370 Proceedings of the British Parliament. Q APRIL, 



for honours, content to slake his thirst in the lowest depths of the 

 muddiest pool ; the man for whose capacity of overthrow, the ruin of 

 all that earth has noblest and most venerable, was not large enough, turn- 

 ing himself with pliant subtlety to work the fall of the weakest and 

 most tottering fragment that encumbers the champaign of- human 

 nature. 



We, of course, do not apply this language to the premier and the 

 clerks composing his cabinet. But we repeat our conviction that no 

 circumstance has occurred to give the nation the satisfactory hope that 

 the present ministry will be cast out by the present parliament. There 

 has been no true sign of parliamentary loss of strength. The paucity of 

 votes for the Treasury, on the first night of the session, was to be 

 accounted for on the well understood principle of " looking before you 

 leap" " seeing which way the wind blows," and all the other homely 

 but practical maxims which the necessity of keeping up .an appearance 

 of ten thousand a-year, when a man has but a fourth of the rental, turn 

 into the daily wisdom of so many worthy gentlemen. 



The extinction of the twin sinecures of Messrs. Bathurst and Dundas, 

 a few nights ago, was one of those little explosions of public feeling, 

 which no habits of submission can thoroughly counteract. It was the 

 scandal of seeing two noblemen determined to fasten their families on 

 the public purse, which they had already so enormously laid under 

 contribution to themselves ; it was the scorn of this avidity for public 

 money, that suddenly excited the House to beat down the sinecurists 

 by a large majority against Ministers. But W T C must not argue this 

 into a symptom of failure in the present administration. We see an 

 advance regular and progressive to all its objects. By those we mean 

 exclusively the objects of the premier ; for we discharge all the other 

 sitters in the cabinet alike of the good and evil of their leader's views ; 

 we believe with the most perfect confidence that there is not a man 

 among them, who has any power of influencing those views, who more 

 than guesses at them, who dares venture a hint in his presence at them, or 

 who looks upon himself as any thing more than an upper clerk with an 

 inordinate salary, or feels that he holds either office or pay by any 

 tenure beyond the will and pleasure of the premier. 



The progress of the premier is easily described. His first object was 

 to secure a cabinet totally dependent on himself. This was to be con- 

 trived but in one way. If, like his predecessors, his purpose had been 

 to establish a strong cabinet, a government to which, individually, as 

 well as generally, the nation could look up ; he would have, like his 

 predecessors, sought out for the best men. But it was of more import- 

 ance to him, to have a cabinet on which the nation must look down ; 

 that being the cabinet which he could rule without fear of a murmur, 

 without the chance of a rebellious doubt starting up in its bosom, or 

 the character of a British minister being burthened by the indepen- 

 dence of a British senator. He made a cabinet to his heart's content. And 

 he deserves credit for the completeness of its fabrication. We strongly 

 doubt whether among all the ranks of Englishmen he could have com- 

 piled such another ; and are ready to believe, like the Roman, in the 

 divinity of Fortune. There is not a man among them who has ever 

 been known to the country, without disappointing every hope; and 

 as for the unknown, their ready prostration since, justifies the choice of 

 their imperious master. But this principle of selection shows the use 



