centage of radicalism by way of penalty. He becomes louder and broader in his demands whenever they are negatived or postponed, and seems in the fair way to adopt some of the views of the Chartists. We do not say this lightly—by way of banter—or in regard of general political disagreement. We never, at any time, reposed much faith in the judgment or sagacity of Lord John Russell; and, of late years, our opinion of him, in these respects, has, we confess, materially declined. We have been, in our own sphere of action, engaged in most of the political struggles which have taken place within the memory of the present generation; and we trust that these have not passed by without some wholesome lessons. To change of opinion, where honestly induced and through conviction, every one is bound to be fair and lenient; because, undeniably, in our own day there has been a great unravelment of social questions, and mere party prejudice is no longer allowed to be paramount. Perhaps the only living statesman of eminence, who cleaves to the old system, and is inveterate in his addiction to party intrigue, and what he calls “tradition,” is Lord John Russell. Put him into Utopia, and his first thought would be how he might establish the exclusive supremacy of the Whigs. He is so much and so inveterately a party man, that he seems to care little what becomes of the country, provided only that he, and his, sit at the receipt of customs. He showed that long ago—not in the days of his hot youth, but in those of his pragmatic manhood. He—the Whig Constitutionalist—characterised the opinion of the Upper House as “the whisper of a faction;” and did not disdain the violent and frantic sympathy of mobs when such demonstrations tended to his own particular purpose, or aided the ascendancy of his party. Ever since he has pursued the same course. No man can tell when he is in thorough earnest, or when he is not. He invited, by word and deed, Papal aggression; and, when the aggression came, he started up at once, as an indignant Protestant champion, and flung down his diminutive gauntlet, in name of Great Britain, to the Pope! And yet, at the bidding of the Irish Roman Catholic phalanx, we find this second Luther a strenuous supporter of Maynooth, and of the nunneries! Had his ancestor John, the first Lord Russell—who in 1540, and 1550, obtained grants from the Crown of the possessions of the Abbey of Tavistock and the Monastery of Woburn—been equally zealous for the protection of convents, he probably would have remained, as he was born, an utterly unacred gentleman.