into public life. If such a system is permitted,
any foreign monarch or any foreign government may secure the services of
a British senator as his agent and representative. It is quite appalling
to think that the chivalrous Earl of Derby or the conscientious Mr.
Gladstone should be shocked by the offer of a handsome annual salary
paid quarterly, (not deducting the income-tax,) made by the King of
Dahomey for an eloquent defence of his humane and enlightened rule, or
by an equally munificent donative from the famous and merry monarch of
the Cannibal Islands for the support of himself and his loyal subjects
in their copious consumption of human flesh. We should be sorry wantonly
to raise so dreadful a suspicion; but if British M.P.s are permitted,
according to the Roebuck precedent, to be PAID agents, why has not
Southern money found its way into senatorial pockets? Greedy Mr. Laird,
and unscrupulous, money-loving Mr. Lindsay,[A] always resolutely
grubbing for the main chance, are perhaps sufficiently paid by indirect,
though heavy gains in shipbuilding. Needy Mr. Roebuck may be salaried by
the Emperor of Austria, though there is nothing to prove, except his own
open-mouthed and loud-tongued professions of purity, that he is not
"_paid_ agent" of the Confederate Government. The indulgence of the evil
feelings of malice and uncharitableness may, however, sufficiently
recompense him; and to him, perhaps, his virtue may be its own reward.
But if paid agencies are not permitted, a very serious suspicion fastens
on that hard-mouthed, rising lordling, Robert Cecil, son of the Marquis
of Salisbury, and one of the most active and energetic champions of the
slave-mongers of the South. The young lord, it is well known, stepped
down from the lofty pedestal of a bad pedigree to marry the fair, but
portionless daughter of an English judge; his father is proverbially
mean and stingy, and the young lord himself proportionately poor; and in
the intervals of his strenuous advocacy of the claims of the Rebels to
European recognition he laudably ekes out his very narrow income by
writing articles for the London newspapers and reviews; and rumor says
that he communicates gossiping letters, full of piquant and satirical
sketches of the proceedings of the House of Commons to two or three of
the provincial papers. He is under these circumstances peculiarly open
to suspicion. If the proceeding in question is a usual one, why does he
not openly avo