to the new parliament! This was a sad blow to Joseph. All the money which he had paid for the seat was literally thrown away, and he was publicly exhibited in a truly ridiculous point of view besides. In the words of the Vulgate, he might have exclaimed, had he known the Latin, or indeed any language but the Hindoostanee (which knowledge itself is dubious): "Ego autem Hume-iliatus sum nimis!" From that moment Joseph became at heart a Radical Reformer-the sworn enemy of close boroughs, and unwearied opponent of abuses-for the abuse had touched his own pocket! Upon such slender hinges do events of importance sometimes turn. We can imagine the rage with which Joe went forth, his seat and his money both gone, and tearing his hair, like Lear burlesqued, exclaimed: "Strike flat the thick rotundity of the world! Crack nature's moulds, all germins spill at once, I tax not you, ye elements, with unkindness, Removed from parliament, Joseph was by no means inactive. He became an assiduous member of the central committee which was then engaged in multiplying the Lancasterian schools, and recommended in a pamphlet the plan for the establishment of saving's banks, which was subsequently adopted with great advantage to the working classes. In the Court of East India Proprietors he also contended for freedom of trade. Six years were thus passed, when at the general election which took place in 1818, Mr. Hume was returned to parliament by his native town of Montrose; and he was re-elected in the following year after a very severe struggle. Here commences Joseph Hume's career as a Radical Reformer. The House was astounded at the quondam Tory's declaration in favour of democracy; but Joseph, had he been acquainted with the writings of Cicero, might, we suppose, have clenched them with "Possum falli ut Hume-anus!" Since that year, he has scarcely been for a week out of the public sight, at least during the sittings of parliament. There is scarcely a page of the legislative records, since 1818, that has not his name recorded upon it in one shape or another. He has mixed himself up in every skirmish, and had a finger in every pie. His dogged, callous, unwearied, monotonous perseverance-his tough, rhinoceros hide, impenetrable as his head, his insensibility of ridicule, and indifference to defeat, have overborne all opposition, and reconciled the House to him at last as a necessary evil. Metaphors are murdered, and tropes traduced without end-the unfortunate vernacular is uncouthly and barbarously mangled-the "well of English undefiled," is choked up with mud and garbage-still Joseph proceeds with his financial expositions, year after year repeating the diabolical dose, as unwearied as if he were encircled by a ravished auditory "And coolly spouts, and spouts, and spouts away, In one weak, washy, everlasting flood!" There is probably not a man in either House of Parliament, who has individually spoken so much in his senatorial capacity as Hume. Reader, do you expect that we should give you an account of all this? An olla-podrida, a perpetual gallimaufry-Heaven forbid! No change of seasons-no change of measures or of men, ever brought change to him. Humus is not to be met with in the accusative case. There is no such thing as Hume-mum ! His voluntarily imposed labours in ferreting out abuses, and reducing in every quarter the public expenditure, have presented him very often on the same day of each successive Parliament, making the same identical motion, until the process of trituration, through sheer pertinacity has been at length successful. Like a monotonous Highland piper, he has kept elbowing and blowing away at the one single tune, with the same heavy and stolid aspect, until the wished-for halfpenny or farthing was thrown to him at last, as the easiest way to get rid of the annoyBut, as Ennius sings, ance. "Crassus calamo quòd pendeat Humor," Still to his bagpipes sticks the stolid Hume! and the moment he has done with "Bannocks o' Barley-meal," you are sure to hear him about half a step in advance, striking up "Cauld kail in Aberdeen." If he is not kept close in the other world, he will be sure to bring forward a motion suggesting some cheaper mode of supplying Belzebub's gridirons! Amidst a great deal of blundering, Hume has undeniably effected much good, being, thereanent "Like the toad, ugly and venomous," yet bearing still "a precious jewel," not in his head, for that we should have at no price, but in his unwearied assiduity, and unflinching pertinacity, which have, in many instances, successfully cut down a profligate or useless expenditure, and thrown abundance of Parliamentary light upon matters, which others would not have had the patience to ransack. During several sessions after his second return to Parliament, he applied himself to the imperfect manner in which the financial accounts of the government were laid before the House; and in 1822 he obtained a select committee to inquire into the public accounts. That committee reported on the 31st July, and ministers were obliged to admit that the "prevailing form of the accounts neither did nor could exhibit any balance between the income and expenditure," so that frauds to an immense extent might be committed without the possibility of detection. During the whole of the war with France, from 1793 to 1815, when upwards of a hundred millions were raised in a single year, no balance was ever brought forward, and consequently Parliament had no means of telling whether the balance at the disposal of ministers was five shillings, or five millions of pounds sterling. From the date of this report the annual finance accounts have been accurately framed, the balances being stated, and carried forward to the next year's account. For this, and for his exertions in overthrowing the sinking-fund-system, we pronounce Joseph a financial doctor emeritus. Whatever may have been his motives, and arrantly as he may have blundered, he has here performed useful services, the which we readily acknowledge, though we cannot go the length of his partisans in saying that, if we include with these his other successful motions for retrenchment and reduction, in pensions, sinecures, and salaries, he has realized a saving to the country of "two millions a-year in peace, and five millions a-year in war.' This, like the staple manufacture of the Irish borough which Hume now represents, is "just blarney, my honey !" Joe has certainly effected a considerable saving; but it is not his fault that he did not effect ten times a greater, to the crippling and utter destruction of what he himself calls "all oor estoblishments, ceevil, nevvle, an' meelitary !" The truth and the secret of the whole matter is, that Joseph is a financial monomaniac, and that his patriotic pertinacity resolves itself into irresistible impulse. The fame which he thus acquired naturally produced great popularity. The cities of London, Edinburgh, Gloucester, and several others, presented him with their freedom; and in 1824 he was elected, and re-elected in the following year, to the Rectorship of the University of Aberdeen. It were pleasant to inquire of how much of the academical course Joseph possessed even a smattering! In 1830, he was returned to parliament by the electors of Middlesex, and reelected the following year. The Metropolitan county, thus wrung out of the hands of the Conservatives, only served to redouble their exertions in the registration courts, and they had their révanche at the election which took place in August, 1837, when he was unseated, after a violent contest. Virgil seems to have foreshadowed this event: Procumbit Humi * Hume-ctat flumine vultum ! He was, however, immediately elected, through O'Connell's agency, for Kilkenny. His mental qualities undoubtedly suited him much better for the representation of an Irish bog than of the great metropolitan county. During the entire of his parliamentary career, extending over nearly a quarter of a century, during which he has given vent to what would fill several folio volumes, it is incredible that he should never have given utterance to one single thing that deserves to be remembered, with the exception of his blunders, many of which were of the most ludicrous description. The "tottle of the whole," is no exaggeration-it is Joe's habitual pronunciation. The House was once especially noisy during the delivery of one of his noisome harangues. "Mr. Speaker," he said, "I do not -'lay the flattering ointment to my chest,' AA 2 that my statements are agreeable to hon. members opposite !" But the most memorable of all his declarations was that which he made in 1832, during the discussion upon the Russian Dutch loan, when he said: "I will vote black is white, to keep in the present ministers!" We shall suffer his reputation for integrity to rest upon the Greek scrip affair, when his parliamentary declaration, confirmed by the vote which followed it, coming after his previous protestation in favour of the oppressed Greeks, was absolutely "voting black is white," or rather, it was the blackest vote in the annals of legislation; it was in truth "For Greeks a blush, for Greece a tear!" Ridicule and sarcasm unmeasured have assailed Mr. Hume without intermission at every step of his parliamentary progress, but without "phizzing" upon his unimpressible rhinoceros hide: like another well-known economist:- "Still hath he borne it with a patient shrug, For sufferance is the badge of all his tribe!" His intellectual conformation is of a very common-place order. He is totally deficient in concentration-comprehensiveness-even in ordinary clearness of perception. Had he been more highly gifted, however, he would have been unfitted for the vocation in which he has so sedulously laboured, that of a ferreter of financial abuses-the weariest work that ever man engaged in. Sisyphus rolling the stone up the hill is nothing to it; the Danaides vainly seeking to fill their perforated tubs is the only fitting type,-as Tacitus says: Upon May-day, in the year of grace 1839, a public dinner took place at the Crown and Anchor Tavern, Sir Edward Codrington in the chair, when a tea-service was presented to Mr. Hume, in attestation of his "eminent public services." About two hundred Radicals assembled on that occasion That Mr. Hume's character is not held in the highest estimation by the members of the House of Commons, may be inferred from the fact that, at one of the preliminary meetings, Mr. Vigors, M.P., stated that he had applied to a number of English members of Parliament, but found an unaccountable coolness amongst them! The crest on the plate should have been a Greek scrip, and the motto: "I'll vote black is white to keep in the present ministry!" His tremendous ignorance of the most elementary principles of finance was trenchantly exposed at the end of the session before the last, by one who was only less of a dabbler than himself-Mr. Spring Rice. His connexion with the Canadian conspirators-his wicked and treasonable advice to them-and his recent opposition to Lord Seaton's grant, were all characteristic features-the very in-HUMEation of all that is upright and honourable. But what cared Joseph, though Lord Seaton, unlike his own colonial residence, had not laid up one farthing to support the dignified possession of that peerage which he had earned so well. Unsparing as that Shylock to whom we have before referred as his prototype, his resolve was this: "The pound of flesh is mine, and I will have it?" He was for years the confidential correspondent and intimate friend of Mackenzie, "a traitor of the name of Mackenzie," as John Russell styled him-and the ebullition of monkey courage called forth cheers. A more profligate and cowardly traitor than the said Mackenzie never existed. This bosom friend of the immaculate Joseph, after filling the whole population of the United States with disgust, was at length, for his seditious practices, consigned for eighteen months to the quiet meditation of a republican dungeon. Up to the hour of his attempt to fire the town of Toronto, and massacre Sir Francis Head with the rest of the loyal inhabitants, Josephus was Mackenzie's regular correspondent, "Shake off the baneful dominion of Great Britain," was his cuckoo-cry; and, but for his friendly votes in sustainment of Whig corruption, Joe's house in Bryanstone Square would have been undoubtedly searched for the treasonable correspondence which it was known to contain, and himself put upon his trial as an arch traitor. A rumour to that effect was circulated about town at the period. But Joe's neck was fortuitously saved-and so let that pass! His snarl at Sir John Colborne, a few weeks since, on the occasion of Lord John Russell introducing his bill for the union of the two Canadas, was worthy of the Sir John Colborne, he averred, had produced the rebellion. How? By man. arresting the heads of the conspiracy! He had the face further to declare, that Colborne should have been dismissed from his command. But Sir Henry Hardinge applied the "cat" to his back with all the gusto of an old and determined drummer, and left a mark there which will not soon be effaced. This unwearied skinner of flints hath immortalised himself by launching into economic existence the pigmy race of fourpenny pieces-the curse of cabmen, and the horror of flunkies, which were issued in accordance with his representations, for which Joe stood sponsor, and which bear his name, in a judiciously abbreviated form. To all future time, the Joey shall remain, not a standing, but a circulating memorial of this prolific father of economic reform. His great present object is to cause the British Museum and National Gallery, and of course every other exhibition in London, to be opened for the admission of the public on Sundays; and thereanent the saints have liberally stigmatised him as Heathen Hume, and the Infidel Member for Kilkenny. He is literally "all things to all men." When he represented a Scottish constituency, he knew none but Scottish interests. When he represented Middlesex, he was 66 English to the back bone;" and now he is an Irish Repealer, ready, by his own admission, "to vote black is white, to keep in the present Ministers." Let no man be surprised at the motion which he hath now on the tapis for desecrating the Sabbath, by admitting the Cockneys upon that day to all the sights of the metropolis. Throughout a somewhat long life, he hath been actuated by but one consistent worship-the worship of the expediency of the hour! dially can we exclaim with Quintilian Hume-ilem sequitur contemptus!" How cor Our friend Joe's reputation as an economist is pretty well established; but, lo! a young (politically young) rival has recently started up in the person of Colonel Sibthorp. Who reduced the Prince's apanage? Of that honour Joe is shorn, and Sib is the possessor. Not long since, the member for Kilkenny threw out a hint to the Colonel, that "two of a trade can never agree." Mutual jealousy will, we have no doubt, enforce an anxious discharge of duty; and if we have Joe reducing the army estimates by disallowing the item for soap, of which he does not see the necessity-how could he, whom Cicero has painted : we shall, probably, have the Gallant Colonel," the knight of the woful countenance," tilting at the weather-beaten windmills in the neighbourhood of Greenwich Hospital, and cutting the buttons off the poor old pensioner's coats. We have been struck with the singular applicability to the subject of this sketch, of a couple of verses from "The Boys of Kilkenny," which we very slightly alter thus: In the town of Kilkenny there runs a dull sthrame, Like a dish of ripe strawberries, smothered in crhame! His eye-sight is dark as Kilkenny's black coal; His enlightened constituents fill its black hole; His mind as its thick river bottom is pure, And his head is more hard than its marble, I'm sure! EPIGRAM. QUOTH Tom to Cruikshanks t'other day, Pray look at me--I still am grave:" Quoth George: "I'm still a graver !” E. ON BETTY TURNED TEETOTALLER. Total Abstinence boasts quite miraculous merits; T. A PROTEUS IN POLITICS :-"The sweet and bitter fool In motley here!"-KING LEAR. Faith, there has been much "Many wearing rapiers are afraid of goose-quills! to do on both sides, and the Nation holds it no sin to tarre them on to controversy." "We'll e'en to't like French falconers, fly at any thing we see."-HAMLET. The Victorian age will be as celebrated as the Elizabethan. It will live in the minds of all posterity as the age of P.'s-of party peddling, parliamentary prate, poetical poverty, and pretentious puffing, The least, yet greatest, of European sovereigns, is about to become the mother of a leviathan. Her offspring will be the Prince of Wales! The House of Commons will speedily rival the American Congress. Debates of a week's duration are now the fashion. Tourist-members may hear the opening speech, take a turn on the Parisian Boulevards, thence digress to the Rhine, come home by the Rotterdam steamer, and still be in time for the division. Now in the press, and will be issued in the course of the ensuing seven or eight months, an interesting little pocket edition of the celebrated Lardner Cuckolopædia. ON THE PRINCE CONSORT'S FALL FROM HORSEBACK. Which foaled' you thus without remorse.' Quoth he, "I will!"-Quoth she, "You wont The grey mare is the better horse!"" In consequence of the above "untoward event," we are informed that, at the grand review, which took place at the Home Park, dur by ing Easter week, the Prince was, her Majesty's express command, strapped down upon his saddle. "Pray, why's our Foreign Sec. called "Cupid?" |