out he will agree to the Resolutions of the Board of Longitude, on the 9th instant, that this affair shall never come to a decision in the House, but only be put off from time to time."
Montesqieu has said that the united power of the King, the Lords and Commons, in the Parliament of England, is the highest on earth; yet here, setting aside his rank (such are the discrepancies in the history of man) an ostentatious but insignificant individual, of contemptible pretensions, and who, in common parlance, would have been called a conceited prig, wields this mighty power; or at least assumes to give it a direction subservient to his own splenetic resolves and paltry revenge.—That the whole affair was of a personal nature, were there no previous evidence on the point, the conduct of this inflated Aristocrat, after he had procured the passing of the Act, which, with exulting propriety, he called his own, would establish. The ostensible purpose of that measure[1] was to as-
- ↑ There are instances in which the difference between the real and the ostensible purpose of some bill brought into either House of Parliament, is enough to excite the amazement of those, out of doors, in the secret, when such there are; but in the present case, no liberal man, that could have traced his Lordship's motives to their source, two years before, and had scented his genius for mechanics, would have desired to be in his confidence.—The following brief dialogue, which occurred in April, 1833, may place the subject in a clearer point of view,—Sir Robert Inglis asked whether Government were acquainted with the nature of the Bill authorizing the esta-
