long and difficult ladder, each step of which is guarded by a crowd pull- ing at those above them and kicking hard at all below ; the Civic Corporation, with its four ranks of the Chair, the Gown, the Coun- cil, and the Livery, and its enormous fund for the purpose of turn- ing men into sycophants or ciphers ; that of the Clubs, which are as a scale of artificial distinctions for those who want neither money nor power—which teach men to think by conventional rules, and to act in constant fear of being marked as eccentric when they are only independent ; and (we have room for but this one more) the most preposterous of all, .that of fashion, directed by the patronesses of Almack's—who live to create distinctions amongst women, and to set an example of insolence and folly, which is eagerly followed, with superadded meanness, by the ranks below them, the vulgar of Gloucester Place, the very vulgar of Bloomsbury, and the most vulgar women of the suburbs. " Tag rag and bob tail" is the term which the Almack's women generally apply to all the others ; and each rank, in its turn, has some contemptuous epithet for the ranks below it. The scale of fashion ends with poverty, where the other evil influence acts alone in the worship of Mammon ; as, for example, amongst the tradespeople of London, who, spoken of as a class, take their politics from their customers. Add to all these evil influences, the many more which will sug- gest themselves to every reader, and we shall be at no loss to ac- count for the political meanness, cowardice, and impotence of the metropolis. To find singleness of purpose, comprehensive views, a generous love of country, unanimity, boldness, and power, real though latent to the superficial observer,—we must travel out of sight of St. Paul's. Paris rules France, but London is subject to the country. Reform will make a change here as in so many other things—may it come in time to stop the ossification of the heart of the body politic ! If London had shown but half the po- litical spirit of Cornwall, or Birmingham, or the starving county of Clare in 1828, the Reform Bills would have passed the House of Commons—and the House of Lords too—with large ma- jorities.
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