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intellectual match. 'Anger and Retribution,' by Lady Julia Lockwood, and Kellingham House,' by Miss Charlotte Norman, are two well written stories, as horrific as stories founded on fact' usually are. Miss S. C. Hall has contributed one of her spirited and dramatic tales, The Fortunes of Blanche Bolton; and Mrs. Charles Gore, Miss Agnes Strickland, and the Author of Frankenstein, have each a story. The volume will please, and we think, ought to satisfy, the class of readers for whom it is intended. As the annual of the boudoir and the drawing-room, it will maintain its pretensions. The plates are not so good as might be expected from Mr. Charles Heath. The Viscountess Beresford, after Lawrence; My Aunt Mansfield, a design which reminds us of the quiet humour of Smirke; the Earl of Surrey and the fair Geraldine,' a clever drawing by Cattermole; and a groupe before an altar, by Miss L. Sharpe, are the best things in the volume. Several of the engravings are very mediocre.

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Art. V. 1. A Letter to a late Cabinet Minister on the present Crisis. By Edward Lytton Bulwer, Esq., M.P. Author of "England and the English," &c. 8vo. pp. 86. Price 2s. 6d. 1834.

2. The Quarterly Review. No. civ. Nov. 1834. Postscript.

OUR

London.

UR well-meaning and patriotic monarch, by a misguided exercise of his undoubted prerogative, has given another sudden check to the progress of those measures which are indispensable in order to place the laws and institutions of the country in harmony with the present aspect of society, and the just claims of the British people. The result of this check, it requires no sagacity to predict. It is like laying a stone in the track of a locomotive, in order to arrest its progress, or grappling with the wheels of a steam-engine. The state is on the verge of a frightful collision, which threatens to strain every part, and to work sore mischief to the unskilful hands which have adopted such a method of moderating the movements, at the rapidity of which they had taken alarm. Our present Number leaves the press while the country is still in suspense, with only a provisional Cabinet, virtually consisting of a single minister, filling every office with the ubiquitous powers of the fabled Kehama. Such a state of things is, we believe, without precedent. It has arisen without necessity. For the sudden, contumelious dismission of the late ministry, no reason has been assigned; none can be given. The ostensible cause is the necessity of appointing a

new Chancellor of the Exchequer and leader of the House of Commons, in consequence of the death of the late Earl Spencer. In finding an efficient finance minister, there could be no difficulty. Even the Tory prints admit that Lord Althorp's place might have been, in this respect, easily supplied. In choosing an equally competent leader in debate, there was confessedly greater difficulty, since the post demands the union of great personal weight and parliamentary experience, readiness and tact in debate, physical powers of sustaining almost incessant fatigue, and of course, political prominence and responsibility. Powers of oratory are not sufficient to qualify a Cabinet minister for this laborious and responsible function. It is not enough that, like Mr. Grant, Mr. Rice, or Lord Palmerston, the individual is capable of getting up, now and then, a powerful display of eloquence. The leader must be, if not an orator, a ready debater, prompt in reply, and moreover, a clever tactician, capable of watching his opportunity, and shaping his decisions by the aspect of parties, and the turns and accidents of debate. So admirably qualified was Lord Althorp for the post he occupied, by his experience, temper, readiness, aristocratic influence, and the general confidence reposed in his honour and integrity, that Sir Robert Peel is stated to have expressed high admiration of his skilful management during the progress of the Reform Bill, and to have confessed that no other member of the House could have carried through the measure with equal success. Yet, his Lordship is very far from being an orator; in fact, only an indifferent speaker.

It is, however, quite absurd to suppose, that no suitable person could be found, in the late cabinet, to supply the place of Lord Althorp in the House of Commons. The precedence would seem to have been due to the Paymaster of the Forces: his high birth, (which has weight even with a liberal House of Commons,) his unimpeachable consistency and public integrity, parliamentary experience, and popular character, combined to designate him as a suitable successor to the late Chancellor of the Exchequer; a feeble state of health and deficiency of physical energy being the principal, if not the only drawbacks on these qualifications. The Quarterly Reviewer, having a more especial spite against his Lordship, chooses to say, that the proposing Lord John Russell as leader of the House, looks like a joke.' Why so? Setting aside Sir Robert Peel and Lord Stanley, whom could the Tories produce better fitted to fill the post ?-Oh, we forgot Mr. Croker.

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Had Lord John Russell, however, been deemed unequal to the labour, Mr. Abercromby, who was formerly named as a fit person to occupy the chair of the House, could not have been excepted against; and rather than dissolve the ministry on the

ground of this imaginary difficulty, other individuals in the Cabinet might have been found not incapable of taking the lead among the Commons of England.

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At all events, the King's Ministers did not feel this to be an insuperable difficulty, or, so far as appears, a source of any perplexity. Lord Melbourn did not repair to Brighton to disclose any embarrassments, nor, whatever the Quarterly may choose to say, to announce any differences of opinion, or divisions of party in the Cabinet. We have reason to believe that the statement in the Postscript' on this point is entirely fictitious and apocryphal. Lord Melbourn felt in no dilemma' with respect to his colleagues: his only dilemma related to the inofficial Cabinet behind the throne, and to the position in which any Minister must be placed who has to mediate between a people calling for Reform, and a Court and Church opposed to all liberal concessions. The Duke has already found himself in a similar dilemma.

The Quarterly Review and the Standard have favoured their readers with two very different, but equally veritable and authentic expositions of the interview between the late Premier and his Royal Master, which led to the unexpected dismissal of the entire cabinet. The former states, that the majority of the Cabinet thought that they could not meet Parliament, without announcing some strong measures of what they called Church Reform, or, to speak more truly and plainly, Church Spoliation. This we believe to be quite true. But a section of the Cabinet, it is pretended, to whose opinion Lord Melbourn himself is said to have inclined, 6 were reluctant to pledge themselves to this extent, and declared they must resign if such measures were proposed. On the great and vital question of the Church, these two sections of the Cabinet were so irreconcileable, that, whenever that question should be brought into discussion, the dissolution of the ministry was inevitable. This being frankly admitted by Lord Melbourne, his Majesty thought it far better to dissolve the incoherent and distracted' Cabinet at once!

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This audacious fiction can surely impose upon no one. The names of the Ex-Ministers furnish a sufficient refutation. Our readers would be puzzled to fix upon the names of the anti-reform section. The late Cabinet consisted of sixteen ministers, seven peers, viz. Lords Melbourn, Brougham, Lansdown, Mulgrave, Holland, Auckland, and Duncannon, and nine members of the Commons' House, viz. Lords Althorp, Palmerston, and John Russell, and the Rt. Hon. T. S. Rice, C. Grant, E. Ellice, E. J. Littleton, Sir J. Hobhouse, and J. Abercromby. Which 'three or more' of these shall the dishonour light upon, of being suspected by the Tories capable of dividing against their colleagues? If Lord Lansdown, Lord Auckland, and Mr. Rice, are intended as the three, we are sure that they are undeserv

VOL. XII.-N.S.

3 N

ing of the stigma. Their conduct at the time that Mr. Stanley, Sir James Graham, the Earl of Ripon, und the Duke of Richmond seceded from the Cabinet on this very point, sufficiently disproves the calumnious supposition. To any other members of the Cabinet, who have subsequently taken their seats at the council board, the imputation obviously cannot attach. We have no doubt that Lord Lansdown is chiefly pointed at; but to those who heard, as we did, his Lordship's manly and statesmanlike speech in the House of Lords, in the debate which preceded the last division of the Irish Church Bill, the representation of his being adverse to an effective Church Reform, must appear unworthy of notice.

Had there been the slightest atom of truth in this artful statement, still, the loss of Lord Althorp as a leader, could not have been a source of additional embarrassment. It will not be pretended that his Lordship is more of a conservative, or less of an aristocrat, than Lord John Russell. Or take it the other way, and, for argument's sake, suppose that Lord Melbourne, (who is stated to have inclined to the views of the minority,) Lord Althorp, (whose removal from the House of Commons is the alleged source of the whole difficulty,) Lord Auckland and his friends, and we must add Lord Brougham, were all indisposed to concede the reform measures which some of their colleagues deemed indispensable; that is to say, that they had all turned their backs upon reform principles; whence could have arisen any difficulty, had the more liberal members of the ministry resigned, of recalling Mr. Stanley and his friends to resume their places. In such a case, Lord Melbourn ought to have been the last man to resign, or to have been dismissed. Will it be said, that a majority of his colleagues were adverse to his moderate policy? Of whom could that majority be composed? Was the resignation of Lord Palmerston and Mr. Grant apprehended in case Lord Melbourne pushed things too far? Could not their places have been supplied? That Lord Melbourne was disposed to go further than the majority of his colleagues is not pretended, and we need not bestow a word upon such an absurd supposition. View the matter in any light, the palpable falsehood of the Quarterly Reviewer's insidious representation is manifest.

We had written thus far when the Chronicle of this morning (Friday) reached us, in which we find the following reply, in a leading article, to the allegations of the Quarterly Review.

It

*This truly independent and ably edited Journal has been doing infinite service to the cause of Reform, and is fast rising, under its present improved management, in sale and political influence. deserves the gratitude and cordial support of every friend of reform and religious liberty.

In the postcript to The Quarterly Review, which was yesterday copied into The Times, and called an authorized statement, we find the following assertions :-

"The Cabinet has been dissolved, not by the removal of Lord ALTHORP from the House of Commons, but by its own internal and irreconcileable dissensions." PoSITIVELY FALSE in both respects.

The principal pretext assigned was the removal of Lord ALTHORP from the House of Commons; and there were no dissensions of any kind in the Cabinet-no, not the slightest difference of opinion either then or since the formation of the MELBOURNE Cabinet.

2. "That in consequence of these dissensions, Lord MELBOURNE waited on the KING, and made a proposal of remodelling the Cabinet, for the sake of establishing unanimity between the two sections of the Cabinet who disagreed on the Irish Church Question." POSITIVELY

FALSE.

Lord MELBOURNE made no such proposal, there being no such disagreement upon the Irish Church measure then in contemplation.

3. Lord MELBOURNE " candidly informed his MAJESTY that his propositions, even if agreed to, would have the effect of establishing unanimity," &c. POSITIVELY FALSE. The Cabinet were unanimous. It is superfluous, therefore, to contradict the other part of this falsehood.

4." In this state of things, his MAJESTY, with equal frankness and good sense, suggested that if the proposal then submitted to him was a vowedly to settle nothing, but, on the contrary, to render another and early crisis inevitable, there could be no use in patching up a provisional expedient; and that it would be better to do at once, that which was admitted to be unavoidable at last, namely—to dissolve the incoherent and distracted Cabinet." FALSE IN EVERY PARTICULAR. HIS MAJESTY made no such suggestion-no such proposal was submitted to him; nothing was said of another and early crisis, or any crisis at all. No admission of the sort was made; nor was the Cabinet said, by either party to the conversation, to be incoherent and distracted. We repeat, there was no difference between them, on any point whatever.

5. The late Premier conveyed to the Duke of WELLINGTON his MAJESTY's letter, summoning his Grace to Brighton."

This is

lying like truth." A gentleman about the Court requested that Lord MELBOURNE's servant might carry a letter to Sir HENRY WHEATLEY, inclosing another to the Duke of WELLINGTON; and of this fact the monstrous inference has been fabricated-that Lord MELBOURNE was a party to the sending for the Duke of WELLING

TON.

6." His MAJESTY has already reaped some of the fruits of such upright conduct, in the full admission, as we have heard, of various Members of the late Cabinet, that they have nothing to complain of ".

Certainly his MAJESTY has already reaped the fruits of such conduct, but not the full admission here talked of. We are likely to know more of the parties in question than the writer of the Postcript; and we must contradict him as flatly as to this assertion, as we have with respect to every particular of his statement.