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SCOTCH ELECTIONS.-We can afford but a few remarks upon this head. The state of the representative system. in Scotland has disabled that part of the United Kingdom from bearing a part in the national struggle commensurate with the feeling of her population. The returns have in general been discreditable. Edinburgh has infamously signalized herself by the rejection of her brightest ornament, the Lord Advocate. The burghs have generally acted better than the counties; in the latter, the "parchment voters" exclude the influence of public opinion altogether. Scotland is, in fact, the Cornwall of the northone great rotten borough. The people are as little represented by the Scottish members of parliament, as by the Messrs. Alexander, who sit for Old Sarum. No part of the empire will derive more benefit from the measure of Reform than Scotland.

IRISH ELECTIONS.-Ireland has done its duty. There, too, has it been the misfortune of the Peels and the Wetherells to have events at fatal variance with their denunciations. The state of Ireland was such, they vociferated that Ministers must be insane to add a contested election to the other elements of disorder in that country. They hailed the state of Clare as an insurmountable obstacle to the measure in which they foresaw their political annihilation. But there is no fact more certain in the recent history of Ireland, than that political excitement acts rather as an antidote than a stimulus to the insubordinate spirit which the long misrule of the Boroughmongers has gendered in that fine country. Nor has there been any occurrence during the whole election to disprove this position. The prophecies of Tory inspiration have been falsified on both sides of the channel. It is but justice to Mr. O'Connell to say, that his services to the country upon this occasion have been very great. In Dublin, Meath, Waterford, Carlow, Clare, Limerick, Drogheda, his exertions for the popular candidates have been zealous and unwearied. In most places he was personally present; where he was unavoidably absent, he advanced the cause by able and animating letters; and finally he expelled from Kerry the able Anti-Reformer, Maurice Fitzgerald, seating himself in his place without a contest, the Knight of Kerry not choosing to break a lance with the Liberator. This is the third Irish county which has sent O'Connell into parliament. The Beresfords are at length completely beaten out of Waterford. Verily this is "a great day for Ireland." The misfortunes of that country are associated with the name of the Beresford family; their fall is ominous of her rise. We see their unrelaxing animosity to the people in the conduct of the Primate. Lord Ingestrie, driven before the face of the men of Herts, takes refuge in Armagh, a borough belonging to that prelate, and always at the service of some individual whose principles make it dangerous for him to show his face at a popular hustings. The men of Louth have honoured themselves by casting from them the talentless bigot, M'Clintock, and adding the vote and the eloquence of Shiel to the cause of the country and constitution. Dublin has witnessed a hot struggle, but a glorious victory: the foulest and most unprincipled corporation in the empire has been constitutionally overthrown in that city-never to rise again. Her late representatives were distinguished even in the House of Commons for their impudence and incapacity; we believe it was Mr.

Moore who assured the House that nine-tenths of the inhabitants of Dublin were averse to the idea of Reform.

Drogheda has not disgraced herself by the return of Mr. North; because the respectability of that ancient borough had little or no influence in the transaction. Whatever there was in the constituency of character and independence, voted without exception for Mr. Wallace and Reform. The ecclesiastics appeared in great force at the hustings; no fewer than forty of that estimable order supported the vacant declaimer, who presumes to talk of himself and Burke in the same breath. Nor has the University of Dublin done herself any disparagement by preferring such a person as Mr. Lefroy to the Irish SolicitorGeneral. The former is the natural representative, by virtue of his dullness and his bigotry, for a constituency of churchmen and pedants. Old metaphysics and scholastic theology are just the studies to make Anti-Reformers and Illiberals. A little more useful knowledge and practical Christianity (if by any means they could be infused into our colleges) would materially improve their politics, as well as their minds and morals. On the whole, the spirit of liberty has worked nobly in the sister-island.

In conclusion, we see no ground for astonishment in the defeat the Tory faction has sustained. We see no need of ingenious theories, or much expenditure of subtlety to account for it. That the boroughmongers should be confounded at a fall so sudden, so total, so remediless, is easy to be imagined. They thought the element of popular feeling was capable of infinite compressibility; and they never dreamed of an explosion. They thought the heart of England could be made to shrink into whatever dimensions they willed; nor ever imagined that it could swell with indignation, and burst its bonds. Their astonishment is natural; but that surprise should be expressed in any other quarter is unaccountable. For ourselves, we see no matter of surprise in the great events that have taken place. The people were enslaved, and they yearned after liberty; the means of deliverance were in their hands, and they used them.

Our astonishment is of another kind:-that the spirit of liberty slept so long-that the dwarf so long confined the giant-that the handful of petty despots, which the people have scattered with the breath of their mouth, have had so long a career of insult, plunder, and oppression-this surprises-but that when the heart of corrup tion was in his fangs, the British lion tore it, and spared not-this is no matter of astonishment. We expected it from the hereditary spirit of our countrymen.

See the frothy and arrogant composition, called a speech, delivered by Mr. North at the close of the contest. We cannot force ourselves to make an extract.

RUINED BY ECONOMY.

I HAVE never been thoroughly satisfied that my first marriage was not an imprudent one. I attach no blame to myself, for that I, being known by no more distinguished an appellation than Robert Stubbs, should have selected for my partner in the dance of life a lady sinking under the weight of such a name as Jemima-Rosalvina-Mariamne Fitzroy-Mandeville. There was no very obvious error in this. A person of very fine sensibility might, indeed, take exception to the Fitzroy, as implying that a screw had been loose somewhere; but I never considered that either Miss Fitzroy-Mandeville, or myself, need concern ourselves about what had happened-if ever it had happened -most probably so long ago as the reign of Charles the Second. The moment the ring was placed on her finger the Fitzroy-Mandeville was obliterated, and she became, for ever and ever, a positive Stubbs. She had, indeed, intended to announce herself as Mrs. Fitzroy Stubbs, or Mrs. Mandeville Stubbs, (I forget which;) but to this I peremptorily objected: there was in the combination a something which struck me as verging on the ridiculous: and all I could permit was that she might wave the precedence to which, as the wife of an elder branch of the family, she was justly entitled, and, instead of the dignified simplicity of "Mrs. Stubbs," (by which the right of such precedence would have been asserted,) cause to be engraved on her visiting-cards," Mrs. Robert Stubbs." It was, therefore, not respecting the conjunction of names that I have ever entertained any qualms. Nor was it that my wife bore in her veins a dash of aristocratic blood-however derived; nor that she was young; nor that she was beautiful; nor that she was accomplished; nor that she was amiable; nor, &c. &c. &c. No; it was none of these. My error lay in this: that, possessing an unencumbered five hundred a-year of my own, upon which I might, as a single man, have lived very pleasantly in London, or, with an unpretending wife, very happily in some Welsh village; I should have married a woman who increased my income by a clear thousand per annum. Jemima was a person of expensive habits; and my attempts to control or to check her propensity to throw money out at windows, were invariably met by a hint, (which, thanks to a philosopher of the present day, has now become an axiom,) that " every one has a right to do what they please with their own." It was in vain I argued that every guinea of what had once been her thousand-a-year was now mine, and that not one shilling of all my own independent property was her's: that even were she the lawful purse-bearer, she would still have no right by her extravagances to involve us both in ruin that it was for the husband to regulate and manage the finances, save in matters of minor household-concerns; my arguments and remonstrances were always met by the same ready question-" And pray, Mr. Stubbs, how much a-year had you before you married me?" I had at the period, so adroitly referred to, more than enough to enable me to contemplate the approach of Christmas without alarm; and, certainly, such was not the case when my income was trebled. The Ruination-shop in Waterloo Place was not at that time in ex

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istence: nevertheless, I cannot think with any thing like pleasure of what might have been the result of my dear Jemima's proceedings, had I not had the misfortune to lose her in the third year after our marriage. Our only child, Jemima-Robertina-for so we named her, as an affectionate compliment to each other-died not long afterwards.

My fortune was considerably impaired; but by contriving, for a few years, to live upon half my actual income, and by the help of, what was of still greater use in restoring it, a couple of pretty legacies, I was at length master of eighteen hundred pounds a-year. Again I resolved to marry.

Profiting by experience, I avoided the rock which had so nearly wrecked me. Name, blood, fortune,-I would none of them. I chose for my wife Mary Brown, the orphan daughter of a country curate. I need not say she was poor-I have noticed her parentage. She was well educated, though she had never drawn up a plan for reforming the Government of Great Britain, nor what (judging by its frequency amongst well-educated? or highly-talented? young ladies) must be a work of still greater facility-she had never even conceived the idea of improving and ameliorating the condition of society all over the world; she was sufficiently accomplished, though she had not passed months in learning to sing Di tanti palpiti almost as well as a thirdrate chorus-singer at the Opera; and she was very pretty, or, which, perhaps, was still better,-I thought so.

All this was sufficient to justify my choice. Yet one more good quality she possessed, and that it was that tended, more perhaps than any of the others, to confirm me in my resolution of making her my wife. I received from Mrs. Judith Brown, her paternal aunt, an assurance that Mary was a very Phoenix for ECONOMY.

I had had experience of how one may be ruined by an extravagant wife I was now to learn in what manner a good fortune may be puddled away by Economies.

We inhabited a very commodious house, though a small one, in Mortimer Street, Cavendish Square. The situation was peculiarly desirable, inasmuch as we were in the immediate neighbourhood of our best friends and most intimate acquaintances. We were at no very great distance from the Opera, and other places of public amusement, of most of which we were passionately fond.

Mary's first notable discovery was that, merely by going to live a couple of miles out of town, we should accomplish a positive saving, in house-rent alone, of thirty pounds a-year! Well; the experiment must be tried; but as I had, just before, had the house fresh painted and repaired, and newly furnished from top to bottom, I consented to the change with no very good heart. The place she selected was Evergreen-Lodge, Vauxhall,—a house more than double the size of the one we occupied, and of which the back parlour was nearly as large as our front drawing-room! yet these advantages were obtained not by any additional cost, but, on the contrary, to our benefit to the extent of the sum already specified. On our journeys backwards and forwards between the two houses, I carried in my pocket a little instrument which was a source of great uneasiness and alarm to me:

(it was a three-foot rule :) for by dint of applying it to the walls and floors, I discovered that scarcely a piece of furniture in the old house would suit the new one. "Leave the matter to me," said my wife, " and I'll manage it with all possible economy:" and I must do her the justice to say that whatever could be done-under the circumstances!-was done. At the end of a month I received her report. Without following up its numerous details, some idea of her economies may be derived from the principal items:

Imprimis: The window curtains, of course, were useless; in the first place, because they would not fit the new windows, and, in the second, because the materials adapted to a town-house would be quite preposterous in the country. She had, however, managed this point admirably. Hawkins, our upholsterer, would take them off our hands at one third of the price he had, not long before, charged for them, which sum would be almost enough to purchase materials of an inferior quality-yet good enough for the country. As to the making-up of them, she would superintend that point; and by having a couple of work-women in the house, for five or six weeks, at thirty shillings each per week, we should save a full half of what Hawkins would charge. Palpable economy.

2dly, The carpets. Here our gains were manifest. Our large drawing-room carpet would cut down excellently well for the front parlour; and the strips, remaining after the operation, would serve as bed-carpets for the servants' rooms, and not cost us a single shilling! But since we could not expect the advantage all ways, there would be a trifling set-off on the carpets for the other rooms. However, here again we were fortunate in our upholsterer; for Hawkins had been so civil as to say that, rather than we should be inconvenienced, he would take all our old carpets off our hands, allowing us the fullest value for them, and furnish us with new ones at the very lowest price! Here was a disinterested upholsterer for you! Compared with him, Aladdin's friend, who gave new lamps in exchange for old ones, was no better than an usurer.

3dly. The pier and chimney-glasses. These must, in every case be new; but what then? we could lose nothing in this item, good looking-glasses being always worth their cost. As for our own, Hawkins, the fairest-dealing creature in the world, had assured her that he would allow us as much for them—as any other tradesman in town would offer.

4thly. Wardrobes, tables, chairs, and articles of miscellaneous furniture. Of these many were found available; and with respect to those which were not, Hawkins, who was a sort of Providence to us, kindly stepped in, and took them, in exchange, at a fair valuation;a valuation which, as it was his own, we should have been Hottentots, or worse, to have disputed. To have expected that in the transit from Mortimer Street to Vauxhall, every acticle of furniture would escape injury, would have proved me a blockhead; and as, in fact, much injury had occurred, I could not, in conscience, object to so reasonable a charge as 25l. 2s. for repairs. A saving of thirty pounds per annum, in the single item of house-rent, is not to be achieved without a little sacrifice.

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