HOW TO RISE IN THE WORLD.
THE Queen and her subjects stand in very different relations to their domestics. When the parties no longer suit each other, a gentleman turns away his servant, or the servant gives warning ; but the Queen's servant sells his mistress. We learn from an advertisement in the Times of Wednesday, that " a gentleman having no further use for a respectable man and his wife, wishes to procure them situations together or separate." But a domestic of Royalty, in the Times of Monday, announces, that—" A gentle- man holding an appointment at Court, (which requires attendance on the Queen on court-days and other state occasions,) being about to retire, is desirous of introducing a gentleman of independ- ence as his successor, who on receiving. his appointment will be gazetted and presented to her Majesty. -The commission is legally saleable."
The world must be strangely altered if "independence" has become a recommendation at Court. The delicate inuendo, how- ever, couched in the supplementary sentence, "The commission is legally saleable," may imply that the " independence " meant is of the kind said to have characterized Members of the House of Commons when "appointments" to that House were " saleable," whether legally or not. This was the independence of men who, belonging to no party, were open to be purchased by either. It is curious to speculate on the motives which may tempt men to invest money in the purchase of an office that requires attendance on the Queen on court-days and other state occasions. The place may be an object with a vain man, who likes to figure in a court- dress on occasions of state. Or it may be an object to a pru- dent man, who calculates that his periodical appearances at Court will establish first a bowing and then perhaps a speaking ac- quaintance with great men ; and that on this foundation may be built claims to have his son Tom put into the Colonial and his son Dick into the Ordnance Office.
So the Court is the Court still. The old back-stairs path to "in- dependence " of a certain kind is till open. The Pepysian ascent from the household of a great lord to lucrative places under Go- ' ernment may still be effected. Yet any man of a really inde- pendent spirit would rather listen to the overtures of the " practi- ,cal short-hand writer," who intimates, through the same channel .of communication as the Court lacquey, that he can put " per- sons of good education, who have not the means or inclination for 'one of the learned professions, "in the way of earning a guinea" a day and 8d. the folio of 72 words ; adding, that " the average pay at each of the numerous railway offices is la for four hours' -work." Or, if he preferred striking out a line of business for himself, he might emulate the worthy who thus insinuatingly addresses " the embarrassed "—" There are thousands of persons 'who have struggled long against the force of misfortune ; but few are aware that, by a very recent act of Parliament, all small -traders owing debts not exceeding 3001., farmers and all others 'owing to any amount, can be entirely raised from their diffi- .culties at a small expense, and without imprisonment or. bank- ruptcy. All such Mr. — begs will apply to him by letter, or personally-, at —• .77
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