to five years. The effect of this limitation would be to encourage all who are either prejudiced or interested in favour of the old system, to thwart the operation of the measure; since it affords them a hope, that if they can contrive, during the five years, to make out a plausible case of failure against the Bill, they will be permitted to revert to the old system, and mismanage the poor as before. There is nothing whatever gained by the limitation; it will not buy off a single opponent; and in principle it is absurd for Parliament to enact that something shall terminate in five years, which Parliament may put an end to in one month if it see cause. The proviso will only operate in one way; as a declaration to the country, that Ministers and Parliament are not sure they are doing right; that they are preparing for a possible change of opinion, which is tantamount to a warning to the friends of Ministers, not to confide in them, not to suppose that they have duly considered the subject; and an invitation to the enemies of the measure, by no means to relax their opposition.

The idea of limiting the duration of the Central Board is, we conceive, erroneous in principle. The expression, a temporary dictatorship,' unguardedly used by some of the advocates of the Bill, was singularly infelicitous in its application. In the first place, (as the Chronicle,' we think, observed,) who ever heard of a dictatorship under the control of Parliament? But the Central Board may be and ought to be defended, not as an expedient for a temporary purpose, but as in itself the best and only proper principle of administration for a system of Poor Laws. Assume that the Board will continue until the existing evils are remedied, and the management of the poor thoroughly reformed: what, except the prolongation of the same superintendence, is to prevent affairs from relapsing by degrees into as bad a state as before? Acts of Parliament? Declarations of the Legislature that the abuses shall hereafter be illegal? But they have always been illegal. They have crept in gradually in spite of the law, because the local functionaries had strong immediate motives to introduce them, none of which motives an Act of Parliament will or can take away; and because there was no authority to which they were forced to submit their proceedings, and whose duty it was to keep them within the law. And this very state of things will be restored from the first moment that the Central Board shall be discontinued; and will be attended of course with the same consequences. The diffusion of sound principles, which will be the natural effect of the present temporary reform, will retard, no doubt, this inevitable progression, but the inroads of abuse, if more slow, will not be less sure.

The opposition to the Bill has been feeble beyond example. We never remember a public measure in the discussion of which every rational argument was so completely confined to one side. We may add, that we remember none in which the party in the wrong has been more strangely reckless of its own reputation, both in its arguments or in its facts. Who, for instance, would have expected to be told (as in the Times' of the 14th of May) that this Bill renders fruitless the 'protracted struggle from which the British people never ceased, until they had succeeded in making it part and parcel of their constitution, that the meanest subject in the realm should neither be subjected to any taxes, nor amenable to any rules of conduct, except such as should be imposed by the joint consent of King, Lords, and Commons in Parliament

assembled.' Does the Times' mean that the Poor Rates are now voted by King, Lords, and Commons in Parliament assembled? or that the rules which regulate relief are made by Parliament, and not by the Magistrates and Vestries? Is it credible that any person, not drunk with anger or intoxicating liquors, could have penned such an assertion? It is valuable however, in one respect, as bringing into a strong light the truth and value of constitutional clap-traps. It is not, it never was, nor ought it to be, part and parcel of the Constitution of any people out of Bedlam, nor was it ever dreamt of in England, that no one should be empowered to raise money from the people, or make rules to bind them, except Parliament. What is part of the Constitution, is that no one can do these things except in the manner and to the extent which Parliament may authorize; which is only saying what we all know, that Parliament is the Sovereign,

The Times' finds it very absurd to argue that the Commissioners will be responsible, and asks, where is their responsibility if a civil action lie not against them for injury to individuals? We ask, where is the responsibility of Ministers, or any other constituted authorities? In the certainty of their losing their offices at the discretion of Parliament; and the probability, if public opinion, through the customary channels, calls for their removal. What must be the good faith, or the discernment of a writer, who deems this no responsibility, and who at the same time considers the magistrates responsible, because about once a year or less, for some very gross abuse of authority, some magistrate is called to account in the King's Bench, and let off (for the most part) entirely

unharmed?

The Times' has discovered that republicans are the principal supporters of the Poor Law Bill, and that they support it as a means of disorganizing society, and getting rid of King, Lords, and Commons. The present Poor Law Bill is undoubtedly approved by most of those who judge of public measures from a consideration of means and ends, and not from blind traditions and if such are generally republicans, that is no compliment to King, Lords, and Commons. But as far as we know anything of English republicans, and there are few who have had more extensive opportunities of knowing their sentiments, it is far truer of them that they are republicans for the sake of such measures as this, than that they wish for such measures because they are republicans. We have hardly ever conversed with any English republican, who was not almost indifferent to forms of Government, provided the interests of the mass of the people were substantially cared for, in the degree which he considered adequate; and if among the educated and philosophical reformers, to whom the 'Times' seems more particularly to allude, there be any who desire extensive alterations in the Constitution, we believe we may say with some confidence, that there is not one in whom that wish does not originate in despair of seeing an effectual reform in the inward structure of society, except by a previous bursting asunder of its external framework. Any Ministry which should deal with all our social evile, as the present Ministers are dealing with one of the principal of them, by probing the evil to the very bottom, and cutting away, cautiously but unsparingly, all that is pernicious, would convert all the philosophical republicans: by practically demonstrating the possibility of carrying the same practical measures in the same efficiency, under a monarchy as in

a republic, the basis of their republicanism would be taken from under them; for the Times,' and most of those who have written against these people, utterly mistake their character and spirit. Instead of wishing that the present system should work ill, in order that they may obtain one, founded, as they think, on better speculative principles, their habit is to disregard even to excess, the nominal principle and spirit of a nation's institutions, provided the immediate and definite practical interests of society are provided for by such laws, and such organs of administration, as are conformable to their views.

25th May. Honours to Science !-The Examiner,' in its number of this day, (the best which has appeared for several weeks,) denounces with a proper feeling the slavish spirit of a correspondent of the Times,' who, after a long preamble on the importance of showing honour to science, sets forth as a distinguished instance of it, that the King spoke to Dr. Dalton at the levee. There is something, to our minds, unspeakably degrading to the literary and scientific men of this country, in the eager avidity with which they are laying themselves out for the paltriest marks of court notice: those, even, which have become ridiculous to all men of the world, and for which they are competitors, not with the aristocracy, but with those whom the aristocracy laugh at and despise. Think of the pitiable vanity with which so many of these people have allowed themselves to be dubbed Guelphic Knights. With this abject spirit in our intellectual men, who can wonder if honour is not shown to intellect? They have put their own value upon themselves, and have rated it at the smallest coin current in the market.

It is a vain and frivolous notion, that of showing honour: the honour which is worth showing is that which is felt; and that shows itself, not by some one premeditated demonstration, but as a pervading spirit, through the whole conduct of those who feel it. Who says it is not important that those who are at the head of the State should have reverence for intellect? But will they ever have that reverence until intellect shall be the source of their own elevation? The consideration, which is gained by nobleness of character, men of science and letters have the same opportunities of acquiring as other people,-the only other source of consideration is power. Do what we will, where in any state of society the power is, there also will the honour be. Society, with regard to the source of power, may exist in two different states: in the one, what confers power is intellect; in the other, wealth and station; the former state has never yet been realized, though some societies have approached nearer to it than others, and all are tending towards it, in proportion as they improve; the latter, exists in England, and in most countries in Europe. Now, is it a rational expectation that while power shall still accompany wealth and station exclusively, the honour which always goes with power, can be diverted from it, and become an appendage of intellect? And is it not a mean ambition in persons of intellect to desire a merely reflected honour, derived from the passing notice of people of wealth and station? Precisely the same kind of honour which poets enjoyed when they were domestics in the household of great

men.

There are but two stations in the affairs of the world, which can, without dishonour, be taken up by those who follow the pursuits of

intellect. Either intellect is the first of all human possessions, that which in its own nature is fitted to rule, and which for the good, not of its possessors, but of the world, ought to be exalted over the heads of all, and to have the sole guidance of human affairs, all persons being ranked and estimated according to the share they possess of it; either this, or it is a mere instrument of the convenience and pleasure of those to whom, by some totally different title, the direction of the world's affairs happens to belong, and is to be rated at the value which they put upon it, in proportion to the use it is of to them, and to its relative importance among the other things which conduce to their gratification. Whoever deems more highly of wisdom than he deems of rope-dancing, or at most of cotton-spinning, cannot think less of it than that it ought to rule the world; and, knowing that to be its proper station, he will, on the one hand, by the conscientious use of such power as it gives him, do the utmost which an individual can do to place it there; and, on the other, he will never, by any act of his, acknowledge the title of any competitor; far less put up a petition that a nod or a civil word from the usurper may be occasionally vouchsafed to the rightful prince. The State ought to yield obedience to intellect, not to sit in judgment upon it, and affect to determine on its pretensions.

So long as no conventional distinctions are conferred upon intellect, the State abstains from putting any value upon it, and leaves it to assume its proper place, without deciding what that place is: but when it affects to confer a distinction, and confers the very lowest in the conventional scale, it does set a value on intellect, and rates the highest honour which is due to intellectual attainments exactly on a par with the lowest which can be claimed from any adventitious circumstance. Is this the 'honour to science' which scientific men should be desirous of? There is but one thing which Government, as at present constituted, can do for scientific men, and that is the one thing which is not thought of. It is absurd in the State to confer upon them what it calls honours; but it may afford them the means of subsistence, not as a reward, but to enable them to devote themselves to their scientific pursuits, without hinderance from those petty occupations which they are mostly obliged to follow for their daily bread. Every person of scientific eminence, whose genius and acquirements, destined at the best to perish so soon out of the world, are in a great measure lost to it while he is living, for want of some small provision which would keep him independent of mechanical drudgery: every person of distinguished intellectual powers, whom society has not sense enough to place in the situation in which he can be of the greatest use to it, is a reproach to society, and to the age in which he lives. It is here, if any where, that improvement may be hoped for; and we hope it is here that we shall, in time, see it contended for.

28th May. The change in the Ministry.-We have had little faith. hitherto in the impression which generally prevailed, of divisions in the Ministry, amounting to a decided difference of principle between two sections of it. We had been so much accustomed to find members of the Cabinet who were reputed the most liberal, making themselves the organs of whatever was most illiberal in its practical policy, that the present schism in the Cabinet has taken us almost by surprise. We confess

ourselves mistaken. When a body breaks to pieces, and the parts fly off in contrary directions, there must have been a previous tendency of each part to move in the direction in which it is impelled the moment it is set at liberty. It is evident that one portion of the Ministry must have been worse, and another portion must have been better, than their collective conduct.

The Ministry will now have a new base of popularity. If they so please, all past errors will be considered as cancelled, and in two months from this time they may have acquired a new character. If their future conduct show vigour of purpose and a strong spirit of improvement, all that they have done ill, will be imputed to Mr. Stanley and Sir James Graham; all that they have done well, to themselves. From us, and we believe from all the enlightened reformers, they may expect, until they shall have had a fair trial, not only no hostility, but the most friendly encouragement and support. They must now throw themselves upon the people. All their strength is there; and it will not fail them.

The names which are talked of to replace the retiring Members of the Cabinet, are of good augury. In Lord Durham and Sir Henry Parnell, the ministry will have two men more devoted to popular objects, than almost any other public men not decidedly numbered among radicals; and in Mr. Abercromby, one of the most upright, strongminded, and unprejudiced of the members of the old opposition, and one who is thoroughly alive to the spirit of the times.

The change is a decided progress of the Movement, and will carry all the great public questions several steps in advance. But what is more important perhaps than even the change itself, is the immediate cause of it; the general expectation that Mr. Ward's resolution for reducing the Temporalities of the Irish Church, would have passed the House of Commons, even in opposition to the Ministry. It is well understood that this was what determined the retirement of the more Conservative section of the Ministry. A.