CORN FOR CORN.
THOSE resort to quacks and quack-medicines who have tried physic in vain under the "regular practitioner " : the aristocracy resort much to quacks, for there is scarcely an advertising empiric who has not a host of" distinguished persons" in his train. Sr. JOHN LONG did not lack aristocratic support ; and COCKLE is the avowed rescuer of half the Peerage from the black daemon of bile. It is no longer the fashion to "Take pains
To prove a weakness in the reins;"
but titled valetudinarians are so stung by the ecstasy of gratitude for present relief, that they rush into print to proclaim their own ease and the supereminent merit of the man who has contrived it. Wealth, in- dolence, and age, impair the digestion ; the appetite flags before the pastry is on table ; a box of the " antibilious " enables the epicure to arrive at the game ; a second to achieve the very dessert, with a biscuit by way of crowning bravado ; and the rejuvenescent heredi- tary legislator, delighted, is proud to add his name to the list of renovated diners. The effect of this proneness on the part of the great to blazon their infirmities as ostentatiously as their arms, is to supply interesting materials for history—for such are the adver- tisements of empirics : they will enable the future historian to compile a complete nosology of the Peerage. One very instructive disclosure will strike him forcibly : the corn-doctors, who do not pretend to more than experience and the great manual skill acquired by constant practice at one thing, are not to be classed with quacks, but they are advertising doctors, and their advertisements disclose the remarkable fact that corns are the scourge of the British aris- tocracy. The grandees advertise their senile but patrician lame- ness as if they were proud of it, and "boast themselves more lovely than before "— "Ductoresque ipit prlmum capita alta ferentes,
Cornibus."
There is one doctor alone who boasts among his grateful re- tinue— to say nothing of Colonels and Doctors in Divinity, and such small deer—Lord CREWE, Lord FEVERSHAM, the Honourable 0e- TAVIUS DUNCOMBE, M.P., Sir EDMOND TEMPLE, General CHARLES PYE DOUGLAS, Sir HARCOURT LEES, and Lady DICK; and the same gentleman has ten thousand similar testimonials latent at his own residence. Another professor parades the Duke of LEEDS, the present Duke of CLEVELAND, the Marquis of THOMOND, the Mar- quis of LANDSDOWNE, the Marquis of DOUGLAS, Earl HOME, the Earl of BELFAST and his son, Viscount SYDNEY, Lord ADOLPHUS FITZCLARENCE, Lord WILLIAM POWLETT, the Honourable RICHARD CAVENDISH, the Honourable C. E. PEPYS, the Honourable POULETT SOMERSET, Sir GEORGE J. PALMER. This gentleman is fastidious— he" will only insert testimonials from the noblemen and gentle- men residing in London and known to the public." All the afflicted persons dwell on the "pain" from which they have been relieved. What does history teach here ?—that a whole class labour under a particular malady : that they are daily resorting to half or rather fractional measures—bit by bit reform—mere topical palliatives : that the universal infliction of the curse is evidently a judgment for some common crime ; and the historian will remember that the class which here cry out under the burden of corns is the class that for its own benefit imposes the burden of corn-laws. What boots their selfish legislation, if they are reduced to this hobble ? Their folly is amazing : they daily study a new bunion's pilgrim- progress— and they can't even "boil the peas" in their shoes : they know well enough where the shoe pinches ; they subtnit to have their corns peeled and repeeled in the face of the World; and yet they hesitate to absolve themselves from the curse at once, by expiating the crime of their order and repealing the Corn-laws !
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