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During the whole of this narration, Mr. Bender was struck dumb with vexation and surprise. What! was his wife in reality, nothing but a poor woman, who had merely been put in to take care of the house, which he had believed to be her own? He could scarce believe it! Were all his fine air castles to be thus dispersed to the four winds of heaven ?-was this to be the end of that independence which he had, but the day before, so fondly believed he had attained? Was this to be the fulfilment of those bright dreams, in which lately he had so much indulged? It could not be! "You mean to gammon me, my love!" said he to his wife, in a soothing tone, "you cannot mean what you say !"

"It's as true as I stand here," replied Mrs. Bender.

"Then you have most cruelly deceived me!" exclaimed our most unfortunate of parish clerks.

"Why," answered the wife, "I'm beginnin' to think as how you ha' deceived yoursel in this matter."

Instead of

Mr. Bender was too much cut up to say any more. bettering his condition he had made it worse; instead of lessening his burthens, he had added to them. He found some comfort, however, in the thought, that Mrs. Bender would find herself as much deceived as himself, for she evidently considered him as a prosperous tradesman; whereas, he had not a penny.

The furniture was all safely dispatched in the waggons, the house shut up, and the announcement of "This house to let. Enquire at Mr. Bender's, Hatter," put up at the window; after which, the disconsolate Mr. Bender took his wife home to his shop.

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"My dear Mr. Bender," bawled Mrs. Bender from the top of the stairs to her husband, who was sitting musing on his misfortunes in the little parlour behind his shop," where are your shirts, my dear?"

"They are in the drawers," cried the husband in reply.

"I can't find one there, not at all, I can't," once more bawled the wife; "I can't find 'em anywhere."

"They ought to be there," answered Mr. Bender, getting up, and going up-stairs; "there ought to be four-and-twenty beautiful

ones.

"Well! I declare that I can't find one on 'em anywhere ere abouts," observed Mrs. Bender.

"My children have robbed me most shamefully, then," exclaimed our parish-clerk.

"How can you say so, father," said his eldest daughter, who had just joined the party, "when you know you never had any more to your back, than a shirt and a shaker ?"*

"That's a confounded lie, you young baggage!" continued her father; "tell me what has become of my four-and-twenty beauties ?"

"You know, papa, you never had twenty-four in your life,"

An old ragged shirt generally used by poor people to do their dirty work in.-A NOD OR A WINK TO A BLIND horse.

answered the girl; "you know you used to say, that a shirt and a shaker was all that you could afford."

"And I can't find one morsel of a sheet," said Mrs. Bender, who had, during this dispute, been continuing her inspection of her husband's linen, "'cept what's on the bed."

"And what, you hussey, have you done with the sheets?" asked Mr. Bender, once more addressing his daughter; "you know that we were well stocked."

“No, indeed, father, we wasn't," answered the girl, "for we never had more than two sets, and one of them is now at the wash." "You young hussy, you have sold them!" violently exclaimed the father.

"Indeed, father, I hav'nt," humbly protested the daughter. "You lying baggage, you know you have," vociferated Mr. Bender; " you have robbed me out of house and home, and no longer shall you eat of my bread. Come, pack up your tatters, and be off.

"But indeed, father," supplicated the girl," you know, father-" "Don't father me, you young hussy," bawled out Mr. Bender, glad of being able to vent his ill-temper upon some one, however unjustly. "March-no longer shall you darken my door;" saying which, he took her by the shoulders, pushed her down stairs, and then forced her out of the house, shutting and fastening the streetdoor upon her.

Meantime Mrs. Bender, continuing her inspection, found the house almost destitute of furniture; there was scarcely a cup or a saucer to be found: the chairs and tables were dreadfully shabby; indeed the house was almost empty.

She now began to suspect that there had been a mutual take-in, that each had succeeded in deceiving the other, and that Mr. Bender had about as much pretension to the character of a prosperous tradesman, as she had to the character of a rich lady.

Upon his reappearance, therefore, after the ejectment of his daughter, she taxed him with the "most rascally, abominable unprovoked piece o' deception, that had comed into the 'eart o' mau, that o' deceiving a poor lone 'oman."

Upon this he retorted, by rating her with the deception that she had played off on him, and accordingly the dispute ran very high; during the course of which, however, she made her husband confess, to her great consternation, that at that moment he had not ten pounds in the whole world."

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While all this was going on at home, the daughter went to Mr. Steele, the clergyman, and related how she had been treated by her father. Mr. Steele, thereupon, sent for the parish-clerk, and reprimanded him for his conduct, and desired him to take his daughter home, which he refused to do, still persisting that she had robbed him. Upon this Mr. Steele deprived him of his office of parish-clerk, and told him that he must no more look for his patronage.

The gossips of the town have declared that the charge of Miss Bender's robbing her father is totally unfounded, and have whispered that the hatter's motive for preferring it was to procure an excuse for throwing her off his hands. She is, however, well provided for, having been set up by the 'Squire and clergyman in a thriving milliner's shop.

Poor Mr. Bender has also had sufficient reason to repent of his marriage with Mrs. Wombell. As I have before stated, he had gone into a world of expense in providing the splendid wedding feast of which I gave an account in the last chapter. Accordingly when Mr. Plum, the grocer, and Mr. Crusty, the baker, together with the cheeseman, the publican, and the other tradesmen, sent in their bills, he had nothing to pay them with. Nor was this all; Mrs. Bender's brother sent in a long bill for the damages which the rabble had done to his house: and he also found that his wife owed sundry debts which he was expected to pay. The end of it all was, therefore, that Mr. Bender not only lost his character with the inhabitants of H-, but found himself, before his honey-moon was up, in Whitecross-street prison, for debt, from which place of security he was not released until a reformation had been effected in his unwieldy corporation.

Witnesses {

JACK NOKES.

TOM STYLES.

JACK STRAW,

at his castle.

His

+

Mark.

[Here ends our marvellous tale. Reader! Do you ask what is its meaning, or moral? First of all decide whether it be a Fact, or a Fable; a Political Allegory, or an Alsatian Mystery. If you cannot; ask JACK SHEPPARD, OLIVER TWIST, LORD JOHN RUSSELL, or SIR EDWARD LYTTON BULWER, Bart. Any one of these worthies will render a reason, by way of application.]

THE GUARANTEES OF THE BRITISH CONSTITUTION.

BY DR. MICHELSON.

PART II.

MONTESQUIEU is said to have asked the celebrated Law, whom he met at Venice, why he did not follow the example set him in England, and endeavour to win the Parisian Senate over to his views by golden arguments? "The members of your House," answered Law, "are not so bold and generous as my countrymen, but they are more honest." This reply gave rise to an observation from D'Alembert, "that an assembly possessing but scantily the rights of freedom, is more scrupulous in the disposal of them, than a body enjoying their liberties to the fullest extent. In one case the surrendering parties must divest themselves of their little all; in the other, they only lease out a portion of their possessions to the best bidder, for the time being, without parting with the proprietorship. The latter only mortgage, where the former would sell." The influence of the crown naturally increased with the growth of its years. Every successful experiment in the arcana of corruption fur

N. S.-VOL. I.

3 U

nished hints for new schemes to the same end, and ministers learned, in the course of events, to invent and employ such means as were least obviously at variance with the integrity of the constitution. The national debt, swollen, at the present date, to the enormous sum of eight hundred millions, even then not only fettered all the rich landowners and capitalists to the government, on whose continued stability they could alone depend for faith in public credit, and payment of the national securities; but enforced, even from the most upright members of parliament, bor gré mal gré, their consent to novel taxes and monetary expedients, necessarily attended by the creation of numerous new offices and commissions, and incurring an expenditure, that, during the American war, amounted, according to Franklin's estimate, to no less than two millions.

All this formed what next assumed the title of patronage of the Crown, and if we add to its political faculties an enlarged bestowal of church preferments, and the advantages derivable from the formation of armies, and other expensive appurtenances of war, we cannot be surprised at finding the influence of the Crown supremely paramount in Parliament. The powerful and comprehensive mind of Lord Chatham was early imbued with the necessity of reforming the constitution in its very heart's core - even the senate itself; and through the intervening period between the conclusion of the American war and the commencement of the French revolution, scarcely a single eminent statesman flourished in Britain who was not equally impressed with the vast importance of this great national object. Fox, when adverting to the all-absorbing topic, in the House of Commons, on the seventh of May, 1783, declared that the English constitution, however admirable when its provisions were justly and fully administered, and containing, as it confessedly did, those essential qualities which admitted of modification and progressive improvement, was, nevertheless, greatly defective as a whole. At that same time too, what said William Pitt? He denounced, in a severe philippic, the potent influence of the crown, which he described as undermining all the embankments of liberty, and exercising a corrupt power sufficiently strong to subdue every patriotic duty and feeling, in breasts bound to sympathise with the wants and wishes of the people. He characterised the House of Commons as at once the creator and creature of boundless corruption. That house, constructed as the palladium of the constitution, framed to protect the rights of the subject, and restrain within just limits the regal and executive power, had become the cradle of an influence which held freedom in chains, and drained the constitution of its vital spirit, however the outward exanimate lineaments might be preserved. The dire calamities generated by the French revolution, and the horror with which its frantic course inspired all rightminded Englishmen, acted as a check on those salutary reforms, antecedently and ardently sought in this country. Humanity paralysed the energies of parliamentary enterprise, silenced the popular orators, and dissipated the desire for correcting abuses previously prevailing even among the aristocracy. So painful, indeed, had the topic of reform become, that it was deemed democratic and indecorous to introduce it even in conversation among the higher classes, to which the members of both the senatorial houses claimed to belong. History, however, per

tains to the nation at large, in its most comprehensive acceptation, and deals not exclusively with any section of society, whether patrician or plebeian!

Turning to the House of Lords, we view the influence of the crown in its native and congenial sphere. The decline of the feudal system gradually changed the nature of baronial service and the duties of allegiance, in England as in other countries; and after the desolating wars of the rival roses had swept away the greater part of the most powerful nobles, Henry the Seventh spared no pains to break the weakened bonds of military vassalage, or, as Lord Bacon expresses it, the "combination of multitudes, and maintenance or headship of great persons." To effect this, scarcely a session passed during his reign without producing some fresh enactment against such practices; and he called all the arbitrary powers of the Star Chamber into unceasing action to punish offenders. Hence, in process of time, the feudal aristocracy became transformed into a court nobility; and the pride of almost independent warriors was exchanged for the vanity of distinguished servitors. This conversion, it will be observed, long preceded the system of gaining over influential members of the House of Commons to the interests of the crown, and the Lords (who, as natural attachés of royalty, paid every deference to its dictates), seem to have been scarcely conscious of their political nobility, until after the restoration of Charles the Second. From the manner in which the House of Peers is constituted and maintained, it is evident that the ascendancy of the crown must there be more potential than even in the lower house. The throne, in England, as elsewhere, is the dispenser of all honours, and may bestow seats in the House of Lords on individuals not entitled by birth to that distinction. It plainly ensues, that the persons receiving such privileges must follow where their benefactors, the ministers, lead; especially in the early stages of their elevation: and that the crown has always deemed it expedient to ensure its domination among the Lords by a certain majority of members of its own making, may be judged from the simple fact, that the number of English Peers, amounting, in 1825, to 318, had been increased, under the rule of George the Third alone, by nearly 200; and that, from the commencement of Pitt's administration in 1784 until 1826, while 42 peerages became extinct, upwards of 170 were new created.

In the formation of the House of Lords, we find 26 Prelates endowed by the crown, with 16 Scotch, and 28 Irish, Peers; who have been elected to the upper house, by the nobility of their respective countries, ever since the union of those lands with England. Most of these representatives, whether clerical or secular, are usually looking forward, far or near, for various gratifications in the gift of government. Prospects, which most ministers well know how to hold out in perspective, but, generally, without committing themselves by positive promises; and thus, in some degree, every expectant becomes an agent of the cabinet.

The double dependence of the Bishops-first on the Archbishops, whom they are bound to obey as their ecclesiastical superintendants, and next on the ministers of the crown, from whom they may receive worldly advancement in the way of translation-has ever caused the commons to cast a jealous eye on their presence in the upper house,

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