412 Notes of the Month on [Aprin, 
nothing shall ever make him think otherwise of the measure than as most 
“iniquitous,” and so forth ; yet “ nothing shall ever make him think that 
his Right Honourable Friend, on the Treasury Bench, had any ill inten- 
tion whatever in the bill,” &c. Now, this is fulsome ;. ay, and suspicious 
—ay, and in nine instances out of ten, it implies neither more nor less, 
than that the honourable oppositionist by no means wishes to be on bad 
terms with the Treasury Bench. With some, however, the matter is 
more honest, and the whole is a mere idle adaption of an absurd phraseo- 
logy. We do not object to civility on the ordinary occasions of debate. 
But nothing can be more misplaced than this tenderness of tongue on 
the vital questions of the state. The subjects now before the legislature 
are not party matters; not whether Lord Grey shall have the disposal 
of places, or Lord Holland make laws—but whether the people shall have 
a Constitution.— Whether the laws, liberties, nay, lives of Englishmen, 
shall not be in the most imminent danger ;—whether we shall not intro- 
duce idolatry into the land, and provoke Heaven by desecrating Chris- 
tianity ? 
What we desire to see is this ; a dozen men boldly and firmly resolving 
to do their duty to the utmost ; to abjure all compromise—to speak their 
disgust, their scorn, and their determination, in the most direct terms ;— 
to leave no room for reconciliation, and do their best to crush the guilty 
measure, that, once passed, will not leave them a country. So long as those 
childish courtesies pass between them and ministers, so long it 1s impos- 
sible for the nation to believe its advocates sincere. A dozen bold men, 
whom the Home Secretary saw resolutely and systematically scorning 
his advances, would be an opposition more formidable to him, than all 
the bowing and smiling hostility that he thinks still within the reach of 
his lure ; whose bowing and smiling he interprets into a wish to remain 
within the limits of treaty ; and whose hostility he at once deprecates and 
derides. 
The late frosty winds have given catarrhs to all the singers of the 
King’s Theatre ; stopped two operas, utterly d—m—d one, and made 
all the premiéres danseuses epileptic. At the French play in the Strand 
they made Perlet forget his part, Mademoiselle Stephanie Euthanasia 
Merveille stand gazing at two guardsmen in the stage box until every 
soul in the house thought her nailed to the stage; and Mademoiselle 
Pauline Precoce play Roxalana, for which she had no other qualification 
than the petit nez retroussé. 
At Drury Lane they limited Kenny and Morton’s play to six very 
bitter nights, and then blew it out of the world. They served Mr. 
Poole’s farce of “Sixes and Sevens” in exactly the same way. Nor 
were they an atom less unrelenting to Mr. Lacy’s Casket, which they 
treated in the same unceremonious manner ; though, being of nearly the 
heaviest matériel that the stage ever suffered, the Casket must have gone 
to the bottom of itself. 
At Covent Garden they destroyed nothing but Mr. Wood’s voice and 
Madame Vestris’s gaiety, for there was nothing else to destroy ; they, 
however, had the advantage of making Madame wear a handkerchief 
on her neck ; which is a protection not merely to the wearer, but, in this 
instance, to the spectator also ; and of making her keep her mouth shut, 
when she had nothing to say ; a practice which we recommend to her, as 
a valuable discovery, for the future. 
