Trial-balloon

If any stronger presumption that his brochure is a trial-balloon of the present ministry be required, it will be found in the pages 19 and 20, wherein Sir Howard Douglas and Mr. Bliss receive a full volley of foul-mouthed Billingsgate.

Hints—trial-balloons he [Joseph René Bellot] called them—are adroitly thrown out in the newspapers, and one or two articles from his pen appear in the periodicals. When the public mind, as he judges, is prepared, he addresses the Minister officially on the subject.

The other two productions of the press quoted at the commencement are of the fugitive pamphlet sort, to be considered as a sort of literary trial-balloons, thrown out to see if the current of opinion sets fairly for their makers to follow on with larger, or, as sometimes happens, to attract the public gaze to the makers of the new literary bubbles.