Dismissing minor worthies, such as Benjamin Hawes, junior, of the
Commission of Fine Arts, selected probably and appropriately from the
consideration that home-produced _savonnerie_ may lead to clean ideas of
taste, and who, in his own interest, would be a capital Commissioner of
Excise; and Bowring, so well qualified to be chairman of a general board
of Commissioner Tourists, from his multifarious practice--come we at
last to Cobden, of corn and colonial fame, fiercely struggling with
gaunt O'Connell himself for stentorian supremacy--

"Linguae centum sunt, oraque centum,
Ferrea vox."

Cobden and the colonies! The conjunction is euphoniously alliterative at
least, if not a consistent consequence; yet who more fit to perform at
the funeral as the undertaker who alone has got the hearse and mules all
ready for the job? Cobden, who has denounced--more still, has passed
sentence upon--the colonies, should be the executioner. All hail,
therefore, to the Right Hon. Alderman Richard Cobden, M.P., Secretary of
State for the Colonial Department--worthy compeer of the Cabinet, where
sit Lord Chancellor Gibbon Wakefield, and First Lord of the Treasury
Rowland Hill! Rare will be the labours of the trio; the
"self-supporting" supported on either hand by a destroying angel.

In the prospective cabinet of _Charlatanerie_, composed _inter aliis_,
moreover, in addition to the Haweses, the Bowrings, the Brights, the R.
R. R. (why does not the man write the names out in full, as Raving,
Roaring, Rory) O'Moores, there is, however, already a "split;" the
members are each and all at sixes and sevens, for as each has his own
sovereign conceit, so each would rule sovereign over the rest, and bear
no rival near the throne. All would be kings, but not in turn. That
powerful and sarcastic writer, Paul Louis Courier, depicts the same
regiphobia as raging among the Parisian _Charlatanerie_ of his day; and
with an anxious care for his own reputation and respectability, thus
purges himself from contact or connexion with it:--"_Ce qui me distingue
de mes contemporains et fait de moi un homme rare dans le siecle ou nous
vivons, c'est que je ne veux pas etre roi, et que j'evite soigneusement
tout ce qui pourrait me mener la._" Chadwick and Cobden are agreed upon
pauperizing the whole kingdom; but the former insists upon keeping the
paupers in bastiles, whilst the latter requires them in cotton
manufactories; both are agreed upon the propriety