POSTSCRIPT.
Jr appears from the French journals of Wednesday, which bring us the particulars of the debate and division on the Peerage question of the former day, that the majority, which we have stated in a preceding article to be 36, was only 83. We suppose the private letters confounded it with the number of the recent creation, or the temptation to make it and the majority exactly tally was irresistible. The following is the exact state of the votes.
The number of Peers entitled to vote is Absent Majority 3.3
There are no proxies allowed in the French Chamber of Peers.
Preseht
The votes of those present were as follows—
For the abolition of hereditary right Against. 219 40 179 103 70
The Moniteur contradicts the rumours of disturbances in the depart- ment of the Ain. It admits that the taxes are paid slowly, but they are paid without any serious difficulty, and the delay is in most cases to be attributed to the collector rather than the tax-payer. The Pricur- seur de Lyons, by whom these sinister rumours had been chiefly circu- lated, is a strong party paper ; and such authority, to use a phrase of our Northern brethren, "is not safe to ride the water upon." With respect to delays of payment, much depends on the custom of the country. In England, the Assessed Taxes are hardly in any case collected until they have been twelvemonths due ; and if demanded then, the payers are very apt to accuse the collector of sharp practice.
0. P. Q. of the Chronide—of whom we may say, as Johnson did of Goldsmith, nihil non tangit, although we can hardly add aihil non ornat- has.been addressing the Peers of England on the subject of the recent decision on the Peerage question in France. He says- " Learn from this decision five things !--first, that you cannot resist the pro- gress of public opinion ; second, that a Peer is but an unit as well as a Com- moner, and that units have no chance with the millions ; third, that the French Peerage has lost its hereditary character by opposing, for fifteen years, public opinion ; fourth, that you have now your day of probation before the millions shall decide upon your fiat); and fifth, that if you continue to resist the progress of constitutional freedom, and the granting of those ameliorations which would now satisfy and cheer, you also will be swept away by a torrent ; and before the 27th December 1832, a British Hereditary Peerage may be a mere fact of history."
We will not assign so speedy a date to the termination of the British Peers, lest, like Napier—he of the Logarithms—in the case of his cele- brated prophecy of the Day of Judgment, we should chance to outlive our own prognostication ; but it requires no ghost to tell us, if the Peers or the People must go to the wall, which party will go first.
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