1*27.] [ oil ] 



LETTER UPON AFFAIRS IN GENERAL, FROM A GENTLEMAN IN 

 THE " COUNTRY" TO A GENTLEMAN IN " LONDON," 



York, 18th April, J826. 



You appear to me a strange fellow, in asking for my opinion on things 

 in general ; and a still stranger in fancying that those opinions will be 

 worthy perusal. What can a hermit like myself, buried in a country town, 

 two hundred miles from London, know of the world but by report ? and 

 what can report bring to my knowledge which it has not previously 

 brought, in a more striking shape, to your own ? Here, I am the mere 

 reader of events, of which you are an eye-witness the mere digester of 

 opinions, of which you are, perhaps, the original propounder. It is true, 

 that I look to both with some attention ; to the first, in the hope of distil- 

 ling from them agreeable recollections ; and to the latter, in the hope of 

 dispelling by them ill-omened apprehensions. But then I neither collect 

 facts, with a view of confirming idle theories nor register opinions, with 

 a view of forming out of them rude and undigested metaphysics. No ; I 

 seek truth, when it floats upon the surface ; and leave others to dive for it, 

 when it sinks into depths beyond ordinary comprehension. You will, there- 

 fore, see that my lucubrations are those of a lounger, who thinks upon all 

 subjects, and meditates upon none ; and that, if they have any value, they 

 . derive it from being suggested by a view of society taken in a different 

 position from that in which you stand ; and, therefore, embracing certain 

 features of it which may not, perhaps, have come under your observation. 

 But why should I go on, with the affected modesty of an Irish orator, to 

 depreciate the labour which I am nevertheless determined to undertake ? 

 ,why weary you with gossipping about my own inability, when you want 

 me to gossip about all that has interested the town and the country, the 

 palace and the cottage, for the busy period of the by -gone months ? 



The changes in the ministry have formed for some weeks past, and will 

 probably form for some weeks to come, the principal subject of public 

 conversation. Rumour has stuffed my ears with so many surmises and 

 conjectures respecting the nature of those changes, and the probability of 

 their duration, that I hardly know which I ought to believe, and which I 

 ought to repudiate. Only two points seem as yet definitively settled;- 

 and those are, that Mr. Canning is to be the head of the administration, 

 and that the administration is not to be exclusively in favour of the Ca- 

 tholics. Now, though I set no great store upon Mr. Canning's political 

 honesty, in consequence of his having alternately flattered, bullied, and de- 

 rided, pretty nearly every party in the state for the last thirty years, still, 

 as his interest will prevent him from intriguing against his own adminis- 

 tration, he appears to me a fitter person to be entrusted with the helm of 

 government at this particular crisis than any other public man we possess in 

 our present dearth of commanding talent and ability. Mr. Tierney may, 

 perhaps, be gifted with acuter perception ; and Mr. Brougham, with more 

 ready and argumentative eloquence ; but they are both vastly inferior to 

 Mr. Canning in their experience of public business, and in their acquaint- 

 ance with diplomatic forms and trickeries. I do not however see the ad- 

 vantage of getting rid of the underling members of the late cabinet, supposing 

 that the new cabinet is to be constituted, like its predecessor, on the prin- 

 ciple of division. I believe that Mr. Canning would have gladly worked 

 on with the old hacks of office, if they would have consented to work on 

 with him as subordinate agents ; but their pride would not let them yield 



