duced? The yeomanry, of which they had not the patronage. But what have they increased? The army, the navy, the legal situations, the commissions, and some of the public offices of which they have the control; and not content with this, they have made new modes of employing partisans, as we have before described, in every part of the country. We hear of retrenchments. We ask, what they have retrenched? Certainly not the public expenditure; perhaps their own duties. Of the expenditure it is only needful to say, that for the year 1838 it will be nearly fifty-three millions; just about four millions more than for the year 1835. We have no hesitation whatever in declaring that the expense of carrying on the Government at this present moment, independently, of course, of the charge for interest on the National Debt, is considerably more than in 1822 when a motion was brought forward impeaching the Liverpool administration. Lord Londonderry then stated that expense to be L.18,000,000 per annum; a sum less than is at present yearly devoted to our establishments. If the Whigs have neglected to retrench this enormous charge, they have failed not from want of good examples. Mr Pitt abolished 416 places, with salaries of L.275,748, and all these unconnected with the collection of the revenue, while he created only 197, with salaries of L.77,000. In the revenue department, though compelled to increase taxation with the progress of the war, and so to extend also the number of places in the excise and customs, he yet, with a rigid hand, curtailed every unnecessary expense, and abolished in the salt department alone five hundred places. How does it happen that the Reforming Ministers we are now blessed with have not attempted to do likewise? Lord John Russell enumerates under the following several heads the various means of exerting crown influence.† I. The Collection of the Revenue. II. The Civil List and the Subordinate Offices of Civil Government. III. The Colonies. IV. The Army, Navy, Ordnance, &c. • Rose on the influence of the Crown. V. The Law. VI. The Church. VII. The Influence of Honours. All these things still exist, and are still used by the Government for their political and party purposes. If they afforded such ground for jealousy and suspicion in 1822, how does it happen that now, when each several department is increased in its operation on the independence of Parliament, when there are more placemen than ever, that we hear no murmur from the Constitutional Whigs, and catch no whisper of regret or anxiety? How does it happen that we find in the Navy List the names of young persons, in command of vessels, who are notorious for nothing but relationship to Whig partisans ? Among the most recent promotions we find the Hon. Henry Keppell, Edward Stanley, the Hon. Joseph Denman, the Hon. By. ron Cary, the Hon. Frederick Pelham, the Hon. Dudley Pelham, Thomas Eden, Adam Camperdown Duncan, Granville Lock, William Henry Quin, Robert Otway, Lord Francis Russell, George Elliot, Lord Henry Russell, the Hon. Edward Howard, the Hon. Edward Plunkett, Edward Troubridge, the Hon. Charles Elliot, the Hon. Admiral Elliot, and very many more Twysdens, D'Eyncourts, Pagets, Beauclerks, Carnacs, Codringtons, Greys, &c. &c.—whose names alone sufficiently and satisfactorily account for the display of Ministerial interest in their welfare. On glancing at the list of flag-officers employed, we find only twelve, and of that small number the following approved Whigs: Lord Amelius Beauclerk, uncle of the Duke of St Albans. Sir Robert Otway, uncle of the Member for Tipperary. Sir Charles Paget, brother of Lord Sir John Ommany, the defeated Whig Hon. D. Bouverie, brother of the Among the commanders of the ships + Lord John Russell on English Government, p. 401, 356 Whig-Radical Corruption. We in commission, are a few equally dis- Britannia, 120 guns, Captain Dundas. Champion, 18 guns, Commander G. Charybdis, 3 guns, Hon. Robert Gore. Columbine, 16 guns, George Elliot. Hastings, 74 guns, Captain Loch. Pearl, 20 guns, Lord Clarence Paget. Rover, 18 guns, Commander Eden. Royalist, 10 guns, Hon. E. Plunkett. man. Talbot, 28 guns, Captain Codrington. The promotion of most of these fortunate and Liberal gentlemen has been singularly rapid, and their employment almost constant and unceasing. The vessels they command form no inconsiderable portion of the whole naval force in commission; and if so, how few ships remain for the veterans who fought for their country before many of these "honourables" were born! Truly, Lord Minto has "reformed" the naval service in a peculiar and effectual manner; he has introduced a degree of patronage and favouritism never attempted before ; a system which, if it had been acted on during the war, would have consigned the bulwarks of the nation to inexperienced hands, and probably [Sept. have ruined not only the service, but the cause it was required to defend. friended Nelsons, Collingwoods, and It was not by such a system the unRodneys, gained the opportunities of winning fame. But tempora mutantur; we now play at war on the coast of Spain, and it requires no heroes to win bloodless victories. Nelson was not more fitted to conquer at Trafalgar, or Wellington at Waterloo, than at Barcelona, or General Evans at any defeated Whig candidate is now Fontarabia and Irun. An attack on a Sardinian schooner, or a grand movement against a few Carlist guerillas, is all that is expected nowadays perfectly right, therefore, that Minifrom our navy and our legions; it is sters should prove that they consider that any one can execute tasks so mighty and important. We might proceed to examine in detail other departments, but we refrain from doing so. We have mensubject of Whig- Radical corruption, tioned enough to call attention to the and we trust that another Session of Parliament will not be allowed to pass without the extortion from the Ministry of a complete list of all the new places created since 1830, the persons filling them, and the salaries apportioned to each. It will be found by such returns, that under the pretence tion, the amount of Government paof extending the system of centralizatronage has been augmented more than in any preceding eight years during will be seen that every charge formerthe whole history of the country. It ly levelled by the Whigs for factious purposes, and with fraudulent professions against their political opponents, applies now with redoubled force to themselves, and strikes them severely with a back-handed blow. For instance, it used to be the Whig practice to select certain families for invidious notice, and hold them up to public odium, by representing them as gorging with ill-gotten gains. But fastened on numerous places, and we ask if ever a family thus made the object of vituperation, displayed equal to the Whig families of Grey, a nepotism and grasping selfishness of the Greys in places once went the Elliot, Adam, or Ponsonby? A list though Dr Grey, Bishop of Hereford, round of the papers, and even now, is dead, and Earl Grey and Mr Ed ward Ellice have retired from office, makes a tolerable appearance. We may mention as specimens of these patriots, Viscount Howick, Secretary at War; Hon. Colonel Grey, commanding 71st Regiment; Hon. John Grey, Rector of the rich royal living of Wooler; Hon. Frederick Grey, Under-Secretary of the War Department; Sir George Grey, Under-Secretary in the Colonial Department; Hon. Francis Grey, Rector, with a valuable living; Hon. Harry Grey, Aide-de-camp in Ireland; Hon. Sir Henry Grey, General, and Colonel of a regiment in the army; Mr Charles Wood, (son-in-law of Lord Grey) Secretary of the Admiralty; Mr F. T. Baring, (married a neice of Lord Grey) Secretary to the Treasury; Earl of Durham, (son-in-law of Lord Grey) Governor of Canada; Lord Ponsonby, (brother-in-law of Lord Grey) Ambassador to Constantinople; Mr E. Ellice, jun., (nephew of Lord Grey) Secretary of Lord Durham, &c. &c. We believe the Elliots make a still better show; nor are the Howards, Russells, and Abercrombies quite forgotten. The judges they have made, after all their fine promises of rewarding merit, and merit only, are those on the bench who have had least practice as counsel, and are least learned and efficient as interpreters of the law; we refer to the Williamses and Coltmans, whose political principles were their sole ostensible recommendations. In the Church, they have dispensed their patronage among the bishops in a manner to which we have already alluded, and, not content with this, have sought out as recipients of other favours only anti-churchrate agitators, such as Dr Joynes of Rochester, and Dr Knox of Tunbridge, of pamphleteering and political dinner-speaking notoriety. And then in the colonies they send a Lord Durham to Canada, with Messrs Charles and Arthur Buller, Thomas Turton, Thomas Duncombe, and Edward Gibbon Wakefield; and to New South Wales, Sir Maurice O'Connell, a fit and proper instrument for carrying out that infidel system of education which is adopted to please the Roman Catholic emigrants, and against which, the excellent Bishop Broughton has in vain protested. To India they have sent Lord Elphinstone, the youthful cornet of Life Guards, as Governor of the important settlement of Madras; and with exquisite discrimination, while appointing these notable personages, have displayed their judgment and discretion, by recalling Sir John Colborne, who saved Lower Canada, Sir Francis Head, who saved the Upper Province, Sir Peregrine Maitland, who will not (scrupulous man!) commit the trifling offence against God of sanctioning idolatry in India, and Sir Benjamin D'Urban from the Cape of Good Hope. With a Lord Glenelg at home, and only such governors abroad as exactly suit his Lordship's purposes and views, and have not more vigour about them than he considers necessary, who will say our colonies are not secure, and are not certain to flourish? With more materials in our possession, a much stronger case than we have here made out, (although this statement is perhaps amply sufficient) might easily be produced against the Whigs. But in truth, it is not easy to discover all their sinuous windings and all their extended and increasing corruption. It would be desirable to be able to ascertain the exact number of Roman Catholic chaplains and schoolmasters now paid by the British Government in India and the other colonies. Their number is not small, nor their influence insignificant. The publication, too, of such a return as we have suggested, of all the newly created places, would also be beneficial; but in the absence of the necessary documents from whence information on this subject can be gained, we are left more to generalities and conjectures than we could desire. Still enough remains, and enough we hope has been stated in this paper to prove that the Whig party have long been striving to strengthen themselves by the unscrupulous abuse of patronage, and even by the extension of Ministerial influence in every possible direction. It is natural to a weak Government that it should be tempted to the use of arts a strong one can neglect, and an honest one would despise. And in proportion to the increasing weakness of its position, and the experienced failure of former intrigues, must be the increased temptation to fresh and extended corruption. The Melbourne Ministry, then, which hitherto has been tottering in increasing imbecility; which never enjoyed public respect, and therefore had no inducement to struggle to retain it; which has found session after session end in greater weakness, trick after trick issue in new disappointment, must now in its decline and approaching fall, in its distress rising to despair, be peculiarly tempted to preserve its contemptible existence by bartering places for votes, and honours for neutrality or submission. It is highly to the honour of the age, that this wretched and unscrupulous Ministry, notwithstanding all its false professions and misused patronage, is now sinking lower and lower in influence, and is dependent for its permitted power on the condescension or contempt of its opponents. The fact proves that we are sound in core, though many may have been converted by corruption. Peerages may have been thrown away, but still the county members are more and more, year after year, against the Ministry; baronetcies, places, and favours are lavishly offered, but the petty majority in the House of Commons is fast ̧ dwindling away at each successive casual election. We feel convinced that nothing remains to do but for the Conservatives to continue firm and united, exposing not only the imbecility, but also the frauds of the Cabinet. It will then be known through the length and breadth of the land that these pseudo patriots who have promised so much and performed so little, have gained power only to abuse it, and have held it long only to deprive the country of the services of honest men and able statesmen. MEMORANDA OF THE ORIGIN AND HISTORY OF OUR VILLAGE, AND OF ITS FOUNDERS. THE time has been when even Our Village had not an existence, and when those parts which are now covered with dwellings, showing all the varieties of brick and mortar, and exemplifying all the vagaries that can enter into the brains of a country architect, was nothing more than a sandy desert, unmarked in the map of our county, and scarcely trodden by human foot. As one of the means of peopling a district, it pleased Providence to plant one Adonijah Shufflebotham, a ratcatcher by trade, and a thief by practice, in the near neighbourhood of what is now Our Village. By the exercise of his twofold profession, Adonijah managed to accumulate a sum of about some forty pounds, and being bit with the mania of living in a house of his own, and still bearing in mind one part of his trade, he stole a piece of land from the waste-made some bricks-and erected what he called a mansion: that is to say, a dwelling, consisting of two rooms on the ground floor, each seven feet by nine, with similar rooms above, and sundry conveniences for depositing his traps, and the other paraphernalia of his profession. Here Adonijah sojourned in the de. sert for a length of time, in all the dignity given to man by seclusion, and here were given to the world sundry little rat-catchers, destined in the course of time to become prosperous men and women, and the ornaments of Our Village. Year after year rolled on, and Adonijah continued blessed and in peace. He was the only rat-catcher of a considerable district. His family was young and obedient, and he had what he called a house of his own; and as what he could not obtain by ratcatching, he helped out with thieving, want and he were strangers, and nobody could be more happy than Adonijah. But unmixed happiness is not for man, even though a dweller in a desert, and Adonijah the rat-catcher met with something as disagreeable as ratsbane, in the person of one Ichabod Wragg, a dweller in the neighbouring forest. It chanced that Ichabod Wragg heard of the comfortable doings of Adonijah, and was moved by envy thereat. He was a big powerful man, of dark and scowling countenance, by trade an itinerant tinker, and, if tradi tion tells true, a greater thief than Adonijah. He strolled one day to the neighbourhood of Adonijah-saw his house and his homestead-glowered like an ogre at the sight-and swore that he too would have a house, and live like Adonijah in the wilderness. His first care was to erect his house, and in the true spirit of an Englishman he determined, that although he was about to become Adonijah's neighbour, he would have a house as diametrically opposite to that of Adonijah as it was possible to make it. He accordingly planned it to have an opposite aspect-as Adonijah's house was plain in front, he determined to have a bow -and as the original house had but two stories, he resolved to have three. In this determined spirit of opposition, he prevailed upon some tradesmen from a distance to erect him his house; but the same tradition that sets down Ichabod as a thief, also states, that those tradesmen sorely repented their undertaking, for that Ichabod, amongst his other villanies, was villain enough to accept of their materials and their labour without condescending for one moment to recollect so trifling an affair as payment. The two houses of Adonijah Shufflebotham and Ichabod Wragg were the seedlings of Our Village, and the opposition evinced in their structure has descended to our times, for no man ever thinks of building a house like his neighbour. Their very locality displayed opposition, and as houses began to be erected, and roads made past the old original structures, that locality served to give names to the roads; and to the present day the streets leading by them are called the Higher and the Lower Streets. For some time matters went on pretty comfortably betwixt Adonijah and Ichabod they were pretty equally matched their trades did not interfere with each other-and, which was perhaps the strongest incentive to peace, they were a couple of rogues, and they knew it. At length the devil, who sometimes uses contemptible instruments to effect his ends, prompted an unlucky pig, belonging to Ichabod Wragg, to treat himself to a dinner on a couple of lively ducklings belonging to Adonijah Shufflebotham. Adonijah went out of his house just in time to behold the unfortunate swine of his neighbour in the act of tickling his gums with the last fragment of the second duckling, and being moved to wrath at the sight, he smote the gourmand so fiercely on the head with his staff, that he resigned his savoury mouthful, and uttering an ungrateful and inharmonious grunt, resigned at the same time his mortal life. The pig in question was Ichabod's only grunter; and as the loss of a pig, when a man has only one to lose, is a matter of some moment, Ichabod did not entertain the most lively feelings of gratitude towards his neighbour Adonijah for the morning's display of his prowess. Ichabod and Adonijah met-fell out-shook fists at each other -swore more than a little, and almost fought, but the before-mentioned mutual knowledge which they had of each other prevented actual violence for that time, and they parted, having first carefully sown the seeds of future animosity. Ichabod, with a view to strengthen his interest, erected another house near his own, but of a different pattern and different dimensions, and imported a colony, consisting of a relative, his wife, and seven children, and thus was formed the rudiments of the Higher Street. Adonijah, on his part, was not idle, for he stole more land from the waste, built a couple of houses, and planted allies in the shape of a stout brotherin-law, and a one-eyed crony, a blacksmith, with a large family, from an adjoining county, and thus was laid the foundation of the Lower Street. All this was very fair, and was no more than would be allowed to every prudent man; but Ichabod stretched a point-he married his sister, with a dowry of L. 10, and a fifteen-year old cow, to a young ratcatcher from the next town, and set up his brother-in-law in a house that he built near his own, and thus added another link to the Higher Street. Flesh and blood could not stand that. It was bad enough that Ichabod himself, in the first instance, should obtrude upon the privacy of Adonijahit was still worse that his pig should take a fancy to Adonijah's ducklings but all that was not beyond forgive. ness-but to bring a brother-in-law, and that brother-in-law a rat-catcher, into the neighbourhood, and under the |