A new weapon against The Poor-law is a godsend to
the agita- tinction is too nice to be on the instant obvious and unmistakeable. tors, especially in these days when'their vocation shares the general The personal attack on Mr. GEORGE BANKES was the first of a depression ; but that which Mr. WALTER has just discovered has series; one of Mr. COBDEN'S most earnest and effective speeches not availed him much. It was a confidential paper drawn up from lashed up the irritated feelings of the House ; and the final attack the report of the Commissioners of Inquiry, but not by themselves, on Sir ROBERT might very well be taken for the last of the series for the consideration of Lord GREY'S Cabinet ; and it appears to by any but cool and critical hearers, or those whose sympathy had have put in the most naked and rigorous form proposals to reduce carried them along with his meaning: the sustenance of paupers to the lowest possible amount. Mr. This occurrence illustrates a growing evil—the intensely personal II ALTER obtained a copy somehow, and now he moved a reso- character of many contests in Parliament ; of almost all. Mr. lotion denouncing it ; and the motion was the occasion for one COBDEN'S speech was saturated with that vitiating poison. If Sir of the common onslaughts against the Poor-law. It was assumed ROBERT PEEL-had been more closely following Mr. COBDEN'S ideas, that the detected paper was the real basis of the complete instead of watching the words to which he might commit himself, measure: Sir JAMES GRAHAM declared, that it had been re- the .abstract idea of concentrated responsibility, commensurate .lected. by Lord GREY'S Cabinet. Criticism upon it, therefore, with his great power, which all parties attach peculiarly to the II 53 futile as criticism upon a book refused by a publisher to one man in the present Ministry, would not have been mistaken for the answering in person suggested by the sound of the words. The same remark applies with greater force to Mr. ROEBUCK'S culpably lax quotation of the word " maniac," as applied to Lord BROUGHAM, instead of Mr. DRUMMOND'S murderer. Mem- bers are less intent upon understanding the substance of each other's arguments than upon catching at what " he says." The intentness defeats itself : as words are more difficult to fix down than ideas, the words themselves become twisted. Thus the word " maniac " was displaced : and the word " person- ally" no one was sure of ; Mr. COBDEN averred that he did not " say " it,—meaning that he did not intend it ; and Sir ROBERT Paw. said, " You did, you did !" while he mistook Mr. COBDEN'S meaning, but afterwards, when he was possessed of the true idea, gave up the word, though it stands in some of the reports. Word- catching, and the gratuitous imputation of bad motives, are the opprobrium and obstruction of all sound counsel.
