1827.] [ 291 ] 



LETTER UPON AFFAIRS IN GENERAL, FROM A GENTLEMAN IN 

 LONDON TO A GENTLEMAN IN THE COUNTRY. 



PARLIAMENT has assembled since my last ; but up to this day (the 18th 

 of February) nothing very material has been done. The question of the 

 Corn Laws is to come on next week, and will be decided before this 

 paper is printed : it is understood, that the terms and effect of the new ar- 

 rangement each party of course meaning to take as much more by the 

 debate as it can get are agreed upon already. The Catholic Emanci- 

 pation too, it appears, after all, is to be brought forward: this is not 

 surprising, because it has for a long time seemed to be the particular object 

 of the people who manage this qnestion, to take every step which can 

 bring it into more dislike and discredit. In the meantime, the monstrous 

 folly of a " prosecution" is getting up, against M. &hiel, for saying some- 

 thing about "the best mode of invading Ireland" something so needlessly 

 and sedulously indictable, that it could only have been pronounced in the 

 hope of attracting that description of notice. On the whole though a 

 great deal of business was threatened the session of Parliament is not 

 likely to be a very heavy one. The war question except as regards the 

 maintenance of perhaps seven or eight thousand troops in Portugal that 

 will be requisite for some time probably is over. The Chancery business 

 will take three or four nights debating; and end, probably, in nothing 

 material being done : there are too many interests compromised in any 

 attack upon the enormities of that court: the nineteenth century what- 

 ever other characteristics may distinguish it is beyond question, the 

 golden age of law. Mr. Serjeant Onslow has also a promise that the 

 usury laws this year shall receive the attention of the government: if 

 there be any doubt as to opportunity to do every thing, the attention of 

 government, in the first instance, to the Game laws, would perhaps be 

 better applied. 



The Impressment of seamen, too among some other subjects of im- 

 portance which have been rather artfully shunned from time to time gave 

 rise to a smart discussion the other night on the first bringing up of the Navy 

 Estimates ; and it is to be hoped the session will not go over without some 

 serious inquiry as to the possibility of getting rid of the practice. Some very 

 strong, and. indeed almost unanswerable arguments on this question, have 

 appeared in the Times and Globe newspapers of the 14th and 15th inst., in 

 a comment upon the queries put by Mr. Hume and other members on 

 the subject in the House of Commons. In fact, it seems to be mere non- 

 sense to lay it down at once as a principle even as matters stand that we 

 cannot man our navy without impressment : the truth is, we don't try. But, 

 beyond this, when men are found in abundance and more than abundance 

 to undertake the most laborious, unwholesome, personally repugnant, and 

 seriously dangerous, employments every day on shore if the service of the 

 Navy be still such as men decidedly will not undertake, there is some mistake 

 in the system of that service ; there is no need that it should be so repul- 

 sive it ought not to be so. And one part of the secret, we believe those 

 who know the navy best are perfectly well agreed, is, that the service is 

 one of most needless tyranny and hardship : and that, from some absurd 

 notion as a certain class of physicians used to have an idea that the pecu- 

 liarly filthy flavour of a medicine constituted a circumstance in its excel- 

 lence there has been a sort of silly pride, never completely argued out of 

 those who command in it, that it should be so and be so understood and 

 considered. The very name of " the discipline of a Man of War," has 



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