]827.] The New Ministry. 671 



mons is not a war " for love or money " but for both! war for the right 

 war for the wrong war for any thing, or for nothing but still " war 

 to the knife!" and always war! 



The creed of the member out of office lies in a nut-shell : " So long as 

 the right honourable gentleman, Mr. A., and his friends, shall continue to 

 sit on the Treasury-bench, so long will I, who sit upon the opposite one - 

 so help me God, and the B. party oppose every proposition that they 

 bring forward ! unless it happens to be one so absolutely material to the 

 safety and interests of the country, that I dare not, for my life and cha- 

 racter, back out of supporting it." " I have two causes sound and excel- 

 lent of Opposition : I love my country's good ; and I want to displace 

 the right honourable gentleman who is now at the head of his Majesty's 

 government" " So long as he occupies that place, and enjoys the emolu- 

 ments of it, I hate him and every thing about him from the buckle of 

 his perriwig down to his shoe-tie !" " Sitting where he does/ on the rjght 

 hand of the Speaker, what can he be I ask the House but a sycophant, a 

 despot, a satrap, and a servile ?" " I see assumption and ambition even 

 in the tone in which he. blows his nose ! He looks two ways at once- 

 equivocation and double meaning every time he puts on his spectacles ! 

 Let the House ask itself, when it sees him dip his finger and thumb into 

 his snuff-box, how much oftener his whole hand is dipped into the public 

 purse ? How he ever pours out a glass of claret at a cabinet dinner amazes 

 me, without seeing the spirit of * wronged and bleeding Ireland ' rising to 

 put an empty whiskey-bottle into his hand ! He never sucks an orange 

 before he rises to make a * statement/ but I think how his ' minions ' are. 

 ' day after day/ squeezing out the vitals, and property, and interests of the 

 country ! And every thump that he strikes, in the course of his two hours' 

 no-meaning speeches upon the ' box ' of the House of Commons, or on 

 the table is a new blow given to the rights and to the ' constitutional 

 liberties ' of the people !" 



This is the intent and spirit of two-thirds of that which is spoken in 

 Parliamentary warfare. Violence, exaggerated profession, and ultra 

 Utopian doctrine have been, since political memory, the admitted rights 

 and properties of an '* Opposition." Practical men receive all that they 

 say, with a deduction of sixty parts in the hundred, and a very cautious 

 examination of the remainder. Perhaps an Opposition which took, upon 

 the average, one tithe by its motions of that which it went for, would be 

 successful beyond its own comprehension. But we should be disposed to 

 go farther than this. The scope and limitation which we are describing 

 here, we think, is by no means exclusively assumed by the parties in 

 Opposition. The declarations which are now quoted as so many pledges 

 which they have deserted, and which they were bound to redeem out of 

 the mouths of the Whig party, were uttered in the heat of controversy in 

 the fury, very often, of personal hostily and debate in long and laboured 

 " speeches," which were made at least as much for victory over the oppo- 

 nent, as for the truth and fairness of the question ; and that which is still 

 more made by men, who were aiming to dazzle as much as to convince ; 

 who were contending for the prize of wit of eloquence of intellectual 

 superiority far more than for the particular " bill" or " resolution" before 

 the House excited and urged on by the presence and plaudits of the first 

 assembly in Europe perhaps the first in all the world ! And we believe 

 we might lay it down as a truth not to be controverted, that there scarcely 



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