gton, or to the ermined judge who presides in the
courts of our Lady the Queen in Westminster Hall."

This in 1849; but what a very different tone has he thought fit to adopt
now! Was any agency then expected which has not been forthcoming? Or,
having degenerated from being a supporter of liberal opinions in his
youth to being the fond and fatuous admirer of autocrats in his old age,
does he think that it is absolutely necessary that the firm friend of
Austrian despotism should be the malignant assailant of the Government
and people of the United States? The man is consistent in nothing but
his spiteful vindictiveness and love of mischief. He is now the general
object of deserved ridicule and contempt for his flunkyistic attendance
at the Tuileries. At the time of Louis Napoleon's visit to London,
Roebuck raved and ranted about his "perjured lips having kissed the
Queen of England."

He has, on some occasions, put himself prominently forward, and in such
a way as to make himself an influential member of Parliament. He moved
the vote of confidence in the Whig Government in 1850, when the great
debate ensued in which the late Sir Robert Peel made his last speech,
and they were kept in office by a poetical majority of nine. But the
speech with which Roebuck introduced the motion was entirely eclipsed by
the magnificent declamation of Sir Alexander Cockburn, the present
Lord-Chief-Justice of England. On another great occasion, in January,
1855, he brought forward in the House of Commons a motion for inquiry
into the conduct of the Crimean War. Lord Aberdeen's Government was
defeated by an immense majority, and, of course, resigned. Mr. Roebuck
was chairman of the Committee of Inquiry; but the cabinet that came in
discreetly declined to give him any official post in their ranks. They
knew too well the terrible uncertainty and inconsistency of the man's
conduct. They could place no reliance either on his temper or his
discretion. In 1855 he was one of the numerous candidates for the
chairmanship of the Metropolitan Board of Works, but failed to inspire
the electors with any confidence in his capacity for the post. In the
following year he became the chairman of the Administrative Reform
Association, and although the league had at first been highly
successful, and aided much in awaking public attention to the
miscarriages and mismanagement in the Crimea, yet, under this fatal
presidency, it became speedily and ingloriously de