Genre:

News-Commentary, Drollery

Subjects:

Psychology, Government, Politics

    Argues that Henry J Temple (3rd Viscount Palmerston) recently fell asleep in the House of Commons, although during this state of slumber he managed to make some inept remarks in favour of an expensive inquiry into alleged 'corrupt practices at Berwick during the last election'. Evidently Palmerston did not fall asleep but he was deluded and had he been awake he would have seen the error of his ways. Struck by the fact that the House of Commons accepted 'this remarkable case of political somnambulism [...] without hesitation'. Concludes by remarking that the 'sleeping Premier' is another of 'those curious cases of gregarious sympathy, and subjection of multitudes to the control of a single mind, of which so many have been described by writers on psychology'.