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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
greater consideration , how much it has helped forward the Movement , or contributed to hold it back . The question is not what village , castle , or city is our halting-place for the night , but how much lower down the stream , our day ' s journey has landed us . Look back , then ; measure the interval between the point we started from and that which we have reached , and see if we have
not made as much way in a given time , as might satisfy any rational person ' s most impatient desires . B y the passing of the Reform Bill , the instrument seemed to be obtained , by which all the evils of our political condition could be remedied , and all who had grievances could , or thought they could , get them redressed . But an instrument is nothing without somebody to work it . The new instrument of government could
be worked either by Ministers or by the people . Those who made the machine , seemed the likeliest persons to be able to work it ; at least , it seemed fair that they should have a trial . They had their trial ; and after handling their tools as never workmen did before , and turning out such pieces of work as would disgrace a \ boy in the second year of his apprenticeship , they threw up the task , and said to the nation , You must work the machinery
yourselves , we are only fit to oil the wheels . The nation have taken them at their word . During the first year of the Reformed Parliament the people were passive ; they stood by , that Ministers might act : this year the people have acted . Last year was spent in showing what Ministers could do ; and the result seems to have satisfied both themselves and the publie that they could do little or nothing . This year has shown what the people could do .
In the ' Notes on the Newspapers , ' for last March , we said , ' The session now commencing , will probably decide , in the minds of the many , who wield the physical force , the question whether anything is to be hoped from the higher classes , and whether the people shall , or shall not , take their affairs into their own hands . —The public had expected much , but did not know exactly what . They felt sure that the
Reform Bill must somehow be a great good to them , and they trusted that those who had been sufficiently their friends to give them the Bill , would find the means of making it have its natural effects . The fint session taught them that they were not to expect this : the Reform Ministry and the Reformed Parliament would do no good spontaneously *
The second will show whether they are capable of doing any when they are forced . If this trial should also fail , we live in tiroes when mankind hurry on rapidly to ultimate consequences ; the next question "Vill be , what U the easiest and moat expeditious way of getting rid of them /
As we expected , so has it proved . The people have taken they affairs into their own hands . Ministers and Parliament , who , m being expected to think for themselves , had been put upon a task they were nowine equal to , have had a new trial upon an ea *^ tenure , and have got through it much better . The » econd seaaw *
Untitled Article
606 The Close . 0 / the Session .
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Citation
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Monthly Repository (1806-1838) and Unitarian Chronicle (1832-1833), Sept. 2, 1834, page 606, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse.ac.uk/periodicals/mruc/issues/vm2-ncseproduct2637/page/2/
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