vity.

Again, I make this statement on the faith of Lord Shaftesbury, who
pronounced it before their Lordships in the Upper House:--"It is no
uncommon thing to buy and sell them. There is a regular traffic in them;
and through the agency of certain women, not the models of their sex,
you can get any quantity of them you want." Last of all, on the same
high authority, we are told of their perfect inutility, "since there is
nothing that they do could not be better done by a machine."

I resist, as I say, all temptations of this kind, and simply address
myself to the one point of similarity between them which illustrates the
theory with which I have started--and now to state this as formally as
I am able. Let me declare that in all the varied employments of life
I have never met with men who have the same dread of their possible
successors as sweeps and statesmen. The whole aim and object of each
is directed, first of all, to keep those who do their work as little
as possible, well knowing that the time will come when these small
creatures will find the space too confined for them, and set up for
themselves.

A volume might be written on the subtle artifices adopted to keep them
"little"--the browbeatings, the insults, the crushing cruelties, the
spare diet intermixed with occasional stimulants, the irregular hours,
and the heat and confinement of the sphere they work in. Still, nature
is stronger than all these crafty contrivances. The little sweep will
grow into the big sweep, and the small under-sec. will scratch his way
up to the Cabinet I will not impose on my reader the burden of carrying
along with him this double load. I will address myself simply to one
of these careers--the Statesman's. It is a strange but a most
unquestionable fact, that no other class of men are so ill-disposed to
those who are the most likely to succeed them--not of an Opposition,
for that would be natural enough, but of their own party, of their
own colour, of their own rearing. Let us be just: when a man has long
enjoyed place, power, and pre-eminence, dispensed honours and pensions
and patronage, it is not a small trial to discover that one of those
little creatures he has made--whose first scraper and brush he himself
paid for--I can't get rid of the sweep out of my head--will turn
insolently on him and declare that he will no longer remain a
subordinate, but go and set up for himself. This is excessively hard,
and might try the temper