whom felt that his party
was entitled by numerical strength to keep the management of the
Government within its own hands.

Let a man be of what side he may in politics,--unless he be
much more of a partisan than a patriot,--he will think it well
that there should be some equity of division in the bestowal
of crumbs of comfort. Can even any old Whig wish that every Lord
Lieutenant of a county should be an old Whig? Can it be good for the
administration of the law that none but Liberal lawyers should become
Attorney-Generals, and from thence Chief Justices or Lords of Appeal?
Should no Conservative Peer ever represent the majesty of England
in India, in Canada, or at St. Petersburgh? So arguing, moderate
Liberals had been glad to give Mr. Daubeny and his merry men a
chance. Mr. Daubeny and his merry men had not neglected the chance
given them. Fortune favoured them, and they made their hay while the
sun shone with an energy that had never been surpassed, improving
upon Fortune, till their natural enemies waxed impatient. There had
been as yet but one year of it, and the natural enemies, who had at
first expressed themselves as glad that the turn had come, might
have endured the period of spoliation with more equanimity. For to
them, the Liberals, this cutting up of the Whitehall cake by the
Conservatives was spoliation when the privilege of cutting was found
to have so much exceeded what had been expected. Were not they, the
Liberals, the real representatives of the people, and, therefore, did
not the cake in truth appertain to them? Had not they given up the
cake for a while, partly, indeed, through idleness and mismanagement,
and quarrelling among themselves; but mainly with a feeling that
a moderate slicing on the other side would, upon the whole, be
advantageous? But when the cake came to be mauled like that--oh,
heavens! So the men who had quarrelled agreed to quarrel no more,
and it was decided that there should be an end of mismanagement and
idleness, and that this horrid sight of the weak pretending to be
strong, or the weak receiving the reward of strength, should be
brought to an end. Then came a great fight, in the last agonies of
which the cake was sliced manfully. All the world knew how the fight
would go; but in the meantime lord-lieutenancies were arranged; very
ancient judges retired upon pensions; vice-royal Governors were sent
out in the last gasp of the failing battle; great places were filled
by ten