8 AUGUST 1846, Page 13

POLITICAL ANTIQUARIANS.

Tau Protectionist demonstration at Lynn has the advantage of informing the world what those worthy gentlemen would be at. It seems that they are really under the leadership of Lord Stan- ley ; and their practical objects are, to restore the Corn-laws and -revive Protection. Pleasant wags !—they certainly beat all the innocent enthusiasts we know. The Antiquarian and Archaeological Societies, for example, contain a large proportion of en-

thusiasts ; but we never heard of a Monkbarns or a Cockletop who would go to such lengths as their new rivals. They, the anti- quaries and arclueologians, are content to explore bygone ages, and perchance to dote over the remote past j_ but we never uncles,- stood that the most diligent grubber-up of Roman coins proposed to revive Suetonius, or even that Lord Albert Conyngham, when he opened the Saxon barrows on his grounds, had the faintest idea of restoring the Heptarehy. The well-meaning projectors of Lynn, however, are evidently serious: they not only explore the obsolete history of Protection but actually contemplate its re- vival. They are the Rip van Winkles of English politics. This peculiar archeological turn, which makes them exist in the past, - induces them also to be content with Lord Stanley for their leader. How should they know that he is a man utterly used up ? They

• Mill live in the year 1841; and Lord Stanley was at that time • still politically alive although even then falling into the sere and yellow leaf. He died of New Zealand, ving dwelt too long in the unwholesome regions of the CoOtlice. The only spell that collie restore him to life would be the immolation of a victim as substitute for him, vampire fashion. If Lord Grey, now, were to be bitten, and were to fail as egregiously in Colonial adminis- tration as Lord Stanley did, the spell might be complete, and Lord Stanley might be restored to the living world, his death and burial forgotten.