MERCY OF A DESPOT.-The porter of the mosque near the bazaar is a man with one eye. The person who accompanied us thus accounted for the loss of the other eye. This man, a Tartar, was one of the officers of the household of the late Kan, and had the general superintendance of the palace. According to the etiquette of Oriental palaces, the officers, when going through the courts, should hold their heads bowed down, and their hands crossed on their breast. One day this unfortunate man inadvertently raised his eyes towards the apartments, out of which were looking the Kan and one of his women. He was immediately called into the presence of the Kan, who asked him, in a tone of great severity, with which of his eyes he had seen the Sultana. The man replied, with his right eye; and the Kan ordered it to be immediately torn from his head. This did not prevent the Tartar from remaining in his service till the death of his master. This cruelty is, however, not to be wondered at in a country where the loss of eyes is often considered as a favour-it being substituted for the punishment of death. When Mazanderan was invaded by the first Chah of Persia of the present reigning dynasty, the eunuch Aga-Mahomet Kan, one of his generals, took a town by assault after an obstinate resistance. When he had assuaged his first fury by a very extended massacre, he then entered into a composition with the chiefs of the city, relative to sparing the lives of the remainder of the inhabitants. A pardon was granted them on condition of their delivering to him ten pounds of human eyes!”Voyage dans la Russie Meridionale.

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THE

LONDON MAGAZINE.

DECEMBER 1, 1826.

APPENDIX TO THE BLACK BOOK.

THE pamphlet bearing the above title, gives an alphabetical list of the New House of Commons, and the politics, places, connexions, or character of each member. This is a kind of work to which we are generally disposed to attach little value; but we observe features in the performance before us not common to its class, that entitle it to respect and notice. It is executed in a spirit of fairness, and in some points with considerable cleverness. Errors in statement there are, and also miscarriages in judgment; but the first may easily be corrected, and the second are fewer in number than we could have anticipated, considering the nature of the design, which must needs put the justice of the writer to a severe trial. An idea of the plan of the pamphlet will be better conveyed by example than by description. The rank and file of the Honourable House are told of shortly, with a dry enumeration of their places, connexions, or political accidents, as the metaphysicians might call them-for instance, to take the first name :

Abercromby, James, Calne, (the place for which he sits,) brother of Lord Abercromby; a commissioner of bankrupts. Two brothers in the army, and his mother a pension attended regularly; a plain argumentative speaker, bold and persevering in his objects.

Attached to the names of the more leading men, are sketches of their characters, struck off for the most part with spirit and shrewdness. We extract by way of specimen, a portrait of Sir Francis Burdett, by a hand manifestly radical-but certainly impartial, and we think just:

Burdett, Sir Francis, Westminster, a son an officer in the 10th Dragoons.

Men in power, or in high popular favour, are often much more benefited by censure than praise; in either case, they are apt to feel self-importance enough, without it being augmented, or their usefulness diminished, by inconsiderate confidence and admiration. Besides, it is the nature of panegyric to exalt its object in the same degree it depresses those from whom it proceeds, and thus, on one hand, it tends to generate arrogance and conceit; on the other, to produce unseemly humiliation and self-abasement. Something of this kind appears latterly to have been growing up between" Westminster's Pride" and his constituents; he has been flattered and trusted

DEC. 1826.

This is the mark of an oppositionist.
2 H

so long, till he really seems to despise the honours thrust upon him. One cannot otherwise account for the laches in his parliamentary history. No one doubts his integrity or abilities; all that is complained of is a want of zeal and activity in the discharge of his representative duties. If the baronet be sick of public life, he had better retire from the stage at once, and not fill one of the highest posts the people can bestow by the mere fragrance of his name. Of late years, Westminster has not been represented at all; her principles have not been expounded, nor has she exerted the influence in the legislature she ought, from the number, intelligence, and public spirit of the electors. By what hocus-pocus management, then, is Sir Francis continued in the representation, and this too, after he has felt, or affected to feel, indifferent to a seat in Parliament? Among the numerous farces enacted during the general election, none was more disgusting than the way in which the "baronet and his man" were shoved into Parliament, without any questions being asked, any pledge received, and scarcely with a return of thanks for the honour conferred. I will venture to predict such a juggling ceremony will not be so easily repeated. The electors begin to perceive they may be disseized of their franchises as well by the intrigues of a little knot of under-ground politicians as by a peer of the realm. It behoves them to be on the alert in future: usage soon grows into prescription: and the baronet, in process of time, by their tame acquiescence, may claim the representation of Westminster as a patrimonial adjunct, instead of a trust for the benefit of his constituents.

Another indication in Sir Francis seems to disqualify him for a popular leader and representative; as he grows older, he appears to grow more aristocratic in his views of society. The baronet was never suspected of republicanism, his prepossessions were always in favour of birth and Norman descent, and he certainly never indulged the idea that mankind should be all placed on the pavé, and left to start fair for the honours and advantages of society, the prizes being the reward of the best and the wisest. His political views were limited to the renovation of some Saxon scheme of liberty, in which there were lords without control, and a peasantry without rights: in short, his object was to pull down those above him, rather than raise up and assimilate to his own grade those beneath him.

The hon. baronet is much devoted to rural sports, and, I confess, I never knew one of the Nimrod tribe who entertained very enlightened or exalted notions of human liberty. We have an illustration of this position in the general character of the country magistracy. If such men affect popular principles, all they aim at is greater license, a wider chase, and free warren for themselves, not any community of privilege with their fellow men. If greater lords than themselves wish to control the enjoyment of these, they are eager to abate the obstruction; but, as to the bulk of the people, they conceive they are only born to beat the bushes.t

It is, doubtless, from these early impressions, the baronet conceived the aversion he expressed in the last session of Parliament, to the French law of succession, and a minute sub-division of landed property. Sir Francis has no idea of abridging the domain of the "lords of the soil," though it might create food for the famishing, or freeholds for the disfranchised.

In conclusion, one may hope that, on a future occasion, Westminster will be more adequately represented: the present members are men of little mark, and no efficiency whatever, and though they would be good enough for any other place, they are not sufficiently so for a city which has been long held up as an example to others, and a sort of conservatory of popular principles and public spirit; it is the only patch of territory the Reformers have been able to reclaim from the waste of corruption, and it is a pity it should be over-shadowed by two mere sun-flowers like Sir Francis and Mr. Hobhouse.

This is the style of the full-length pictures, and we think it decidedly good; but the briefer description, giving in a few strokes, the party's circumstances and political attitude, which we may call the dot and line work, is by no means of inferior efficiency. Much of it

La Fayette declared that he could not have supposed it possible that any man could be so aristocratical as he found Sir Francis Burdett.-Reviewer.

+ The courts of law, in their well-known zeal to give the utmost possible latitude to the liberties of the subject, in their interpretation of the 5 Anne, c. 14, which is the statute under which offences against the game-laws are usually prosecuted, have determined that a qualified person may take out with him a person not qualified, to beat the bushes and see a hure killed!