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Note: This text has been automatically extracted via Optical Character Recognition (OCR) software. The text has not been manually corrected and should not be relied on to be an accurate representation of the item.
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Untitled Article
National utility , then , is now , and ever must be , ( taking national for a part of universal ) , the whole and sole object of all institutions , their efficiency and modification ; and
the " course of events" must , if necessary , produce the modification , as well as the measures which his lordship proposes for the efficiency . We object to "the word lower classes for
two reasons ; first , because it tends to maintain a false estimate of the only true height , which is intellectual and moral excellence ; and , second , because it keeps out of sight the proper terms , " poorer" classes , or " less educated" classes , or the
" majority ; " for such are the terms which explain the only real distinction of those classes from i the others . Most of the concluding words also , beginning with the Crown " enjoying its prerogatives , " down to the poorer classes " invested with privileges valuable to
tfoem , " are conceived in a spirit of candour , more pleasant , we feajv to Conservatives , than comfortable of augury to Reformers . The Crown , says Lord Durhamenjoys its
, " prerogatives / ' and the upper classes their honours ;—the lower are invested with privileges most valuable to them . Now , " prerogative " is a term that should long have been blotted out of the
language of the constitution , apd we hope to see a liberal Crown taking opportunities of waiving it . It is , by its own etymology , a begging of the question;—a something asked be-
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fore-hand , — pm-rogatum , —* stipulated for , before the rights of others are conceded ;—therefore a tyrannous and unfounded demand , — and unworthy of a just sovereignty and its free ordainers . Then " privilege : " - —
what is a privilege ? Something held , we conceive , in peculiar right , however founded in the general good . But what are the privileges held b y the poorer orders or majority t And in what sense can they be said to be " invested" with them ? "
Enjoy" them , it is not pretended they do ; " honoured " by them , it is not pretended they are . To what then amounts the word " invested ? " and , again , we must ask , what are the "
privileges " of the majority , which are not possessed by the other classes , and which are supposed to give them anything like an equal comfort with the " prerogatived" and the " honoured ? "
"I wish to rally as large a portion of the British people as possible / ' says the Noble Lord , " around the existing institutions of the countrythe Throne , I ^ ords , Commons , and the Established Church . "
If we suppose the greatest body of Reformers to be reading this passage , and giving their answers to it at once , item by item , we may suppose them to answer as follows : — The Throne . —Yes ; — because it saves us from the evils
of a disputed rule , and also possesses a something in its very ornamentality , which ( in the present condition of human
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70 Lord Durham and the Reformers .
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Citation
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Monthly Repository (1806-1838) and Unitarian Chronicle (1832-1833), Aug. 1, 1837, page 76, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse.ac.uk/periodicals/mruc/issues/vm2-ncseproduct1834/page/4/
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