most probably go on as they have done, till some comet comes with its tail; and on the eve of some grand and radical reform, puts an end to the question. THE SPEECH OF CHARLES C. WESTERN, Esq. M.P. _on the Distressed State of the Agriculture of the Country, delivered in the House of Commons, March 7, 1816_. THE SPEECH OF HENRY BROUGHAM, Esq. M.P. _on the same subject, delivered in the same place, April 9, 1816_. This is a sore subject; and it is here handled with much tenderness and delicacy. It puts one in mind of the traveller’s nose, and the nuns of Strasburgh, in the tale of Slaukenbergius. ‘I will touch it, said one; I dare not touch it, said another; I wish I had touched it, said a third; let me touch it, said a fourth.’ While the gentlewomen were debating the point, the traveller with the great nose rode on. It would be no ungracious task to treat of the distresses of the country, if all were distressed alike; but that is not the case; nor is it possible to trace the necessities of one part of the community to their source, or to hint at a remedy, without glancing invidiously at the superfluities of others. ‘Aye, there’s the rub, that makes calamity of so long life.’ The speeches before us are to the subject what a veil is to a lady’s face, or a blind to a window. Almost all that has been said or written upon it is a palpable delusion—an attempt to speak out and say nothing; to oppose something that might be done, and propose something that cannot be done; to direct attention to the subject, and divert it from it; to do something and nothing; and to come to this potent conclusion, that while nothing _is done_, nothing _can be done_. ‘But have you then any remedy to propose instead?’ What sort of a remedy do you mean? ‘Oh, one equally safe and efficacious, that shall set every thing to rights, and leave every thing just as it is, that does not touch either the tythes or the national debt, nor places and pensions, nor property of any kind, except the poor’s fund; _that_ you may take from them to make them independent of the rich, as you leave Lord Camden in possession of thirty thousand a year to make him independent of the poor.’—Why, then, what if the Lord Chancellor and the Chancellor of the Exchequer were to play a game at push-pin on the top of St. Paul’s; or if Mr. Brougham and Mr. Horner were to play at cat’s-cradle on the top of the Monument; or if the little garden between the Speaker’s house and the river-side were to be sown with pearls and cockle-shells? Or if——Pshaw! Patience, and shuffle the cards. The great problem of our great problem-finders appears to be, _to take nothing from the rich, and give it to the poor_. That will never do. We find them and their schemes of diversion well described in Rabelais, book v. chap. xxii. ‘_How Queen Whim’s Officers were employed, and how the said Lady retained us among her Abstractors._