On this page

• Text (1)

  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.

  • 

    Untitled Article

• Transcript

  • 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.

    Additionally, when viewing full transcripts, extracted text may not be in the same order as the original document.

    Untitled Article

    Had the Philosopher died ten years ago , and were he to awake now , he would deem that his wish , to take those ten years one at the end of each succeeding century , had been granted : he would suppose , at first , that the progress of an hundred years had raised the grandson of his follower and friend to that lofty position . He would scarcely believe that already , by that return , the first stone had been laid of a moral monument which time and his country will raise to his memory . Mr . Roebuck ' s election was a signal victory over cant , calumny ,

    influence , party-spirit , and selfish interests . Incidentally , it was the vindication of Mr . Hume from a series of attacks as disgraceful and ungenerous as eyer were directed against a public benefactor by envy , ignorance , ingratitude , vindictiveness , and the concealed desire of neutralizing the future usefulness of a man who had made himself formidable to all who prey upon the country : and directly , it was the triumph of talent and principle rising by inherent buoyancy , amid impotent clamour and through opposing clouds , to their proper sphere . We have seen no production connected with these elections to be compared for an

    instant with Mr . Roebuck ' s address to the Bath electors , for clearness , ability , completeness , the nervousness of its style , the comprehensiveness and soundness of its views , and its practical yet pure and lofty spirit . Such are the men to realize the vision which , in a former article , we indulged , of what the first Reformed Parliament ought to be .

    The attacks just alluded to , which were continued in the Times newspaper till the second morning of the election ; the absurdity of many Dissenters ; the scarcely-veiled hostility of the Whigs ; and the non-resistance to personal solicitation , influence , and expenditure by any similar means , render Mr . Hume ' s return , at the head of the poll , for Middlesex , not the matter of course which it should haye been , but a display of principle and right feeling which call for gratulation .

    We attach importance to Mr . Poulett Thomson ' s return for Manchester , because it is a popular rebuke to the busy interests which are ever endeavouring to strengthen themselves for a parliamentary scramble , on the monkey principle , every one ' s hand in his neighbour ' s dish . Free trade has been continually termed a ' splendid delusion / It is so , if its principles be unsound ; but the restrictive system , if erroneous , must bear a less flattering

    appellation , and can only claim to be a sordid delusion . Can we wonder that the Glasgow operatives are even now petitioning to have the rate of wages kept up artificially , by legal enactments , when the capitalists of almost every mercantile and manufacturing class , with the landholders of course , have been exerting all their influence to return men to parliament for the avowed purpose of upholding profits and rents by similar means ? Is the labourer so blind as not to perceive that , while he is told he cannot be helped , they are all endeavouring to help themselves , at the

    Untitled Article

    The Elections . 47

• Citation
  • Monthly Repository (1806-1838) and Unitarian Chronicle (1832-1833), Jan. 2, 1833, page 47, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse-os.kdl.kcl.ac.uk/periodicals/mruc/issues/vm2-ncseproduct2606/page/47/