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    they arise from deficiency of it . Like most public men , they are often judged with too much harshness in respect to intentions , because they are presumed to have that qualification which is necessary to the admission of a witness in an English court of justice : ' the faculty of distinguishing right from wrong . ' Oi lukewarmness in the performance of some of their most important duties , of the want of a stronger active principle of honesty , we fear they can by no means be acquitted . But we believe them to be wrongfull y suspected of because

    positive knavery ; few persons are aware how much m human conduct that looks like knavery , is sufficiently accounted for by defects of the intellect . There is astrong and growing impression in the country , founded upon the conduct of Ministers on this question , and on many others , that their denunciations of slavery , as well as their advocacy of Reform , were tricks to get into place , or to secure themselves in it . But this , in reality , does not follow ; and to suppose that it does , argues ignorance of the incapacity of ordinary minds , either to feel or think for themselves . Any one who had really felt

    the detestableness of slavery ; whose imagination had represented to him its horrors , or whose reason had made sensible to him its shocking immorality , could never have thought of impressment without similar detestation . But there are men in abundance , and most of the Whig Ministers seem to be of the number , whose own minds never tell them anything which is not first shouted to them by the voice of a united world . Left to themselves , they would never

    have found out that there was anything condemnable , either in impressment or in slavery : but when , for thirty years , they had grown accustomed to hear dinned in their ears , by men who had found it out for themselves , that negro slavery was a blot upon our national character , an enormity , a crime , a sin , it at last appeared so to them . In thirty years more , by an equally intense expression of national abhorrence , their consciences might , we dare say , be awakened on the subject of impressment too .

    But what words can be found io characterise Sir James Graham ' s amendment ? The grievance was , that you seized upon men by force , and robbed them of their only property , their labour : —the remedy proposed is , that instead of going out into the streets , knocking down the first man you meet , and robbing him , you shall for the future draw lots whom you will rob ; the power , however , of knocking down in the streets not being given up , but still held in reserve to be used in cases of emergency !

    It is hardly worth while to ask the question , how seamen are to be induced to submit to a registry which they will know is intended to facilitate catching them for the purpose of being robbed ? Nor need we do more than just allude to the vehement objection at first made on account of the expense , to so important a public institution as a registry of births and marriages , while

    expense is no objection to registering men for the purpose of robbing them . Our indignation when we think on the lives which have been rilled with bitterness , and the noble hearts which have been broken by the pressgang abomination , gives way to astonishment at the quality of the understanding which can think to justify it by such arguments , or to uphold it for a short time longer by such miserable evasions .

    \ st March . The Dudley Election . —On personal grounds we should regret the defeat of Sir John Campbell : there are few persons connected with office for whom we have so real a respect . In his peculiar department he is most valuable ; at once an eminent lawyer and a strenuous law-reformer . In his general conduct he manifesis this great superiority over almost all ° ther official people , whether Ministers or underlings , that his opinions

    always seem to be the growth of his own mind ; and he therefore is not afraid to commit himself by enunciating them . He is not one of those who , never talking but by rote or from tradition , never know whether they may venture to assent to a proposition which is not in their books . He has what so few men have , reasonable self-reliance : and this quality , along with that pre ference for truth and reason on all subjects which usually accompanies

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    The Dudley Election . 241

• Citation
  • Monthly Repository (1806-1838) and Unitarian Chronicle (1832-1833), April 2, 1834, page 241, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse.ac.uk/periodicals/mruc/issues/vm2-ncseproduct2632/page/9/