ployment. Lord Grey did not think him entitled to a Peerage, and his colleagues pronounce him best qualified for the chair of the Commons. They would not send him up to the Lords, but as he finds his way into the Commons, his pre-eminent merits are said to entitle him to preside in it.

Lord Althorp stated that when he found Mr Manners Sutton again returned, he saw the great advantages which must result [query, to the Tory party] from replacing him in the chair, and he marvelled, or was, according to his own Abigail phrase, "really quite astonished" that any gentleman could differ from him.

Let us pause here to compassionate the state of honest Lord Althorp's mind while the return of this man of pre-eminent merit to the new Parliament was yet a matter of doubt. How uneasy must have been his thoughts while it was possible that the Reformed House might lack the presence, and with it the presidency, of this trancendantly qualified Tory. And how did he act under these anxious circumstances? Did he offer him (pardon the soft impeachment) any one of the new nomination boroughs,-did he tender him the representation of Chatham, which sounds not unapt for a Speaker? Or would he, could he have allowed the door of the House to be closed against this man so incomparably qualified to fill its chair? Were such rare, such unmatched merits to be lost to Parliament, or left to the chance of loss? If they

are of such inestimable service in the House, how must Lord Althorp have trembled while they were out of the House!- what must have been his agony during the Cambridge election, and how fervent his prayers for the success of this precious Tory and unique Chairman! But on our lives we believe that honest Lord Althorp was as insensible to all these considerations as Launce's dog. We don't believe that he would have moved a finger to procure the return of the only man for the chair ; nay more, had he had a casting vote at Cambridge, he would have given it against the pattern of Speakers; and would have been perfectly content to see Mr Abercrombie in his present place.

LORD ALTHORP A THEORIST.

NOTHING Comes more readily to foolish, ignorant people than a sneer at theorists, and yet they are eternally theorizing, and most dogmatically, without knowing it.

Lord Althorp, who is so leading a personage, so solid, so free from any levity, so approved of judgment that he is President of the Cattle Shows, as well as, by the grace of his Majesty, leader of the House of Commons-Lord Althorp, so vene

rated as he is, is theorist à la folie. People stare to hear this, but we can easily make it manifest.

His Lordship has explained, that by the finality of the Reform he did not mean that there should be no other Reforms, but no other Constitutional Reforms,

"Do I mean to say, because I used those words, "that the Reform of Parliament itself is final-that "no other Reform was to be introduced, and that no advantages whatever were to accrue from it?

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Certainly not. I considered it final, and I sup"ported it as final as far as regarded the Consti"tution of the House itself, and as a means by "which to effect other improvements and other "Reforms."

Thus, before the working of the measure had been seen, before its efficiency for the end proposed had been demonstrated, his Lordship had determined that it should be final! This, we repeat, is theory to a folly, unless indeed Lord Althorp feels conscious of the immediate inspiration of Minerva, and claims the positiveness of unerring wisdom. Had Lord Althorp ever a tight shoe? (We beg the simplicity of our instances may be excused, for when we address ourselves to Ministers it is necessary to make things very plain.) Again, therefore, we ask, had Lord Althorp ever a tight shoe? He says, yes: now we don't want to know the story of it, and the when and where, but simply to ask him whether he accepted it as a final

shoe, or whether he sent it back to be stretched, or flung it, as one might be excused for doing, to one who wears no shoe, having a foot like the beasts on whose fat and shapes Lord Althorp sits in supreme judgment? He walked in the shoe as if he would walk on egg-shells without crushing them; his soul was in his foot, all his sensibilities seemed bundled up and crushed in calf-skin, his eyes were ready to weep for his toes, his blood rose against the maker, he cursed the last in his bitterness of spirit, and resolved it should be no last, no final measure, for him. Now let us see him confronted with the shoemaker, let him point out with a fond and tender touch the precise place where the accursed thing pinched his dear flesh, and imagine the shoemaker resolutely to reply" My Lord, when I "cut out the leather of that shoe for your foot, I "intended it to be final, and sent it home to you

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as final, or finished, and I am determined not to "make any alteration in it. It ought to satisfy.

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you, and will, if you have a reasonable foot; the "measure is a very large one, and in short it must "fit you, for I resolved, when I made it, that you "should have no other."-" What!" cries the Lord, "must not I, who wear it, know best where the "shoe pinches, and have I not a right to have my "shoes made as I think proper?"-" Not at my

shop," replies the fashionable tradesman, with a civil bow, but a confident air. "If your Lordship wants to put your feet in barges, and dislo

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"cate your ankles, you must find another to serve

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you. The shoe is finished, final: I will never "change or alter it. I never was out in my "measure."

Now we do suppose that a constitution is a nicer thing to make than a shoe, and that a Minister might have more doubts about the fitness of the one for a people, than a shoemaker of the fitness of the other for a particular foot, and he must be a prodigious theorist or a demi-god, the rashest of speculators or the wisest of beings, who says of an untried measure, "This shall be, and there shall be no fault and no change in it."

THE IRISH COERCION ACT.

WHEN we styled Mr Stanley the Secretary at War with Ireland, it was not without presage of the extremities to which his distempered counsels were hurrying on the Ministry. More powers and more powers will be demanded, till no powers remain. The defeat of all the resources of a mighty government is in process. The demonstration of what cannot be done against a people is about to be worked out; and to make the example the more