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MONTHLY CHRONICLE.

THE COMING SESSION.

THE unprofitable results of the two last sessions of Parliament cause many to look forward with despondency to that which is about to commence. We are not of the number. The pause of a few years in the onward progress of national improvement has been more apparent than real. The reign of our youthful Sovereign, it is true, has been unmarked as yet by any of those events, which, like Catholic Emancipation, Reform of Parliament, or Abolition of Slavery, form eras in the history of a people; but the popular energy which achieved those peaceful triumphs remains unimpaired, and whenever it shall be awakened to renewed activity, it will walk forth with a power strengthened by repose, and will be prepared to act with a vigour immeasurably beyond any that it has yet displayed. Even the last six months have done much to advance the cause of Reform. The explosion of Chartism on the Welsh border will go far to dispel the fatal illusion that lately kept the labouring classes aloof from those of their fellow-sufferers, by whom alone social improvements can ever be enforced; and the bloodshed so wantonly provoked at Newport will not have been unattended by some beneficial consequences, if it should lead to the abandonment of those visionary schemes of reform, which never could have been realised, but the too eager pursuit of which might easily have led to the reinstatement of that party, whose only principle of government has invariably been the reduction of civil and religious liberty within the narrowest bounds.

There have been governments in England that would have made the late mournful event in Monmouthshire a pretext for the curtailment of popular rights. We have no such apprehension at present; and therefore, while we grieve for the melancholy fate of those whom their mistaken zeal has hurried into destruction, we know the full extent of the evil, and can derive comfort from the confident hope, that the sacrifice will probably lead to the dissolution of that unfortunate confederacy which has done more to revive the hopes of Toryism than any single event that has occurred within the last ten years.

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We think we perceive many symptoms of an improved feeling among working classes. They are beginning, or we are much mistaken, to become aware of the fraud that has been practised on them by those whose tools they have allowed themselves to be made; and should the dissension which has prevailed among Reformers during the last two or three years, give way speedily to any thing like a real union, we may rest assured that the coming session will not be found barren of most gratifying results.

Among the most important manifestations of the last few months, we should be disposed to name the complete disclosure of the character and de

signs of Toryism. The abortive attempt of Sir Robert Peel to take the Treasury by assault has revealed a fact of the highest importance namely, the decided aversion which the Queen feels for the re-establishment of a Tory government. The personal preference of the sovereign in a constitutional state may be a very secondary consideration when the national will is unequivocally pronounced. But when a nation is divided in itself, a compact and enterprising faction of comparatively little real strength, if countenanced by the sovereign, may easily seize and retain power. Had the throne been filled in the month of May last by one whose sympathies leaned towards the principles of Toryism, the cause of Reform would, undoubtedly, have been arrested for several years to come, even if a decidedly retrograde system of policy had not been adopted. Faction was surprised by a discovery equally unexpected and overwhelming, for a general belief had prevailed among the whole Tory party, that Queen Victoria longed ardently to emancipate herself from the influence of an administration which she had inherited along with her uncle's crown. Since the moment when this illusion was dissipated, the malignity of disappointed ambition has known no bounds. The most revolting series of personal calumnies has been obtruded on the public through the columns of the Tory press, whose only aim during the last seven months appears to have been to poison the public mind against the reigning sovereign, and to make her, as far as possible, an object of popular aversion. The affair of Lady Flora Hastings has been made a fruitful and unceasing topic of declamation against the female circle which surrounds the Queen, accompanied by the foulest insinuations against the Queen herself. The old appeal to the most grovelling fanaticism has been renewed, and an attempt made to inflame the mob once more with those evil passions that gave rise to the disgraceful. no-popery riots of 1780. Few things can be more humiliating to an Englishman, if he reflect on the subject, than the mischievous industry with which so large a portion of the public press has for some time past been engaged in the task (a hopeless one we trust,) of corrupting public opinion by fostering or reviving religious animosities. But this atrocious system, this attempt to make the masses instrumental to their own enthralment, through the agency of their fanaticism, is one that cannot succeed. A partial success, if any such have been obtained, must ere long be followed by a complete reaction; and whenever that reaction takes place, the union and reconcilement of the several sections of the Reform party must follow, or, in other words, the nation at large will again apply its combined efforts to the achievement of those great social improvements, the want of which is generally acknowledged. Before such a combination a brawling and all but rebellious oligarchy will again crouch with fear and trembling, while the insulting declamations of treason and disaffection will again be hushed down into the less offensive, though no less offending "whisper" to which it is ever the cue of disappointed faction to have recourse.

Our Tory oligarchy stands unmasked. The faction failed in their attempt to lord it over the crown, and since that moment they have been the bitterest foes of the youthful Sovereign, whose integrity and singleness of mind defeated their crafty machinations. And this is Conservatism! How basely has that word been prostituted! How treasonable, how revolutionary, have been the designs carried on under its convenient sanction! For 150 years the people of England have been struggling to defend against the encroachments of Toryism those principles of constitutional government which triumphed in the expulsion of the Stuarts. No act more eminently conservative of the principles sanctioned by the Revolution of 1688, has