A Hundred Years Ago
The Great Unpaid have grievously disappointed their friends. Those who take the trouble of thinking before they form their opinions, knew that these gentry would prove ineffective, whenever their powers should be called into active operation ; but the reasoning portion of the public, until very lately, formed a miserably small minority of the population of Great Britain ; and we were doomed, from day to day, to hear dinned into our ears the praises of the magistracy, of which we knew them not only to be undeserving, but that their conduct was then laying a train of evils, to which their wisdom would never impose or their vigour fix a termination.
If to preserve game, enforce the payment of tithes, stop footpaths. and silence profane fiddles, had been the only ends and objects of justice, the squires and their clerical adjuncts might have served the purpose. They have shown every disposition, and have displayed extraordinary vigour in punishing the transgressions, exacting the dues, curtailing the conveniences, and destroying the amusements of the lower orders ; but if greater things arc to be accomplished—crime to be prevented, famine averted, oppression repelled, confidence and content to be secured—then our rustic police is at fault. When the case rises higher—when a long train of mis- government and the moat grinding local tyranny have excited dis- turbances, even to the verge of rebellion, then indeed our provincial authorities betray their utter imbecility ; the blusterer of the bench proves a coward in the field—the Solon of petty sessions is but a Dogberry in the council.
GEORGE CROIKSHANK.
George Cruikshank is the most practical of laughing philosophers : he " turns diseases into commodity "—he " creates a joke under the ribs of Death" : he is a licentiate of the College of Morous, and his prescriptions shake. the diaphragms of _his patients until they dethrone their nightmares. His plates are the very cantharidea of mirth, and tickle even the hypochondriac into a 6t of laughter. Ho has, in this humorous and graphic commenary on Sir Walter's anecdotes of visions and hallucinations, given UB the antidote of fun to the bane of good spirits ; and we will venture to say that this two shillings' worth of George Cruikshank will be worth more than all the physic or reasoning in Christendom towards curing the hypped and phantom-worried patient.
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