620 The Wellington and the Grey Administrations. DEC. 



way. Who were to be the storming-party, whether they were to 

 clecend from the moon or to ascend from Fleet ditch, whether the Thames 

 was to disembark an army on its shores, or the warlike shopkeepers of 

 Fleet-street were to take the field against the gilt coach and cream- 

 coloured horses, has not yet been explained. But it served as the foun- 

 dation of morning cabinet councils, midnight despatches, couriers riding 

 for their lives from the Mansion House to Whitehall, and regiments or- 

 dered to break up from their quarters, in full fighting order, at a mo- 

 ment's notice. In fact, nothing escaped disclosure, except the nature of 

 the danger, of which the secret was kept with memorable strictness, and 

 is still deposited in the breasts of the original discoverers. 



It happened that the only menace in the Lord Mayor's letter was 

 against the Duke himself, and we still find it difficult to discover why 

 the public disgust for his grace should have any thing to do with their 

 feelings towards the King. But those are secrets of State. Sir Robert 

 Peel wrote the notice, that his Majesty could not venture ; the citizens 

 read the notice with contempt for the writer, and utter denial of the 

 danger. But the Duke was not to go ; and the question was decided. 



We understand that the King, since he has got rid of the Duke ; 

 whether it is that the loyal citizens have grown more warlike, or the 

 days longer within this month, intends to eat his dinner at the Mansion 

 House in spite of being shot on his way, or having Fleet-street barri- 

 cadoed by an army of a hundred thousand rebels debouching from Chan- 

 cery-lane. 



The Wellington Administration perished totally, under the ridicule of 

 this most ridiculous transaction. The chieftain himself was obviously 

 borne down by a sense of contemptible failure, and the feeble tone in 

 which he made the last dying speech of his power, was not more indi- 

 cative of the fallen minister, than of the fallen man. 



The Guildhall affair had enough of folly in it to reconcile the most 

 stubborn unbeliever to the idea that the ministry were not gifted with 

 the sort of understanding precisely fitted for governing the country. 

 But the sycophants of the premier had laboured so long to establish for 

 him a reputation for miraculous sagacity, that we shall take the trouble 

 of giving another proof of his utter inaptitude. The King's speech 

 furnishes an unanswerable case. It was the declared desire of the 

 nation that we should not interfere in the quarrels of foreigners. In 

 the first place we have no right to dictate to any people what form of 

 government they shall choose, any more than we have a right to dictate 

 what food they shall eat, or what clothes they shall wear. In the next, 

 England has always found this kind of interference as impolitic as it 

 was unjust, being always finally dragged into the heat of the conflict 

 as a principal, seeing her efforts baffled, and the only results being the 

 hatred of the nation concerned, the ridicule of all other nations, and 

 three or four hundred millions added to our national debt. The peculiar 

 case before government at the time was Belgium. And on this the 

 nation had already decided that we should leave the parties concerned, 

 to settle it between them. All the government declarations through 

 the newspapers were of exactly the same tenor. 



Yet what was the astonishment of all men of common sense, when 

 the following paragraph made its appearance in the King's Speech. 



" I have witnessed with deep regret the state of affairs in the Low Coun- 

 tries. I lament that the enlightened Administration of the King should not 



