noble lord that it is my intention to act upon a sense of public duty, and to propose those measures to Parliament which my own conviction of public duty shall lead me to think desirable. Sir, it is right that there should be a distinct understanding as to the terms on which a public man holds office. The force of circumstances, and a sense of duty to the country, have compelled me to undertake the harassing and laborious task, in the performance of which I now stand before you. What can be my inducement to undertake that task, and to make the sacrifices which it entails? What but the hope of rendering service to the country, and of acquiring an honourable fame? (cheers). Is it credible that I would go through the labours which are daily imposed upon me if I did not claim for myself the liberty of proposing to Parliament those measures which I shall believe conducive to the public welfare? Sir, I will claim that liberty-I will propose those measures; and do with confidence assure this House that no consideration of mere political support shall induce me to alter them. I will not hold office by the servile tenure which would compel me to be the instrument of carrying other men's opinions into effect (cheers). I do not estimate highly the distinctions which office confers. To any man who is fit to hold it, its only value must be, not the patronage which the possessor is enabled to confer, but the opportunity which is afforded to him of doing good to his country (loud cheers). And the moment I shall be convinced that that power is denied me, to be exercised in accordance with my own views of duty, I tell every one who hears me, that he confers on me no personal obligation in having placed me in this office. Free as the winds, I shall reserve to myself the power of retiring from the discharge of its onerous and harassing functions the moment I feel that I cannot discharge them with satisfaction to the public and to my own conscience" (great cheering).

Those who have carefully observed the political events and parliamentary transactions of the last ten years, will not fail to discern how striking is the contrast presented by the Whig Opposition, brief as has been the period of its operations, to the conduct of the Conservatives in Opposition. Already the old Whig weapon-a threat to stop the supplies-has been wielded, and that deliberately, on two evenings, by Mr. Fielden. The member for Oldham has all the outward appearance of honesty of purpose; but does he reflect on what the consequences of a stoppage of the supplies, even for twenty-four hours, would be? What would become of the thousands of Government clerks and attendants, and their families, who receive day by day their daily bread? They must pine in the streets, or resort to the workhouse. But what workhouses could contain the millions whom Mr. Fielden and thirty members-we grieve to mention the fact that so many can be found who prefer party to principlewould consign to instant beggary? What imagination can conceive the effect upon a commercial country like this of the shutting up for a day of the Post-office? And then would soldiers,

with arms in their hands, but destitute of rations, refrain from helping themselves at the butchers' and bakers' shops? And when acts of plunder have once commenced, in a dense and dissolute population, who can foretell the ending? Mr. Fielden always professes, and, were it not for his deliberate recommendation of a step which would plunge millions into inevitable misery, we should not cherish a suspicion of his sincerity-Mr. Fielden always professes, more loudly than any member of the House, his sympathy with the afflicted and the poor, and is incessantly charging upon the rural gentry and ancient aristocracy of the country an insensibility to the calamities of his constituents; but what would the scantily portioned widow, the female orphan, the feeble aged man, whose whole subsistence is derivable from the funds, say of Mr. Fielden's consideration for the weak ones of the world, when, in reply to their application for their dividends, they were told that honourable member had stopped the supplies ? We are not drawing from the stores of a prolific imagination images of horror which are of improbable occurrence; on the contrary, we are only culling, from a mountain of misery, a few facts, which must of necessity and immediately ensue upon a stoppage of the supplies.

We derive comfort from the reflection that this is exclusively a Whig weapon of party war, which no Conservative hand has yet brandished. The Lord Campbell, when his late Majesty's Attorney-General, used it at Edinburgh, on the occasion of his furious tirade against the House of Lords, which we wish may be thrown in his teeth the first day he assumes lordly airsin the offensive acceptation we speak-which will probably be no distant one, inasmuch as the noble Irish Chancellor of three weeks is a Liberal Whig. Mr. Hume was ever fond of resorting to this threat, with which the Whig campaign is so characteristically commenced. We can well sympathize with Sir Robert Peel's indignation at the flagrantly unfair and ungenerous Opposition arrayed against him; but, remembering the uniform tactics of the Whigs, we cannot wonder at any trick they play off-any mean subterfuge they flee to any specious sophistry their wily Leader weaves. For all these cunningly devised and vexatious skirmishings of these bush-rangers, the Conservative Champion must stand prepared, and his supporters must not flinch a hair's breadth from his side. Let there be no divisions among us, and, above all, let there be cultivated a disposition to merge individual differences of opinion in a single feeling of deference to the Leader chosen to uphold in the House of Commons the Conservative cause. Sir Robert Peel bears the responsibility: no attempts ought, therefore, to

be made to coerce him; and he ought not, considering the mighty toil of restitution imposed upon him, to be hurried. It is dreadful when flames envelope a ship at sea, or unexpectedly she strikes upon a shoal; and it is not wonderful that hurry and confusion prevail amidst the roar of waters and the crackling of fire; but the annals of the ocean record how more than commonly needful is calmness in such an hour of horror, and how many lives are lost by precipitation and over-anxiety. We doubt not but that the soul-sickening scenes of destitution and suffering, drawn by the representatives of the manufacturing districts, are founded on reality; but will they be relieved of their awful accompaniments by any sudden rush to remedies which may not be applicable to remove them? It is boldly, but falsely, asserted, that all this misery is attributable to the corn laws, and no other cause, and therefore those laws must be immediately modified or repealed; and a clamorous charge of selfishness, or insensibility, is raised against Sir Robert Peel and the Conservative party, because they deny that throwing two millions of agricultural labourers upon their parishes, and ruining our home retail tradesmen, would operate beneficially upon the manufacturing interests, and therefore require a reasonable space to discover some broad and probably permanent measure for the redress of existing grievances. All this is infamously unfair, but in perfect consistency with the character of a WHIG OPPOSITION. Be it the part of a CONSERVATIVE GOVERNMENT steadily to go on in its conscientious course, unmoved by unjust censure, and not unduly solicitous of human applause, in these days called "public approbation." A Minister, actuated by Christian motives, who discharges his duties to the satisfaction of his own conscience, without troubling himself over curiously to calculate the probable impression his measures may make on the public mind, will, in the issue, also give public satisfaction.

That "honesty is the best policy," is them axim of no highly elevated code of ethics; but so congenial is sincerity with the temper and spirit of the British people, that sure we are an Administration, which will only deal with the national interests sincerely, will never have to complain of popular impatience, though it may be assailed by the interested urgency of faction, nor lack ample room and verge enough to mature its measures and perfect its plans.

465

Ecclesiastical Report.

IN this department of our Review it is our object to place before our readers a sketch, more or less extended, according to circumstances, of all those proceedings which either directly or indirectly relate to our ecclesiastical institutions. It appears necessary to explain our object, otherwise it might be said that some of the topics occasionally introduced are not strictly ecclesiastical. We are well aware that, in the strict meaning of the term, it can only refer to matters evidently connected with the Church; but, by a latitude of interpretation, other questions, though only indirectly connected, are brought within its intentions. We feel that it is necessary to premise thus much on the present occasion, inasmuch as we are about to introduce a subject to the notice of our readers which cannot in strictness be considered ecclesiastical. We allude to

THE DISSENTING CONFERENCE AT MANCHESTER.

For many years Dissenters, Papists, and Infidels have banded together for the purpose of overturning their common enemyTHE ANGLICAN CHURCH! Still she has withstood all their attacks, and raises her head with renewed vigour, in despite of the shameless methods adopted by her opponents to effect her overthrow. The insidious arts of the enemy have recoiled upon his own head; for the friends of the Church, perceiving that the motley crew of her opponents were by no means scrupulous in their mode of warfare, have been roused to act on the defensive and thus has it come to pass that the hostility of foes has awakened the energies of friends; and now, for one enemy, the Church has twenty friends, who, but for the attacks to which she has been so long subjected, would have remained comparatively indifferent to her welfare. It it a singular circumstance, that every act of aggression, on the part of Dissenters, has turned out disastrously for themselves: it has exposed their own weakness, and revealed a fact which the enemies of the Church were unwilling to believe, namely, that she is still, notwithstanding occasional acts of neglect on the part of her friends, most deeply rooted in the affections of the English people. The Marriage Act, which was to show that half the people of England were estranged from the Church, is a case in point; for since it has been permitted to all men to enter into the marriage state without submitting to the service of the Church, not one fiftieth part of the population ever dream of forsaking the path which was trodden by their forefathers. We appeal with

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one.

exultation to the fact, that, by the Parliamentary returns, only four thousand two hundred and eighty marriages were celebrated, during one year, in the offices of the registrars and in the various Dissenting meeting-houses in England and Wales; while, within the same period, the number solemnized according to the ancient form-solemnized according to the rites of the Church, was one hundred and seven thousand two hundred and We may be excused for referring to this subject, though it has been mentioned on a former occasion, because the Dissenting cry, before the new scheme was introduced, was, let us have liberty to marry as we please, and we will soon prove that our numbers are a majority of the community! Other matters might be specified to show that the Dissenters have been caught in their own trap. And we are quite sure that the present unprincipled crusade against the Church of England will issue, just as many others have done, in the discomfiture of the parties who are engaged in the warfare.

But to proceed with the affair at Manchester. It appears that a Mr. George Thompson, not a preacher, was principally concerned in originating this notable scheme for a conference of Dissenting ministers. Of Mr. George Thompson we know nothing; but his name is registered in the annals of Dissent: and many a Dissenter probably views him as a greater statesman than Sir Robert Peel or Lord Stanley. We subjoin certain extracts from the advertisement, issued in the name of Mr. George Thompson, which will explain how the conclave at Manchester was assembled. It is headed-" Corn Laws.National Conference of Ministers of all Religious Denominations on the subject of the Laws restricting the Food of the Community, to be held in Manchester, commencing Tuesday, August 17, 1841."

After this high-sounding heading, we have a circular from Mr. George Thompson himself "to the ministers of religion in Manchester and its vicinity." Mr. Thompson says, "The present communication has its origin in the deliberations of a few friends, who, being deeply interested in the physical and moral condition of the poor, and in the general welfare of our country, have come together to consider what is our duty at the present crisis." Great results have flowed from very small beginnings! The mightiest rivers arise from a very slender stream! And what a stupendous effect has been produced by Mr. George Thompson's happy thought of convening a conference of Dissenting ministers-the most important assemblage probably since the celebrated council of Trent, and, if we are to credit the Whig and Dissenting press, to be remembered when that