s self-satisfied
aristocratic-looking personage not many years before had distinguished
himself as the most prominent of radical malcontents, and had been drawn
by his enthusiastic dupes through the city of Westminster in a triumphal
car, decorated with the symbols of liberty, and preceded by a banner
bearing the inscription, "Westminster's Pride and England's Glory."

The queer figure in the cocked hat is Sir de Lacy Evans, who figures as
one of the dancers in allusion to his practice as compared with his
professions. In 1833 he obtained a seat for Westminster, triumphing over
his opponent Sir J. C. Hobhouse, who for fifteen years had represented
that constituency, both candidates professing to be zealous advocates
for the abolition of flogging in the army. Sir de Lacy nevertheless,
when commanding the British Legion at St. Sebastian, "jumped Jim Crow"
by flogging his soldiers without mercy. Lord John Russell once sneered
at every project of Reform, but his Lordship, as we have seen, "jumped
Jim Crow" by repeatedly introducing the Reform Bill into the House of
Commons, which was mainly passed by his persistent exertions; very
properly, therefore, Lord John figures in HB's clever sketch among the
most prominent of "Jim Crow" double shufflers.

FOOTNOTES:

[108] These political changes, as we shall presently see, are by no
means uncommon. William Cobbett, for instance, in 1801 supported the
principles of Pitt, but in 1805, from a "Church and King" man, he
became and continued an ardent liberal.

[109] "English Graphic Satire," by R. W. Buss.

[110] _Westminster Review_, June, 1840.

[111] Greville's "Memoirs," ii. p. 303.

[112] This was the idea of all Tories of the day. The terrible effects
of the Reform Bill were amusingly predicted by John Wilson Croker to
the king himself; they have not of course been fulfilled. See
"Journal of Julian Charles Young" (Memoir of Charles Mayne Young,
vol. i. p. 231).

CHAPTER XII.

_THE POLITICAL SKETCHES OF_ HB (_Continued_).

LORD JOHN RUSSELL.

Sydney Smith said of little Lord John Russell, that he was "ready to
undertake _any_thing and _every_thing--to build St. Paul's,--cut for the
stone,--or command the Channel fleet," and this satire of the wit was
true. He tried politics and he tried literature, and few people will say
that he was entirely successful at either. As a politician, for
instance, his general capacity fo