accompanied with a circumstance somewhat out of date, appears to me in
the highest degree admirable. Suppose you were to treat the lords of the
bedchamber with a sight of St. Paul's cathedral? There is a certain part
of it of a circular form, commonly called the whispering gallery. You
have probably heard, that by the uncommon echo of this place, the
weakest sound that can possibly be articulated, is increased by that
time it has gone half round, into a sound, audible and strong. Your
lordship, with your flock of geese about you, would probably be frolic
and gamesome. You may easily contrive to scatter them through the whole
circumference of this apartment. Of a sudden, you will please to turn
your face to the wall, and utter in a solemn tone the royal opinion.
Every body will be at a loss from whence the mandate proceeds. Some of
your companions, more goose-like than the rest, will probably imagine it
a voice from heaven. The sentence must be two or three times repeated at
proper intervals, before you can contrive to have each of the lords in
turn at the required distance. This will demand a considerable degree of
alertness and agility. But alertness and agility are qualities by which
your lordship is so eminently distinguished, that I should have very few
apprehensions about your success. Meanwhile it will be proper to have a
select number of footmen stationed at the door of the gallery, armed
with smelling-bottles. Some of your friends, I suspect, would be so much
alarmed at this celestial and ghost-like phenomenon, as to render this
part of the plan of singular service.
But after all, I am apprehensive that many of the noble lords to whom I
allude, would be disgusted at the very mention of any thing so
old-fashioned and city-like, as a visit to this famous cathedral. And
even if that were not the case, it is proper to be provided with more
than one scheme for the execution of so necessary a purpose. The
question is of no contemptible magnitude, between instructions _viva
voce_, and a circular letter. In favour of the first it may be said,
that a letter is the worst and most definite evidence to a man's
disadvantage that can be conceived. It may easily be traced. It can
scarcely be denied. The sense of it cannot readily be explained
away.--It must be confessed there is something in this; and yet, my
lord, I am by all means for a letter. A voice may often be overheard. I
remember my poor old goody used to say, (heaven rest her soul!) That
walls had ears. There are some lords, my dear friend, that can never
think of being alone. Bugbears are ever starting up in their prolific
imagination, and they cannot be for a moment in the dark, without
expecting the devil to fly away with them. They have some useful pimp,
some favourite toad-eater, that is always at their elbow. Ever remember,
so long as you live, that toad-eaters are treacherous friends. Beside,
it would be a little suspicious, to see your lordship's carriage making
a regular tour from door to door among the lords of the bed-chamber. And
I would by no means have Pinchbeck's dark-lanthorn brought into common
use. Consider, my lord, when that is worn out, you will not know where
to get such another.
A letter may be disguised in various ways. You would certainly never
think of signing your name. You might have it transcribed by your
secretary. But then this would be to commit your safety and your fame to
the keeping of another. No, my lord, there are schemes worth a hundred
of this. Consider the various hands in which a letter may be written.
There is the round hand, and the Italian hand, the text hand, and the
running hand. You may form your letters upon the Roman or the Italic
model. Your billet may he engrossed. You may employ the German text or
the old primero. If I am not mistaken, your lordship studied all these
when you were a boy for this very purpose. Yes, my lord, I may be in the
wrong, but I am confidently of opinion, that this is absolutely the
first, most important, and most indispensible accomplishment of a
statesman. I would forgive him, if he did not know a cornet from an
ensign, I would forgive him, if he thought Italy a province of Asia
Minor. But not to write primero! the nincompoop! the numbscul!
If it were not that the persons with whom your lordship has to
correspond, can some of them barely spell their native tongue, I would
recommend to your lordship the use of cyphers. But no, you might as well
write the language of Mantcheux Tartars. For consider, your letters may
be intercepted. It is true, they have not many perils to undergo. They
are not handed from post-house to post-house. There are no impertinent
office-keepers to inspect them by land. There are no privateers to
capture them by sea. But, my lord, they have perils to encounter, the
very recollection of which makes me tremble to the inmost fibre of my
frame. They are ale-houses, my lord. Think for a moment of the
clattering of porter-pots, and the scream of my goodly hostess. Imagine
that the blazing fire smiles through the impenetrable window, and that
the kitchen shakes with the peals of laughter. These are temptations, my
lord, that no mortal porter can withstand. When the unvaried countenance
of his gracious sovereign smiles invitation upon him from the weather
beaten sign-post, what loyal heart but must be melted into compliance.
From all these considerations, my lord, I would advise you to write with
invisible ink. Milk I believe will serve the purpose, though I am
afraid, that the milk that is hawked about the streets of London, has
rather too much water in it. The juice of lemon is a sovereign recipe.
There are a variety of other preparations that will answer the purpose.
But these may be learned from the most vulgar and accessible sources of
information. And you will please to observe, that I suffer nothing to
creep into this political testament, more valuable than those of
Richelieu, Mazarine, and Alberoni, that is not entirely original matter.
My lord, I defy you to learn a single particular of the refinements here
communicated from the greatest statesman that lives. They talk of Fox!
He would give his right hand for an atom of them!
I will now suppose you, my lord, by all these artifices, arrived at the
very threshold of power. I will suppose that you have just defeated the
grandest and the wisest measure of your political antagonists. I think
there is nothing more natural, though the rule will admit of many
exceptions, than for people who act uniformly in opposition to each
other, upon public grounds, to be of opposite characters and
dispositions. I will therefore imagine, that, shocked with the boundless
extortions and the relentless cruelties that have been practised in some
distant part of the empire, they came forward with a measure full of
generous oblivion for the part, providing with circumspect and collected
humanity for the future. I will suppose, that they were desirous of
taking an impotent government out of the hands of Jews and pedlars, old
women and minors, and to render it a part of the great system. I will
suppose, that they were desirous of transferring political power from a
company of rapacious and interested merchants, into the hands of
statesmen, men distinguished among a thousand parties for clear
integrity, disinterested virtue, and spotless fame. This, my lord, would
be a field worthy of your lordship's prowess. Could you but gain the
interested, could you eternize rapacity, and preserve inviolate the blot
of the English name, what laurels would not your lordship deserve?
I will therefore suppose, that your gracious master meets you with a
_carte blanche_, that he is disposed to listen to all your advices, and
to adopt all your counsels. Your lordship is aware that the road of
secret influence, and that of popular favour, are not exactly the same.
No ministry can long preserve their seats unless they possess the
confidence of a majority of the house of commons. The ministry therefore
against which your lordship acts, we will take it for granted are in
this predicament. In this situation then an important question naturally
arises. Either a majority in the house of commons must be purchased at
any rate, or the government must be conducted in defiance of that house,
or thirdly, the parliament must be dissolved. Exclusive of these three,
I can conceive of no alternative. We will therefore examine each in its
turn.
Shall a majority in the house of commons be created? Much may be said on
both sides. A very ingenious friend of mine, for whose counsels I have
an uncommon deference, assured me, that nothing would be so easy as
this. Observing with a shrewdness that astonished me, that ministry,
upon a late most important question, mustered no more than 250 votes,
and that there were 558 members, he inferred, that you had nothing more
to do than to send for those that were absent out of the country, and
you might have upwards of 300 to pit against the 250. It is with
infinite regret that I ever suffer myself to dissent from the opinion of
this gentleman. But suppose, my lord, which is at least possible, that
one half of the absentees should be friends to the cause of the people;
what would become of us then? There remains indeed the obvious method of
purchasing votes, and it might be supposed that your lordship's talent
of insinuation might do you knight's service in this business. But no,
my lord, many of these country gentlemen are at bottom no better than
boors. A mechlin cravat and a smirking countenance, upon which your
lordship builds so much, would be absolutely unnoticed by them. I am
afraid of risquing my credit with your lordship, but I can assure you,
that I have heard that one of these fellows has been known to fly from a
nobleman covered with lace, and powdered, and perfumed to the very tip
of the mode, to follow the standard of a commoner whose coat has been
stained with claret, and who has not had a ruffle to his shirt. My lord,
if common fame may be trusted, these puppies are literally tasteless
enough to admire wit, though the man who utters it be ever so corpulent,
and to discover eloquence in the mouth of one, who can suffer himself to
spit in an honourable assembly. I am a plain man, my lord; but I really
think that among marquisses and dukes, right honourables and right
reverends, these things are intolerable.
I would therefore have your lordship give up at once, and with a grace,
the very idea of bringing over to your side the partisans of these huge
slovenly fellows. The scheme of governing the country without taking the
house of commons along with you, is much more feasible than this. This
might be done by passing an act of parliament by the authority of two
estates of the realm, to declare the house of commons useless. For my
part, I am far from thinking this so bold a step as by some it may be
imagined. Was not Rome a free state, though it had no house of commons?
Has not the British house of commons been incessantly exclaimed upon, as
corrupt and nugatory? Has not a reform respecting them been called for
from all quarters of the kingdom? I am much of opinion in the present
case, that that is the most effectual reform, which goes to the root.
Rome had her hereditary nobility, which composed her senate. She had her
consuls, an ill-imagined substitute for monarchical power. In these, my
lord, was comprehended, in a manner, the whole of her government. I
shall be told indeed that they had occasionally their _comitia_, or
assemblies of the citizens of the metropolis. But this is so far from an
objection to my reasoning, that it furnishes me with a very valuable
hint for the improvement of the English constitution.
Let the present house of commons be cashiered, and let the common
council of the city of London be placed at St. Stephen's chapel in their
room. These your lordship will find a much more worthy and manageable
set of people, than the representatives of the nation at large. And can
any sensible man doubt for a moment, which are the most respectable body
of men? Examine their persons. Among their predecessors I see many poor,
lank, shrivelled, half-starved things, some bald, some with a few
straggling hairs, and some with an enormous bag, pendant from no hair at
all. Turn, my lord, to the other side. There you will see a good,
comely, creditable race of people. They look like brothers. As their
size and figure are the same, so by the fire in their eyes, and the
expression in their countenances, you could scarcely know one of them
from another. Their very gowns are enough to strike terror into the most
inattentive. Each of them covers his _cranium_ with a venerable periwig,
whose flowing curls and voluminous frizure bespeak wealth and
contentment. Their faces are buxom, and their cheeks are florid.
You will also, my lord, find them much more easy and tractable, than the
squeamish, fretful, discontented wretches, with which other ministers
have had to do. There is but one expence that will be requisite. It is
uniform, and capable of an easy calculation. In any great and trying
question, I was going to say debate, but debates, I am apt to think,
would not be very frequent, or very animated,--your lordship has nothing
to do, but to clear the table of the rolls and parchments, with which it
is generally covered, and spreading a table cloth, place upon it half a
score immense turtles, smoking hot, and larded with green fat. My lord,
I will forfeit my head, if with this perfume regaling their nostrils, a
single man has resolution enough to divide the house, or to declare his
discontent with any of the measures of government, by going out into the
lobby.
So much, my lord, for this scheme. It is too considerable to be adopted
without deliberation; it is too important, and too plausible, to be
rejected without examination. The only remaining hypothesis is that of a
dissolution. Much, I know, may be said against this measure; but, for my
own part, next to the new and original system I have had the honour of
opening to your lordship, it is with me a considerable favourite. Those,
whose interests it is to raise an outcry against it, will exclaim,
"What, for the petty and sinister purposes of ambition, shall the whole
nation be thrown into uproar and confusion? Who is it that complains of
the present house of parliament? Is the voice of the people raised
against it? Do petitions come up from every quarter of the kingdom, as
they did, to no purpose, a few years ago, for its dissolution? But it is
the prerogative of the king to dissolve his parliament. And because it
is his prerogative, because he has a power of this kind reserved for
singular emergencies, does it follow, that this power is to be exercised
at caprice, and without weighty and comprehensive reasons? It may
happen, that the parliament is in the midst of its session, that the
very existence of revenue may be unprovided for, and the urgent claims
of humanity unfulfilled. It is of little consequence," they will perhaps
pretend, "who is in, and who is out, so the national interests are
honestly pursued, and the men who superintend them be not defective in
abilities. That then must be a most lawless and undisguised spirit of
selfishness, that can for these baubles risk the happiness of millions,
and the preservation of the constitution."
All these observations, my lord, may sound well enough in the harangue
of a demagogue; but is it for such a man, to object to a repetition of
that appeal to the people in general, in the frequency and universality
of which the very existence of liberty consists? Till lately, I think it
has been allowed, that one of those reforms most favourable to
democracy, was an abridgment of the duration of parliaments. But if a
general abridgment be so desirable, must not every particular abridgment
have its value too? Shall the one be acknowledged of a salutary, and yet
the other be declared of a pernicious tendency? Is it possible that the
nature of a part, and of the whole, can be not only dissimilar, but
opposite? But I will quit these general and accurate reasonings. It is
not in them that our strength lies.
They tell us, that the measure of a dissolution is an unpopular one. My
lord, it is not so, that you and I are to be taken in. Picture to
yourself the very kennels flowing with rivers of beer. Imagine the door
of every hospitable ale-house throughout the kingdom, thrown open for
the reception of the ragged and pennyless burgess. Imagine the whole
country filled with the shouts of drunkenness, and the air rent with
mingled huzzas. Represent the broken heads, and the bleeding noses, the
tattered raiment, and staggering bodies of a million of loyal voters. My
lord, will they pretend, that the measure that gives birth to this
glorious scene, is unpopular? We must be very ill versed in the science
of human nature, if we could believe them.
But a more important consideration arises. A general election would be
of little value, if by means of it a majority of representatives were
not to be gained to the aristocratical party. If I were to disadvise a
dissolution, it would be from the fear of a sinister event. It is true,
your lordship has a thousand soft blandishments. You can smile and bow
in the newest and most approved manner. But, my lord, in the midst of a
parcel of Billingsgate fishwomen, in the midst of a circle of butchers
with marrow-bones and cleavers, I am afraid these accomplishments would
be of little avail. It is he, most noble patron, who can swallow the
greatest quantity of porter, who can roar the best catch, and who is the
compleatest bruiser, that will finally carry the day. He must kiss the
frost-bitten lips of the green-grocers. He must smooth the frowzy cheeks
of chandlers-shop women. He must stroke down the infinite belly of a
Wapping landlady. I see your lordship tremble at the very catalogue.
Could you divide yourself into a thousand parts, and every part be ten
times more gigantic than the whole, you would shrink into non-entity at
the disgustful scene.
In this emergency I can invent only one expedient. Your lordship I
remember had six different services of plate when you were in Ireland,
and the duke of P---- could boast only of three. You had also five
footmen and a scullion boy more than his grace. By all this magnificence
I have been told that you dazzled and enchanted a certain class of the
good people of that kingdom. My lord, you must now improve the
popularity you gained. Import by the very first hoy a competent number
of chairmen. You are not to be told that they are accustomed to put on a
gold-lace coat as soon as they arrive upon our shore, and dub themselves
fortune-hunters. It will be easy therefore to pass them here for
gentlemen, whose low familiarity shall be construed into the most
ravishing condescension. No men, my lord, can drink better than they.
There is no constitution, but that of an Irish chairman, that can
dispense with the bouncing whisky. They are both brawny and courageous,
and must therefore make excellent bruisers. Their chief talent lies in
the art of courtship, and they are by no means nice and squeamish in
their stomach for a mistress. They can also occasionally put off the
assumed character of good breeding, and if it be necessary to act over
again the celebrated scenes of Balfe and M'Quirk, they would not be
found at a loss. My lord, they seem to have been created for this very
purpose, and if you have any hope from a general election, you must
derive every benefit from their distinguished merit. I own however, I am
apprehensive for the experiment, and after all would advise your
lordship to recur to the very excellent scheme of the common-council
men.
There is only one point more which it remains for me to discuss. I have
already taken it for granted, that you are offered your choice of every
post that exists in the government of this country. Here again, if you
were to consult friends less knowing than myself, you would be presented
with nothing but jarring and discordant opinions. Some would say,
George, take it, and some, George, let it alone. For my part, my lord, I
would advise you to do neither the one nor the other. Fickleness and
instability, your lordship will please to observe, are of the very
essence of a real statesman. Who were the greatest statesmen this
country ever had to boast? They were, my lord, the two Villiers's, dukes
of Buckingham. Did not the first of these take his young master to the
kingdom of Spain, in order to marry the infanta, and then break off the
match for no cause at all? Did he not afterwards involve the nation in a
quarrel with the king of France, only because her most christian majesty
would not let him go to bed to her? What was the character of the second
duke? This nobleman,
Stiff in opinions, always in the wrong,
Was every thing by starts, and nothing long,
But, in the course of one revolving moon,
Was chymist, fiddler, statesman, and buffoon.
My lord, I do not flatter you so far as to suppose that your abilities
are as great, or that you will ever make so distinguished a figure as
either of these noblemen. But I would have you imitate them in your
humbler circle, and venture greatly, though the honour you should derive
from it, should be only, that you greatly fell. Accept therefore, my
lord, of one of the principal responsible offices without thought and
without hesitation. Through terror or manly spirit, or whatever you
choose to call it, resign again the next day. As soon as you have done
this, make interest for another place, and if you can obtain it, throw
it up as soon again. This, my lord, is not, as an ignorant and
coxcomical writer has represented it, "the vibration of a pendulum," but
a conduct, wise, manly, judicious, and heroic. Who does not know, that
the twinkling stars are of a more excellent nature, than those which
shine upon us with unremitted lustre? Who does not know that the comet,
which appears for a short time, and vanishes again for revolving years,
is more gazed upon than either? But I am afraid the comet is too sublime
an idea for your lordship's comprehension. I would therefore recommend
to you, to make the cracker the model of your conduct. You should snap
and bounce at regular intervals; at one moment you should seem a blazing
star, and the next be lost in trackless darkness.
My lord, there is nothing, which at all times I have taken more pains to
subdue, than that overweening pride, and immeasurable conceit, which are
the principal features of your lordship's character. Nature, indeed, has
furnished you with one corrective to them, or they must infallibly have
damned you. It is timidity. Other people may laugh at this quality. For
my part I esteem it worthy the loudest praise and most assiduous
cultivation. When the balance hangs in doubt between the adventurousness
of vanity and the frigidity of fear, ever incline to the latter side. I
had rather your lordship should be a coward, than a coxcomb. If however
you could attain to that reasonable and chastised opinion of yourself,
which should steer a proper mean between these extremes, should make you
feel your strength, when menaced by the most terrible adversaries, and
your weakness, when soothed by the most fawning parasites, this, my
lord, would be the highest perfection to which you could possibly
attain. I will therefore close my epistle with the discussion of a case,
which your lordship may think parallel to the species of behaviour I
have recommended to your cultivation. I mean that of the celebrated and
incomparable earl Granville, in the year 1746. I will show you what this
nobleman did, and in how many particulars you must for ever hope in vain
to resemble him.