The Sun.
London, England, 1866-08-03 00:00:00

WHITEBAIT POLITICS.

(From the Owl.)
I am a Whitebait. You may imagine perhaps that
Whitebaits have no feelings ; at all events, no political
feelings. No doubt you would not expect me to care vell
much whether, after I left the neutral grease in which
am fried, I were eaten by Conservative or Liberal jaw°,
but there you are mistaken. We talk these matters over a
good deal during the season, when the natural anxieties
of our precarious existence give us a little leisure, and. I
can assure you that the prospect of being swallowed of.
Gladstone, or digested by Clarendon, gave quite a pleasant
shudder to many a delicate little fish. How delicious to
have entered those lips from which so many elucinent
_
periods have issued, even though it was a plunge into eter-
nity. How amusing to have given the Foreign Senretag
a lesson in intervention by sticking in his throat, or tickled
his persuasive tongue by the pepper which was alwaYS a°
handy to him in the person of Mr. Layard. I could have
readily resigned myself to the appetite of the Duke of
„
Somerset, feeling certain that at all events I should hi'
been sure to have been treated with a dignified oeurtes?;
and swallowed as became a duke. Now, how different
will be. Should I fall to the lot of the First Lord shall
-af
most likely be taken at a gulp, like the reconstruction e
the Navy: We have been in a state of mind for the last
week or two as to our right "to nest in large numbell:
Some of our friends who met a Yarmouth bloater, which
had had the advantage of being wrapped up in a news:
paper, and had carefully read it, told us that there had bac"
a groat row in London about great meetings of
people in
public places. We don't understand how this can be, for
the moment it was mentioned to us we immediately set-
tled, as regards us, that large meetings were a great !Dia-
take, as they inevitably led to our being captured in Bums,rous bodies. It is, therefore, very possible that we shall
obey the orders of the Home-office and move about sine'
But then, of course, we shall be, like the Adullamites, very
hard to catch for the Tory Cabinet. What torture it will b°
if I find myself poised on the kindly but uncertain fork of
Mr. Walpole. Whether, unlike the Reformers in the 1381.14
I shall be admitted into his mouth, or whether I shall be
kept outside, and afterwards removed by the waiters, tore.:
appear, like Beales, a rechaufe at a more plebeian repast'
is a bewildering uncertainty. Cranborne will take us like he
did the Indian Budget. He will be helped by the waiter, and
swallow everything in blind confidence that it is all right'
How different to the painstaking way in which De 0
would have investigated us through his eyeglass. Lord
Stanley, we fear, will not appreciate us as his predecease'
would have done, and, accustomed to rely on Mr. 10131-
mond, will, .1 fear, fail in the performance of his dull t°
us. Altogether the prospects of us little fish are not en-
couraging, and we fear that we shall disagree with them'
but if we do, they had better call on Dr. Beales, and, as
he seems to enjoy their confidence in his treatment of the
inside of the park, they surely would allow him to prescribe
for their own.