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    ¦ M ^ the capacity for comprehending them , render the Attorney General a mos t useful Member of the House of Commons , and one whose absence from it yrould be a public misfortune . But Sir John Campbell cannot fail to find , in a short time , some door open for his readtnission into Parliament ; and , meanwhile , it is matter of just rejoicing that the Ministry have received a lesson , of a kind which they can understand . If you seek to make an impression upon a Minister , there is

    a much surer method than argument ; arguments serve well enough to convince him that he is in the right ; but to make him conscious of being in the wrong , there is nothing like the loss of votes . The present Ministry are , in this , remarkably like every other Ministry . The way to move them is not to overthrow their syllogisms , but to turn out their candidates . This is the only point where they are always vulnerable ; and , fortunately , it is by no means hard to be come at . Here , indeed , lies the chief reason for preferring a Whig to a Tory Ministry . The check operates much sooner . To defeat

    a Tory candidate , the independent electors must come to the poll ; to annihilate a Whig , they have only to stay away from it , and leave the rest to the * natural influence of property . ' A Tory Ministry is in no danger , except from great positive unpopularity ; but mere indifference on the part of the public is fatal to a Whig Ministry . This ensures on the part of the present Ministers greater deference than

    would be paid by the Tories to public opinion when actually declared . To foresee , indeed , what will probably be the public opinion a month hence , or what judgment the public will pronounce on any measure not yet laid before it , is what no reasonable man will expect from them . To be capable of this , they must be either philosophers or men of the world ; and their misfortune is that they are neither . They are unskilled alike in books and in men . They have neither theory nor experience .

    To the world at large , the Dudley election tells only what was known before : to Ministers , it was , we should think , a revelation of something they dreamed not of ; namely , that the nation were not perfectly satisfied with their conduct . And , lest they should fail in drawing this inference , their fast friends and supporters , the Times * and * Chronicle / have undertaken the kind office of instilling it into their minds , accompanied by suitable admonitions . The * Times' reads them a severe lecture on the folly of half-measures . The 'Chronicle' bestows on them a catalogue of their errors oromission and of commission , and tells them they have lost the confidence of the country . On this the Examiner * remarks : —

    ' Upon any discomfiture of the Ministry , such as the defeat of the Attorney General at Dudley , it is very frankly told its faults by journals which , so long as the tide flowed smoothly , have countenanced and encouraged it in all its errors . The first deviations from the right course are the deviations which should be closely watched and corrected ; but the supporters of Government in the daily press are silent , or apologifcts , or approvers , of such declensions , till they have extended to a broad departure from the just line , and brought Ministers to a position of conwpicuous disgrace . Which is the time to tell a man that he U in the wrong path r * when he first steps into

    it ; or when , exhausted and bemired , he has wandered miles from the right way ? The information may be better late than never , but it would have been better at first than at last . The attempt , however , to correct the first false step has been censured and resisted as , an act of hostility . The angry remark has been , " Why point out the little deviation from the right path in which they have advanced so far , and deserve indulgence ? Apply yourself to commending their line of movement where it has been well directed , instead of ungraciously dwelling on th « present declension of some few

    degrees . ' * Now we could never understand the kindness of not telling a man when he was going ? wrong , especiall y when marching straight into a slough ; nor , on the core of his having travelled right up to a certain point , could we admit that he had earned a title to lose his way , and that it wag ungrateful to admonish him that he had mistaken his course . But this was for some time fashionable doctrine , and when Ministers were first truckliag to the Tories and adopting Tory principles , as upon sinecure * and the duration of Parliaments , and falling into divers Tory practices , aud

    Untitled Article

    242 Notes on the Newspapers .

• Citation
  • Monthly Repository (1806-1838) and Unitarian Chronicle (1832-1833), April 2, 1834, page 242, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse.ac.uk/periodicals/mruc/issues/vm2-ncseproduct2632/page/10/