thief: you cannot do better than employ him; you will make his drunkenness counteract his thievery, and no doubt you will bring him out of the conflict a very moral personage!" G. Canning. LXVII. "MEASURES, NOT MEN" If I am pushed to the wall, and forced to speak my opinion, I have no disguise nor reservation:--I do think that this is a time when the administration of the Government ought to be in the ablest and fittest hands; I do not think the hands in which it is now placed answer to that description. I do not pretend to conceal in what quarter I think that fitness most eminently resides; I do not subscribe to the doctrines which have been advanced, that, in times like the present, the fitness of individuals for their political situation is no part of the consideration to which a member of Parliament may fairly turn his attention. I know not a more solemn or important duty that a member of Parliament can have to discharge, than by giving, at fit seasons, a free opinion upon the character and qualities of public men. Away with the cant of "measures, not men!" the idle supposition that it is the harness, and not the horses, that draws the chariot along! No, sir, if the comparison must be made, if the distinction must be taken, men are everything, measures computatively nothing. I speak, sir, of times of difficulty and danger; of times when systems are shaken, when precedents and general rules of conduct fail. Then it is, that not to this or that measure,--however prudently devised, however blameless in execution,--but to the energy and character of individuals, a state must be indebted for its salvation. Then it is that kingdoms rise or fall in proportion as they are upheld, not by well meant endeavors (laudable though they may be), but by commanding, overawing talents,--by able men.