authors, and its authors alone_. When it is discovered that all the benefits promised from it are a mere delusion; that stagnation, distress, and misery have signalised its triumph; that trade does not revive with the contracted expenditure of the rich, nor confidence return with the increased audacity of the poor; that the ancient and kindly relations of life have been torn asunder in the struggle, and the vehemence of democracy has provided no substitute in their stead; that interest after interest, class after class, is successively exposed to the attacks of the revolutionists, and the ancient barrier which restrained them is removed: the eyes of the nation must be opened to the gross fraud which has been practised upon it. Then it will be discovered that the aristocratic interest, and the nomination boroughs, which supported their influence in the Lower House, were the real bulwark which protected all the varied interests of the country from the revolutionary tempest, and that every branch of industry is less secure, every species of property is less valuable, every enterprise is more hazardous, every disaster is more irretrievable, when its surges roll unbroken and unresisted into the legislature. “It is upon this very circumstance, however, that our chief, and indeed our only hope of the country is founded. Hitherto the great body of the middle classes have stood aloof from the contest, or they have openly joined the reforming party. They were carried away by the prospect of the importance which they would acquire under the new Constitution, and did not perceive that it was their own interests which were defended, their own battle which was fought, their own existence which was at stake, in the contest maintained by the Conservative party. Now the case is changed. The old rampart is demolished, and, unless these middle ranks can create a new one, they must be speedily themselves destroyed. From the sole of their feet to the crown of their head, the middle classes of England at present stand exposed to the revolutionary fire; every shot will now carry away flesh and blood. Deeply as we deplore the misery and suffering which the exposure of these unprotected classes to the attacks of revolution must produce, it is in the intensity of that suffering, in the poignancy of that distress, that the only chance of ultimate deliverance is to be found. Periods of suffering are seldom, in the end, lost to nations, any more than to individuals; and it is years of anguish that expiate the sin, and tame the passions, of days of riot and licentiousness.