1830.] Affairs in General 203 



go in, and every member liable for every paragraph. Nor is this all. 

 The presentation of a Grand Jury, made up of those great lawyers, 

 called country gentlemen, or, perhaps, grocers and cobblers, may order 

 the presses, types, and printers to be tossed into the street. 



No wonder that the newspapers, gifted with such ultra freedom, such 

 savage liberty, such reckless hazard, and superhuman release from the 

 chains of authority, should be objects of incessant alarm to a paternal 

 Government. 



The old sneers at the stage will not last above the first week after 

 Easter : this we are positively informed. As no less than four of the 

 nobility will indulge the theatrical public with the exhibition of their 

 delightful accomplishments Lady Harborough, Lady W. Lennox, Lady 

 Fife, and the Countess of Sontag Thundervontrunck they will, by the 

 particular desire of managers, appear under other names, lest the gal- 

 leries should be too much alarmed by being suddenly brought into the 

 presence of the haut ton. 



The grand agitator, begins every year, like Bonaparte, with a grand 

 expose of what he intends to do. Though we are sorry tp say, that 

 he generally ends the year, pretty much in the style of his pattern, by 

 telling us, what he had intended to do. We are no lovers of this frac- 

 ture of promise. We recollect that he solemnly pledged himself to 

 die, either in the Jield or on the scaffold, before he would see his 

 beloved forty-shilling freeholders deprived of their birth-right ; a birth- 

 right much nearer and dearer to them than their shirts. We now, 

 in the name of all that is patriotic, by the aggrieved majesty of the 

 rights of man, and the naked injuries of the wwforty-shillinged, call 

 upon the great agitator, before the assembled world, to redeem his 

 pledge, without further let or hindrance, giving him his choice of the 

 field or the scaffold. 



Yet, precarious as the very sound of pledge is in our ears, if he 

 he will but break ground upon any one of his list of public efforts, we 

 shall perhaps suffer him to exist until the end of the session. He pub- 

 licly vows 1. To repeal the Subletting Act 2. To repeal the Vestry 

 Bill 3. To repeal the Grand Jury System of Jobbing 4. To repeal 

 the law that makes Truth a Libel. 5. To repeal the law rendering 

 the Charities of Dissenters and Catholics unsafe. 6. To repeal the 

 laws of Corporation Monopolies 7- To repeal the law authorizing 

 excessive tolls 8. To repeal the law allowing the freedom of Cor- 

 poration to non-residents, and excluding certain residents 9. To re- 

 peal the law, allowing tithes in Ireland 10. To abolish all sinecures, 

 and pensions unearned by public services 11. To diminish all public 

 salaries raised during the war, or by the fall of the paper curency : 

 the salaries of the Judges having been twice raised in this way 12. 

 To procure a new and comprehensive code of law 13. To correct the 

 present system of legal proceedings, and render law simple, cheap and 

 expeditious 14. To call for, 1st. The abolition of the irresponsible 

 power placed in the most unsuitable hands of unpaid magistrates 2nd. 

 The abolition of the present system of special pleading, that being the 

 most fertile source of falsehood, fraud, and perjury 3rd. The abo- 

 lition of the absurd distinctions between Courts of Law and of Equity 

 4th. The abolition of all decisions on mere points of form, and com- 



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