To little purpose would my Lord John remind his party that he was going to do every thing for every body--to plunder the parsons and pay the priests--to swamp the constitution and upset the church--respectable people would take time to look at his papers; they would see that he was an active little busy man, accustomed to do the whole work of a family single-handed; that he was in many respects attentive and industrious, but had a following of low Irish acquaintances whom he let into the house on every occasion, and that then nothing escaped them--they smashed the furniture, broke the looking-glasses, and kicked up a regular row: for this he was discharged, receiving all wages due.
And then, instead of suffering long-winded panegyrics from the member for Tiverton, how easily would the matter be comprehended in one line--"a good servant, lively, and intelligent, but self-sufficient, and apt to take airs. Turned off for quarrelling with the French valet next door, and causing a difference between the families."
Then again, how decisively the merits of a certain ex-chancellor might be measured in reading--"hired as butler, but insisted on cleaning the carriage, and scratched the panels; would dress the dinner, and spoiled the soup and burned the sauce; never attended to his own duties, but spent his time fighting with the other servants, and is in fact a most troublesome member of a household. He is, however, both smart and intelligent, and is allowed a small pension to wait on company days."
Trust me, this plan, if acted on--and I feel it cannot be long neglected--will do more to put pretension on a par with desert, than all the adjourned debates that waste the sessions; it would save a world of unblushing self-praise and laudation, and protect the country from the pushing impertinence of a set of turned-off servants.
A NUT FOR THE LANDLORD AND TENANT COMMISSION.
Every one knows the story of the man who, at the penalty of losing his head in the event of failure, promised the caliph of Bagdad that he would teach his ass to read in the space of ten years, trusting that, ere the time elapsed, either the caliph, or the ass, or he himself, would die, and the compact be at an end. Now, it occurs to me that the wise policy of this shrewd charlatan is the very essence of all parliamentary commissions. First, there is a grievance--then comes a debate--a very warm one occasionally, with plenty of invective and accusation on both sides--and then they agree to make a drawn game of it, and appoint "a Commission."