very large library (for the most part quite
unknown at the present benighted time) which
will infallibly become the rich inheritance of
Posterity, there will be found a history of
England. From that record, Posterity will
learn the origin of many noble families and
noble titles. Now the jest I have in my
mind, is this. If we could so arrange
matters as that that privileged class should
be always with great jealousy preserved,
and hedged round by a barrier of buckram
and a board of green cloth, which only a
few generals, a few great capitalists, and a
few lawyers, should be allowed to scale
—the latter not in a very creditable manner
until within the last few generations: as our
amiable friend Posterity will find when he
looks back for the date at which Chief Justices
and Puisne Judges began to be men of
undoubted freedom, honor, and independence—if
such privileged class were always watched
and warded and limited, and fended off, in the
manner of hundreds of years ago, and never
adapted to the altered circumstances of the
lime; and if it were in practice set up and
maintained as having been, from Genesis thenceforward,
endowed with a superior natural instinct
for noble ruling and governing and Cabinet-
making, as triumphantly shewn in the excellent
condition of the whole machinery of Government,
of every public office, every dockyard,
every ship, every diplomatic relation, and
particularly every colony—I think there
would be a self-evident pleasantry in this
that would make Posterity chuckle. The
present British practice being, as we all
know, widely different, we should have
many changes to make before we could hand
down this amusing state of things. For
example, it would be necessary to limit the
great Jenner or Vaccination Dukedom and
endowment, at present so worthily represented
in the House of Lords, by the noble and
scientific Duke who will no doubt be called
upon (some day or other) to advise Her
Majesty in the formation of a Ministry. The
Watt or Steam-Engine peerage would also
require to be gradually abolished. So would
the Iron-Road Earldom, the Tubular Bridge
Baronetcy, the Faraday Order of Merit, the
Electric Telegraph Garter, the titles at present
held by distinguished writers on literary
grounds alone, and the similar titles held by
painters;—though it might point the joke to
make a few Academicians equal in rank to an
alderman. But, the great practical joke once
played off, of entirely separating the ennobled
class from the various orders of men
who attain to social distinction by making
their country .happier, better, and more
illustrious among nations, we might be
comfortably sure, as it seems to me—and as I now
humbly submit—of having done something to
amuse Posterity.

Another thing strikes me. Our venerable
friend will find in that English history of his,
that, in comparatively barbarous times, when
the Crown was poor, it did anything for money
—commuted murder, or anything else—and
that, partly of this desperate itching for gold,
and partly of partial laws in favor of the
feudal rich, a most absurd obsolete punishment,
called punishment by fine, had its birth. Now,
it appears to me, always having an eye on the
entertainment of Posterity, that if while we
proclaimed the laws to be equal against all
offenders, we would only preserve this obsolete
punishment by fine—of course no punishment
whatever to those who have money—say
in a very bad class of cases such as gross
assaults, we should certainly put Posterity
on the broad grin. Why, we might then
even come to this. A " captain " might be
brought up to a Police Office, charged with
caning a young woman for an absolutely
diabolical reason; and the offence being proved,
the " captain" might, as a great example of
the equality of the law, (but by no fault in the
magistrate, he having no alternative) be fined
fifty shillings, and might take a full purse
from his pocket and offer, if that were all,
to make it pounds. And what a joke that
would be for Posterity! To be done in the
face of day, in the first city upon earth, in.
the year one thousand eight hundred and fifty-
three!

Or, we might have our laws regarding this
same offence of assault in such a facetious
state as to empower a workhouse nurse within
two hours' walk of the capital, slowly to
torture a child with fire, and afterwards
to walk off from the law's presence scot
free of all pains and penalties, but a
fortnight's imprisonment! And we might so
carry out this joke to the uttermost as that
the forlorn child should happily die and rot,
and the barbarous nurse be then committed
for trial; her horrible offence being legally
measured by that one result or its absence,
and not by the agony it caused, and the
awful cruelty it shewed. And all this time,
(to make the pleasantry the greater) we might
have all manner of watch-towers, in measurement
as near as possible of the altitude of the
Tower of Babel when it was overthrown,
erected in all parts of the kingdom, with all
sorts and conditions of men and women
perched on platforms thereupon, looking out
for any grievance afar off, East, West, North,
and South, night and day. So should that
tender nurse return, gin-solaced, to her
ministration upon babies, (imagine the dear
matron's antecedents, all ye mothers!) and
so should Posterity be made to laugh, though
bitterly!

Indeed, I think Posterity would have such
an indifferent appreciation of this last joke,
on account of its intensely practical character,
that it might require another to relieve it.
And I would suggest that if a body of gentlemen
possessing their full phrenological share
of the combative and antagonistic organs, could
only be induced to form themselves into a
society for declaiming about Peace, with a very