text:  The people are occasionally mentioned at the end of every seven years; but in the interim all was settled in the parlours of the peerage! The scene which we have just given was absolutely puerile if it were not scandalous; and without laying ourselves open to the charge of superstition on such subjects we might almost regard the preservation of the empire as directly miraculous while power was in the hands of such men as the Butes and Newcastles the Bedfords and Rockinghams of the last century