A Hundred Years Ago
" THE SrEcteroa," DECEMBER 6TH, 1834.
The attempt to get up a Church and King cry, to revive the days of Anti-Catholic bigotry and Birmingham mobs, has utterly failed. People laugh at Guy Faux, and no longer dread the Pope of Rome. If Dr. Priestley were to make his appearance in Birmingham, he would be honoured as a demigod by the sons of those who burnt his library and threatend his life. The country is one generation wiser as well as older than in the days of Anti-Jacobin fury. The Tories, some of the more sensible of them at least, see and feel this. The necessity of some new method of deluding the masses is recognized ; and it proves their real consciousness of the progress which the desire of improvement has made among the people, that they now strive to trick them with the pretence of being friends to Reform. The Duke's organs, indeed, adopt different tones ; but while Fraser speaks to the High Church party, the Standard and the Times Are-constantly insinuating the probability of Church and Corporation Reform being conceded by the embryo Ministry.
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Our accounts from North Britain are very cheering. The Reformers are aware of the necessity of exertion, and are everywhere showing a determined front. The Town Council of Inverness agreed, by a majority of 15 to 4 tolhe following address : " Your Majesty has earned a high and lasting fame, both at home and abroad, by supporting the principle of Constitutional Reform, in seasons of difficulty and danger. The nation is now improving peacefully and rapidly, through all its ranks and professions, in Imowledge and strength, commerce and manufactures. We pray, therefore, that nothing may °cm* to arrest this march of improve- ment ; and that your Majesty will admit only to your councils such statesmen as possess the confidence of the nation, and will carry forward a gradual but effectual reform of the institutions of our country."
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