dation." Mr. Tierney and
Lord Althorp followed; but they threw no new light on the subject; and
all parties ended where they had begun: the public had to believe which
of the statements made they chose, according to this or that man's
political bias. In a discussion which followed, the attention of the
house was directed to the character of the new government, and the
conduct of those members of the former government who had joined it.
Mr. T. Dun-combe remarked, that the house had still to learn how the
difference between Messrs. Huskisson and Herries had been made up, and
how these members continued to sit in the same cabinet. The colonial
secretary, he said, had still to explain "how their pulses, which
formerly were so irregular, could beat so soon in unison; by what means
the _quietus_ had been produced, and the direful wrath appeased." He was
inclined to impute all that had happened to a secret and powerful agency
which had not yet been unmasked, and which was exercised, according to
the statement of the honourable member, by a Jew stock-broker, and a
Christian physician. He had, indeed, "been credibly informed that there
is a mysterious personage behind the scene, who concerts, regulates, and
influences every arrangement." He continued, "There is, deny it who can?
a secret influence behind the throne, whose form is never seen, who name
is never breathed who has access to all the secrets of the state, and
who manages all the sudden springs of ministerial arrangement,

'At whose soft nod the streams of honour flow,
Whose smiles all place and patronage bestow.'

"Closely connected with this invisible, this incorporeal person, stands a
more solid and substantial form, a new and formidable power, till these
days unknown in Europe. Master of unbounded wealth, he boasts that he
is the arbiter of peace and war, and that the credit of nations depends
upon his nod. His correspondents are innumerable; his couriers outrun
those of sovereign princes and absolute sovereigns; ministers of state
are in his pay. Paramount to the cabinets of continental Europe, he
aspires to the domination of our own. Even the great Don Miguel himself,
of whom we have lately heard and seen so much, was obliged to have
recourse to the purse of this individual, before he could take
possession of his throne. Sir, that such secret influences do exist is
a matter of notoriety: they are known to have been but too busy in the
underplot of the r