sitting himself down in the shadow of the ancient thorn which relieves the desolation of the venerated mound of Old Sarum, then and there to lend an ear to the muttering of the unclean things which the rank fens have engendered, as, creeping from their lurking-places, they croak and hiss their last in the face of the glorious sun, now abroad in his might to dry up the pestilential sources of their existence.

Arguments it has been our lot to hear and see put forth in many forms and guises of absurd and audacious inefficiency, but the dying dialectics of the borough-mongers surpass beyond the limits of comparison every display of the kind that ranges within the sweep of our experience. Never were the dictates of decency and common sense more outrageously defied than they have been within this memorable month, by those who, owing to the multitudinous fictions of our matchless Constitution, are presumed to be guardians of the one, and oracles of the other. The sagacity of our ancestors-that mystery of small meaning so frequently resorted to as the appeal in the last instance by the proficients in the noodle art of argumentation-the cunning of our Saxon or Norman forefathers, could hardly have anticipated the transmigratory change which it now appears has fallen upon the beloved protectress of their social system.-O that they might rise in their shrouds and behold their Constitution incarnate in a corporation of Parliamentary Stock-Jobbers!—their knights of the shire planted side by side with the dignified representatives of Gatton or the magnanimous vassals of Sir Masseh Lopez!

When Napoleon called us a nation of shopkeepers, he scarcely contemplated the full applicability of his words. He in all probability referred exclusively to that branch of shopkeeping which is the right arm of our strength, which levelled his throne to the dust. But the other branch-the source of our weakness, the cause of our reproach"the sign of our shame and the seal of our sorrow"-very likely came not within the intended scope of his remark; yet the old sub-lieutenant of the regiment of La Fere had too little of the stolid leaven of legitimacy in him to be altogether ignorant of this branch of our internal commerce. The trade in legislators, by which he, or the Grand Turk, or the Prince of Darkness himself, might, through the proper employment of the ways and means, have despatched their deputies to the Imperial Parliament of Great Britain, doubtless passed within the field of his eagle vision. To the crowning quality, however, of this interesting species of traffic, he must have been a stranger. He could not have been aware of the astounding fact made manifest within the last few weeks; a fact which has been thrown as an ægis over the bloated form of things as they are that the trade in legislators is our ancient and excellent Constitution, and our ancient and excellent Constitution the trade in legislators the disease the body, the body the disease! Such is the chief defensive proposition which the patrons of abuses have in their hopeless extremity chaunted through "all the compass of the notes!"— Let our countrymen attend to it.

A bugbear has long been in repute for quieting the distempered spirits of the nursery; and our constitutionalists who are skilled in the varied arcana of coercive government-those sublime mysteries

which, according to Sir Robert Peel, are sealed from the narrow capacities of the conductors of the press-have also got their bugbear, their Rawhead-and-bloody-bones, with which they make tough endeavour to affright the dissatisfied genius of the age from the prosecution of its claims. But the genius of the age has burst its leading-strings-in the dignity of manhood, it has fixed its step upon the high road of improvement; and those who gainsay it, do so at their peril. "Let them sin on and tempt the fatal hour"-their devices are threadbare; and if judicial blindness had not fallen upon them, they must have perceived that nothing remains but to submit, or perish amid the whirl of a revolution very different from the idle phantasy conjured up by the besotted imagination of political bigotry.

Those who have attached the damnatory name of Revolution to the most popular measure that has been for generations introduced into Parliament, are the very men who would have affixed the brand of heresy on religious reformation; with fat sees, and abbeys, and benefices in their clutch, they would have shuddered at every whisper of change as ominous of ruin to the whole fabric of organized society. But the prosperity of England did not cease with pious Queen Mary, nor, maugre the predictions of the constitutionalists, will it receive its deathblow, under the Patriotic Monarch who now fills our island's throne. It belongs only to "children of a larger growth," to hold a controversy about words. To us, Revolution is as welcome a phrase as Reformation, supposing the salutary end we aim at be accomplished. That it will be attained, provided "England to herself prove true," is as certain as that the sun will shine in summer-despite the clustered opposition of all the locusts of the land.

The enthusiasm which has been displayed at this glorious crisis by every member of the empire, near and remote, must be cheering to the heart of a Briton. Scotland has awakened from her feudal slumbers, Ireland has consigned the torch of discord to the waters, and England with majestic hand has unrolled the records of her early freedom, and demanded the restoration of her rights. Reform !-Reform !—is the prayer of seven hundred petitions already in the bureau of the Sovereign or on the tables of Parliament and many more will come― seven thousand if required. Still there is a party which remains unconvinced that the people desire a change-for

"None so blind as he that will not see."

We would beg these persons to remember, that they are not the first who were incredulous-until too late-of the warning voice of truth. Sacred history relates, that the vitiated inhabitants of a pristine world scoffed at the prediction of a deluge.

While the nation averts its face from Wellington, Peel, and their followers-it greets with smiles of gratitude and pride, those truly noble men who have spontaneously returned into the treasury of Public Liberty, a portion of the precious deposits which never can pass into private keeping, without bringing detriment and disgrace on the common weal. Jealous as we shall always be of ministers and ministerial measures, we should think ourselves niggards in acknowledg

ment, if we withheld from Earl Grey the lofty meed of approbation so peculiarly his due. We thank the Premier for his just explanation of the relations of the Commons and the Aristocracy; we thank him for his admirable remedy for the country's grievances, and yet again we thank him for the manly avowal which pledges him to administer that remedy in its original potency or not at all. He may well be envied the glory of an act that will solace his declining years, and impart to his memory a hallowed and unfading radiance. Nor has he been without fitting compeers in his high-minded career. The Dukes of Norfolk and Devonshire; the Marquis of Cleveland; Lord Grosvenor; Lord Radnor; Graham, Smith, and Russell, have each acquitted themselves after the fashion of the best days of England. If to him who saved the life of a Roman citizen was granted a civic crown, how much more is a similar tribute due to those who generously interpose to rescue twenty-two millions of people from the perils of internal strife! If these be aristocrats, let us have many of a similar stamp

66 Such chains as their's are sure to bind."

The KING is with his subjects; and it is the solemn duty of the country to maintain its ground unrelaxingly, until the last iota of its rightful claims shall have been conceded. Let electors purify their minds for the conscientious exercise of their powers, in the event of a dissolution of Parliament. Honest and unsuspecting men may be quietly despoiled of their property, but plunderers rarely disgorge until the grasp of retributive justice is upon them. A General Election may fairly be anticipated and if the healthy constituency keep to its post, the last cheer at the hustings will be the death-knell of the borough mercenaries. Should, however, an untoward event, or the dying desperation of corruption baffle our expectations-should the odious oligarchy again muster their dense phalanx in St. Stephen's, then, and in that case, it will be for the King, and the untainted Aristocracy-and the People, with whom all power originates, to PROVIDE FOR THE EMERGENCY, according to the usage of the Constitution, when the privileges of one of the estates have suffered from the encroachment of another. We shall make an appropriate extract from De Foe's "Original Power of the Collective Body of the People of England examined and asserted"—a work dedicated to King William III.-which proceeds upon the presumption of a parallel state of affairs.

"The good of the people governed is the end of all government, and the reason and original of governors; and upon this foundation it is that it has been the practice of all nations, and of this in particular, that if the male-administration of governors have extended to tyranny and oppression, to destruction of right and justice, overthrowing the constitution, and abusing the people, the people have thought it lawful to reassume the right of government in their own hands, and to reduce their governors to reason.

"The present happy restoring of our liberty and constitution is owing to this fundamental maxim,

"That kings, when they descend to tyranny,

Dissolve the bond, and leave the subject free.

"If the people are justifiable in this procedure against the King, I hope I

shall not be censured if I say, that if any one should ask me, whether they have not the same right, in the same cases, against any of the three heads of the constitution-I dare not answer in the negative.

"I may be allowed to suppose any thing which is possible; and I will therefore venture to suppose, that, in the late King's reign, the House of Commons, then sitting, had voted the restoration of popery in England, in compliance with the King's inclination.

"I doubt not but it had been lawful for the grand juries, justices of the peace, and freeholders of any county, or of every county, to have petitioned the House of Commons not to proceed in giving up their religion and laws.

"And in case of refusal there, they might petition the House of Lords not to have passed such a bill.

"And in case of refusal there, they might petition the King, and put him in mind of his coronation engagement.

"And in case of refusal to that petition, they might petition the King again, to dissolve the Parliament, or otherwise to protect their liberties and religion. "And if all these peaceable applications failed, I doubt not but they might associate for their mutual defence against any invasion of their liberties and religion."

Salus populi suprema lex. When either King, Lords, or Commons shall have inverted the end for which these estates were instituted, then "The public good ceases to be in the same public capacity," and

"Power retreats to its original."

Law or power that is repugnant to reason is, ipso facto, void in itself.

But the Bill, we are all but morally certain, will pass through the House of Commons by a triumphant majority. It is not possible that an opposition of any consequence can be mustered insane enough to attempt to arrest its progress.

The Duke of Wellington, who holds that the unanimous prayer of the community is an insufficient plea for the grant of Reform, deprecates the measure because it would lead to a total alteration of the men chosen for the discharge of parliamentary duties. The people are debtors to his Grace for the argument.

Assuredly, Reform will at once sweep away the rubbish of representation, and give us, instead, a body of men capable of comprehending the national interests, and amenable to the public for their parliamentary conduct. The sooner this "alteration" takes place the better.

Nothing can be done to ameliorate the general condition of the people, until the Reform Bill has become incorporated with the great charters of the land. To it, and it exclusively, should attention be directed. When the Royal Assent, which awaits its advent to the throne, shall have made it part and parcel of the statutes of the realm, then will be the time to speak of subordinate grievances. A full and free representation will produce a new and magnificent era in the history of Great Britain. Her wounds will be healed-her energies increased an hundred-fold, and she will assume, in a more commanding form, her proper station as the Protectress of the Liberties of Europe.

JOURNAL OF A SOUTH-AFRICAN EMIGRANT.

CHAPTER I.-Arrival at Algoa Bay.

Ar day-break on the 13th of May, 1820, we were voyaging with a favourable breeze along the southern coast of South-Africa, on our way to Algoa Bay. The weather was fair and pleasant; and the land, from which we were only a few miles distant, rose abruptly from the shore in massive mountain ridges, clothed with forests of large timber, and swelling in the back-ground into lofty serrated peaks of naked rock. On our larboard-bow opened a narrow inlet between two cliffs, being the entrance to a fine lagoon, or salt-water lake, called the Knysna, which forms a beautiful and spacious haven (though unfortunately of difficult access), winding up, as we were informed by our captain who had twice entered it, into the very bosom of the magnificent woods which luxuriantly clothe this part of the coast. As we sailed smoothly and swiftly along, passing headland after headland, the country seemed to glide past us like a gorgeous panorama, unfolding continually new features, and exhibiting new combinations of scenery, in which the soft and the stern, the monotonous and the picturesque, were strikingly and strangely intermingled. The aspect of the whole was impressive, but sombre; beautiful, but somewhat savage. There was the grandeur and the grace of nature, exuberant and untamed; and there was likewise that air of lonesomeness and of dreary wildness, which a country unmarked by the traces of human industry or of human residence, seldom fails to exhibit to the view of civilized man.

Seated on the poop of the vessel (my usual station), I gazed alternately on the land-the land so often longed for during our three months' voyage, and on the bands of emigrants who now crowded the deck or leaned along the gangway; some silently musing, like myself, on the scene before us; others earnestly conversing in separate groups, and pointing with eager gestures to the country we had come so far to inhabit. It was a scene full of interest, and fraught with matter for reflection-but in reflection I will not now indulge. Rather let me, as our brig speeds gallantly onward to her port, attempt a hasty sketch of my fellow-passengers,-of that little band more especially whose fortunes were so closely linked with my own, and whose subsequent adventures in colonizing the wilderness will occupy a prominent place in the following narrative.

On board our vessel, the Brilliant transport, a Scotch brig of 350 tons, about 200 emigrants, consisting of three separate parties, had embarked at Deptford, with a view to take a share in colonizing, under the auspices of government, the vacant territory near the eastern frontier of the Cape Colony. The first party and by far the most numerous, was composed entirely of English methodists and dissenters, who had associated themselves, like the early American colonists, on principles of religious as well as civil communion. Unhappily, however, their opinions on the former important topic proved upon trial any thing but harmonious. During the voyage, having little else to occupy their attention, they engaged keenly in polemical discussions; and under the control of two local preachers, a tall grave Wesleyan coachmaker, and a little dogmatic Anabaptist surgeon,-they soon split into two discordant factions of Arminians and high Calvinists. Heated by incessant controversies for three months, many of them who had been wont formerly to associate on friendly terms, had now ceased to regard each other with sentiments of Christian forbearance. Some of the fiercer disputants had not even spared to fulminate the reciprocal charge of maintaining " damnable heresies;" and the two hostile champions, after many obstinate disputations, which became more intricate and intemperate every time they were renewed, had at length finally parted in flaming wrath, and for several weeks past had paced the quarter-deck together without speaking, or exchanging salutations. Such are the deplorable effects of " zeal not accord.