Notes of the Month. 217 



loyalty and patriotism on the public highways, whose lately adopted phraseo- 

 logy smacks of a desired subversion of the antique meaning of the king's 

 English. For instance, where should we look for a more perfect embodiment 

 of the absurd than is to be found in the words " operative conservatism/' 

 Talk of the frigidity of caloric, of the fragrance of asafstida, of the airy grace- 

 fulness of a behemoth ; discourse of the wisdom of Londonderry, of the charity 

 of Cumberland, of the dignified deportment of Sir C. Wetherell ; descant on 

 the consistency of the Times ; find an Adonis in Col. Sibthorp or a statesman 

 in Knatchbull ; prove that the member for Knaresborough is not a donkey or 

 that young Sublimity D'Israeli will ever be member for any place; extract the 

 square root of nothing and present the product to Lord Eldon ; convict Lynd- 

 hurst of political honesty or the Marquis of Waterford of common sense; dis- 

 cover charity in an Agnewite, humility in a bishop, or the parish settlement of 

 the man in the moon : do any or all of those things, and you may rest satis- 

 fied that most people will think you a very singular if not a very clever fellow, 

 but find conservatism among British operatives and you may set up for a 

 conjuror. 



The Egyptians talk of their snake charmers, and well they may, for it is no 

 joke to make wristbands and necklaces of unfanged rattlesnakes. But the 

 confidence of the adroitest Fellah or Dervish amongst them is maiden bash- 

 fulness compared to the effrontery of some of our brazen charlatans who 

 think to hoodwink that ever vigilant monster the public. And what is the 

 sovereign specific they attempt to work their juggleries withal ? why mut- 

 tering some gibberish about dead grandfathers and grandmothers ? Now not 

 to talk of such classical creepers as snakes and serpents of which one reads 

 so much in Pliny and parsons' speeches, we simply ask, is there a sensible 

 fresh-water eel between Twickenham Ait and Lovegrove's, or a commonly 

 intelligent mud-frog or tadpole from that to Gravesend, that would'nt turn 

 up his nose at any palavering trash about the superior sagacity of his 

 grandfather or grandmother ? Why there's not a gudgeon in the Thames that 

 does'nt regard his progenitors as the merest flats because of their ignorance 

 of paddle-wheels and funnels. And yet our precious popularity anglers, who 

 keep for ever Bob-bing in troubled waters, wonder why the public is not 

 dangling at their lines' end, although their hooks are but baited with a few tit- 

 bits from the antique that perish from the simplest contact with the atmos- 

 phere of modern times and shed a sickly miasm through the land. No 

 wonder we have influenzas when toryism is hawked about in the middle of the 

 nineteenth century. 



| But let us leave off this metaphoric jargon, for since Peel's Composite hodge- 

 podge about the breakwater and the House of Lords,* we have become painfully 

 aware how really assinine a man may make himself though he blunders but 

 figuratively. The Tories not unfrequently luxuriate in the enjoyment of 

 sneering at the limited knowledge of the masses, but the Tories themselves 

 afford the best possible illustration of the inutility of a circumscribed ac- 

 quaintance with humanity when a great political prize is imperilled. Impu- 

 dence will do much, and unfortunately there is no paucity of gulls to jeopar- 

 dise the trade of empericism. But the error of the Tories is, that impudence 

 will achieve any thing, and that " fool" may be safely applied to erery man 

 who is sceptic touching the infallibility of the Carlton Club. Hence their 

 idiotic labours to entrap the working classes. Hazlitt it is, we believe, who 

 says that " he who has long been a man among boys will ever be a boy 

 among men." Tories who think to find conservatism among operatives are 

 but boys among men and the most foolish because the most despicable of 

 boys chastized bullies. Tories are aliens to the people, and the people to 

 them. In the nature of things this position must be eternally preserved, and 

 he who expects the contrary may as reasonably hope to find the sun blazing 



* See the Glasgow oration. 



