pection somewhat of the character of a
select vestry, fulfilling municipal rather than imperial offices, and
beleaguered by critical and clamorous millions, who cannot comprehend
why a privileged and exclusive senate is required to perform functions
which immediately concern all, which most personally comprehend, and
which many in their civic spheres believe they could accomplish in a
manner not less satisfactory, though certainly less ostentatious.

But if it have not furnished us with abler administrators or a more
illustrious senate, the Reform Act may have exercised on the country at
large a beneficial influence. Has it? Has it elevated the tone of the
public mind? Has it cultured the popular sensibilities to noble and
ennobling ends? Has it proposed to the people of England a higher test
of national respect and confidence than the debasing qualification
universally prevalent in this country since the fatal introduction
of the system of Dutch finance? Who will pretend it? If a spirit of
rapacious coveteousness, desecrating all the humanities of life, has
been the besetting sin of England for the last century and a half, since
the passing of the Reform Act the altar of Mammon has blazed with triple
worship. To acquire, to accumulate, to plunder each other by virtue of
philosophic phrases, to propose an Utopia to consist only of WEALTH and
TOIL, this has been the breathless business of enfranchised England for
the last twelve years, until we are startled from our voracious strife
by the wail of intolerable serfage.

Are we then to conclude, that the only effect of the Reform Act has been
to create in this country another of those class interests, which we now
so loudly accuse as the obstacles to general amelioration? Not
exactly that. The indirect influence of the Reform Act has been not
inconsiderable, and may eventually lead to vast consequences. It set men
a-thinking; it enlarged the horizon of political experience; it led
the public mind to ponder somewhat on the circumstances of our national
history; to pry into the beginnings of some social anomalies which they
found were not so ancient as they had been led to believe, and which had
their origin in causes very different to what they had been educated to
credit; and insensibly it created and prepared a popular intelligence to
which one can appeal, no longer hopelessly, in an attempt to dispel the
mysteries with which for nearly three centuries it has been the
la