"GROUND ARMS!"--_Birdcage Walk._
LION.--So! how do you feel now?
UNICORN.--Considerably relieved. Though you can't imagine the stiffness of
my neck and legs. Let me see, how long is it since we relieved the
griffins?
LION.--An odd century or two, but never mind that. For the first time, we
have laid down our charge--have got out of our state attitudes, and may sit
over our pot and pipe at ease.
UNICORN.--What a fate is ours! Here have we, in our time, been compelled to
give the patronage of our countenance to all sorts of rascality--have been
forced to support robbery, swindling, extortion--but it won't do to think
of--give me the pot. Oh! dear, it had suited better with my conscience, had
I been doomed to draw a sand-cart!
LION.--Come, come, no unseemly affectation. _You_, at the best, are only a
fiction--a quadruped lie.
UNICORN.--I know naturalists dispute my existence, but if, as you unkindly
say, I am only a fiction, why should I have been selected as a supporter of
the royal arms?
LION.--Why, you fool, for that very reason. Have you been where you are for
so many years, and yet don't know that often, in state matters, the greater
the lie the greater the support?
UNICORN.--Right. When I reflect--I have greater doubts of my truth, seeing
where I am.
LION.--But here am I, in myself a positive majesty, degraded into a
petty-larceny scoundrel; yes, all my inherent attributes compromised by my
position. Oh, Hercules! when I remember my native Africa--when I reflect on
the sweet intoxication of my former liberty--the excitement of the
chase--the mad triumph of my spring, cracking the back of a bison with one
fillip of my paw--when I think of these things--of my tawny wife with her
smile sweetly ferocious, her breath balmy with new blood--of my playful
little ones, with eyes of topaz and claws of pearl--when I think of all
this, and feel that here I am, a damned rabbit-sucker--
UNICORN.--Don't swear.
LION.--Why not? God knows, we've heard swearing enough of all sorts in our
time. It isn't the fault of our position, if we're not first-rate
perjurers.
UNICORN.--That's true: still, though we are compelled to witness all these
things in the courts of law, let us be above the influence of bad example.
LION.--Give me the pot. Courts of law? Oh, Lord! what places they put us
into! And there they expect me--_me_, the king of the animal world, to
stand quietly upon my two hind-legs, looking as mildly contemptible as an
apoplectic dancing-master,--whilst iniquities, and meannesses, and tyranny,
and--give me the pot.
UNICORN:--Brother, you're getting warm. Really, you ought to have seen
enough of state and justice to take everything coolly. I certainly must
confess that--looking at much of the policy of the country, considering
much of the legal wickedness of law-scourged England--it does appear to me
a studied insult to both of us to make us supporters of the national
quarterings. Surely, considering the things that have been done under our
noses, animals more significant of the state and social policy might have
been promoted to our places. Instead of the majestic lion and the graceful
unicorn, might they not have had the--the--
LION.--The vulture and the magpie.
UNICORN.--Excellent! The vulture would have capitally typified many of the
wars of the state, their sole purpose being so many carcases--whilst, for
the courts of law, the magpie would have been the very bird of legal
justice and legal wisdom.
LION.--Yes, but then the very rascality of their faces would at once have
declared their purpose. The vulture is a filthy, unclean wretch--the bird
of Mars--preying upon the eyes, the hearts, the entrails of the victims of
that scoundrel-mountebank, Glory; whilst the magpie is a petty-larceny
vagabond, existing upon social theft. To use a vulgar phrase--and
considering the magistrates we are compelled to keep company with, 'tis
wonderful that we talk so purely as we do--'twould have let the cat too
much out of the bag to have put the birds where we stand. Whereas, there is
a fine hypocrisy about us. Consider--am not I the type of heroism, of
magnanimity? Well, compelling me, the heroic, the magnanimous, now to stand
here upon my hind-legs, and now to crouch quietly down, like a pet kitten
over-fed with new milk,--any state roguery is passed off as the greatest
piece of single-minded honesty upon the mere strength of my character--if I
may so say it, upon my legendary reputation. Now, as for you, though you
_are_ a lie, you are nevertheless not a bad-looking lie. You have a nice
head, clean legs, and--though I think it a little impertinent that you
should wear that tuft at the end of your tail--are altogether a very decent
mixture of the quadrupeds. Besides, lie or not, you have helped to support
the national arms so long, that depend upon it there are tens of thousands
who believe you to be a true thing.
UNICORN.--I have often flattered myself with that consolation.
LION.--A poor comfort: for if you are a true beast, and really have the
attributes you are painted with, the greater the insult that you should be
placed here. If, on the contrary, you are a lie, still greater the insult
to leonine majesty, in forcing me for so many, many years to keep such bad
company.
UNICORN.--But I have a great belief in my reality: besides, if the head,
body, legs, tail, I bear, never really met in one animal, they all exist in
several: hence, if I am not true altogether, I am true in parts; and what
would you have of a thick-and-thin supporter of the crown?
LION.--Blush, brother, blush; such sophistry is only worthy of the Common
Pleas, where I know you picked it up. To be sure, if both of us were the
most abandoned of beasts, we surely should have some excuse for our
wickedness in the profligate company we are obliged to keep.
UNICORN.--Well, well, don't weep. _Take_ the pot.
LION.--Have we not been, ay, for hundreds of years, in both Houses of
Parliament?
UNICORN.--It can't be denied.
LION--And there, what have we not seen--what have we not heard! What
brazen, unblushing faces! What cringing, and bowing, and fawning! What
scoundrel smiles, what ruffian frowns! what polished lying! What hypocrisy
of patriotism! What philippics, levelled in the very name of liberty,
against her sacred self! What orations on the benefit of starvation--on the
comeliness of rags! Have we not heard selfishness speaking with a syren
voice? Have we not seen the haggard face of state-craft rouged up into a
look of pleasantness and innocence? Have we not, night after night, seen
the national Jonathan Wilds meet to plan a robbery, and--the purse
taken--have they not rolled in their carriages home, with their fingers
smelling of the people's pockets?
UNICORN.--It's true--true as an Act of Parliament.
LION.--Then are we not obliged to be in the Courts of Law? In Chancery--to
see the golden wheat of the honest man locked in the granaries of
equity--granaries where deepest rats do most abound--whilst the slow fire
of famine shall eat the vitals of the despoiled; and it may be the man of
rightful thousands shall be carried to churchyard clay in parish deals?
Then in the Bench, in the Pleas--there we are too. And there, see we not
justice weighing cobwebs against truth, making too often truth herself kick
the beam?
UNICORN.--It has made me mad to see it.
LION.--Turn we to the Police-offices--there we are again. And there--good
God!--to see the arrogance of ignorance! To listen to the vapid joke of his
worship on the crime of beggary! To see the punishment of the poor--to mark
the sweet impunity of the rich! And then are we not in the Old Bailey--in
all the criminal courts! Have we not seen trials _after dinner_--have we
not heard sentences in which the bottle spoke more than the judge?
UNICORN.--Come, come, no libel on the ermine.
LION.--The ermine! In such cases, the fox--the pole-cat. Have we not seen
how the state makes felons, and then punishes them for evil-doing?
UNICORN.--We certainly have seen a good deal that way.
LION.--And then the motto we are obliged to look grave over!
UNICORN.--What _Dieu et mon droit!_ Yes, that does sometimes come awkwardly
in--"God and my right!" Seeing what is sometimes done under our noses, now
and then, I can hardly hold my countenance.
LION.--"God and my right!" What atrocity has that legend sanctified! and
yet with demure faces they try men for blasphemy. Give me the pot.
UNICORN.--Come, be cool--be philosophic. I tell you we shall have as much
need as ever of our stoicism?
LION.--What's the matter now?
UNICORN.--The matter! Why, the Tories are to be in, and Peel's to be
minister.
LION.--Then he may send for Mr. Cross for the oran-outan to take my place,
for never again do I support _him_. Peel minister, and Goulburn, I
suppose--
UNICORN.--Goulburn! Goulburn in the cabinet! If it be so, I shall certainly
vacate my place in favour of a jackass.
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