and duly paid for such Christian-like solicitude.  He is called in; he then prorogues Parliament to the tune of “Go to the devil and shake yourself,” and sits down in the easy chair of salary, and tries to think!  Disturbed in his contemplations by the groans and screams of the famishing, he addresses the starving multitude from the windows of Downing-street, telling them he can do nothing for them in a large way, but—­the fee he has received to cure them can afford as much—­graciously throwing them fifty pounds from his private compassion!  As a statesman he is powerless; but he has no objection to subscribe to the Mendicity Society.

It is an old hacknied abuse of NERO, that when Rome was in flame he accompanied the crackling of doors and rafters with his very best fiddle.  We grant this showed a want of fine sympathy on the part of NERO; there was, nevertheless, a boldness, an exhibition of nerve, in such instrumentation.  Any way, it leaves us with a higher respect for NERO than if he had been found playing on the burning Pantheon with a penny squirt.  His mockery of the Romans, bad as it was, was not the mockery of compassion.

“I will make bread cheap for you,” says Sir ROBERT PEEL to the Paisley sufferers; “I will not enable you to buy the quartern loaf at a reduced rate by your own industry, but I will treat you to a penny roll, at its present size, from my own purse.”  Whereupon the Tories clap their hands and cry, “What magnanimity!”

What should we say if, on another Pie-lane conflagration of London, the Minister were to issue an order commanding all the fire-offices to make no attempt to extinguish the flames, and were then to exclaim to the sufferers, “My friends, I deeply sympathize with you; but the Phoenix shall not budge, the Hand-in-Hand mustn’t move a finger, the Eagle must stay where it is; nevertheless, there is a little private fire-engine of my own at Tamworth; you are heartily welcome to the use of it, and pray heaven it may put this terrible fire out, and once more make you snug and comfortable.”

Quackery is of more ancient birth than many very honest people suspect; nay, more than, were the register of its nativity laid before their eyes, they would be willing to admit.  We have no space for its voluminous history; but it is our belief, since quackery first plied its profitable trade with human incredulity, it never perpetrated so successful a trick as that exhibited by Sir ROBERT PEEL in his motion of want of confidence.  The first scene of the farce is only begun.  We have seen how Sir ROBERT has snatched the cards out of the hands of the Whigs, and shall find how he will play the self-same trumps assorted by his opponents.  A change is already coming over the Conservatives; they are meek and mild, and, with their pocket handkerchiefs at their eyes, lisp about the distresses of the people.  “When the geese gaggle,” says a rustic saw, “expect a change of weather.”  Lord LONDONDERRY has already begun to talk of an alteration of the Corn-laws.