sternation; that he was violating every sacred duty, and every solemn engagement that bound him to himself, his country, his sovereign, and his God!--Alas, my lords, by what argument could any man hope to reclaim or dissuade a mean, illiberal, and unprincipled minion of authority, induced by his profligacy to undertake, and bound by his avarice and vanity to persevere? He would probably have replied to the most unanswerable arguments, by some curt, contumelious and uumeaning apophthegm, delivered with the fretful smile of irritated self-sufficiency and disconcerted arrogance; or, even if he could be dragged by his fears to a consideration of the question, by what miracle could the pigmy capacity of a stunted pedant be enlarged to a reception of the subject? The endeavour to approach it would have only removed him to a greater distance than he was before! as a little hand that strives to grasp a mighty globe is thrown back by the re-action of its own effort to comprehend. It may be given to a Hale, or a Hardwicke, to discover and retract a mistake; the errors of such men are only specks that arise for a moment upon the surface of a splendid luminary; consumed by its heat, or irradiated by its light, they soon purge and disappear; but the perverseness of a mean and narrow intellect, are like the excrescences that grow upon a body naturally cold and dark: no fire to waste them, and no ray to enlighten, they assimilate and coalesce with those qualities so congenial to their nature, and acquire an incorrigible permanency in the union with kindred frost and kindred opacity. Nor indeed, my lords, except where the interest of millions can be affected by the folly or the vice of an individual, need it be much regretted, that, to things not worthy of being made better, it hath not pleased Providence to afford the privilege of improvement. DESCRIPTION of the BALLOT BY BEANS. BUT, my lords, it seems all these defects in point of accusation, of defence, of trial and of judgment, as the ingenious gentlemen have argued, are cured by the magical virtue of those beans, by whose agency the whole business must be conducted. If the law had permitted a single word to be exchanged between the parties, the learned counsel confess that much difficulty might arise in the events which I have stated; but they have found out that all these difficulties are prevented or removed by the beans and the ballot. According to these gentlemen, we are to suppose one of those unshaven demagogues, whom the learned counsel have so humourously described, rising in the commons when the name of alderman James is sent down; he begins by throwing out a torrent of seditious invective against the servile profligacy and liquorish venality of the board of aldermen-this he does by beans :— having thus previously inflamed the passions of his fellows, and somewhat exhausted his own, his judgment collects the reins that floated on the neck of his imagination, and he becomes grave, compressed, sententious, and didactic; he lays down the law of personal disability, and corporate criminality, and corporate forfeiture, with great precision, with sound emphasis and good discretion, to the great delight and ́edification of the assembly--and this he does by beans.He then proceeds, my lords, to state the specific charge against the unfortunate candidate for approbation, with all the artifice of malignity and accusation; scalding the culprit in tears of affected pity, bringing forward the blackness of imputed guilt through the varnish of simulated commiseration; bewailing the horror of his crime, that he may leave it without excuse; and invoking the sympathy of his judges, that he may steel them against compassion-and this, my lords, the unshaved demagogue doth by beans. The accused doth not appear in person, for he cannot leave his companions, nor by attorney, for his attorney could not be admitted-but he appears and defends by beans. At first,. humble and deprecatory, he conciliates the attention of his judges to his defence, by giving them to hope that it may be without effect; he does not alarm them by any indiscreet assertion that the charge is false, but he slides upon them arguments to shew it improbable; by degrees, however, he gains upon the assembly, and denies and refutes, and recriminates and retorts-all by beans,-until at last he challenges his accuser to a trial, which is accordingly had, in the course of which the depositions are taken, the facts tried, the legal doubts exposed and explained-by beans ;-and in the same manner the law is settled with an exactness and authority that reinains a record of jurisprudence, for the information of future ages; while at the same time the "harmony" of the metropolis is attuned by the marvellous temperament of jarring discord; and the "good will" of the citizens is secured by the indissoluble bond of mutual crimination, and reciprocal abhorrence. By this happy mode of decision, one hundred and fortysix causes of rejection (for of so many do the commons consist, each of whom must be entitled to allege a distinct cause) are tried in the course of a single day with satisfaction to all parties. With what surprise and delight must the heart of the fortunate inventor have glowed, when he discovered those wonderful instruments of wisdom and of eloquence, which, without being obliged to commit the precious extracts of science, or persuasion, to the faithless and fragile vehicles of words or phrases, can serve every process of composition or abstraction of ideas, and every exigency of discourse or argumentation, by the resistless strength and infinite variety of beans, white, or black, or boiled, or raw; displaying all the magic of their powers in the mysterious exertion; of dumb investigation, and mute discussion; of speechless objection, and tongue-tied refutation! : Nor should it be forgotten, my lords, that this noble discovery does no little honour to the sagacity of the present age, by explaining a doubt that has for so many centuries perplexed the labour of philosophic enquiry; and furnishing the true reason why the pupils of Pythagoras were prohibited the use of beans it cannot, I think, my lords, be doubted, that the great author of the`metempsychosis found out that those mystic powers of persuasion, which vulgar naturalists supposed to remain lodged in minerals, or fossils, had really transmigrated into beans; and he could not, therefore, but see that it would have been fruitless to preclude his disciples from mere oral babbling, unless he had also debarred them from the indulgence of vegetable loquacity. DESCRIPTION OF THE PENSION LIST. THIS polyglot of wealth, this museum of curiosities, the pension list, embraces every link in the human chain, every description of men, women, and children, from the exalted excellence of a Hawke or a Rodney, to the debased situation of the lady who humbleth herself that she may be exalted. But the lessons it inculcates form its greatest perfection : it teacheth, that sloth and vice may eat that bread which virtue and honesty may starve for after they had earned it. It teaches the idle and dissolute to look up for that support which they are too proud to stoop and earn. It directs the minds of men to an entire reliance on the ruling power of the state, who feed the ravens of the royal aviary, that cry continually for food. It teaches them to imitate those saints on the pension list that are like the lilies of the field-they toil not, neither do they spin, and yet are arrayed like Solomon in his glory. In fine, it teaches a lesson which indeed they might have learned from Epictetus--that it is sometimes good not to be over virtuous: it shews, that in proportion as our distresses increase, the munificence of the crown increases also in proportion as our clothes are rent, the royal mantle is extended over us. But notwithstanding that the pension list, like charity, covers a multitude of sins, give me leave to consider it as coming home to the members of this house-give me leave to say, that the crown, in extending its charity, its liberality, its profusion, is laying a foundation for the independence of parliament; for hereafter, instead of orators or patriots accounting for their conduct to such mean and unworthy persons as freeholders, they will learn to despise them, and look to the first man in the state, and they will by so doing have this security for their independence, that while any man in the kingdom has a shilling they will not want one. . ANTICIPATION OF THE CONSEQUENCES TO IRELAND OF AN UNION WITH GREAT Britain. I AM sorry to think it is so very easy to conceive, that in case of such an event the inevitable consequence would be, AN UNION WITH GREAT BRITAIN. And if any one desires |