126 



DICKSON ON HIS FLAX WILLS 



year, such, have been the consequences that have followed the 

 Bright peace-offerings of these peace at-any-price parties. 

 However, we must now hope for better legislation, and that the 

 views of all selfish agitators shall be so crushed as to prevent 

 their gloating once more on thousands sterling collected from 

 their manufacturing brethren. The end of such men ever have 

 been and ever will be, as Pope has said : — 



" When the tired glutton labours through a treat 

 He finds no relish in the sweetest meat." 



Richard's longing after the sweets of office has taken away 

 not only appetite, but all invitations to parliamentary dinners ; 

 nothing but rustication can restore him, and as to his com- 

 panion, who figured with others of the broad brim, and who, 

 not unlike " O'Connell," had many joints to his tail when he 

 lead the forlorn hope to the Emperor of Russia — words on his 

 career are almost superfluous. Even the u Times" considers him 

 not altogether compos mentis during his late excursions to 

 the north, after the trial he gave the Birmingham gun-makers; 

 what a splendid representative of the interests of that branch 

 of business ! They should join the Sheffield sword-makers^ and 

 get John's fine figure cast out of the Crimean and Sebastopol 

 cannons, and have it erected in the Town-hall in Birmingham. 



Knowing the position of the injured landowners, as well 

 as the distress of many of the farming classes in the south and 

 west of Ireland, from the heavy tax imposed upon them 

 towards the support of the poor in the union workhouses, 

 where reproductive employment would be an everlasting 

 blessing if properly introduced, inasmuch as if the inmates 

 were once taught the art of cultivating and scutching Flax, 

 they would be inclined to appreciate the advantages of it, and 

 follow up the practice when free of the workhouse, and by 

 that means the farmers would be completely initiated into the 

 most profitable mode of working up their "crops of Flax — I 



