seen at the door of her house with mop | you must change because the beings and pattens, trundling her mop, squeez- whom you govern are changed. After ing out the sea-water, and vigorously all, and to be short, I must say that i pushing away the Atlantic Ocean. The Atlantic was roused. Mrs. Partington's spirit was up; but I need not tell you that the contest was unequal. The Atlantic Ocean beat Mrs. Partington. She was excellent at a slop, or a puddle, but she should not have meddled with a tempest. Gentlemen, be at your ease — be quiet and steady. You will beat Mrs. Partington.

has always appeared to me to be the most absolute nonsense that we cannot be a great, or a rich and happy nation, without suffering ourselves to be bought and sold every five years like a pack of negro slaves. I hope I am not a very rash man, but I would launch boldly into this experiment without any fear of consequences, and I believe there is not a man here present who would not They tell you, gentlemen, in the de- cheerfully embark with me. As to the bates by which we have been lately enemies of the bill, who pretend to be occupied, that the bill is not justified reformers, I know them, I believe, by experience. I do not think this better than you do, and I earnestly true; but if it were true, nations are caution you against them. You will sometimes compelled to act without have no more of reform than they are experience for their guide, and to trust compelled to grant - you will have no to their own sagacity for the anticipa- reform at all, if they can avoid it — tion of consequences. The instances you will be hurried into a war to turn where this country has been compelled your attention from reform. They do thus to act have been so eminently suc- not understand you- they will not cessful, that I see no cause for fear, believe in the improvement you have even if we were acting in the manner made they think the English of the imputed to us by our enemies. What present day are as the English of the precedents and what experience were times of Queen Anne or George the there at the Reformation, when the First. They know no more of the country, with one unanimous effort, present state of their own country, pushed out the Pope, and his grasping than of the state of the Esquimaux and ambitious clergy? What ex- Indians. Gentlemen, I view the ignorperience, when at the Revolution we ance of the present state of the country drove away our ancient race of kings, with the most serious concern, and I and chose another family, more con- believe they will one day or another genial to our free principles? And waken into conviction with horror and yet to those two events, contrary to dismay. I will omit no means of experience, and unguided by prece- rousing them to a sense of their dandents, we owe all our domestic happi-ger; for this object, I cheerfully sign ness, and civil and religious freedom-the petition proposed by Dr. Kinglake, and having got rid of corrupt priests, which I consider to be the wisest and and despotic kings, by our sense and most moderate of the two. our courage, are we now to be intimidated by the awful danger of extinguishing Boroughmongers, and shaking from our neck the ignominious yoke which their baseness has imposed upon it? Go on, they say, as you have done for these hundred years last past. I answer it is impossible: five hundred people now write and read, where one hundred wrote and read fifty years ago. The iniquities and enormities of the borough system are now known to the meanest of the people. You have a different sort of men to deal with

SPEECH BY

THE REV. SYDNEY SMITH. STICK to the Bill it is your Magna Charta, and your Runnymede. King John made a present to the Barons. King William has made a similar Never mind; compresent to you. mon qualities good in common times. If a man does not vote for the Bill, he is unclean - the plague-spot is upon him push him into the lazaretto of

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the civil difficulties of life, men de- your profession, those talents will

pend upon your exercised faculties, and your spotless integrity; and they require of you an elevation above all that is mean, and a spirit which will never yield when it ought not to yield. As long as your profession retains its character for learning, the rights of mankind will be well arranged; as long as it retains its character for virtuous boldness, those rights will be well defended; as long as it preserves itself pure and incorruptible on other occasions not connected with

never be used to the public injury, which were intended and nurtured for the public good. I hope you will weigh these observations, and apply them to the business of the ensuing week, and beyond that, in the common occupations of your profession: always bearing in your minds the emphatic words of the text, and often in the hurry of your busy, active lives, honestly, humbly, heartily exclaiming to the Son of God, "Master, what shall I do to inherit eternal life?"

SPEECHES.

MEETING OF THE CLERGY
OF CLEVELAND.

March, 1825.

[From the Yorkshire Herald.] MR. ARCHDEACON, -I am extremely sorry that the clergy of the North Riding of Yorkshire have abandoned that distinction and pre-eminence, which they have held over the clergy of the other two Ridings, in their abstinence from political discussion and from public meetings, on the subject of the Catholics. I sincerely wish that nothing had been done, and no meeting of any description called. As it has been called, it is my duty to attend it, and certainly I will not attend in silence. Do not let my learned brethren, however, be alarmed; I am not going to inflict upon them a speech. I never attended a public political meeting before in my life; nor have I ever made a speech; and therefore my want of skill is a pretty good security to you for my want of length.

them again, but take the blame to yourselves for advancing them!

The first dictum of the enemies of the Catholics is, that they are not to be believed upon their oath; but upon what condition did the parliament of 1793 grant to the Catholics immunity and relief? Upon the condition that they should sign certain oaths; and why was this made a condition, if the oath of a Catholic is not credible? Or is a small subdivision of the clergy of the North Riding of Yorkshire to consider that test as futile, and those securities as frail, which the united wisdom of the British Parliament has deemed sufficient for the most sacred acts, and the most solemn laws? I am almost ashamed to ask you (for it has been regularly asked in this discussion for thirty years past), by what are the Catholics excluded from the offices for which they petition, unless by their respect for oaths? If they do not respect oaths they cannot be excluded; if they do respect oaths, why do you exclude them when you have such There are two difficulties in speak- means of safety and security in your ing upon the subject ; — one, that the own hands? If Catholics are so caretopics are very numerous, the other, less of their oaths, show me some susthat they are trite; -the last I cannot pected Catholic who has crept into cure, nor can you cure it; and we must place by perjury; who has enjoyed all agree to suffer patiently under each those advantages by his own impiety, other. I shall obviate the first by con- which are denied to him by the justice fining myself to those commonplaces of the law: I not only do not know an in which the strength of the enemy instance of this kind, but I never seems principally to consist: if they heard of such an instance :- if you have been an hundred times refuted have heard such an instance, produce before, do not blame me for refuting it; if not, give up your gratuitous and

scandalous charge. But not only do I persecution of heretics. Upon the see men of the greatest rank and for- same principle, Catholics might retort tune submitting to the most mortifying upon our own Church the many Caprivations for the sake of oaths, but I tholics condemned to death in the see the lowest and poorest Catholics reign of Elizabeth ;-upon this pringive up their right of voting at elec-ciple they might cast in your teeth the tions, sacrificing the opportunity of decrees of the University of Oxford, in supporting the favourer of their fa- support of passive obedience, ordered vourite question, and suffering the by the House of Commons to be burned disgrace of rejection at the hustings, by the hands of the common hangman from their delicate and conscientious in the reign of Queen Anne; they might regard to the solemn covenant of an remind you of the atrocious and imoath. What magistrate dares reject moral acts of Parliament, passed by the oath of a Catholic? What judge the Protestant parliaments of Ireland dares reject it? Is not property against its Catholic inhabitants, during changed, is not liberty abridged, is not the reigns of George I. and George II. the blood of the malefactor shed? Are Wickedness and cruelty such as the not the most solemn acts of law, both Spartan would not have exercised upon here and in Ireland, founded and bot- his helot-such as the planter would tomed upon the oath of a Catholic ? abstain from with his slave- one of Is no peace, is no league, made with the worst and most wicked periods of Catholics? do not the repose and hap-human history! Are all these impupiness of Europe often rest upon the tations true now, because they were oaths and asseverations of Catholics? true then? Has not the General AsDoes my learned brother forget that sembly of the Church of Scotland two-thirds of Christian Europe are almost petitioned in favour of the Catholics?-and am I to understand Catholics? Would any Protestant from him, that this vast proportion of church now condemn to death those the Christian world is deficient in the who dissented from the doctrines of its common elements of civil life?-that establishment? All dissenters live in they are no more capable of herding the midst of our venerable establishtogether than the brutes of the field?ment unmolested, and under the broad that they appeal to God only to allay canopy of the law. It is not now pos suspicion, and to protect fraud? If sible, with all the intelligence and wissuch are his opinions, I must tell him dom which characterises that learned (though I am sure he neither knows body, that a similar decree should the mischief, nor means it), that Car-emanate from the University of Oxford. lile, in his wildest blasphemies against For all our own institutions we claim the Christian religion, never uttered the benefit of time; and, like Joshua, anything against it so horrible and so bid the sun stand still, when we want unjust. to smite and discomfit our enemies. I come now to another common But, Sir, remember at what a period phrase, the parent of much bigotry this assertion is made of the unand mischief; and that is, that "The changed and unchangeable spirit of spirit of the Catholic religion is un- the Catholic religion. The Catholic changeable and unchanged." Now, Sir, revenues are destroyed, and yet the I must tell these gentlemen of the 15th spirit of submission to priests is the century, that if this method of appealing same in the minds of the lay Catholics to the absurdities of a past age, and who have voted for the destruction of impinging them upon the present age these revenues. The inquisitions are is fair and just, it must be a rule as broken open-the chains of the victims applicable to one sect as to another. are loosened-the fires are quenched Upon this principle, I may call the-the Catholic churches are deserted! Church of Scotland a persecuting In Spain, in France, in Italy, the priests Church, because, in the year 1646, it are reduced to a state of beggary; and

itioned Parliament for the severest yet the authors of this meeting can see

Now see the consequences of having a manly Leader, and a manly Cabinet. Suppose they had come out with a little ill-fashioned seven months' reform; what would have been the consequence? The same opposition from the Tories that would have been quite certain and not a single Reformer in England satisfied with the measure. You have now a real Reform, and a fair share of power delegated to the people.

How are you to do without a government? And what other government, if this Bill be ultimately lost, could possibly be found? How could any country defray the ruinous expense of protecting, with troops and constables, the Duke of Wellington and Sir Robert Peel, who literally would not be able to walk from the Horse Guards to Grosvenor Square, without two or three regiments of foot to screen them from the mob; and in these hollow squares the Hero of Waterloo would have to spend his political life? By the whole exercise of his splendid military talents, by

The Anti-Reformers cite the increased power of the press-this is the very reason why I want an increased power in the House of Commons. The Times, Herald, Advertiser, Globe, strong batteries, at Bootle's and Sun, Courier, and Chronicle, are a heptarchy, which govern this country, and govern it because the people are so badly represented. I am perfectly satisfied, that with a fair and honest House of Commons the power of the press would diminish-and that the greatest authority would centre in the highest place.

White's, he might, on nights of great debate, reach the House of Lords; but Sir Robert would probably be cut off, and nothing could save Twiss and Lewis.

The great majority of persons returned by the new Boroughs would either be men of high reputation for talents, or persons of fortune known in Is it possible for a gentleman to get the neighbourhood; they have prointo Parliament, at present, without perty and character to lose. Why are doing things he is utterly ashamed of they to plunge into mad and revolu-without mixing himself up with tionary projects of pillaging the public the lowest and basest of mankind? creditor? It is not the interest of any Hands, accustomed to the scented such man to do it; he would lose lubricity of soap, are defiled with pitch, and contaminated with filth. Is there not some inherent vice in a Government, which cannot be carried on but with such abominable wickedness, in which no gentleman can mingle without moral degradation, and the practice of crimes, the very imputation of which, on other occasions, he would repel at the hazard of his life?

What signifies a small majority in the House? The miracle is, that there should have been any majority at all; that there was not an immense majority on the other side. It was a very long period before the Courts of Justice in Jersey could put down smuggling; and why? The Judges, Counsel, Attorneys, Crier of the Court, Grand and Petty Jurymen, were all smugglers, and the High Sheriff and Constables were running goods every moonlight night.

more by the destruction of public credit than he would gain by a remission of what he paid for the interest of the public debt. And if it is not the interest of any one to act in this manner, it is not the interest of the mass. How many, also, of these new legislators would there be, who were not themselves creditors of the State? Is it the interest of such men to create a revolution, by destroying the constitutional power of the House of Lords, or of the King? Does there exist in persons of that class any disposition for such changes? Are not all their feelings, and opinions, and prejudices, on the opposite side? The majority of the new members will be landed gentlemen: their genus is utterly dis tinct from the revolutionary tribe; they have Molar teeth; they are destitute of the carnivorous and incisive jaws of political adventurers.

There will be mistakes at first, as