ACCIDENTS OF CENSURE.
THERE is a strange caprice in the incidence of censure. Not only may "one man steal a horse while another must not look over the hedge," but it sometimes happens that the same man who is indulged in stealing the steed is severely handled for the smaller offence. Dr. Marsham is a heretic as to the current opinions of the day in political economy ; but that would be no objection with all constituencies. He happened, however, to speak of some labouring classes in England as people who "rejoiced in potatoes" ; and the flippant triviality of the phrase appears to be a thing that he will never be able to get over. There has been a potato famine; potatoes and misery are now held to be close companions ; Dr. Marsham's commonplace pleasantry of phrase was inopportune; but it does seem hard that he should incur last- ing infamy for the verbal indiscretion. On the other hand, though the Duke of Norfolk expatiated on curry-powder, his seat among his peers is as safe as ever, his vote as good as that of the wisest in the Senate. A lord may twaddle on turmeric without forfeit- ing his qualification; but "some things is too sarious to mintion —praties is one."
The infirmity of Henri Quatre has never been held incompa- tible with statesmanship : the epithet " great " has been applied to many men who would fall under the anathema of Mr. Spooner; even at this very time eulogies have been lavished, not only by lax-spoken Irish Members, but by strict and Presbyterianly- Inclined statesmen in the highest station, on one who notoriously incurred the risk of having to do penance equally with the royal patron of Protestantism in France, or with many more modern royal persons nearer home. If you may believe the eulogists, no man was ever more valued as a public servant ; he would have been retained as long. as possible in public employment. An- other person, stationed at a post of less importance, is tried by the tribunal of public gossip, there convicted of being open to scandal, and told that peccadilloes are held in Downing Street to be a perpetual disqualification for public employment
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