the national will, are no longer in existence. A free
press has shared their fate. There is no accredited organ of public
opinion; indeed there is no public opinion to record. Lords and Commons
have been swept away, though a number of the richest old gentlemen in
London meet daily at Westminster to receive orders from Buckingham
Palace. But at the palace itself has broken out one of those sanguinary
conspiracies which have of late become unceasing. The last heir of the
house of Brunswick is lying dead with a dagger in his heart, and
everything is in frightful confusion. The armed force of the capital are
of course "masters of the situation," and the Guards, after a tumultuous
meeting at Windsor or Knightsbridge, have sold the throne to Baron
Rothschild, for a handsome donation of 25 pounds a-piece. Lord Clyde,
however, we may be sure, is not likely to stand this, and in a few months
will be marching upon London at the head of the Indian Army. In the mean
time the Channel Fleet has declared for its own commander, has seized
upon Plymouth and Portsmouth, and intends to starve the metropolis by
stopping the imports of "bread-stuffs" at the mouth of the Thames. And
this has become quite possible; for half the population of London, under
the present state of things, subsist upon free distributions of corn
dispensed by the occupant of the throne for the time being. But a more
fatal change than even this has come over the population of the capital
and of the whole country. The free citizens and 'prentices of London;
the sturdy labourers of Dorsetshire and the eastern counties; and the
skilful artizans of Manchester, Sheffield and Birmingham; the mariners
and shipwrights of Liverpool, have been long ago drafted into marching
regiments, and have left their bones to bleach beneath Indian suns and
Polar snows. Their place has been supplied by countless herds of negro
slaves, who till the fields and crowd the workshops of our towns, to the
entire exclusion of free labour; for the free population, or rather the
miserable relics of them, disdain all manual employment: they divide
their time between starvation and a degrading debauchery, the means for
which are sedulously provided by the government. The time-honoured
institutions of the bull-bait, the cockpit, and the ring, are in daily
operation, under the most distinguished patronage. Hyde Park has been
converted into a gigantic arena, where criminals from Newgate "set-t