_Taper_: It will never do to throw over the Church Commission. Commissions and committees ought always to be supported. _Tadpole_: Besides, it will frighten the saints. If we could get Sir Robert to speak at Exeter Hall, were it only a slavery meeting!--that would do. _Taper_: It is difficult: he must be pledged to nothing, not even to the right of search. Yet if we could get up something with a good deal of sentiment and no principle involved, referring only to the past, but with his practical powers touching the present! What do you think of a monument to Wilberforce or a commemoration of Clarkson? _Tadpole_: There is a good deal in that. At present go about and keep our fellows in good humour. Whisper nothings that sound like something. But be discreet. Do not let there be more than half-a-hundred fellows who believe they are going to be Under-Secretaries of State. And be cautious about titles. If they push you, give a wink and press your finger to your lips. I must call here on the Duke of FitzAquitaine. This gentleman is my particular charge. I have been cooking him these three years. I had two notes from him yesterday, and can delay no longer. The worst of it is he expects I shall bear him the non-official announcement of his being sent to Ireland, of which he has about as much chance as I have of being Governor-General of India. It must be confessed ours is critical work sometimes, friend Taper. But never mind: we have to do with individuals; Peel has to do with a nation; and therefore we ought not to complain. Is this a libel, or is it a fair account of the formation and working of English governments? Let those answer who have read the memoirs of the leading statesmen of the present century. Is there anywhere to be found, in the records of the overthrow or building-up of Cabinets, any hint, even the slightest, of an insight into the condition of the country, or of a desire to mend it? Forces were at work shattering the bodily frames and destroying the souls of millions of those whom they were aspiring to guide. Do we find anything at all, save manœuvres for a new turn of the political kaleidoscope? Might not Sidonia, might not Disraeli himself, reasonably doubt whether such methods of selecting administrations would be of long continuance?