Phenix Gazette

The London Examiner of October ninth has rather a severe article against the "noble lords," on their rejection of the Reform Bill. The Examiner was formerly edited by Leigh Hunt—we should say it is still edited by that gifted and distinguished radical, from the spirit of this article, a few paragraphs of which we quote.

"The Lords have justified our expectations. The Bill is strangled by a majority of 41. The Ministry must be constant and bold, or it will have all to answer for. The King, we are assured, is firm. A prorogation may instantly be expected. To Government, we say, 'Strike fearlessly!' or another power may strike wildly.—Safety is now in boldness. There is nothing to fear but mis-timed and mis-placed timidity. Meanwhile, let us be of good cheer."

"If we had ever said a good word for the Peers—if we had encouraged any wild hopes of their sense of justice, we should now repent it; but our conscience acquits us of any such indiscretion. We have never professed a love for their power in the State; we have never pretended to discover any utility in it; we have never believed that a passion for liberty runs in the breed; we have never protested that the respect and authority of their House would be permanently secured, if they would do the poor supplicating nation the small favor of passing its little bill for parliamentary emancipation, the destruction of the electioneering slave trade, and the restoration of the people's notorious rights. A reverence for a hereditary legislature seems properly contemporary with a belief in witches and wizards. The qualities of birth and broomsticks should be pretty well understood at our advanced age. We have thought that the best thing the House of Lords could do would be to show itself harmless: and that as Pericles said of the women of Greece, their praise should be, that they gave no occasion or handle to be spoken of. Instead, however, of drawing the decent veil of cobwebs about their chamber, they have thrust it into importance by insult and injury to society. It is the house of mischief. It is full of mephitic air; and the instant any good thing passes into it, it falls down lifeless. It behoves the Ministry to fling a few pails of water on it—to drench it with a purifying stream of fresh Peers."