820 CURRAN they are only a few cartloads of the raw materials for manufacturing members of parliament, on their way to the next election." Even Mr. Beresford himself, and his whole corps o commissioners, who were present, had not gravity enougł to withstand this attack on their risible muscles, but joined in the general burst of laughter it excited. When the late Lord Backinghamshire (then Major Hobart) was secretary to the viceroy, and, of course, ha what is called the management of the commons house, his ranks were filled in general by a miserable set of sup porters, whose talents only qualified them to talk agains time, or fire their amen shots at the question, by the simple monosyllables, aye or no; sitting mum through the de bate, and serving, like Falstaf's soldiers, as "mere food for the gunpowder" of Curran's wit. The orator, in one of hi speeches, affecting a tone of commiseration, noticed those gentlemen thus- " For my part, Mr. Speaker, I never glance at the righ honourable gentleman over the way (Major Hobart) with out feelings of unaffected pity for him, in the duties he has to perform in his arduous situation. When I behol an English secretary, day after day, marching down to thi house from the castle, like a petty German clock-maker with his wooden time pieces dangling at his back, in orde to deposit them on their shelves, in dumb shew, until thei manager shall pull the string for their larums to go off or their hurdy-gurdies to play their appointed tunes, feel for the honour of the country he came from, as wel as for the debasement of my own. Such is the miserable machinery by which his questions are carried in this house without even the semblance of argument or the decency of candid discussion." At another time, expressing his alarm at the rapid strides of corruption over the remaining virtues of the repre sentative body, and the elevation of apostacy in proportion to its excess, he compared the unblushing supporters of the minister's influence, to "Drowned bodies, which
