s."

Then again, how decisively the merits of a certain ex-chancellor might
be measured in reading--"hired as butler, but insisted on cleaning the
carriage, and scratched the panels; would dress the dinner, and
spoiled the soup and burned the sauce; never attended to his own
duties, but spent his time fighting with the other servants, and is in
fact a most troublesome member of a household. He is, however, both
smart and intelligent, and is allowed a small pension to wait on
company days."

Trust me, this plan, if acted on--and I feel it cannot be long
neglected--will do more to put pretension on a par with desert, than
all the adjourned debates that waste the sessions; it would save a
world of unblushing self-praise and laudation, and protect the country
from the pushing impertinence of a set of turned-off servants.

A NUT FOR THE LANDLORD AND TENANT COMMISSION.

Every one knows the story of the man who, at the penalty of losing his
head in the event of failure, promised the caliph of Bagdad that he
would teach his ass to read in the space of ten years, trusting that,
ere the time elapsed, either the caliph, or the ass, or he himself,
would die, and the compact be at an end. Now, it occurs to me that the
wise policy of this shrewd charlatan is the very essence of all
parliamentary commissions. First, there is a grievance--then comes a
debate--a very warm one occasionally, with plenty of invective and
accusation on both sides--and then they agree to make a drawn game of
it, and appoint "a Commission."

Nothing can be more plausible in appearance than such a measure; nor
could any man, short of Hume himself, object to so reasonable a
proceeding as a patient and searching inquiry into the circumstances
and bearings of any disputed question. The Commission goes to work: if
a Tory one, consisting usually of some dumb country gentlemen, who
like committee work;--if Whig, the suckling "barristers of six years'
standing:" and at it they go. The newspapers announce that they are
"sitting to examine witnesses"--a brief correspondence appears at
intervals, to show that they have a secretary and a correspondent, a
cloud then wraps the whole concern in its dark embrace, and not the
most prying curiosity is ever able afterwards to detect any one fact
concerning the commission or its labours, nor could you hear in any
society the slightest allusion ever made to their whereabouts.

It is, in fact, the polite mode of int