ted or revived. This is not the place to enter
into a discussion on the vexed question as to whether Mr. Pitt and his
successors, in pursuing their system of repression, were justified by
the necessities of the long French war. It is enough to assert, what few
or none will deny, that, for the space of more than a generation from
1790 onwards, our country had, with a short interval, been governed on
declared reactionary principles. We, in whose days Whigs and Tories have
often exchanged office, and still more often interchanged policies,
find it difficult to imagine what must have been the condition of the
kingdom, when one and the same party almost continuously held not only
place, but power, throughout a period when, to an unexampled degree,
"public life was exasperated by hatred, and the charities of private
life soured by political aversion." [These expressions occur in Lord
Cockburn's Memorials of his Time.] Fear, religion, ambition, and
self-interest,--everything that could tempt and everything that could
deter,--were enlisted on the side of the dominant opinions. To profess
Liberal views was to be excluded from all posts of emolument, from all
functions of dignity, and from all opportunities of public usefulness.
The Whig leaders, while enjoying that security for life and liberty
which even in the worst days of our recent history has been the reward
of eminence, were powerless in the Commons and isolated in the Lords. No
motive but disinterested conviction kept a handful of veterans steadfast
round a banner which was never raised except to be swept contemptuously
down by the disciplined and overwhelming strength of the ministerial
phalanx. Argument and oratory were alike unavailing under a constitution
which was indeed a despotism of privilege. The county representation
of England was an anomaly, and the borough representation little better
than a scandal. The constituencies of Scotland, with so much else that
of right belonged to the public, had got into Dundas's pocket. In the
year 1820 all the towns north of Tweed together contained fewer voters
than are now on the rolls of the single burgh of Hawick, and all the
counties together contained fewer voters than are now on the register of
Roxburghshire. So small a band of electors was easily manipulated by a
party leader who had the patronage of India at his command. The three
Presidencies were flooded with the sons and nephews of men who were
lucky enough to have a