The Liverpool Standard and General Commercial Advertiser.
Liverpool, Merseyside, England, 1836-12-20 00:00:00

iLiberpool

TUESDAY MORNING, DECEMBER 20, 1836.

We have, for some time, felt great surprise at the little
public concert) %vitt) which a British ministry may be
lost—for, as if ti,qcliM by the wand of some political
Harlequin, the word,
prorogation, consigned them to
silent oblivion. Not only a rich argosy foundered at sea,
but even an absconded apprentice, excites longer inte-
, rest, and more .matter for conversation. The curtain is
no sooner dropped, and the play over, than my Lord,
John Russell and Viscount Melbourne, who figured upon
the stage in all the late tragi-comedies, have disappeared,
with their subordinates, down to the scene-shifters and
candle-snuffers of the parliamentary theatre:, Surely
'some political Melibwus might be found to chant a re-
quiem over the "remains" of a departing administra-
tion; or to console despairing radicalism with the hope,
thattltev who are perishing as ministers, may rise again
as agitators, to disturb the land—that they who have been
the caterpillars of the state, devouring its verdurous
leaves, will shortly spread their gaudy wings, and hum
in florid declamation, like painted butterflies, and as
harmless.. But let us trace them in their larva,state—in
which, though there is no sign of motion, there still is
life—perhaps we shall be able to take off a little of the
painted down of the future moth.
What has become of Lord John Russell and Viscount
Melbourne ? In all the late movements of our political
hemisphere we have never once seen those blazing stars
whose ever ominous appearance

disastrous twili!,ht sheds
O'er halt the nations—and with fear of change
Perplexes monarchs"—
their own, and all with whom their country is connected.
Are they, luminously, slumbering on beds of down—
steeped in Lethean forgetfulness of dangers past, and
peri kto come ? Are they dreaming over again of the
hair-brearlth escapes of the last session's campaign ? If
such he their repose, we fancy we hear theni exclaim,
with Clarence, " ac would not pass another such a night,
though .'t were to buy a world of happy (lays, so full of
theadfiii horrors was the time." But, we fear, they sel-
dom sleep " the innocent sleep ;" or, if even their eye-
lids are weighed down With sleep, the spectre of depart-
ing power draws their curtain, and finding them as pale
as Pt iatn, cries, sleep no more—" Troy is burnt." When
the summons arrived for Lord John and Viscount Mel-
bourne to disencumber' themselves of the load of govern..
anent, which had been awkwardly placed upon their shoul-
ders, and which they had " heavily borne," with what
alacrity di-d they dive into the stream of obscurity, from
which they have not yet emerged ; but such amphibious
creatures, which are neither fish nor fowl, and yet, like
CElia Lcelia Crispina, are compounds of all contradic-
tions—can live in any element ; either the turbid " wa-
ters of strife" and agitation, or in the political hurricane,
that carries desolation in its course.. But let us track
those-fugitive minis-fers to their biding places—we shall
find much matter there for speculation; Du we not bet
hold the there, in all the agony of disappointed ambi-