he order of the Commons has been
this--that it has placed the nomination of the Government in the hands
of the popish priesthood. Is that a great advance of public intelligence
and popular liberty? Are the parliamentary nominees of M'Hale and Kehoe
more germane to the feelings of the English nation, more adapted to
represent their interests, than the parliamentary nominees of a Howard
or a Percy? This papist majority, again, is the superstructure of a
basis formed by some Scotch Presbyterians and some English Dissenters,
in general returned by the small constituencies of small towns--classes
whose number and influence, intelligence and wealth, have been grossly
exaggerated for factious purposes, but classes avowedly opposed to the
maintenance of the English constitution. I do not see that the cause of
popular power has much risen, even with the addition of this leaven.
If the suffrages of the Commons of England were polled together, the
hustings-books of the last general election will prove that a very
considerable majority of their numbers is opposed to the present
Government, and that therefore, under this new democratic scheme, this
great body of the nation are, by some hocus-pocus tactics or other,
obliged to submit to the minority. The truth is, that the new
constituency has been so arranged that an unnatural preponderance has
been given to a small class, and one hostile to the interests of the
great body. Is this more democratic? The apparent majority in the House
of Commons is produced by a minority of the Commons themselves; so that
a small and favoured class command a majority in the House of Commons,
and the sway of the administration, as far as that House is concerned,
is regulated by a smaller number of individuals than those who governed
it previous to its reform.

But this is not the whole evil: this new class, with its unnatural
preponderance, is a class hostile to the institutions of the country,
hostile to the union of Church and State, hostile to the House of Lords,
to the constitutional power of the Crown, to the existing system of
provincial judicature. It is, therefore, a class fit and willing to
support the Whigs in their favourite scheme of centralisation, without
which the Whigs can never long maintain themselves in power. Now,
centralisation is the death-blow of public freedom; it is the citadel
of the oligarchs, from which, if once erected, it will be impossible to
dislodge them. But can that p