264 THE STATE TRIAL. 



send up the navy estimates a hundred fold to man a fleet at the like cost 

 per disabled seaman. The stone, however, flung at Ascot, has not yet 

 done all its mischief; \ve suspect that it will be found to self-generate, 

 and, taken in connexion with the fact of the wooden leg and the old 

 clothes of Collins being purchased by " a French lady," we should not 

 be surprized, if in a short time, numerous stones were found to rise up, 

 in various parts of the continent, against legitimate and crowned heads. 

 It is rumoured that the coat and breeches of Collins were bought by the 

 femme-de-chambre of the Duchess de Berri, have been smuggled into 

 Paris, and, as there is no less magic in the cut, than in the " web " of the 

 habit ct culottes of the English traitor, various suits, on their exact model, 

 have been clandestinely distributed among several ill-affected members 

 of the Parisian Hospital of Invalids. It was in contemplation to send 

 the shirt of Collins to the Duchess de Berri, to unfurl as an auspicious 

 Bourbon banner, but, luckily it was in time discovered that the shirt 

 was a striped shirt, and consequently, instead of the white flag of Henry 

 the Fifth, might have been mistaken for the standard of the United 

 States. Great hopes are founded on the wooden leg. As Ariel was en- 

 closed in a pine, so, such is the superstition of desperate people, it is 

 imagined that the demon of civil discord is "pegged up" in the cast-off 

 member of the ex-pensioner (we wish there were hundreds of ex-pen- 

 sioners). The only difficulty is to evoke the fiend; this, however, may 

 be managed by the sanctity at Hplyrood. Since we have written the 

 above, we learn that the cabinet are disunited as to the punishment to be 

 inflicted on the traitor, Collins. It is with due deference that we offer 

 our advice in the matter. We remember a very ingenious piece of 

 biography, written, we believe, by Mr. Leitch Ritchie, of a man who, 

 like Collins, had a wooden leg. This leg, however, was internally fitted 

 up by some subtle workman, who owed a spite to the cripple, with such 

 exquisite mechanical powers, that when once joined to the stump of the 

 wearer, it commenced its terrible action, and whether the lame man 

 would or not; carried him with unimaginable velocity through town and 

 country, bog and brake ; he could not pause an instant, no man could 

 stay him. Now we propose that this leg, or some such leg, be screwed 

 on to the disabled member of Dennis Collins, who thus, throughout the 

 whole country, would furnish a terrible peripatetic example of the enor- 

 mity of high treason. Only fancy a Greenwich pensioner darting like a 

 swallow across our path now passing stage-coaches now distancing 

 rail-road passengers sweeping down Pall Mall in a twinkling making 

 but three steps of Piccadilly I His haggard look the quid rolling fit- 

 fully in his cheek whilst the wooden member should fall " stump, 

 stump, stump," upon the ear; a laconic, yet terrible warning to all stony- 

 hearted ex-pensioners. We do not anticipate any objections to our plan, 

 unless conservative watchfulness should dissent, 011 the ground of its 

 trenching on the vested interests of the wandering jew. In good earnest, 

 the matter of Collins has been made ridiculously important ; its effects 

 have been most absurdly magnified. Ireland is at this moment famish- 

 ing, yet what has Ireland to complain of, if its miseries be compared to 

 ours ? Starvation is bad enough, but, if we may believe our ministers, 

 all England has for these months past been suffering agonies from the 

 stone. 



