We think that this pamphlet, though its notions are pushed to a crazy extreme, is calculated to do good. In attacking the existence of legislative assemblies, it lays bare and mercilessly ridicules their abuses, especially their tendency to endless and worthless talk and palaver. The style is not that which Carlyle is accustomed to use in his library, but the style of Carlyle over his brandy and water; and it accordingly has the recklessness as well as the fire of that peculiar method of accelerating the faculties. The Parliament which Carlyle likes, and which he contrasts with Lord John’s, is an old Norman one, before the business of Parliament had been undertaken by the newspapers; a Parliament which advised, not a Parliament which governed. “Reading,” he says, “in Eadmerus and the dim old Books, one finds gradually that the Parliament was at first a most simple Assemblage, quite cognate to the situation; that Red William, or whoever had taken upon him the terrible task of being King of England, was wont to invite, oftenest about Christmas time, his subordinate Kinglets, Barons, as he called them, to give him the pleasure of their company for a week or two; there, in earnest conference all morning, in freer talk over Christmas cheer all evening, in some big royal Hall of Westminster, Winchester, or wherever it might be, with log-fires, huge rounds of roast and boiled, not lacking Malmsey and other generous liquor, they took counsel concerning the arduous matters of the kingdom. ‘You, Taillebois what have you to propose in this arduous matter. . . Tête-d’étoupes, speak out. And first the pleasure of a glass of wine, my infant!’ Thus, for a fortnight’s space, they carried on, after a human manner, their grand National Consult, or _Parliamentum_; intermingling Dinner with it (as is still the modern method;) debuting every thing as Tacitus describes the Ancient Germans to have done, two times; once sober, and once what he calls ‘drunk’—not exactly dead-drunk, but jolly round their big table; that so both sides of the matter might be seen, and, midway between rash hope and unreasonable apprehension, the true decision of it might be hit.”