The measure of the Chancellor of the Exchequer, of which we have attempted the foregoing explanation, appears to have suggested to John Doyle his sketch of _The Rival Newsmongers_, in which the leading men of all parties are represented in the act of endeavouring to force the sale of their own journals. The scene is supposed to be enacted in front of the Elephant and Castle, where we find the "Union Coach" waiting to take up passengers,--the three who occupy the roof being a Scotchman, indicated by his bonnet and plaid, Paddy by his shocking bad hat, while in the portly, jolly-looking party next him we have no difficulty whatever in recognising honest John Bull. The three are listening to the appeals of O'Connell, close to whom is Mr. Roebuck, and behind him again Mr. Hume. Sir Roger Gresley addresses himself to the insides, and the person holding up his paper to the special notice of John Bull is the Marquis of Londonderry. The driver of the coach is Lord Melbourne, and the ostler little Lord John Russell.
The public man who perhaps of all others earned and deserved his place in the pictorial satires of the nineteenth century was emphatically Brougham. The verdict of posterity on this restless but unquestionably brilliant man of genius must of necessity be a somewhat disappointing one; he aimed at being nothing less than an Admirable Crichton, and such a character in the nineteenth century, when every public man must be more or less talented, more or less brilliant, would be an impossibility even to a genius. A rival lawyer and political opponent, Sir Charles Wetherell is reported to have said of him that he knew a little of everything but law; and although this statement was spiteful and untrue, there is no doubt of the truth of Mr. Greville's remarks, that his duty as Chancellor was confined to appeals which _must_ come before him, lunacy and other matters over which he had sole jurisdiction, and that "nobody ever thought of bringing an original cause into his court."[115] We think we may even go farther than this, and say that no lawyer of the present day would dream of relying on Lord Brougham's decisions. O'Connell said of him, "I pay very little attention to anything Lord Brougham says. He makes a greater number of foolish speeches than any other man of the present generation. There may be more nonsense in some one speech of another person, but in the number, the multitude of foolish speeches, Lord Brougham has it hollow. I would start him ten to one--ay, fifty to one--in talking nonsense against any prattler now living."