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attorney, commenced to patronise him. It so happened, that their neighbour Wickham, the tallow-chandler, had just then taken it into his head to erect certain vats, and chaldrons, and God knows what sort of utensils, for boiling down fat, and making soap; and the consequence was, that Tom's new house was now filled with all kinds of abominable odours, which were as numerous, if they were not as "well defined and several," as those counted by Coleridge in Cologne. The widow-I mean Mrs. Cluggins declared that there was no enduring the nuisance. The attorney said, that Wickham should be compelled to abate it; while Tom, who dreaded the very name of law, and was, moreover, tolerably well accustomed to queer smells in his own way, was entirely in favour of putting up with the lesser grievance of the chaldrons, than the greater one of the Common Pleas. Tom, however, was out-voted. Wickham refused to abate his pans and coppers, and so to law Pidgeon went, as a duck takes to water. Poor Tom was in an agony for full six months, while Pidgeon was in high delight, and finally triumphed over Wickham and Scroodge, by getting a verdict with damages at the assizes, and compelling the removal of the noxious boilers. Strange to say, Tom was not yet done with law. It so happened, that Tom's stepmother, and her son, Bobby Gopple, had, some time before this, sailed for the West Indies, and were drowned in the passage. Upon this, the acute and restless mind of Pidgeon, who had now settled at Alton-le-Moors, took a fancy to overhaul all the affairs of Tom's father, to the great dismay of poor Tom.

The result, however, was, that Pidgeon soon discovered that Scroodge had wofully mismanaged the West India property, save in the matter of making

costs for himself. Pidgeon was now

in his element, and poor Tom was undergoing a slow process of having his nervous system torn asunder. Nevertheless, before a year was over, Pidgeon did contrive, by means of the mysterious machinery of the law-by orders, and fiats, and re-hearings, and I know not what to turn the whole proceedings inside out, and at length to recover for Tom a very pretty little sum, and thereby to triumph signally over Scroodge.

All this time you will be curious to know how Tom and his bride got on. Well, I can assure you, nothing could be better. She made him a kind, comfortable, prudent wife, as he often gratefully acknowledged as they sat together of an evening, after Miss Rosa had attained her heart's desire, and was married, after all sorts of crosses, to her own cousin. In truth, what originally appeared to promise nothing but disasters to Tom Cluggins, turned out in the long run to be the very making of the man. He grew fat and self-possessed, under the genial manipulation of the widow-as you see horses get into good condition when well groomed and rubbed down; and 'twas a pleasant thing to sit with him over a glass of something hot, after dinner, and hear him confess, as I have done, that he was one of the happiest men living.

After all," said he to me, one evening, when he was particularly mellow, and had just given me the details of his adventures, "after all, my dear friend, widows and attorneys are, I believe, just like everything else in the world there are good and bad of them. I have chanced to happen upon extreme specimens of both; and I must admit that, upon the whole, I have more reason to rejoice at than to regret my intercourse with widows and attorneys."

PHILALETHES.

BURKE'S FAME AND COBDEN'S FOLLY.

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The pamphlet called "1793 and 1853," like all the writings and speeches of Mr. Cobden, furnishes abundant evidence of the truth of the "sharp and shallow" brand affixed to "the Manchester manufacturer" by the Ra dical reformer we have quoted. There is in all that comes from the tongue or pen of Mr. Cobden, what we may call a systematic superficiality—the form of elementary philosophy without any of the substance of profound politicsthe flimsy views of what lawyers call "the first impression of a case," to the neglect of science, precedent, and enlarged sense. so constantly and perseveringly exhibited, that we can only attribute his want of depth and breadth of thinking to the vices of clap-trap philanthropy, and the pernicious habits of platform declamation. Before we advert to the last literary effusion from this incessant agitator, let us briefly characterise its author.

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To a clear head and an active temper, Richard Cobden united a fluent tongue and a vulgarly ambitious nature. Bred in Manchester life, he possessed the flippant and ever ready adroitness, the familiarity with current facts, and proficiency in the skin-deep political economy, which is ever found in the half-read sciolists of the saucy and sectarian school of Manchester politics. He came upon English political life at a time when there was a want of an effective tribune and active popular speaker. Cobbett, in talent worth a thousand Cobdens, had died in 1835. Henry Hunt was, in all senses of the term, no more. Mr. Joseph Hume had no talents for stirring popular assemblies or exciting the multitude; and the only exaggerations in which he was proficient were of the arithmetical kind. Mr. George Grote, with all the convictions, had none of the capacities specially required for an English

Radical reformer, and, greatly to the advantage of historical literature, abandoned the impulses of progressive Liberalism for the interests of permanent literature. Mr. Henry Warburton was a mere superannuated encyclope dia in breeches, full of facts that had lost their significance, sometimes consulted, but generally neglected, Mr. Thomas Duncombe was a mere dandy demagogue, a pleasing declaimer of platform platitudes-a well-bred, goodnatured, political humbug, that laughed at himself and all mankind. Mr. Thomas Wakley, his colleague, had more talent than truth, more cleverness than character; a man whose tongue was often listened to, but rarely trusted. In those days, 1834 to 1841, there was only first-class democratic genius, one far-famed popular speaker, but a host of influences, which, over his recent grave, it would be invidious to characterise,interfered with O'Connell's influence over democracy in England.

It was at such a time that Mr. Cobden entered into public life, the parliamentary spokesman of the factory interest, the guide and tribune of the Manchester party. The Whigs could not estimate the results of their own Reform bill. The scions of their vaunted families were more skilled in figures of rhetoric than arithmetic - their boasted Russells, Normanbys, Morpeths, et hoc genus, had far more talent for similes than statistics, for composing declamations, than for calculating budgets. With some fifty members to his back in the interest of the factory lords, with the want of a good popular "ery" at the time, with a substantial monied interest behind him, and the showy clap-traps of an ad captandum question at his command, full of practical details, and flushed with antagonism to a "proud aristocracy," Mr. Richard Cobden, a third-rate tribune, who could not have lived for an hour in rivalry with the Girondist chiefs of the French Revolution-a man without genius of intellect, or greatness of heart-sharp, quick, but superficial-was enabled, by the blunders of one party, the bullying of another-by trimming here, and tergiversation there—to aid in carrying

a much disputed question. Nothing contributed to this overrated man's notoriety more than the artful compliment of Sir Robert Peel, who, foreseeing that Lord John Russell would more suo endeavour to appropriate to himself the settlement of the question, by his allusion to "the unadorned eloquence of Richard Cobden," at once advertised the success of the Manchester agitator, and balked the monopolising ambition of the baffled and outstripped Whig leader.

Fired by his triumph, and yet perhaps having an uneasy sensation at heart that his success was felt to be more accidental than deserved, Mr. Cobden has now aimed at a higher mark, and aspires to inaugurate a new popular party with dubious designs in politics. The Quixotic quietism which this un-English demagogue now professes must not induce us to treat his machinations with contemptuous ridicule or listless apathy. In the times in which we live there is a propensity to inflammatory folly, as if mankind were drunk with words;" as if the phrenetic flatulence of popular declaimers had a more than customary spell in disorganising and debauching those many-headed masses-" semper avidi novarum rerum." Let vigilance be maintained, and we do not despair in the least of the democratic designs of this Manchester agitator being over

come.

In asking our readers for their attention now, we can promise them not to go over the ground occupied already by the public journals. The London and provincial press of the empire has dealt out severe justice to the shallow fallacies of this angry agitator for peace, whose "Liberalism" means levelling, whose precedents are American, whose principles are democratic in a plebeian sense, whose sympathies are more cosmopolitan than British. The flimsy views of Mr. Cobden upon the question of" national defences" have been too signally demolished in debate by Lord Palmerston, and in controversy by the whole press, for us to engage with exploded fallacies. But a most important part of Mr. Cobden's "1793 and 1853" has been neglected we mean his elaborate detraction from the signal merits of Burke in his "Reflections upon the French Revolution." Observing, that Mr. Cobden and the Manchester party

have now taken up a new position, and that they have avowed ulterior designs, it becomes of the first importance to fix attention on the grave nature of the questions they have raised, and it is therefore that we deem it to be most useful to expose the fatuity of Mr. Cobden's estimate of the famous "Reflections" of Burke. It will be well for us here to mark the degree of importance which we attach to Mr. Cobden's opinions upon Burke.

It is in politics as in literature or the fine arts; the estimation in which great classical writers are held marks the degree of culture and knowledge prevailing amongst admirers or detractors. When Voltaire ridiculed Shakspeare, his criticism exposed only the false views of "nature" held by the Frenchman. The old formal modes of gardening-cutting hedges into batteries, and clipping shrubs into human form, attested the deformed ideas of beauty amongst the mechanical landscape-gardeners of the time. The neglect of Milton's "Paradise Lost," in an age when the rants of Nat Lee, and the rhyming plays of Dryden were deemed sublime, proved the debased state of public taste in the days of the second Charles. The popularity of Minerva Press novels amongst readers who deemed Jane Austen insipid and uninteresting, showed the want of fine feeling and true sense in the sentimental milliners' girls, who preferred romantic slip-slop to pictures of life as faithful to nature as the best landscapes of Constable or Collins. There were readers of Irish eloquence at one time who thought Mr. Charles Phillips almost equal to Grattan or Curran. There were to be found playgoers in the English and Irish theatres who applauded Mrs. Pritchard to the neglect of Mrs. Siddons, who cheered Miss Walstein and carped at Miss O'Neil. A portion of the low London Whigs in 1812-15 followed Mr. Whitbread. "that Demosthenes of bad taste"- -as if he were a second Charles Fox and abused Mr. Canning as an empty declaimer. There were Irish politicians who decided that the Catholic claims should be entrusted to the advocacy of Sir Francis Burdett in preference to Grattan or Lord Plunket. In all these cases. -the things admired and the things not approved of marking with damning accuracy and scientific precision the gradations in

ignorance of the tasteless and thoughtless Vandal herd. If a man told us that Mr. Hume was a better popular speaker than Mr. Cobden, and that Mr. Cobden was a greater orator than Lord Derby, we all know what estimate to put upon the taste of so sapient a judge.

It is thus in the case of Mr. Cobden's disparagement of the prophetic wisdom and comprehensive science of Burke's "Reflections on the Revolution." That great work is the great masterpiece of British constitutional politics. We can allow for its occasional exaggeration, and we do not subscribe to some of its opinions. But to its great leading views upon Christianity, upon the Church in these countries, the British monarchy, and the legislature, we cordially subscribe. In doing so we only echo the sentiments of all Conservative thinkers; but what, on the present occasion, is of more importance, we carry with us the convictions of all that is sound and loyal in the Whig party. No species of writing grows so rapidly stale as political dissertation on passing events; but "The Reflections" differed from every other political work in our literature. It is read now by every one who pretends to a good education. At the universities and in the inns of court, it is mastered by all who wish for proficiency in moral reasoning. The public press of the Empire attests its place amongst the political statutes of journalism. As a wit once exclaimed-" Our very sign-boards show that there was once a Titian in the world, and all our leading articles remind us of the existence of a Burke !"

That great work produced, on its appearance, a sensation without parallel before or since in political writings. It was not an age of shilling editions, but eighteen thousand copies of it were sold at once in England, and not less than sixteen thousand found their way over the Continent. It was the first trumpet - call

to Christendom, to "rouse itself from the harlot-lap of apathy," and gird itself against the dangers and seductions of the French philosophy. We owe it to the memory and genius of our illustrious countryman, to guard his fame against the calumniating disparagement of the Manchester levellers; and however feeble may be the hands that undertake his defence, we may say that nowhere

could Burke's character be more appropriately vindicated than in the pages of the DUBLIN UNIVERSITY MAGAZINE," because our national University was the first public body in the empire to confer upon him honorary distinction for that great work. His affecting letter to the Provost on the receipt of the degree of "D. C. L.,” cannot be read without emotion by every son of Alma Mater—that benignant parent who was the first also to confer literary reward on Burke's great friend, Johnson.

We do not, of course, pretend to think that the fame of Burke, any more than the glory of the Great Duke, can be disparaged by the words of Mr. Cobden. Our wish is rather to expose the shallowness and unconstitutional character of the Manchester school, its democratic tendency, and its dangerous principles. When a great classical manual of English politics is scouted as "a philippic" and "declamation," and when we are told of its author's "reason and judgment being overborne," and of "the monomania" of its writer, it is worth while setting against the writer of "1853 and 1793" the views of persons that he must himself admit to have been as "liberal" almost as he himself could desire. In upholding, by the authority of great names, the wisdom and philosophy of Burke's "Reflections," we will not quote from Tory writers, though we could cite profound and brilliant testimonies to Burke's great masterpiece from the pens of Scott, Coleridge, Southey, Mr. Canning, Chief Justice Bushe, Mr. Croker, and a host of other eloquent recorders of the power of that classical production. We will prefer to bring the testimonies of "Whigs and something more" to bear against Mr. Cobden's shallow opinion; and for that purpose we can do nothing better than take the names of several noted Liberals, who are incidentally alluded to by the writer of "1793 and 1851." "We will see the recorded opinions, in their mature years, of the celebrated Dumont (the friend, ally, and biographer of Mirabeau), of Sir James Mackintosh, of Charles James Fox, of Sir Philip Francis, each and all of whom were sympathisers with the French Revolution, and of course opposed to the declaration of war in 1793; and to these authorities we will add the names of other zealous Foxite Whigs,

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both of them also opposed to the war of 1793-the celebrated Dr. Parr, and the late eminent Professor Smyth, of Cambridge.

But before contrasting the opinions of those noted and most accomplished Whig orators and writers with the flippant ignorance ofthe Manchesterian leader, we wish to mark emphatically the important fact, upon which sufficient stress has not been laid by former writers, that the "Reflections" of Burke were not written upon a hasty survey of French affairs. He had ever, from the time of the American war, and previous to it, studied the affairs of France with great attention, of which we find some proof, amongst others, in the very remarkable allusion to the financial state of France, in his celebrated reply to Mr. Grenville's "State of the Nation," wherein Burke observes

"Under such extreme straitness and distraction labours the whole body of the French finances; so far does their charge outrun their supply in every particular, that no man, I believe, has considered their affairs with any degree of attention or information, but must hourly look for some extraordinary convulsion in the whole system, the effects of which on France, and even all over Europe, it is difficult to conjecture."

In the foregoing passage, the "mens præsaga futuri" looks to the effects on "all Europe," of French affairs. But let us turn to Prior's Biography, and see how Burke's mind was affected by a visit to France, many years before 1789:

"In 1773, Mr. Burke visited France. In the following sessions of parliament, he pointed out,' says his biographer, 'the conspiracy of atheism to the watchful jealousy of government. He said that, though not fond of calling in the aid of the secular arm to suppress doctrines and opinions, yet, if ever it was raised, it should be against those enemies of their kind who would take from man the noblest prerogative of his nature, that of being a religious animal. Already, under the systematic attacks of those men, I see, said Mr. Burke, many of the props of good government and religion beginning to fall; I see propagated principles which will not leave to religion even a toleration, and make virtue herself less than a name. Memorable words, indeed,' says the biographer, when we consider their literal fulfilment."

We will now cite the most remark

able political prophecy that any statesman ever made; and blind must be the prejudice, and besotted the understanding, which will not admire the extraordinary powers of divining future events, as shown in the following letter from Burke to Lord Charlemont. It is valuable also, as being the earliest recorded proof of his opinions on the affairs of 1789. We specially request the attention of the reader to it :

"As to us here, our thoughts of every thing at home are suspended by our astonishment at the wonderful spectacle which is exhibited in a neighbouring and rival country. What spectators and what actors! England gazing with astonishment at a French struggle for liberty, and not knowing whether to blame or to applaud.

"The thing, indeed, though I thought I saw something like it in progress for several years, has still something in it paradoxical and mysterious. The spirit it is impossible not to admire, but the old Parisian ferocity has broken out in a shocking manner. It is true that this may be no more than a sudden explosion if so, no indication can be taken from it; but if it should be character rather than accident, then that people are not fit for liberty, and must have a strong hand, like that of their former masters, to coerce them.

"Men must have a certain fund of natural moderation to qualify them for freedom, else it becomes noxious to themselves, and a perfect nuisance to everybody else. What will be the result it is hard I think still to say. To form a solid constitution requires wisdom as well as spirit; and whether the French possess wise heads amongst them-or, if they possess such, whether they possess authority equal to their wisdom-is yet to be seen. In the meantime, the progress of this whole affair is one of the most curious matters of speculation that ever was exhibited." Burke to Lord Charlemont, 9th August, 1789, three weeks after taking the Bastile. Prior's Life, vol. ii. pp. 41-42; and vide Hardy's Life of Charlemont.

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