e devil and shake yourself," and sits
down in the easy chair of salary, and tries to think! Disturbed in his
contemplations by the groans and screams of the famishing, he addresses
the starving multitude from the windows of Downing-street, telling them he
can do nothing for them in a large way, but--the fee he has received to
cure them can afford as much--graciously throwing them fifty pounds from
his private compassion! As a statesman he is powerless; but he has no
objection to subscribe to the Mendicity Society.

It is an old hacknied abuse of NERO, that when Rome was in flame he
accompanied the crackling of doors and rafters with his very best fiddle.
We grant this showed a want of fine sympathy on the part of NERO; there
was, nevertheless, a boldness, an exhibition of nerve, in such
instrumentation. Any way, it leaves us with a higher respect for NERO than
if he had been found playing on the burning Pantheon with a penny squirt.
His mockery of the Romans, bad as it was, was not the mockery of
compassion.

"I will make bread cheap for you," says Sir ROBERT PEEL to the Paisley
sufferers; "I will not enable you to buy the quartern loaf at a reduced
rate by your own industry, but I will treat you to a penny roll, at its
present size, from my own purse." Whereupon the Tories clap their hands
and cry, "What magnanimity!"

What should we say if, on another Pie-lane conflagration of London, the
Minister were to issue an order commanding all the fire-offices to make no
attempt to extinguish the flames, and were then to exclaim to the
sufferers, "My friends, I deeply sympathize with you; but the Phoenix
shall not budge, the Hand-in-Hand mustn't move a finger, the Eagle must
stay where it is; nevertheless, there is a little private fire-engine of
my own at Tamworth; you are heartily welcome to the use of it, and pray
heaven it may put this terrible fire out, and once more make you snug and
comfortable."

Quackery is of more ancient birth than many very honest people suspect;
nay, more than, were the register of its nativity laid before their eyes,
they would be willing to admit. We have no space for its voluminous
history; but it is our belief, since quackery first plied its profitable
trade with human incredulity, it never perpetrated so successful a trick
as that exhibited by Sir ROBERT PEEL in his motion of want of confidence.
The first scene of the farce is only begun. We have seen how Sir ROBERT
has snatched the cards