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NOTES ON THE NEWSPAPERS.
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Prospects of Re / win . —By the divisions which followed the debates in the House of Commons , on the election of a speaker and on the address , it became evident that the two coalitions , occupying the opposite sides of the House ; viz ., of Tories and Conservative Whigs , on the one hand , and of Reforming Whigs and Radical Reformers on the other , were so nearly balanced , as to ensure the new Administration the chance of struggling on for a while , and , perhaps , by the introduction of a few popular measures , and a clever
system of parliamentary tactics , of prolonging its harassed existence , until some new and more enduring combination of political elements can be formed . For this respite the Tories are indebted to Lord Stanley and his followers * They held the balance ; and by their own trimming trimmed the Ministerial boat , which must else inevitably have capsized in the first breeze . The apprehension of a final split with , this party , and the hope that it might yet assist intiie substitution of a ministry , somewhat resembling the last , for that which now ~ exists ; seems to have neutralized the energy of the Whig leaders .
and through then- influence to have restrained the entire opposition from those decisive proceedings which the country had confidently anticipated ; neither coalition has yet become consolidated , nor is either likely to be immediately broken up . The Stanleyites labour hard to retain the factitious importance of their present position . The Radicals are loath to lose that Whig co-operation , by which alone there is the chance of unseating the Tories . The Whigs are continually embarrassed by their former acts while in office , and by a regard to the prospect of a return to office . And the
Tories , with their usual unscrupulosity , are ready tor any expedient by which they may retain , from day to day , the possession of power and place . The result ha 3 been that , although the present House of Commons probably contains a larger admixture of intelligence , honesty , and patriotism than has ever before been admitted into that assembly , its proceedings have hitherto shown a deplorable want of principle . The plain and straightforward course would have been a prompt declaration that the powers of government should not be directed by the party to which they had been intrusted . ' But . this
could not have been carried . ' very well , then , it would have been a good point on which to have been defeated . It would have marked the strife , and dignified it , from that moment as one of principle . The Opposition would have become one of defined views and purposes : it would have been the people against the party . The pretensions of the members would have been brought to an intelligible test ; their constituents could not have been mystified ; and had the desperate experiment of another dissolution been ventured upon , the results would probably have been such as Toryism and
trimming would never have forgotten . That the cause of reform has not been placed in this intelligible and honourable position is not so much the fault of the people as of their leaders . They have not understood , or not felt themselves equal to , the situation in which they are placed . The first notification of the Duke of Wellington ' s investiture with a temporary dictatorship produced a sensation in the country which , had it been properly directed , would have at once stopped the mongrel species of counter-revolution which
we are now undergoing . Had the Whigs taken advantage , a fair and manly advantage , of that excitement ; had they renounced their vain attempt , their then detected and exposed blunder , of governing by Tory permission and Court compromise , they might have been borne back at once to office upon the shoulders of the people , as they were in 1832 , with a full amnesty for all past disappointments and full confidence for the future . The course which O'Conncll tooki n Ireland was that which should have been everywhere adopted . There was but one thing to be dono >—to put down the attempt at
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Notes On The Newspapers.
NOTES ON THE NEWSPAPERS .
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No . 100 . R
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Citation
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Monthly Repository (1806-1838) and Unitarian Chronicle (1832-1833), March 2, 1835, page 217, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse.ac.uk/periodicals/mruc/issues/vm2-ncseproduct2643/page/73/
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