420 EDITORIAL COLLOQUIES, 



of it. If John Bull was not sand-blind, and his sensibility like that 

 of a mill-stone, he would say, to himself, 



' Le medecin qui Ton m'indique, 

 Sait le Latin le Grec 1'Hebreu 

 Les belles lettres la physique, 

 La chimie, et la botanique. 

 Chacun lui donne son aveu : 

 Mais je veux vivre encore un peu.' " 



"Exactly; but the cunning people of the late Cabinet had a 

 plan for freeing themselves of all care of their patients, a plan which 

 will, I presume, be studiously followed by the present; and this was, 

 to make all the measures adopted for the relief of the body politic, to 

 emanate from that body itself. If the measure was bad, 'Oh!' 

 said they, ' we can't help it, the people will have it.' Thus, instead 

 of directing the public mind, instead of guiding the current, they 

 trimmed their egg-shell of a bark, and sailed merrily along. One may 

 therefore easily conceive their utter consternation when they found 

 themselves suddenly swamped. In their whining on this subject 

 indeed they are peculiarly pathetic on this point ; and we saw one 

 of their supporters nearly melted to tears the other night in repeating 

 the catastrophe. He wound up his oration by saying 



' It was not in the battle- 

 No tempest gave the shock/ 



Now we are not amongst that class of people 



4 Who evermore peep through their eyes, 

 And laugh like parrots at a bag-piper :' 



but we confess this touch made us cachinnate fiercely." 



" Yes ; and I fancy the Tories will be obliged to pursue the same 

 course, if they keep power, with but little consideration as to the 

 ultimate consequences. They may say to themselves, as Frederick 

 of Prussia once said to some people who requested him to silence a 

 particular sect in Neufchatel, that preached against everlasting pu- 

 nishment, ' Mes sujets de Neufchatel ont le droit d'etre damnes 

 aussi long temps qu'il leur plait.' " 



" Frederick's answer showed the shrewd politician. No ministry 

 can be powerful in Great Britain, which is composed of extremes. 

 The public voice is too potent for oligarchy but oligarchy is as yet 

 too strong to be rudely pushed to the wall." 



