Was there ever anything so lucky that the strike of the masons should have
happened at this identical juncture! Parliament is prorogued. Now,
deducting Sir Robert Peel, physician, with his train of apothecaries and
pestle-and-mortar apprentices, who, until February next, are to sit
cross-legged and try to think, there are at least six hundred and thirty
unemployed members of the House of Commons, turned upon the world with
nothing, poor fellows! but grouse before them. Some, to be sure, may pick
their teeth, in the Gardens of the Tuileries--some may even now venture to
exercise their favourite elbow at Baden-Baden,--but with every possible
and probable exception, there will yet be hundreds of unemployed
law-makers, to whom time will be a heavy porter's burden.
We have a plan which, for its originality, should draw down upon us the
gratitude of the nation. It is no other than this: to make all Members of
Parliament, for once in their lives at least, useful. The masons, hired to
build the new temples of Parliament, have struck. The hard-handed
ingrates,--let them go! We propose that, during the prorogation at least,
Members of Parliament, should, like beavers, build their own Houses. In a
word, every member elected to a seat in Parliament should be compelled,
like Robinson Crusoe, to make his own furniture before he could sit down
upon it.
Have we not a hundred examples of the peculiar fitness of the task, in the
habits of what in our human arrogance we call the lower animals? There is
many a respectable spider who would justly feel himself calumniated by any
comparison between him and any one of twenty Parliamentary lawyers we
_could_ name; yet the spider spins its own web, and seeks its own nook of
refuge from the Reform Broom of Molly the housemaid. And then, the tiny
insect, the ant--that living, silent monitor to unregarding men--doth it
not make its own galleries, build with toilsome art its own abiding place?
Does not the mole scratch its own chamber--the carrion kite build its own
nest! Shall cuckoos and Members of Parliament alone be lodged at others'
pains?
Consider the wasp, oh, STANLEY! mark its nest of paper.--(it is said, on
wasp's paper you are wont to write your thoughts on Ireland)--and
resolutely seize a trowel!
Look to the bee, oh, COLONEL SIBTHORP! See how it elaborates its virgin
wax, how it shapes its luscious cone--and though we would not trust you to
place a brick upon a brick, nevertheless you may, under instruction, mix
the mortar!
Ponder on the rat and its doings, most wise BURDETT--see how craftily it
makes its hole--and though you are too age-stricken to carry a hod, you
may at least do this much--sift the lime.
But wherefore thus particular--why should we dwell on individuals?
Pole-cat, weasel, ferret, hedgehog, with all your vermin affinities, come
forth, and staring reproachfully in the faces of all prorogued Members,
bid them imitate your zeal and pains, and--the masons having struck--build
their Houses for themselves.
(We make this proposal in no thoughtless--no bantering spirit. He can see
very little into the most transparent mill-stone who believes that we pen
these essays--essays that will endure and glisten as long, ay as long as
the freshest mackerel--if he think that we sit down to this our weekly
labour in a careless lackadaisical humour. By no means. Like Sir LYTTON
BULWER, when he girds up his loins to write an apocryphal comedy, we
approach our work with graceful solemnity. Like Sir LYTTON, too, we always
dress for the particular work we have in hand. Sir LYTTON wrote
"Richelieu" in a harlequin's jacket (sticking pirate's pistols in his
belt, ere he valorously _took_ whole scenes from a French melo-drama):
_we_ penned our last week's essay in a suit of old canonicals, with a
tie-wig askew upon our beating temples, and are at this moment cased in a
court-suit of cut velvet, with our hair curled, our whiskers crisped, and
a masonic apron decorating our middle man. Having subsided into our
chair--it is in most respects like the porphyry piece of furniture of the
Pope--and our housekeeper having played the Dead March in Saul on our
chamber organ (BULWER wrote "The Sea Captain" to the preludizing of a
Jew's-harp), we enter on our this week's labour. We state thus much, that
our readers may know with what pains we prepare ourselves for them.
Besides, when BULWER thinks it right that the world should know that the
idea of "La Vailière" first hit him in the rotonde of a French diligence,
modest as we are, can we suppose that the world will not be anxious to
learn in what coloured coat we think, and whether, when we scratch our
head to assist the thought that sticks by the way, we displace a velvet
cap or a Truefitt's scalp?)
Reader, the above parenthesis may be skipped or not. Read not a line of
it--the omission will not maim our argument. So to proceed.
If we cast our eyes over the debates of the last six months, we shall find
that hundreds of members of the House of Commons have exhibited the most
extraordinary powers of ill-directed labour. And then their capacity of
endurance! Arguments that would have knocked down any reasonable elephant
have touched them no more than would summer gnats. Well, why not awake
this sleeping strength? Why not divert a mischievous potency into
beneficial action? Why should we confine a body of men to making laws,
when so many of them might be more usefully employed in wheeling barrows?
Now there is Mr. PLUMPTRE, who has done so much to make English Sundays
respectable--would he not be working far more enduring utility with
pickaxe or spade than by labouring at enactments to stop the flowing of
the Thames on the Sabbath? Might not D'ISRAELI be turned into a very
jaunty carpenter, and be set to the light interior work of both the
Houses? His logic, it is confessed, will support nothing; but we think he
would be a very smart hand at a hat-peg.
As for much of the joinery-work, could we have prettier mechanics than Sir
James GRAHAM and Sir Edward KNATCHBULL? When we remember their opinions on
the Corn Laws, and see that they are a part of the cabinet which has
already shown symptoms of some approaching alteration of the Bread
Tax--when we consider their enthusiastic bigotry for everything as it is,
and Sir Robert PEEL'S small, adventurous liberality, his half-bashful
homage to the spirit of the age--sure we are that both GRAHAM and
KNATCHBULL, to remain component members of the Peel Cabinet, must be
masters of the science of dove-tailing; and hence, the men of men for the
joinery-work of the new Houses of Parliament.
Again how many members from their long experience in the small jobbery of
committees--from their profitable knowledge of the mysteries of private
bills and certain other unclean work which may, if he please, fall to the
lot of the English senator--how many of these lights of the times might
build small monuments of their genius in the drains, sewerage, and certain
conveniences required by the deliberative wisdom of the nation? We have
seen the plans of Mr. BARRY, and are bound to praise the evidence of his
taste and genius; but we know that the structure, however fair and
beautiful to the eye, must have its foul places; and for the dark, dirty,
winding ways of Parliament--reader, take a list of her Majesty's Commons,
and running your finger down their names, pick us out three hundred
able-bodied labourers--three hundred stalwart night workmen in darkness
and corruption. We ask the country, need it care for the strike of Peto's
men (the said Peto, by the way, is in no manner descended from
_Falstaff's_ retainer), when there is so much unemployed labour, hungering
only for the country's good?
We confess to a difficulty in finding among the members of the present
Parliament a sufficient number of stone-squarers. When we know that there
are so few among them who can look upon more than _one side_ of a
question, we own that the completion of the building may be considerably
delayed by employing only members of Parliament as square workmen: the
truth is, having never been accustomed to the operation, they will need
considerable instruction in the art. Those, however, rendered incapable,
by habit and nature, of the task, may cast rubbish and carry a hod.
We put it to the patriotism of members of Parliament, whether they ought
not immediately to throw themselves into the arms of Peto and Grissell,
with an enthusiastic demand for tools. If they be not wholly insensible of
the wants of the nation and of their own dignity, Monday morning's sun
will shine upon every man of her Majesty's majority, for once laudably
employed in the nation's good. How delightful then to saunter near the
works--how charming then to listen to members of Parliament! What a
picture of senatorial industry! For an Irish speech by STANLEY, have we
not the more dulcet music of his stone-cutting saw? Instead of an oration
from GOULBURN, have we not the shrill note of his ungreased parliamentary
barrow? For the "hear, hear" of PLUMPTRE, the more accordant tapping of
the hammer--for the "cheer" from INGLIS, the sweeter chink of the mason's
chisel?
And then the moral and physical good acquired by the workmen themselves!
After six days' toil, there is scarcely one of them who will not feel
himself wonderfully enlightened on the wants and feelings of labouring
man. They will learn sympathy in the most efficient manner--by the sweat
of their brow. Pleasant, indeed, 'twill be to see CASTLEREAGH lean on his
axe, and beg, with _Sly_, for "a pot of the smallest ale."
Having, we trust, remedied the evils of the mason's strike--having shewn
that the fitness of things calls upon the Commons, in the present dilemma,
to build their own house--we should feel it unjust to the government not
to acknowledge the good taste which, as we learn, has directed that an
estimate be taken of the disposable space on the walls of the new
buildings, to be devoted to the exalted work of the historical painter.
Records of the greatness of England are to endure in undying hues on the
walls of Parliament.
This is a praiseworthy object, but to render it important and instructive,
the greatest judgment must be exercised in the selection of subjects;
which, for ourselves, we would have to illustrate the wisdom and
benevolence of Parliament. How beautifully would several of the Duke of
WELLINGTON'S speeches paint! For instance, his portrait of a famishing
Englishman, the drunkard and the idler, no other man (according to his
grace) famishing in England! And then the Duke's view of the shops of
butchers, and poulterers, and bakers--all in the Dutch style--by which his
grace has lately proved, that if there be distress, it can certainly not
be for want of comestibles! But the theme is too suggestive to be carried
out in a single paper.
We trust that portraits of members will be admitted. BURDETT and GRAHAM,
half-whig, half-tory, in the style of Death and the Lady, will make pretty
companion pictures.
To do full pictorial justice to the wisdom of the senate, Parliament will
want a peculiar artist: that gifted man CAN be no other than the artist to
PUNCH!