MR. TAIT'S NEW MAGAZINE.
MR. TAIT, an active and enterprising member of the great book trade, has at length brought forth the first Number of his Magazine. The note of preparation had been loud, and the world was duly ap- prized, through all the regular channels, that TAIT was in labour, and that on the first of April (ominous day, when little boys are sent to fetch pigeons' milk !) he would duly accouche. The brat is now sprawling before us,—a thumping, lively, little giant ; grand in his dimensions, vigorous in his struggles, and pretty shrill- voiced in his cry. Our decided opinion is, that, only wrap him in blankets, furnish him with plenty of palm-oil (otherwise milk from Taihiti), and keep him warm for fear of the Cholera Morbus, which would turn his rosy pink into blue, and he will get on. If the little rascal survives, he is very likely to be a member of the Reformed Parliament. We never saw a young creature with such a decided turn for politics, and those of the Liberal side : he screams himself black in the face at the approach of a Tory,—an antipathy inherited from his worthy progenitor, TAIT ipsissimus- ; Tatra; r`an4raTos—the great present ancestor of this magnanimous future infinite series of Magazine. In fact, there is much to be said for young TAIT, now and to come. The infant speaks well, and to the purpose; and if there be a little babble in his talk, that will mend in season. The arti- culation of the first month is never very perfect. The publisher—and editor likewise, we presume, for in the Modern Athens every bookseller is capable of editing his own Magazine—apologizes for this tendency to Politics, and promises Literature in a future Number. It must, however, be a shade or two different from that in which he now rejoices. We cannot away with " The Martinet ;" " Kissing" is barely tolerable ; and "The Ventilators" just like the Princess Lmvssr—a protocol in 'petticoats. "The State of Magic in Egypt" is evidently a piece of experience, pleasantly detailed ; but the title of it is a preposterous mistake, and what is more, repulsive : who cares for the state of magic in Egypt? We refer the very able and original writer of this paper, to Mrs. MEER ALI HASSAN'S book on Mahometanism in India, where he will see some better stories of serpent-finders than his own.
Of the right-down Political papers, the first is far the best : it is plain, expository, manly—with a repressed power of humorous illustration, that in another sphere, we suspect, shines with a brighter glory. The •" State of the West Country," and the "Causes of the Jamaica Rebellion," are practical and somewhat vigorous papers : such ought generally to season a Magazine, and not form its staple. With a few coarse things in the Jamaica paper, there are some memorable ones. There is a sentence which .explains the planters hostility to the Missionaries, and indeed the -actual anomalous condition of Slavery in the West Indies : the _rebellion, observes the writer, was not "the work of any one class 'of Missionaries, further than this, that they have contributed to enlighten the minds of the Blacks, and that every step in know- ledge unfits a man for slavery." The most lively paper of the number is a well-conceived article called "A Tete-ii-Tke with Mr. Tait;" in which one of the in- numerable Mr. Smiths holds an argument with the projector as to his principles and prospects of success. In no recent magazine,. or other periodical, have we read a better-sustained dialogue. On the whole, from what we see of this Number of the work,. we are inclined to believe that success depends on Mr. TAIT him- self—his activity, energy, resources, and knowledge of business. A monthly work of talent, information, and amusement, is no light undertaking; and he has undoubtedly powerful rivals to contend with. He must beat the Liberal New Monthly of Lon- don, and the Tory Blackwood of Edinburgh; and he may rest assured, that, in the present state of literature; neither is a light task, or to be effected without repeated efforts.
So much for the brains of the young hopeful—his exterior is also in most respects promising : he looks less livid than Blackwood, not so military as the United Service, and more cheerful than the Metropolitan. But what is this huge bandeau of black coronets and murky maces we discern indented right upon the os iron& P Who is it that stands godfather to TAIT Junior?—We beg leave to assume our spectacles, and examine the signs upon the brow. The eover is adorned with a wood-cut of an individual remarkable for his wig, which descends in an avalanche over what we presume is a robe of office. From the character of this wig, we at first imagined that the effigies was designed to represent the great Lord Burleigh, —for just so is he always dressed in the Critic, by those high au- thorities the stage-managers. The face of this personage looks dead as wood can be; but there is life enough in the wig, to ani- mate the whole Magazine. " The wisdom is in the wig. ' How crisp is every hair—how buoyant are its ample folds—how sub- stantively they project into the outer darkness of the picture We have seen the ocean present some such appearance, but a wig never before. A learned seer, we understand, attributes the face to Lord BROUGHAM ; but that Lord will assuredly never own it. There may be something like him, perhaps, in that which is under the wig; but in all that which escapes from its comprehen- sive constrictures, there is no resemblance. We presume this sign is intended as a kind of anti-type to Blackwood's head of By- CHANAN : it is a worthy rival to that excellent likeness of a swarthy old coal-porter. We must give a specimen extract—what shall it be ? As TAIT says, " the times are political," and the crisis of the Whig Cabinet is at hand : let us give the
CHARACTER. OF EARL GREY AND HIS MINISTRY.
We now come to the character, the development of which has been such a surprise to the country,—Earl Grey. The world gave him credit for statesman- ship. They who knew him more closely, were aware that he was wanting in
the first essential of statesmanship, the knowledge of the status. For years he had kept up no acquaintance with the world, either through books or conversa- tion. -The changes which have been so rapidly taking place in the public mind,
have been unmarked by him. He is a political neophyte in his old age. He takes up the world as he laid it down, and thinks it will yet bound submissive to the ruler's racket. In rhetoric, he is as accomplished and vigorous as ever; in his understanding, there seems to be but the one fault—that he knows not what he has to do with. Ha is like Dominic Sampson, resuming the early les- sons of "little Harry Bertram," six feet high, precisely where they were broken
off, when he was whipped up by the gauger. He spouts as mere phrases, senti- ments which have ceased to pass as phrases, and are resented as propositions of oppression. The reception of his talk about vindicating the rights of the Irish clergy and crushing resistance, must have astonished him about as much, as the poor Dey of Algiers was amazed in Italy, when a question was raised, as to his privilege of strangling one of his attendints and peremptorily decided in the ne- gative. The exile had simply forgotten the difference of time and place ; and Algiers does not differ more from Italy, than England as it is differs from Eng- land as it was, when Earl Grey finished the impressions of his mind. For years he has lived in a haughty retirement, suffering much from ill health, and vacant for hypochondriacal fancies. It is still a matter of wonder, that so bold and well- cast a measure as the Reform Bill should have proceeded from such a condition of intellect. Here was no misapprehension of the state of opinion, and the ne- cessities of the times ; but while he espouses the cause, he sets himself against the consequences,—while he affords the means of redress, he declares for the in- violability of abuses. Again, in the conduct of the Reform Bill itself, there is the precise converse of this inconsistency. As in the reform pregnant with all other reforms, he affords the means, while he pledges himself to resist the ob- jects; so, on the other hand, in the conduct of it, he has proposed the object, and, up to the hour at which we write, withheld the means. One moment we see him busy, and earnest in making bricks without straw ; and, at another, we hear him declaring, that not a part of our tottering pile shall be altered or amended. He would and he would not. He would give the people their rights and continue their wrongs. He would give the people power with the one hand, and oppose their resistance of abuses with the other. He reforms a corrupt Parliament, and threatens to vindicate with the bullet and the bayonet, an exac- tion for which no service is rendered. He would concede to public opinion in the ruling measure, and resist it at the hazard of civil war, in the instance of B particular abuse, intolerable to seven millions of people subjected to it, and to another twelve millions who witness it, and make common cause as to the prin- ciple, and sympathize with those engaged in the struggle against it. These various inconsistencies favour the opinion that the plan of Reform-was the work of a mind bolder and more cognizant of the times • and to Lord Dur- ham it is attributed. However this fact may be, and whatever may be the causes of the contradictions we have noticed, it cannot be denied that the Pre- mier's advocacy of the measure has been preeminently able and intrepid. In rhetoric there has been no failure on his part. The failing has been in thein- comparably more important point of action. Indeed, his have been the only speeches denoting any breadth of view and piercing comprehension. It is strange that a man who so accurately apprehended the state of the public mind, with relation to this question, should show so profound an ignorance of it in other instances, in which it is unequivocally manifested. None, however, "are so blind as those who will not see."
The distribution of the Ministerial patronage is another example of the neglect of means, which seems hardly reconcileable with zeal for the objects professed. What are the people to think when they see arms from their own arsenals pre- sented to their enemies? The effect is not singly to deprive the popular side of certain powers, which go to increase the hostile force ; but also the sanction of opinion is conveyed to the enemy by these signs of extraordinary preference. The argument is, that their merits must be great, their claims overwhelming, when even their adversaries are compelled to pass over their own supporters, and acknowledge the superior qualification of their foes. Asthis-elatea the Tory party, so it abashes the Liberals ; who have to bear the scoff of their opponents, and either to confess their own unworthiness, or to call in question the justice and courage of their leaders. All men were amazed that Lord Hill, the nominee of the Duke of Wellington, was continued in the command of the Army. Why was it to seem that the Tories only could produce a man fit to be Commander-in-Chief? Why were the Tories' bellowing threats of civil war to be comforted in their folly, by seeing one of their faction at the head of the army,—an enemy in our camp, and in command of our camp ! Lord Hill did not vote on the Reform Bill. Sir Henry Parnell did not vote on the Russian-Dutch Loan. Lord Hill was continued in the command, which should never have been confided to him. Sir Henry Parnell was in- stantly dismissed from the only office in the Government held by one whose qualifications far exceeded the place assigned for their exercise. Sir Henry committed a fault, but unconsciously. It is a pregnant fiict, that he had no notion that his withholding his vote would be offensive to the Ministry. He had seen them so negligent of support, so careless of absolute hostility, so to- lerant of actual injury, that lie could hardly suppose, that, in taking the precise course on a secondary question which Lord Hill had pursued on the vital one with impunity, he should provoke his colleagues to a rupture. But it was the old quarrel of the wolf and the lamb. Sir Henry had long discovered himself to be too good an economist for his colleagues. He did not leave his principles at the door of his office, and they were disagreeable where such things are not cus- tomary. He talked of retrenchment as if he were still on the other side" of the House. To most fabrics there is an outside and an inside; the outside smooth and specious, the inside less fit for inspection, and laid next to self; it is especially so with the mantle of Government, the wrong side of which comes next the skin.
Earl Grey's use of his patronage has not been more blameable than Lord Brougham's, which is next in importance. A capital error, and apparently without a motive, was the appointment of Mr. Horne to the Solicitor-General- ship. As the new Chancellor was deficient in knowledge of equity, it was the more necessary that he should have a Solicitor-General who could assist and upbear him. We need not say how he has provided for his wants. The thing is ludicrous—the jest of the Court and the Commons. Then, in the new Bankrupt Court—that notable specimen of blundering, for the costly clumsiness of which the country is not, in fact, indebted to the Chancellor, but to one Mr. Vizard, whose oracles are preferred to those of Bentham, albeit his name is better known in connexion with the business of making members of Parliament than with the science of jurisprudence,—in the appointments to this precious piece of handy-work (with its four judges to work, and four more to look over them, with such uses as the Gog and Magog in the old Hall might amply have sup- plied), errors of a less pardonable nature are to be traced. One may be espe- cially instanced, the alleged motive for which was the part which the learned gentleman had taken in the suppression of some mysterious papers affecting Royalty: The question is, whether services of this sort constitute qualification . for judicial office. While we are touching on this subject, we are tempted to notice a curious illustration of the rebuke of the mote in a brother's eye, in com- placent unconsciousness of the beam in the censor's. Among the official as- signees selected by the Commissioners, were two persons, one of whom hap- pened to be a brother, another a brother-in-law of members of the electing Com- mittee. The brother had declined to vote. Of the qualifications of the gentle- men chosen, there was no doubt or question. The Chancellor, however, when he saw the names in the list, took alarm, and rejected them; signifying his dis- pleasure that persons should have been nominated, the brother and brother:in- law of whom were on the Committee. The idea of a brother having any part or influence in preferring a brother, was shocking to him, though of his own act he had appointed his brother to a Mastership. For this fraternal preference there was the sanction of no committee of disinterested persons—nay, there was not the approval of any one man in the country acquainted with the merits of the choice. Here Lord Brougham's favouritism, we believe, stops ; Earl Grey's takes afar wider range, and we only lament that he had not five hundred more kinsmen to promote in different parts of the empire, in lieu of those enemies of the good cause, whom lie has, in default of personal partialities, invested with power. Inexplicable it is that a nobleman, who, in 1810, demanded as a con- dition of office, that the Prince's household should be turned out, has, at the present conjuncture, so incomparably important, suffered posts of influence and command to be filled by bitter and avowed enemies to his counsels. The stake has been boldly and generously proposed, but the game has been ill played, though we have little doubt that it will ultimately be won. He who plays ill, with a nation to back him, may almost call his cards. Much mystery has been thrown about the creation of Peers. One would think that Earl Grey, from tenderness to the order, wished to induce a belief that it is a difficult matter to make Peers. As Teddy the tiler says, in the farce, to his brother hodman, " You baste, sure you suppose it as easy to make a Peer as to make a hod ofinor- tar !" Our opinion is, that there has never been any real difficulty about the matter; though the satellites of those Ministers whom we account disaffected to popular objects, have been most loud in imputing the delay to the disinclination of the King. They had, however, represented the same obstacle to the dissolu- tion of the late Parliament ; and we remember how nobly the slander was con- futed by his Majesty's right majestic exercise of his prerogative. Certain we are, that the persons to whom we allude, would not dare whisper against the Crown, but at the instance of their patrons for some shabby party purpose.
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