1829.] Affairs in General. 669 



this to the North Pole, would go to the bottom with fatigue before a 

 police man would come to his call. 



So much for the Green Park and its preserves of despairing milliners, 

 and men unknown, in Wellington boots : all of which go to mingle 

 with his INIajesty's tea in Buckingham House ; the basin being the 

 grand provision of fluid for the sovereign and his household. 



But, for those who prefer a still larger style of making their retreat, 

 Ave propose the Serpentine ; a public resource for escaping the troubles 

 of this world, established in old reputation ; but of late so much 

 improved for the purpose, that it may be said to have been made 

 anew. A few years ago if a drunkard fell in, or a passer by in the 

 night made a false step, or an unhappy being attempted to take the 

 final plunge, there was still a slight interval between him and destruc- 

 tion. But now every thing has been made commodious in the extreme. 

 The Avall has been smoothed to so perfect a level with the road, that 

 the first fog would be as likely to lead the first lord of the Admiralty 

 overhead and ears ten feet deep, as the dullest lubber that ever " had 

 his grog aboard." A rail or battlement, or any thing in the shape of 

 prevention, would be treason to the march of mind, and the whole 

 passage to the other world is as plain as the palm of one's hand. 



That the children and nurses who congregate about the Serpentine 

 do not roll into it by the hundred weight, we cannot conceive ; for the 

 day of miracles is gone by. We suppose that they do, but as there are 

 more than enough of both in the world, nobody inquires about them. 



Yet we should think that Lord Lowther, who is not a married man, 

 might have some compassion on the brood, and that he, not being 

 plagued with the res vocalis domi, the " squalling brats and the scolding 

 wife," as the old song has it, might put up a few palisadoes, if it were 

 only for form's sake, and to spite the county coroner. 



They may talk as they wiU of justice in Ireland, but it is a kind of 

 justice which we hope will never come across the Channel. It is of that 

 impartial nature which has been defined, reciprocal all on one side. 

 The grand commission which went down with such pomp, a few weeks 

 ago, to clear the country of all offenders. White-boys, Liberators, and so 

 forth, has returned to Dublin with its finger in its mouth, the Solicitor- 

 General leading the van, and ]\Ir. Serjeant Gould making puns all tlie 

 way. 



The wisdom of resting the conviction of a combination of assassins on 

 a single approver, who, of course must be a villain, was shown by the 

 fact, that after giving evidence sufficient to bring the verdict of the jury 

 full against the men first tried, it was found good for nothing in the 

 next instance. And this result, which every one who knows of what 

 clay approvers are made, must have expected soon or late, an approver 

 being always ready to push his testimony as far as any one will ask for it, 

 put the Solicitor General and the Crown lawyers into such a state of con- 

 sternation, that they fled the country at once, letting seventeen individuals 

 loose upon mankind, who, we hope, will not come to be neighbours of 

 ours, purified as they are. Not a single point of the evidence was dis- 

 proved. All tlie details of the open conspiracy, the signatures for 

 murder, the purchase of powder and ball, the routes marked out for the 

 assassins, the gentlemen designed for the victims, the reasons for not 

 firing at them this cby and for firing at them the next, the actual firing 



