covered, the pseudo-cynic seen through,
and his affected misanthropy deservedly gains for him universal derision
and scorn. Some years after he entered Parliament, Mr. Disraeli, with
whom he had many encounters, in which he was invariably worsted, made
the House roar with laughter by taunting Roebuck with his "Sadler's
Wells sarcasms and melodramatic malignities," and drew a most amusing
picture of him as "a solitary sentinel pacing round the deserted citadel
of his own opinions."

"He who surpasses or subdues mankind
Must look down on the hate of those below";

but as Mr. Roebuck has done neither the one nor the other, his only
chance of not being utterly forgotten, instead of being feared or hated,
by his contemporaries, is to continue his work of mischief, and merely
change the object of his puny attacks as one becomes more prominent than
another, and as he can manage to maintain his own quasi-importance by
attaching his name to great questions. He had no special dislike for
this country; so far from that, he admired and praised us, as by an
extract from one of his books we will presently prove; but since he has
become a self-appointed lackey, has donned imperial livery, and as a
volunteer does the dirty work of despots, he must have lost all sympathy
with and all regard for an independent, free, and brave people. We hope
and believe that this country vastly prefers his censure to his praise,
and, as far as it has leisure at the present crisis for any serious
consideration of his erratic pranks, would rather have his enmity than
his friendship. _Non tali auxilio!_

But we must recur to his inconsistent and rather uninteresting career,
and so satisfy, and perhaps weary, the curiosity of any reader who is
still disposed to ask the momentous question, "Who is Roebuck?"

In 1835, he was appointed the agent--the _paid_ agent--of the House of
Assembly of Lower Canada, during the dispute then raging between the
Executive Government and the House of Assembly. As Englishmen especially
plume themselves on the fact that the members of their legislative
bodies are unremunerated, it is somewhat difficult to understand how
this exception was made in John Arthur's favor. As a precedent it is to
be hoped that it has not been followed; for it is obvious that such an
arrangement, however advantageous or pleasant to individual members,
might throw grave suspicions on the purity of public men, and introduce
a wholesale venality