Surely, surely, these latter times have not been exactly
the ones in which it was expedient for Scotchmen to check the children of
any county in England with the place of their birth, more especially
those who have had the honour of being born in Norfolk--times in which
British fleets, commanded by Scotchmen, have returned laden with anything
but laurels from foreign shores. It would have been well for Britain had
she had the old Norfolk man to dispatch to the Baltic or the Black sea,
lately, instead of Scotch admirals.

{7} As the present work will come out in the midst of a vehement
political contest, people may be led to suppose that the above was
written expressly for the time. The writer therefore begs to state that
it was written in the year 1854. He cannot help adding that he is
neither Whig, Tory, nor Radical, and cares not a straw what party governs
England, provided it is governed well. But he has no hopes of good
government from the Whigs. It is true that amongst them there is one
very great man, Lord Palmerston, who is indeed the sword and buckler, the
chariots and the horses of the party; but it is impossible for his
lordship to govern well with such colleagues as he has--colleagues which
have been forced upon him by family influence, and who are continually
pestering him into measures anything but conducive to the country's
honour and interest. If Palmerston would govern well, he must get rid of
them; but from that step, with all his courage and all his greatness, he
will shrink. Yet how proper and easy a step it would be! He could
easily get better, but scarcely worse, associates. They appear to have
one object in view, and only one--jobbery. It was chiefly owing to a
most flagitious piece of jobbery, which one of his lordship's principal
colleagues sanctioned and promoted, that his lordship experienced his
late parliamentary disasters.

{8} A fact.

***END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE ROMANY RYE***

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