But in the British empire, for a century past, it has been thoroughly understood, by men of sense of all parties, that a change of dynasty is out of the question, and that there is no reform worth contending for in the state, which is not to be effected by the means which the constitution itself has provided. This conviction, long impressed upon the nation, and interwoven as it were with the very framework of the British mind, having come to coincide with the passions incident to party divisions in a free state, has in process of time produced the strange and tortuous policy which, for above a quarter of a century, has now been followed in this country by the government, and lauded to the skies by the whole liberal party on the Continent. Deprived of the watchwords of men, the parties have come to assume those of things. Organic or social change have become the war-cry of faction, instead of change of dynasty. The nation is no longer drenched with blood by armies fighting for the Red or the White Rose, by parties striving for the mastery between the Stuart and Hanover families, but it was not less thoroughly divided by the cry of "The bill, the whole bill, and nothing but the bill," at one time, and that of "Free-trade and cheap corn" at another. Social change, alterations of policy, have thus come to be the great objects which divide the nation; and, as it is ever the policy of Opposition to represent the conduct of Government as erroneous, it follows, as a necessary consequence, that the main efforts of the party opposed to administration always have been, since the suppression of the Rebellion in 1745, to effect, when in opposition, a change in general opinion, and, when in power, to carry that change into effect by a change of policy. The old law of nature is still in operation. Action and reaction rule mankind; and in the efforts of parties mutually to supplant each other in power, a foundation is laid for an entire change of policy at stated periods, and an alteration, as great as from night to day, in the opinions and policy of the ruling party in the same state at different times.