The Church—can you doubt what her danger would be
Were Tories at present in power?
Lord John, or his friends, we should certainly see
Attacking her posts every hour.
But as long as the Bishops may help out his lease,
He won't injure a hair of their wigs;
Nay, he even proposes the list to increase—
So huzza for the rule of the Whigs!
If Grey were at large, how he'd lay down the law
On the cures he for Ireland had found;
And swear that he never would rest till he saw
Her Establishment razed to the ground.
But Grey, while in office, sits muffled and mum,
Like a small bird asleep in the twigs;
And Ward, in the Commons, is equally dumb—
So huzza for the rule of the Whigs!
If any of us had made war on Repeal
With the weapons that Clarendon tries,
What shrieks of indignant invective from Shiel
At the wrongs of Old Erin would rise.
By millions of noisy Milesians back'd,
From the peer to the peasant that digs—
How would Monaghan murmur that juries were pack'd!—
So huzza for the rule of the Whigs!
On Aliens or Chartists to hear them declaim,
You'd think Castlereagh come from the dead.
Though the mixture of metaphors isn't the same,
And the courage and coolness are fled.
But the Whigs are becoming respectable men
As any that ever kept gigs,
They are practising now all they preach'd against then—
So huzza for the rule of the Whigs!
Go on, my good lads—never think of retreat,
Though annoy'd by a squib or a squirt;
You're fulfilling the fate such impostors should meet,
And eating your bushel of dirt
Then swallow it fast, for your hour may not last—
We shall soon, if it pleases the pigs,
Give your places to men of a different cast,
And get rid of the rule of the Whigs!
THE NAVIGATION LAWS.
"When the Act of Navigation," says Adam Smith, "was made, though England and Holland were not actually at war, the most violent animosity subsisted between the two nations. It is not impossible, therefore, that some of the regulations of this famous act may have proceeded from national animosity. They are as wise, however, as if they had all been dictated by the most deliberate wisdom. National animosity, at that particular time, aimed at the very object which the most deliberate wisdom would have recommended,—the diminution of the naval power of Holland, the only naval power which could endanger the security of England. The Act of Navigation is not favourable to foreign commerce, or to the growth of that opulence which can arise from it. As defence, however, is of much more value than opulence, the Act of Navigation is perhaps the wisest of all the commercial regulations of England."[8] Before these pages issue from the press, this, undoubtedly the wisest of all the commercial regulations of Great Britain, and under which the maritime strength and colonial empire of England have risen to a pitch of grandeur unknown in any other age or country, will be numbered among the things which have been. The House of Commons, by a majority, have voted for the repeal of the Navigation Laws.
Free trade will soon have done its work, so far, at least, as the House of Commons is concerned. It is gradually but unceasingly advancing, and swallowing up successively all the great interests of the empire, save that of the capitalists, as it moves forward. The agricultural interests will find themselves deprived, in February next, of all protection; and the British cultivator exposed to the competition, without any shield save a nominal duty of 1s. a quarter, of states where wheat can be raised, with a fair profit in average years, at 18s. a quarter, and brought to this country for 10s. at the very utmost of freight. As soon as we have two fine harvests in succession, it will be seen to what state this system will reduce British rural production. The West India interests have been next assailed; and our colonies, upon whom free labour has been forced, upon a compensation being given to the proprietors on an average of a fourth of the value of their slaves, are speedily to be exposed, with no protection but a differential duty of 5s. 6d. a hundredweight, diminishing 1s. 6d. a-year, till, in 1854, it disappears, to the competition of slave colonies, where sugar can be raised for £4 a ton, while in the British colonies the measures of government have precluded its being raised for less than £10 a ton. As a natural consequence, cultivation is about to cease in those noble settlements; the forest and the jungle will speedily supplant the smiling plantations, and £100,000,000 worth of British property will be lost beyond redemption.