196 LAW AND POLITICS. 



feet in ascent per day ; at Ipswich, 7450 ; at St. 

 Alban's, 8000 ; at Bury, 8950 ; at Cambridge, 

 10,175; at Durham, 12,000; at Brixton, Guildford, 

 and Reading, the summer rate exceeds 13,000 ; 

 while at Warwick, the summer rate will be 17,000 

 feet in ten hours. 



In the spring of 1823, Milbank Penitentiary con- 

 tained 869 prisoners; the officers and their families 

 amounted to 106. Total within the walls, 975 

 persons. 



Abuse of the Laws. 



Nothing is more unreasonable than from the pos- 

 sible abuse of a law, to found an argument against the 

 law itself. The king can create as many peers as he 

 chooses, but is it likely that he would make every 

 man in the kingdom a peer ? 



Popularity. 



In a free country, when a public functionary has 

 the reputation of being what is vulgarly called po- 

 pular, there is a strong suspicion that he is evading 

 or betraying his duties. Popularity is very different 

 from public estimation. 



Political Nostrums. 



He (or a nation) is miserably unwell, who is in 

 greater danger from his physician than from his 

 disease. " Infeliciter aegrotat cui plus periculi a 

 medico quam a morbo." (Seneca.) 



We can neither bear the disease nor the remedy. 

 " Nee morbum ferre possumus nee remedium." 

 (Livy.) 



To ao or not to do. 



In politics as in common life, to know what can be 

 done, and how to do it, is a most valuable species of 

 information ; the next is, to know what cannot be 



