TOPICS OF THE
A GOOD JOKE.)I WE who live, act, and suffer in this January 1847, are by those means, consciously or unconsciously, amassing materials for the future historian. He will find many obscurities, which, if we could anticipate them, we could clear up : we could act a com- mentary or an illustrative note. On the other hand, many things will become clear to him which are obscure to us. For instance, we can fancy how amusing it will prove when some future Disraeli explains a curiosity of history at present existing only to puzzle us. Many persons are aware that there goes about the political world a gentleman called David Urquhart, whose mission it is to bring Lord Palmerston's head to the block. Mr. Urquhart is, we believe, accounted a sort of prophet in remote parts of Turkey, and in a small circle of private believers here, who hold little re- unions to further his pious enterprise. By the general public he is looked upon only as belonging to the testy class of discharged servants. Whilst occupying a subordinate post in the British Embassy at Constantinople, he found that he could not have it all his own way ; and with a cry of "Treachery I" he threw up his engagement. If Lord Palmerston still has whereon to rest his hat, it is not by favour of Mr. Urquhart. With extraordinary diligence, that gentleman has collected a countless set of circum- stantial proofs that Lord Palmerston is the agent of Russia, to whom he treacherously betrays the interests of England and of Europe. It was a happy thought that made the accuser seek his evidence in diplomatic correspondence ; which, as it is generally framed on the plan of concealing its meaning, is excellently adapted to all sorts of constructive interpretations : and, instigated by his decapitating zeal, Mr. Urquhart has made good use of that capacity in the documents. With equal painstaking, no doubt, they might be turned into anything else—into a pantomime or a commentary on Dante's Divina Commedia ; but who would take such pains without some great and worthy motive? " Peace " is allegorically figured as a woman without a head : in Mr. Urquhart's allegory, you must substitute the figure of Lord Pal- merston.
The existence of one gentleman continually talking and writing. at another gentleman's head, is a striking historical fact—an oddity of contemporary history; but what shall we say to the still stranger demeanour of the other gentleman ? Lord Palmer- ston seems to enjoy it as much as if Sackerson were loose. He is a Macbeth impervious to apprehensions on the score of his Mac- duff; and he wears his head in drawingroom or council, with as jaunty an air as if nobody seen were protesting against his right to it. Be wags it with a licentiousness of self-possession, inde- cently regardless of extraneous claims to it, and evidently thinks it as much his own as "the Mulligan" does his estate of Bally- mulligan.
That is cool, but it is not all. With singular sportiveness, Lord Palmerston is not only ostentatious of his head, most un- scrupulously taking out of it whatever comes up ost, but he
seems to delight in supplying Mr. Urquhart with materials for his adverse claim. The prisoner at the bar on a charge of high treason keeps on making the prosecutor handsome presents of inculpatory evidence. Look at the Alontpensier affair. Mr. Urquhart, more solito, makes out that Lord Palmerston trapped Louis Philippe into that false step, and planned the quarrel with France, in order to favour Russia's designs. If lord Pal- merston had really prepared the quarrel, appearances could not have been more favourable for Mr. Urquhart's purpose; endow' if to supply the crowning proof, he suffers a report to pass cur- rent, that he is going to prove the "entente cordiale" impossible! If England and France were at loggerheads, Russia might do what she pleased in Europe ; and Lord Palmerston is doing his best to promote the said loggerheads, as if in pure bravado. Circumstances also favour the noble Lord's jocose coquetry with the headsman. The Times most opportunely digs up some secret documents, of which it was nearly impossible for anybody to be in possession except the Russian or the British Government : "How on earth did the Times obtain them ? " every one asks. They were, replies Mr. Urquhart, furnished by Lord Palmerston, for purposes of his awn. And, truly, there are circumstances which invest this last romance with an air of verisimilitude more striking than anything that the ingenious invention of Dumas or James could contrive.
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