448 Notes of the Month on [[APRIL, 



We should also like to know, whether, when those poor devils of 

 officers' widows are forced to give up their petty provision, the widows 

 of the placemen about Whitehall are to be allowed to keep their pen- 

 sions, and marry whom they please, thus to fasten upon the public 

 purse ? That there are such individuals, and tolerably well known to 

 the public, we believe. And we ask, what is justice, if it be not even- 

 handed ? 



But the more unfortunate consequence of this regulation will be, not 

 a saving to the country, nor the prevention of those marriages, which 

 have been here with such ludicrous pomp called " rewarding one man 

 for the service of another j" but an increase of prevarication, a temp- 

 tation to perpetual falsehood imposed on those widows. They will 

 marry, if they like ; as what woman was ever capable of thwarting her 

 inclination for any thing, from prudential motives ? Not a sixpence will 

 be saved ; but a vast many protestations of perpetual widowhood will 

 be wrung from the unfortunates, who have plunged into second matri- 

 mony, with a full determination to let go the public allowance on no 

 condition whatever. We hope that oaths will not be required, for though 

 a promise is equally binding in honour, yet the oath is a more formi- 

 dable mode of meeting the temptation ; and in the multitude of instances, 

 the temptation would carry the day. We hope so foolish an attempt 

 will be abandoned. It must be nugatory on any considerable scale, and 

 even on the smallest, it will be only a temptation to weakness and 

 poverty to commit falsehood. 



Mr. Nash's conduct in the purchase of the Crown Lands has been 

 brought before the House. But the most effective part of Colonel 

 Davies's speech, was his denunciation of Mr. Goulburn. 



" He could not easily conceive how a man, like the individual alluded 

 to, should be at his time of life so sordid as to be impelled to the com- 

 mission of such fraudulent acts as these by the thirst of gold ; but it was 

 an extraordinary sight to him, and one difficult to assign a cause for, 

 why the Chancellor of the Exchequer should be so regardless of his 

 good name as to wish to bind it up with the tainted mass of this man's 

 character. He pledged himself, if the House now gave him permission 

 by sanctioning the present motion, to prove from documents he had 

 since obtained possession of, that the party whom he thus accused had 

 been guilty of many acts which the House would feel itself bound to 

 reprobate, although sanctioned by the countenance and support of the 

 Chancellor of the Exchequer ; and, in this instance, he would take care 

 not to suffer his object to be defeated by permitting the Committee to 

 bind him in his accusation to a precise phrase, as they had on the 

 former occasion, which had, he acknowledged, been the means of secur- 

 ing his defeat/' 



Mr. Goulburn was immeasurably shocked, that any body should 

 think him capable of doing any thing that a perfect gentleman and pure 

 senator should not do. He rose in becoming indignation, charged the 

 motion, as tending by " the light of a side wind," as that classical orator 

 the Attorney-General says : or by " running counter to the corner stone," 

 as that not less clastical orator Mr. Brougham expresses it ; to censure 

 the last year's committee, which committee had given its verdict on the 

 matter by declaring " that Mr. Nash was innocent, but had done 

 wrong," which strikes us as a rather enigmatical species of acquittal. 



