On Aliens or Chartists to hear them declaim, You'd think Castlereagh come from the dead. Though the mixture of metaphors isn't the same, And the courage and coolness are fled. But the Whigs are becoming respectable men As any that ever kept gigs, They are practising _now_ all they preach'd against _then_-- So huzza for the rule of the Whigs! Go on, my good lads--never think of retreat, Though annoy'd by a squib or a squirt; You're fulfilling the fate such impostors should meet, And eating your bushel of dirt Then swallow it fast, for your hour may not last-- We shall soon, if it pleases the pigs, Give your places to men of a different cast, And get rid of the rule of the Whigs! THE NAVIGATION LAWS. "When the Act of Navigation," says Adam Smith, "was made, though England and Holland were not actually at war, the most violent animosity subsisted between the two nations. It is not impossible, therefore, that some of the regulations of this famous act may have proceeded from national animosity. They _are as wise, however, as if they had all been dictated by the most deliberate wisdom_. National animosity, at that particular time, aimed at the very object which the most deliberate wisdom would have recommended,--the diminution of the naval power of Holland, the only naval power which could endanger the security of England. The Act of Navigation is not favourable to foreign commerce, or to the growth of that opulence which can arise from it. As defence, however, is of much more value than opulence, the Act of Navigation is perhaps the wisest of all the commercial regulations of England."[8] Before these pages issue from the press, this, undoubtedly the wisest of all the commercial regulations of Great Britain, and under which the maritime strength and colonial empire of England have risen to a pitch of grandeur unknown in any other age or country, will be numbered among the things which have been. The House of Commons, by a majority, have voted for the repeal of the Navigation Laws. [8] _Wealth of Nations_, iv. c. 2.