1832.] [ 137 ] 



ii*tl -jVfill iifli, 

 THE RE-ASSEMBLING OF PARLIAMENT. 



PARLIAMENT has once more met for the (C dispatch of business" that 

 is, they have re-assembled to talk about trifles, and to do as little as 

 possible. The debates of the last fourteen days sufficiently shew, that 

 the favourite plan the most pertinacious interruption, with the smallest 

 possible progress will be consistently adhered to, as long as the Reform 

 question shall be agitated. Indecent haste, and unconstitutional hurry, 

 are still the watchwords of the Opposition ; their Jack-the-Giarit killers 

 are, night after night, employing their pigmy faculties in spreading 

 straw r s over the pit, on the brink of which the Ministers are stalking 

 with giant- strides, as if they really meant to walk into it. This is no 

 time for parliamentary etiquette, and slow-paced politeness; every mind 

 in the country is made up on the subject, one way or the other; and all 

 that the house has to do nightly, is to divide. Our state- Falstaffs must 

 learn, that there is a time when discretion ceases to be the better part of 

 valour. It is well for them, that the country has still confidence in their 

 integrity and good intentions ; but good intentions alone will tire the 

 most confiding people in time, who will be apt to require other demon- 

 strations of integrity, than deprecatory addresses to Sir Robert Peel, 

 and gentle dissuasives to Mr. Croker. It would be ludicrous if Lord 

 Althorp, by listening with such gravity, did not render it lamentable 

 to see some " friend to the constitution" start up at this the eleventh 

 hour, and declare that the whole foundations of the state were giving way, 



because Lord John Russell had represented, that the borough of 



contained only two hundred houses, instead of two hundred and one. 

 He might as well say, that a plot existed for pulling down St. Paul's, 

 because he had met a man with a pickaxe in Cheapside. It is the busi- 

 ness of these people to talk, and the business of ministers not to listen. 

 Such springs will serve well to catch woodcocks, but, from the com- 

 pany we find him in, Lord Althorp should be a bird of higher wing. 



A more formidable battery, however, has been opened upon the 

 ministry. They have been nearly burnt to death, between the two slow 

 fires of Lord Aberdeen and Mr. Herries. Belgium and Russia have 

 been hurled at them, at the same moment. They escaped, however, 

 both from Scylla and Charybdis ; and we hope the danger of a defeat 

 has inspired in them the only thing that they require the courage to 

 conquer. 



The Fast-Day, a farce, has been read in the parliamentary green- 

 room, and is to be immediately produced. Of course Mr. Perceval is 

 the author of it. He spoke with closed doors, and an open Bible. 

 Nobody seemed to recollect that three-fourths of the nation are keeping 

 fast-days all the year round. Mr. Goulburn concurred in the pro- 

 priety of national humiliation, but said, " he preferred it in the tosual 

 way." National humiliation, we imagine, means national starvation and 

 bankruptcy ; and few statesmen understand " the usual way" of pro- 

 ducing these results better than Mr. Goulburn. 



Lord Eldon was very facetious the other night on the subject of the 

 Birmingham petition in favour of the Bristol rioters. The honour which 

 government might have done itself, by saving the unhappy men, would 

 have infinitely exceeded even the satisfaction with which a legislator 

 like Lord Eldon must contemplate their doom. 



