Her majesty was now in the fifth year of her age, and a prodigy of sense and goodness.  In her first speech to the senate, which she lisped with inimitable grace, she assured them that her [2] heart was entirely Irish, and that she did not intend any longer to go in leading-strings, as a proof of which she immediately declared her nurse prime-minister.  The senate applauded this sage choice with even greater encomiums than the last, and voted a free gift to the queen of a million of sugar-plumbs, and to the favourite of twenty thousand bottles of usquebaugh.  Her majesty then jumping from her throne, declared it was her royal pleasure to play at blindman’s-buff, but such a hub-bub arose from the senators pushing, and pressing, and squeezing, and punching one another, to endeavour to be the first blinded, that in the scuffle her majesty was thrown down and got a bump on her forehead as big as a pigeon’s egg, which set her a squalling, that you might have heard her to Tipperary.  The old king flew into a rage, and snatching up the mace knocked out the chancellor’s brains, who at that time happened not to have any; and the queen-mother, who sat in a tribune above to see the ceremony, fell into a fit and [3] miscarried of twins, who were killed by her majesty’s fright; but the earl of Bullaboo, great butler of the crown, happening to stand next to the queen, catched up one of the dead children, and perceiving it was a boy, ran down to the [4] king and wished him joy of the birth of a son and heir.  The king, who had now recovered his sweet temper, called him a fool and blunderer, upon which Mr. Phelim O’Torture, a zealous courtier, started up with great presence of mind and accused the earl of Bullaboo of high treason, for having asserted that his late majesty had had any other heir than their present most lawful and most religious sovereign queen Grata.  An impeachment was voted by a large majority, though not without warm opposition, particularly from a celebrated Kilkennian orator, whose name is unfortunately not come down to us, it being erased out of the journals afterwards, as the Irish author whom I copy says, when he became first lord of the treasury, as he was during the whole reign of queen Grata’s successor.  The argument of this Mr. Killmorackill, says my author, whose name is lost, was, that her majesty the queen-mother having conceived a son before the king’s resignation, that son was indubitably heir to the crown, and consequently the resignation void, it not signifying an iota whether the child was born alive or dead:  it was alive, said he, when it was conceived—­here he was called to order by Dr. O’Flaharty, the queen-mother’s man-midwife and member for the borough of Corbelly, who entered into a learned dissertation on embrios; but he was interrupted by the young queen’s crying for her supper, the previous question for which was carried without a negative; and then the house being resumed, the debate was cut short by the impatience