A HINT FOR POOR LORD GREY.
LORD BROUGHAM, on Monday last, confessed the utmost alarm at the bill for establishing Limited Enlistment in the Army : he said he could not express his alarm ; and he foresaw, in his fears, the total destruction of the best army that ever was, that is, or ever will be. We might be at some loss to discover in his speech the reasons for this unwonted state of timidity, if we sought it in the arguments advanced ; but we detect them in the avowal at the. beginning. Lord Brougham had been in the House since ten o'clock in the morning, and was fatigued ; also he had eaten nothing, and was famished. This accounts for all the gloom of his views. "A hungry man is an angry man " ; a fatigued mad is desponding ; hungry and fatigued, you can look at ncthing but the black side of things. It was no want of understanding that precluded Lord Brougham's imagination from picturing a better army than that band of ragamuffins which cost the Duke of Wel- lington so much trouble—it was merely the want of a biscuit.
If omniscience were not impossible for human nature, it would be generally understood that Lord Brougham knows all things. Being a man, he is of course ignorant of something, if only as a condition of his nature ; and the thing of which he is unaware seems to be the influence of food in expanding and invigorating the hopeful anticipations. A mutton chop might have made all the difference in his judgment on the Army Service Bill ; even a penny bun might have proved a great support on the occasion. It is astonishing with what daring hopes a snack in time will fortify the breast. Talk of "a stake in the country" as essen- tially necessary to the character of a legislator !—it is a steak at Bellamy's that is the basis of wholesome legislation. It miti- gates that wolfish melancholy to which Lord Brougham con- fessed. " Emollit mores," as Partridge says, " nec sinit ease feros." Lord Grey is the person who suffers most just now from the peckish state in which Lord Brougham allows himself to be
at six or seven ; and the Secretary for the Colonies should really see, as a matter of order, that his noble friend is not let loose upon him fasting.
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