PALMERSTON AS THE LONDON HERCULES.
IT is difficult for ordinary people to imagine that Lord Palmerston can repose ; it is difficult for them to fancy that, if he has not three times the work of any other man, he will not be active in 'mischief, if it were only to exercise his faculties and to exhibit the grace with which he can recover himself and everybody else. Like the great schoolboy, he kicks his protege into the water under the assurance of saving him : but, however they may admire the feat, people would on the whole prefer to waive the opportunity of being saved. It is a customary device in fairy tales to defer an unplea- sant occurrence by giving to the efficient cause of it some inter- minable task ; and accordingly the Times, deeply reflecting that the Home Office is a post which will leave Lord Palmerston leisure to look about him, confers upon him the most interminable task of all—the removal or reform of all London nuisances.
The catalogue of mere specimens is alarming. The Home Se- cretary is to settle the rationale of cab-fares, and to abolish the enormity of back-fares, in deference to the " new towns " beyond the three-mile circle of the Post-office. He is to re- form the public steam-boats and steam-piers, and to endow them with " proper management and suitable landing-places." He is to rebuild the bridges which are tottering, and to free those that are tolled ; and even in regard to that single one which is neither tot- tering nor tolled, London Bridge, he is to mend the pavement. He is to rescue "the wretched creature" "hurrying to save the rail," from being stopped mid-way by those slow prodigies the advertis- ing-vans, which interpose their inopportune " siste viator " in order to commend the virtues of the " Eureka shirt " or the " hydro- dynamic filter" : and he is to save the horses from unwholesome frights at those undecipherable works of art. He is to supply the place of " Horace and Boileau," by shaming " the Commissioners of Police, and all whom it may concern, into immediate and effective action" on the subject of neglected sewers, the supplies of " drab liquid teeming with animal life under the profaned name of water," and our "polluted churchyards." In short, it is delicately sug- gested that we are in want of " every local arrangement that can conjure away pestilence and fever from our habitations, and draw out the sting from passing epidemics," in " this vast conglomeration of brick, mortar, and humanity," called by synecdoche London; and Lord Palmerston is nominated as the Pontifex Maximus to re- form " the system in which all is filthy, ill-arranged, and abomi- nable."
Plenty to do here ! Pontifex Maximus on the Seven Hills has not half so much on his hands. He has only the government of Rome and of Purgatory to look after; whereas Lord Palmerston is to have the Home Office and the province of London nuisances. The latter purgatory, too, is peopled with rebellious souls, who won't at all stand the application of the reforming hand. The man who interferes with churchyards, water-supply, commis- sioners of police, advertising-vans, bridges, steam-boats, steam- piers, cabs, and " all that is filthy, ill-arranged, or abominable," must be prepared for the army which he will arouse, of under+ takers, parsons, beadles, and parish conservatives ; water compa- nies, directors, shareholders, and tun:mocks ; hawkers of Eureka shirts, hydro-dynamic filters, Old Parr pills, " standard or natural sherry," and Surrey volcanoes ; bridge shareholders, and projectors of bridges unattainable ; steam-boat proprietors, smoky mariners, tarry stokers, Hungerford porters, all the mudlark men, and the terrible brigade of cabmen. Surely these be enough of foreign af- fairs to eat up the leisure time of the Home Secretary, though he were the only person capable of more activity than Lord Palmer- ston—the Gentleman in Black.
And why doom Lord Palmerston to this portentous task in de- tail? Has he been railing at the Gods or the Emperors, that he should be set rolling the stone of reform up every hill or gutter in London ? The punishment, indeed, accumulates upon one man all the penal industries which were witnessed in the mythological House of Correction by Ulysses, 2Eneas, Dante, and other gentle- men connected with the press of classic poetry. Lord Palmerston's crimes are many, but no human being ever merited this. Es- pecially when it is needless. The only reason why her Gracious Majesty should nominate Lord Palmerston as an assigned convict without ho of release, would be deference to the pleasant malice
pe
of the Leading Tournal, and we can imagine that Gracious Majesty would be well disposed to concede so small a favour to so great a petitioner. Bat we foresee the merciful cunning of the Times. Its object evidently is to frighten Lord Palmerston into a real duty of
his new office in the Ministry. Difficult imagine it, as it may be to magine
it there is really one parent cause for this brood of H. ydra London probably is the only great civic community in the world without a munieipality. It has, indeed, that ancient synecdoche which gives its name- to the whole, and exacts a coal-tax from more than the whole ; the morbid appetite of the Lord Mayor and Alder- men requiring them to feed upon the coals of Surrey, Hertfordshire, and other distant parts. There are also parish administrations; but none which can transcend the boundaries annually whipped by the little charity-boys. There are also Boards, set over the whole, to direct improvements, and to teach parishes how to make drains run into one another. Bat as these Boards are established only to stop the mouths of Sanitary Associations and other organized bores,-their purpose is fulfilled by their simple existence ; and they are cunningly deprived of powers, lest they should " offend the foreigner in the next parish or East of Temple Bar. Being thus without an effective municipality, it naturally follows that London cannot regulate its ways ; and all of us who live in the metropolis are consequently under the rule of Lynch law. The peculiarity of that law is, that its authority is not con- centrated but diffused, and that the head of the department con- sists of the lowest orders, the Mohawks and Hawkubites, the Skinners and Barnburners. In the English capita], the established Lynch law is administered by turncocks, funeral mutes, placard- bearers, steam-boat stokers, mudlarks, and cabmen. Now the object is, to substitute for that enormous committee of public un- safety, " with power to add to their number," a duly organized municipality for the whole metropolis ; which would essentially Wsess the power to do all that is wanted in its own province. ho is most concerned in advancing the proper measure for that purpose, if not the chief of the Home department? The Times has admirably prepared the Palmerstonian mind for an adequate con- ception of that duty. Having been duly frightened with a sight of the mortal work to be got through, he will feel it as a positive respite when he is told that, instead of executing it all propria manu, he has only to provide the instrument, by pushing the proper bill through Parliament.
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