Now, without stopping to criticise the workhouse equipage, which appears to be driven by a man too old to speak, with an idiot for his companion; nor even to advert to the scant ceremony of burying a man in his daily dress, and in a coffin that would not close on him--what shall we say of the “patent parson power” that buries paupers in detachments, and reads the service over platoons of dead? The reverend chaplain feeling the uncertainty of human life, and knowing how frail is our the to existence, waits in the perfect conviction of a large party before he condescends to appear. Knowing that dead men tell no tales, he surmises also that they don't run away, and so he says to himself--these people are not pressed for time, they 'll be here when I come again--it is a sickly season, and we 'll have a field-day on Saturday. Cheap soup for the poor, says Mrs. Fry. Cheap justice, says O'Connell. Cheap clothing, says a tailor who makes new clothes from old, with a machine called a devil--but cheap burial is the boast of the Liverpool chaplain, and he is the most original among them. [Illustration: 225] A NUT FOR THE “HOUSE.” I have long been of opinion that a man may attain to a very respectable knowledge of Chinese ceremonies and etiquette before he can learn one half the usages of the honourable house. Seldom does a debate go forward without some absurd 'interruption taking place in a mere matter of form. Now it is a cry of “Order, order,” to some gentleman who is subsequently discovered not to have been in the least disorderly, but whom the attack has so completely dumfounded, that he loses his speech and his self-possession, and sits down in confusion, to be sneered at in the morning papers, and hooted by his constituents when he goes home. Now some gifted scion of aristocracy makes an essay in braying and cock-crowing, both permitted by privilege, and overwhelms the speaker with the uproar. Now it is that intolerable nuisance, old Hume, shouting out “divide,” or “adjourn;” or it is Colonel Sibthorpe who counts the house. These ridiculous privileges of members to interfere with the current of public business because they may be sleepy or stupid themselves, are really intolerable, besides being so numerous that the first dozen years of a parliamentary life will scarcely teach a man a tithe of them. But of all these “rules of the house,” the most unjust and tyrannical is that which compels a man to put up with any impertinence because he has already spoken. It would seem as if each honourable member “went down” with a single ball cartridge in his pouch, which, when fired, the best thing he could do was to go home and wait for another distribution of ammunition; for by remaining he only ran the risk of being riddled without any power to return the fire.