The Liverpool Standard and General Commercial Advertiser.
Liverpool, Merseyside, England, 1841-03-05 00:00:00

THE EASY MAN

There is no human being walks through this life in a way
more peculiar to himself than the easy man. The hopes and
fears, the joy and anguish, which worry and harass the rest
of mankind, are unknown to him ; he came into this world
he knows not how—he jogs through it just because he sees
other people doing so—he eats and drinks, sleeps soundly,

and dies easily—and when he is buried, the sexton, as he
stands in the half-filled grave, sticks his spade in it for a
moment—and takes snuff. The easy man is generally of a
middle stature, stout, with cheeks having a kind of rough-
ness like a fowl with feathers off, rosy however, and streaked
like a winter pear. There is usually a little watery saliva at
the corners of his mouth, and in cold weather his proboscis
has a drop hanging from it like a diamond in the nose of a
Persian queen. He wears an everlasting drab great coat,
green leather gloves, and a hat slightly turned up behind.
His trowsers in summer—they are a very old pair—are usu-
ally too short for him, and display glaring white worsted
stockings ; his hair appears to obey no sort of arrangement ;
and :he was never seen with an umbrella in his life. He
speaks always in a kind of cosy whisper, as if he was con-
versing with his wife under a coverlit. He has a look of uni-
versal benignity, and breathes heavily through his nose. He
is fond of using the word " sir," and sticks it into his sentences
oftener than other people. He takes off his hat in banks and
attorney's offices, and has a guise of inoffensiveness which
nobody can mistake. One of these men, a few months ago,
took it into his thick head to write a letter• to the Times. It
was a short one, to be sure, but on an important subject, be-
ing no less than an inquiry why London should not be
fortified as well as Paris? "We are getting frightened, Sir,
in the city," concluded the easy man, in his cosy, cheeping,
shrug. shoulder phraseology. Now, had there been an in-
vasion, that fellow. and all his kind, would have been
of about just as much use as so many bolsters. It is odd,
but these men are always married, and have usually a great
number of chubby-faced children, with stupid counte-
nances and dirty noses. How all this came about—how
these men could have made love, " popped the question"—
to use that abominable way of expressing it—and volun-
tarily put their necks into the matrimonial noose, is a mys-
tery and a riddle which staggered Solomon himself. One
would think that if woman was banished from the earth,
or indeed had never existed in it, it would have been a
matter of perfect indifference to him ; and yet they are at
once detected by the sex as marrying men. They make
good husbands in their way, if they do not happen to marry
a lady of " poetic temperament"—in that case, to use a
"it is all up with thern•" How-
ever their capacity for suffering is marvellous; and if the
devil should have given them a poetess for a wife, he cannot
deprive them of the blessed serenity of a vacant mind. A
chronicler of small beer would have made him happy ; yet,
bad as matters are, the easy man can yet smoke his pipe, and
thank God they are no worse. To look in the face of one of
snorers, it is easy to see that he does not care live shillings
for the fall of man. Had Eve, indeed, never eaten the for-
bidden fruit, he would have taken his share of the enjoy-
ments of Paradise decorously ; but as it is, the easy man is by
no means distressed about it. The beauties of nature, the
harmony of the universe, and the national debt, are things
which never enter into his mind. The rise and fall of em-
pires—the revolutions of nations—the starry heavens—animal
magnetism—and the shortness of human life, are subjects
which affect him not—he lives and breathes—he is one of the
herd—he dies and is forgotten.—Courl Gazette.

common expression

SALE OF THE AMERICAN PACKET-SHIP PRESIDENT.—
The American line-of-packet ship President, that lately went
on the Nore Sand, has been sold by public auction, in the
Captains'-room, at Loyds', for £B3O.

MINISTERIAL STRATAGEMS.—The exertions of the go-
vernment to bring up their supporters on the 25th ult. were
unparalleled. Sir T. Wilde, though labouring under the most
severe indisposition, was brought to the house at the immi-
nent risk of his life. In fact a room off the lobby—since not
inaptly styled " the infirmary"—was crowded with invalids,
until summoned into the body of the house by the sound of
the division bell. Amongst the invalids were Mr. Byng, the
aged and infirm representative for Middlesex ; Mr. Fyshe
Palmer ; Lord Charles Russell, with a fractured collar-bone ;
Lord Douglas Hallyburton in a state of imbecility ; and, to
his eternal shame be it spoken, Sir Thomas Troubridge,
whose daughter, a young lady of seventeen years of age, lies
still a corpse in his house. All these voted in the majority,
with the exception of Lord Douglas Hallyburton, and he was
removed before the division took place. Of course, those
who could insist, on a Lord of the Admiralty, outraging every
decency of life, by giving his vote under such circumstances,

could have no compunction in exhibiting hutriarinit;
most degraded and pitiable form, in the person of Lord
Douglas Hallyburton, if there was a possibility of ren-
dering his vote available. And now, to account wby it
was that the Treasury whippers refrained from tendering the
noble lord's vote : According to the rules of the House of
Commons, it is competent to any member to object to another
member's voting, on the plea that the member objected to
had not heard the question put. In such a case, the Speaker
is obliged to call such member to the table, who, on being in-
formed of the objection that has been taken, is asked from
the chair to state what the question is, upon which he is going
to vote. Now, Lord Douglas Hallyburton is quite incom-
petent either to understand the nature of any question pro.
posed to him, or even to repeat the simplest question when
deliberately read to him. The Treasury whippers having got
wind that Lord Douglas's vote would have been objected to
on the grounds I have stated, removed the noble lord from
the house.—Dublin Evening Mall.