A BAD JOKE.
" It was the glory of Elizabeth that she selected for her Ministers statesmen responding to the spirit of the age. In a constitutional monarchy, such as that which now happily exists in this country, and in which the authority of the Crown is exercised through responsible advisers, the political character of the Ministry is not less important than the personal qualifications of the Sovereign. Indeed, the highest personal qualifications of the Sovereign for the elevated station which he fills, are sagacity to select and constancy to support a Ministry competent to meet the peculiar exigencies of the times, and skilled to navigate the vessel of the state through the straits and rapids of the social current. This was the glory of Elizabeth ; this is the glory of William IV."— Globe.
This is rather too had of the Globe. To toady the Ministers, is quite natural and proper—the bounden duty and everyday vocation of a Government journal : but surely this could be done without quizzing the King ? To compare Lords BROUGHAM, ALTHORP, and MELBOURNE, to BACON, WALSINGHAM, and CECIL, is going quite as far as can fairly be expected in Down- ing Street; but there was no occasion to insinuate a resemblance between the sagacious, crafty, unscrupulous ELIZABETH, with the simple, open, good-natured, and well-meaning Sailor King. To laud his Majesty's skill in cabinet making, too, is almost indecent at the present time. If WILLIAM the Fourth's notions on this subject are rather singular,—if his propositions on a recent occasion were not indicative of the most profound know- ledge of parties or principles in politics,—still there is no occasion for the Globe to sport its jokes upon the Royal eccentricities or ignorance. The readers of our contemporary's effusions may not perhaps be so obtuse as he imagines ; and though ill-informed in Court scandal and party intrigues, they cannot help knowing what all know, that there have been more changes of Cabinets— more shiftings and adjustings of ill-assorted materials in the Go- vernment—more indications of the absence of a firm directing power—since the accession of WILLIAM the Fourth, than during the same period in the reign of any British Monarch since 1688; unless we must except the brief interval during which the Duke of NEWCASTLE and his set tormented GEORGE the Second. The joking of the Globe is therefore too broad.
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