The Press.
London, England, 1854-06-10 00:00:00

PETER PLYMLEY'S GHOST
TO LORD JOHN RUSSELL.

DEAR JOHN,—You have been talking with your well-known courage
about " principles." You have been producing characters from
Holland house and appealing to " the book in breeches." Don't you
know (my worthy John) that principles and point-lace went out of
fashion together—that you might as well revive Wood's budget, or ex-
plain Mr. Gladstone's " Church and State," as found anything on Whig
political principles since the days of the Revolution?
I could as soon have expected to hear that you had come down to
the House in the hat and feather, doublet and ribbons, tights and buff
boots of Sir Geoffrey Hudson, as that you had set up a talk about
principles. What principle there can be in common between yourself
and your amiable colleague Aberdeen is a question to be submitted
to a council of ethical students with the longest heads and the
shortest habiliments in your Alma Mater of Edinburgh; or to the
most profound mathematical prizeman the ever displayed a thought-
ful countenance and a dirty shirt in Can idge. How could you ask
him to have anything to do with a Reform Bill? Depend upon it he
deals in measures as incomplete as the statues that are the produce
of the plunder of the Parthenon—a defiant hero with the spear-arm
broken short off—a sage looking (for twenty years at Russia) with both
his eyes knocked out.
But, John, had you not enough of Reform Bills ? Know you not
that your monument is to he found in the taprooms of London
(where. the incomprehensible Gladstone has made himself understood
at last by giving them taxation "in their own jugs "), enframed
between the landlord and landlady, and flanked by Tom Cribb and the
late Mr. Thistlewood ? There you stand listening to the Royal assent
to the " bill, and the whole bill," while the painter has made to
descend upon the heads of you and " Old Glory " a ray of sunshine as
solid as a deal plank. Could you not have taken warning by the fate
of Charles XII., Napoleon, and Barrington the pickpocket, and been
content with the , laurels you had won ? You were no inconsiderable
actor in that great revolution when the hordes of Birmingham were to
charge (under the command of an attorney), not six and eightpence,
but their hereditary oppressors, and the troops of the Crown. Did
not your adherents on the field of Piccadilly attack the man that con-
quered Napoleon, and in smashing their own shackles smash his plate
glass as well ? courageously forgetful even of Lord Londonderry's
horse, which interfered in politics like Caligula's, and rode down the
sovereign people, leaving not " heads " but their opposites rolling
in the dust. Have you yearned once more to shoulder your crutch
and show how those fields were won? The thing's impossible.
Nobody will rise in insurrection to enfranchise the doctors and
attorneys ; and who would mind a couple of hundred Baptist ministers
arming themselves each with an evangelical breakfast and a green
umbrella to raise an entente on behalf of the University of London?
The Reform Bill, however, has been blown away by war. One
Nicholas, it would seem, set you upon it, and another •cabled you to
let it go, and yon are a War Minister !
And you have begun it properly. I do not hear of the " ear-
piercing fife," but of the pocket-piercing estimates—not of the spirit-
stirring drum, but of tie spirit-encouraging malt tax. How can you,
John, be a party to the ingratitude of your Premier to Nicholas ? You
must have forgotten when he would have persuaded us that Siberia was
as healthful as Funchal, and any phthisicky old gentlewoman as well
protected there as if she was combatting for lodgings with her land-
lady at Torquay; that the Turk was as safe beside Nicholas as an old
retired wooden-legged Admiral of the Yellow, whose cottage and pad-
dock might adjoin the grand demesnes of the Duke of —, who
occasionally sent the veteran a bunch of grapes or yesterday's paper ;
and that his grace would as soon have attacked the admiral unawares,
when his leg was screwed off for the night, seized his cabbage garden,
and carried off his milch cow and his last quarter's pension, as the Czar
attack Abdul-Medjid. Judge Nicholas by yourself. When he saw the
invitations to encroach how could he avoid encroaching? Suppose
you had an opportunity of the like kind to turn the cathedrals into
literary institutions (free of the poor rates), and draught the country
parsons for the militia, would you not adopt it with that alacrity with
which you commence projects and give them up ?
Do you (my simple friend) suppose for a moment that the
stomach of Nicholas for territory is less than that of his subjects for
train oil? or that he could resist the temptation your Premier threw
in his way any more than his subjects could resist the appetising pre
Nonce of the lamps when all the allied powers of " civilisation " met in
London, and Alexander's soldiers allayed their craving with the oil, and
left Fleet-street in darkness—darkness as thick as you yourself are in
as to the results of your war and your finance ? You may have heard,
perhaps (at second hand), of the platonic cycle in that famous
university where our friend Dugald Stewart quoted a passage of
Aristotle's Ethics as " some judicious remarks which he had found in
"an old magazine." Now, John, the platonic cycle has come round.
Nicholas wishes to do with Constantinople what Henry did with
Woburn Abbey—knock the chief proprietor on the head, and send
the ladies of the seraglio (like the nuns) to shift for themselves, if
they can find any shifts. You are a man of precedents, andhow canyon
-gistently 0- him? I know you of old that Whig precedents are
',oliah, you curse your enemies. lam con-
, but for obvious reasons would not, that
it than Charles James Fox ought consti-
mister. And if Nicholas has not Whig
' robbery what precedent on earth has he

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