the field, is the infallible test of wisdom in council. This inference has not always been confirmed by subsequent events, and military chieftains have not always proved the wisest or the best of civil governors. The Duke of Wellington, bred from childhood a soldier, and having passed through a military career of unrivalled splendor, or at least, success, had himself declared the consciousness of his own incompetency to the chief management of the affairs of the nation, within one short year before he had undertaken it. The opinion of his incompetency was not confined to himself. It was shared by all the distinguished statesmen of the realm, of all parties, but not by the great body of the people. He had received a liberal education at Eton school; had held many important civil offices; had conducted for a series of years the most important negotiations, and as a member of preceding administrations, and of both Houses of Parliament had the most familiar acquaintance with all the great concerns of the country, with all the forms of proceeding in the national councils, and all the principles upon which the government had for a long series of years been administered. The people could not believe that such a man was incompetent to hold the reins of Empire. He received them from the hands of Lord Goderich, voluntarily surrendered by him, as unmanageable by mere plain good sense and honest intentions. The quality which had appeared to be most deficient in his administration was

energy, and of that the Juke o Wellington had a Benjamin's portion.

In the conduct of public affairs, this quality is as indispensable in peace as in war. In both it may sometimes for a considerable period supply the place of discretion, but whoever at the head of the nation, relies upon it entirely will, as was said by his brother the Marquis of Wellesley of Napoleon, prepare for himself great reverses.

Military command, essentially consists in the unobstructed exercise of the will, over the action of others. The tendency of successful command, is to inspire disproportionate self confidence, and impatience of control. It produces a disposition to underrate the value of council, and sometimes an indisposition to receive it. Frederick the Great laid it down as a maxim, that a General who wishes to do nothing has only to call a council of war. Decision is the most efficient quality for the gain of battles, and when it has often been exerted with great success, it leads to an under estimate of deliberation, and an irksomeness at receiving advice. In the selection of his associates for the discharge of civil trusts, a military commander will, therefore, be apt to prefer subaltern to pre-eminent talents, and subserviency to his will, rather than a bold spirit and independent judgment. Such was the character of the Duke of Wellington's administration. The scantiness of talent among his colleagues was a subject of general remark, and their submission to his will was not less conspicuous

than their inability by the process of their understandings to form and sustain one of their own. This domineering temper was manifested throughout his whole ministerial career, and never more emphatically than in the peremptory declaration against parliamentary reform, which brought it to a close.

To the general deficiency of talents in the Duke's administration, an exception must be made in behalf of Sir Robert Peel, definitively its leader in the House of Commons, a man far more competent for the head of a ministry than the Duke himself. There was for some time another exception in the person of Mr Huskisson, of whom, probably for that very reason, the Duke disembarrassed himself with as little of ceremony in point of form, as of delicacy in substance. In the correspondence which accompanied his expulsion from the ministry, the trampling of a more resolute purpose upon a more intelligent mind was exhibited in glaring light. The melancholy death of Mr Huskisson preceded only by a few months the Duke's ministerial downfal; and if his spirit could then retain any portion of earthly resentment, and had any consciousness of the latter event, it might be soothed by the recollection that it was his vote upon the disfranchisement of East-Retford, involving the question of parliamentary reform, which the Duke's political intolerance had punished by driving him from the highest councils of his country.

On receiving the resignations of the Duke of Wellington and of

Sir Robert Peel, the king asked them separately to whom he should apply to form a new ininistry, and they both recommended Earl Grey. He was accordingly sent for at 5 o'clock on the 16th and received the royal command to form a cabinet-the king declaring that the Duke of Wellington had his undivided confidence when minister, and that it would equally without reserve be transferred to his successor. This declaration was well received by the public, and contributed largely to increase the personal popularity of the king. As an exemplification of the individual nullity of a king of England in the ad ministration of public affairs it is remarkable. A transfer of unqualified confidence from a tory to a whig ministry, produced by a single vote for inquiry of the House of Commons upon a bill for the establishment of the civil list, if the king were in any case responsible for his political principles would indicate little steadfastness of character. The king as Duke of Clarence had been an uncompromising tory, from the first explosion of the French Revolution. So sudden and total a change of principle, not merely with regard to a single measure like that of Catholic emancipation, but to a whole system of policy for the management of the affairs of the kingdom at home and abroad, would not have been tolerated in any responsible individual. In the king it was generally approved as an act of signal homage to the principles of the Constitution.

The new Ministry was

an

nounced on the 23d of November, composed as follows:

First Lord of the Treasury, Earl Grey. Lord Chancellor of England, Brougham and Vaux.

Lord

His warfare during the interval between the two Parliaments against the ministry had been incessant, and he had come full

Viscount Palmerston.

Secretary of State Home Department, Viscount Melbourne.

Secretary of State Colonial Department, Viscount Goderich.

President of the Council, Marquis of Lansdowne.

Lord Privy Seal, Baron Durham. President of the Board of Control, Charles Grant.

President of the Board of Trade and Master of the Mint, Lord Aucland. Chancellor of the Exchequer, Lord Althorpe,

First Lord of the Admiralty, Sir James Graham.

Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster, Lord Holland.

Postmaster General, Duke of Richmond.

SUBORDINATE APPOINTMENTS.

Lord Chamberlain, Duke of Devonshire. Secretary of War, C. W. Wynne. Commander in Chief of the Army, Lord

Hill.

Chief Commissioner of Woods and Forests, Agar Ellis.

Master General of the Ordnance, Lieut.
General Sir Edward Paget.
Lord Lieutenant of Ireland, Marquis of
Anglesey.

Chief Secretary for Ireland, Mr Stanley.
Attorney General, Sir Thomas Denman.
Judge Advocate General, R. Grant.
Solicitor General, Sir W. Home.
Lord Chancellor of Ireland, Lord Plun-
kett,

mentary reform, and for the abolition of slavery in the British Colonies. His attack upon the administration, in the first debate on the address in answer to the royal speech, had been vigorous and impressive, and the overthrow of the ministry had been attributed more to him than to any other man. It was foreseen that while he remained in the House of Commons, no administration could be safe without his aid, and it had been supposed that this could be obtained upon more moderate terms than it was found his own estimate of his importance required. Before the change of ministry had taken place, he had given notice of an intended motion for Reform of Parliament, and when the resignation of the ministers was announced by Sir Robert Peel in the House of Commons, upon the postponement, with other business, of his motion, Mr Brougham said that as no

Poulet Thompson.

Attorney General of Ireland, Mr Pen

nefather.

Paymaster of the Forces, Lord John

Russel.

Surveyor General to the Board of Ord

nance, Sir Robert Spencer,

In this list we find Mr Henry Broughan, transformed into Lord Brougham and Vaux, Lord Chancellor of England. The metamorphosis was not effected without some difficulty. He had come into the new Parliament, with highly augmented consideration, as a member for Yorkshire.

HIM, he should certainly call up his motion, on the 25th. On the 23d he took his seat upon the Woolsack as Lord Chancellor, much to the surprise of the new opposition, and of the public, and not without severe animadversion. It was understood that Earl Grey would have preferred to retain him as the ministerial leader in the House of Commons, but that Mr Brougham could not be retained. The peerage and the Woolsack, were a sine qua non

to him, and he received all approaches of the new Premier with a lofty indifference, intimating significantly that he might not without hesitation accept the Peerage and the Chancery as equivalent for the representation of Yorkshire. These scruples were however not of long continuance; for on the 22d a patent of Peerage was made out, and the next day he presided in the House of Lords. Earl Grey, upon presenting himself to that House as the head of the new administration, made a speech in which he declared that the principles of his government should be economy and retrenchment at home; non-intercourse with the internal affairs of other nations; and a Reform of Parliament in the House of Commons. These were now the popular doctrines of the British nation.

Thenceforward, a new system of government was to direct the fortunes and regulate the affairs of the British Empire. But retrenchment and economy had been the avowed purpose of the preceding and indeed of all preceding administrations; even of the most extravagant and profuse. At one of the most wasteful periods of British history, when the annual provision for fifty millions sterling of expenditure was called for, from Parliament, a member of the ministerial board solemnly declared to the House of Commons that the Government never spent a shilling without looking at both sides of it. A standing theme and hackneyed boast of the royal speeches to Parliament was economy; and the common effort of the ministers,

from time immemorial, has been to find out some paltry superfluity to curtail, and to blazon it forth as a sinking fund to the national debt.

The retrenchments of Earl Grey will not materially differ from those of his predecessors, and as economy is always a relative term, resting not upon the amount of expenses but upon the circumstances and means of the expending party upon the collateral condition of others and upon the manners, fashions and customs of the times, he like others has found it more easy to promise in Parliament than to introduce it into the complex machinery_of the Executive Government. The disclaimer of all interference in the internal affairs of other States is also a principle subject to much qualification. If by speaking of the king's endeavors to restore good government in the Netherlands the Duke of Wellington had intended to announce the 'determination to restore the dominion of the House of Orange in the Belgian Provinces, it was certain that object would not be further pursued under the Administration of Earl Grey - but the protocols of the five powers at London have too often and too imperiously dictated to the people of Belgium their own destines to be rigorously reconcilable with the principle of non-intervention. The undoubted desire both of the Belgian and of the French people was the re-annexation of Belgium to France. It was also the unquestionable interest of both.Belgium is geographically_part of France as much as the Depart

ment of the Seine. The language, the religion, the manners and customs of Belgium are French. Every political and moral consideration, that can influence the minds of the people points to their re-union with France, and they have felt and acted accordingly. They at first frankly solicited that re-union, but the Protocol of the five powers fulminated an interdict upon that. They next chose the Duke de Nemours for their king, and Louis Philippe under the rescript of the five Powers pronounces a prohibition upon that. Lastly, by dint of mere overbearing importunity, the five Powers prescribe Prince Leopold of Saxe Coburg, whose only earthly qualifications for the office were that he had been the husband of the Princess Charlotte, and was a British pensioner, to the Belgian People for their King. This Prince whom the five Powers appear to have considered as a Passe-partout of a kingdom - a standing Raffler for royal crowns, had acquired some reputation for good sense, by perceiving that he was utterly unfit for the office of King of Greece; but he lost it all again by accepting the crown of Belgium, by the election of the five Powers through the constrained suffrages of the Belgian Congress. He accepted the Crown and took the command of the Belgian army, who, as might have been expected under such a leader, at the first sight of the enemy fled for their lives; and then, as if to cap the climax of absurdity in the proceedings of the dictatorial protocols, a French army step in to

rescue the fruits of his victory from the King of Holland, and the Belgians from his impending vengeance.

All this has been done under the auspices of Earl Grey, and since his proclamation of the principle of non-intervention for a governing maxim of his administration.

His project of parliamentary reform remains. This was now for the first time declared to be the deliberate purpose of the government itself. And this may be

considered as a new era in the history of the British Islands. It must be obvious to every one that a reform of the popular representation in the House of Commons, and an abridged duration of Parliaments, are of little importance in themselves, compared with the consequences to which they tend. Its first effect must undoubtedly be a great accession of relative strength to the democratic branch of the Government, and a redoubled impetus to the power of public opinion. Whether this advantage will be purchased by the loss of stability in the continued agency of the ruling power -whether the spirit of reform once firmly seated in Saint Stephen's chapel, will submit to the restraints upon its own action hitherto deemed salutary, or restrain itself within the bounds of moderation, is to be disclosed hereafter. A reformed House of Commons adds not one kernel of wheat to the harvests of the land

it feeds no paupers it pays no tithes - it leaves the national debt with its intolerable burdens as it was before. Burdens under