legislature--did they really mean that big people should try to
penetrate where little ones were not small enough to pass?--or was it
some piece of conciliation to the climbing boys, that they should see
their masters grilled and wasted, in revenge for "the disabilities
they had so long laboured under?" This point of great difficulty--and
after much thought and deliberation, I have come to one solution of
the whole question, and I only hope it may prove the right one. It is
this. The bill is a parable--the climbing boy, and the full-grown
sweep--and the chimney, and the householder, and the machine, are mere
types which I would interpret thus:--the householder is John Bull, a
good-natured, easy fellow, liking his ease, and studying his
comfort--caring for his dinner, and detesting smoke above all things;
he wishes to have his house neat and orderly, neither confusion nor
disturbance--but his great dread is fire; the very thought of it sets
him a-trembling all over. Now, for years past, he has remarked that
the small sweeps, who mount so glibly to the top of the flue, rarely
do anything but make a noise--they scream and shout for ten minutes,
or so, and then come down, with their eyes red, and their noses
bloody, and cry themselves sick, till they get bread-and-butter. John
is worried and fretted at all this; he remembers the time a good-sized
sweep used to go up and rake down all the soot in no time. These were
the old Tory ministers, who took such wise and safe precautions
against fire, that an insurance-office was never needed. "Not so now,"
quoth John; "'od! rabbit it, they've got their climbing boys, who are
always bleating and bawling, for the neighbourhood to look at
them--and yet, devil a bit of good they do the whole time."
And now, who are these? you would ask. I'll tell you--the "Climbing
Boys" are the Howicks, and the Clements--the Smith O'Briens and the
D'Israelis, and a host of others, scraping their way upwards, through
soot and smoke, that they may put out their heads in high places, and
cry "'weep! 'weep!" and well may they--they've had a dirty
journey--and black enough their hands are, I warrant you, before they
got there.
To get rid of these, without offending them, John brings in his
philanthropic bill, making it penal to employ them, or to have any
other than the old legitimate sweeps, that know every turn of the
flue, and have gone up and down any time these twenty years. No new
machine for him--no Whig contrivance, to scrape the bricks and burn
the house--but the responsible full-grown sweeps--who, if the passage
be narrow, have strength to force their way, and take good care not to
get dust in their eyes in the process.
Such is my interpretation of the bill, and I only trust a discerning
public may agree with me.
A NUT FOR "THE SUBDIVISION OF LABOUR."
I forget the place, and the occasion also, but I have a kind of misty
recollection of having once, in these nutting excursions of mine, been
excessively eloquent on the subject of the advantages derivable from
division of labour.
Not a walk or condition in life is there to which it has not
penetrated; and while natural talents have become cultivated from
finding their most congenial sphere of operation, immense results have
accrued in every art and science where a higher degree of perfection
has been thus attained. Your doctor and your lawyer now-a-days select
the precise portion of your person or property they intend to operate
on. The oculist and the aurist, and the odontalgist and the
pedicurist, all are suggestive of various local sufferings, by which
they bound their skill; and so, the equity lawyer and the common-law
lawyer, the special pleader and the bar orator, have subdivided
knavery, without diminishing its amount. Even in literature, there are
the heavy men who "do" the politics, and the quiet men who do the
statistics, and the rough-and-ready men, who are a kind of
servants-of-all-work, and so on. In universities, there is the science
man and the classical man, the man of simple equations and the man of
spondees. Painting has its bright colourists and its more
sombre-loving artists, and so on--the great camps of party would seem
to have given the impulse to every condition of life, and "speciality"
is the order of the day.
No sooner is a new discovery made, no matter whether in the skies
above, or the dark bowels of the earth, than an opportunity of
disagreement is sure to arise. Two, mayhap three, gentlemen, profess
diversity of opinion; followers are never lacking, let any one be fool
enough to turn leader--and straightway there comes out a new sect,
with a Greek name for a title.
It is only the other day, men began to find out that primitive rocks,
and basalt, ochre, and sandstone, had lived a long time, and must
surely know something of antiquity--if they only could tell it. The
stones, from that hour, had an unhappy time of it--men went about in
gangs with hammers and crowbars, shivering this and shattering
that--picking holes in respectable old rocks, that never had a word
said against them, and peeping into "quarts,"[1] like a policeman.
[1] Query "quartz."--_Devil._
Men must be quarrelsome, you'd say, if they could fight about
paving-stones--but so they did. One set would have it that the world
was all cinders, and another set insisted it was only slack--and so,
they called themselves Plutonians and Neptunians, and made great
converts to their respective opinions.
Gulliver tells us of "Big-endians" and "Little-endians," who hated
each other like poison; and thus it is, our social condition is like a
row in an Irish fair, where one strikes somebody, and nobody thinks
the other right.
Oh! for the happy days of heretofore, when the two kings of Brentford
smelled at one nosegay. It couldn't happen now, I promise you.
One of their majesties would have insisted on the petals, and the
other been equally imperative regarding the stamina: they'd have
pushed their claims with all the weight of their influence, and there
would have been soon little vestige of a nosegay between them.
[Illustration]
But to come back, for all this is digression. The subdivision of
labour, with all its advantages, has its reverse to the medal. You are
ill, for instance. You have been dining with the Lord Mayor, and
hip-hipping to the health of her Majesty's ministers; or drinking,
mayhap, nine times nine to the independence of Poland, or civil and
religious liberty all over the globe--or any other fiction of large
dinners. You go home, with your head aching from bad wine, bad
speeches, and bad music; your wife sees you look excessively flushed;
your eyes have got an odd kind of expression, far too much of the
white being visible; a half shut-up look, like a pastry-cook's shop on
Sunday; there are evident signs, from blackness of the lips, that in
your English ardour for the navy you have made a "port-hole" of your
mouth; in fact, you have a species of semi-apoplectic threatening,
that bodes ill for the insurance company.
A doctor is sent for--he lives near, and comes at once--with a glance
he recognises your state, and suggests the immediate remedy--the
lancet.
"Fetch a basin," says somebody, with more presence of mind than the
rest.
"Not so fast," quoth the medico. "I am a pure physician--I don't
bleed: that's the surgeon's affair. I should be delighted to save the
gentleman's life--but we have a bye-law against it in the college.
Nothing could give me more pleasure than to cure you, if it wasn't for
the charter. What a pity it is! I'm sure I wish, with all my heart,
the cook would take courage to open a vein, or even give you a bloody
nose with the cleaver."
Do you think I exaggerate here? Try the experiment--I only ask that.
Sending for the surgeon does not solve the difficulty; he may be a man
who cuts corns and cataracts--who only operates for strabismus, or
makes new noses for Peninsular heroes. In fact, if you don't hit the
right number--and it's a large lottery--you may go out of the world
without even the benefit of physic.
This great system, however, does not end with human life. The
coroners--resolved not to be behind their age--have made a great
movement, and shown themselves men worthy of the enlightened era they
live in. Read this:--
"On Friday morning last, a man named Patrick Knowlan, a
private in the 3rd Buffs, was discovered lying dead close
beneath the platform of a wharf at the bottom of
Holborn-lane, Chatham. It would appear that deceased had
mistaken his way, and fallen from the wharf, which is used
for landing coals from the river, a depth of about eight
feet, upon the muddy beach below, which was then strewn with
refuse coal. There was a large and severe wound upon the
left temple, and a piece of coal was sticking in the left
cheek, close below the eye. The whole left side of the face
was much contracted. He had evidently, from the state of his
clothes, been covered with water, which overflows this spot
at the period of spring tides. Although nothing certain is
known, it is generally supposed that he mistook Holborn-lane
for the West-lane, which leads to the barracks, and that
walking forward in the darkness he fell from the wharf. Mr.
Lewis, the coroner for the city of Rochester, claims
jurisdiction over all bodies found in the water at this
spot; and as the unfortunate man had evidently been
immersed, he thought this a proper case for the exercise of
his office, and accordingly summoned a jury to sit upon the
body at ten o'clock on Friday morning--but on his going to
view the deceased, he found that it was at the King's Arms,
Chatham, in the hands of Bines, the Chatham constable, as
the representative of Mr. Hinde, one of the coroners for the
eastern division of the county of Kent, who refused to give
up the key of the room, but allowed Mr. Lewis and his jury
to view the body. They then returned to the Nag's Head,
Rochester, and having heard the evidence of John Shepherd, a
fisherman, who deposed that a carter, going on to the beach
for coals, at half-past seven o'clock on Friday morning,
found the body as already described, the jury returned a
verdict of 'Found dead.' Mr. Hinde, the county coroner, held
another inquest upon the deceased, at the King's Arms; and
after taking the evidence of William Whittingham, the
carter who found the body, and Frederick Collins, a corporal
of the 3rd Buffs, who stated that he saw the deceased on the
evening preceding his death, and he was then sober, the jury
returned a verdict of 'Accidental death;' each of the
coroners issued a warrant for the interment of the body. The
disputed jurisdiction, it is believed, will now be submitted
to the decision of a higher court, in order to settle what
is here considered a _vexata quaestio_."--_Maidstone
Journal._
Is not this perfect? Only think of land coroners and water
coroners--imagine the law defining the jurisdiction of the Tellurian
as far forth into the sea as he could sit on a corpse without danger,
and the Neptunian ruling the waves beyond in absolute sway--conceive
the "solidist" revelling in all the accidents that befall life upon
the world's highways, and the "fluidist" seeking his prey like a pearl
diver, five fathoms low, beneath "the deep, deep sea." What a rivalry
theirs, who divide the elements between them, and have nature's
everlasting boundaries to define the limits of their empire.
I hope to see the time when these great functionaries of law shall be
provided with a suitable costume. I should glory to think of Mr. Hinde
accoutred in emblems suggestive of earth and its habits--a wreath of
oak leaves round his brows; and to behold Mr. Lewis in a garment of
marine plants and sea shells sit upon his corpse, with a trident in
his right hand. What a comfort for the man about to take French leave
of life, that he could know precisely the individual he should
benefit, and be able to go "by land" or "water," as his taste inclined
him.
I have no time here to dwell upon the admirable distinctions of the
two verdicts given in the case I allude to. When the great change I
suggest is fully carried out, the difficulty of a verdict will at
once be avoided, for the jury, like boys at play, will only have to
cry out at each case--"wet or dry."
There would be probably too much expense incurred in poor localities
by maintaining two officials; and I should suggest, in such cases, an
amphibious coroner--a kind of merman, who should enjoy a double
jurisdiction, and, as they say of half-bred pointers, be able "to take
the water when required."
A NUT FOR A "NEW VERDICT."
Money-getting and cotton-spinning have left us little time for fun of
any kind in England--no one has a moment to spare, let him be ever so
droll, and a joke seems now to be esteemed a _bona fide_ expenditure;
and as "a pin a day" is said to be "a groat a year," there is no
calculating what an inroad any manner of pleasantry might not make
into a man's income. Book-writers have ceased to be laughter-moving--the
stage has given it up altogether, except now and then in a new
tragedy--society prefers gravity to gaiety--and, in fact, the spirit
of comic fun and drollery would seem to have died out in the land--if
it were not for that inimitable institution called trial by jury.
Bless their honest hearts! jurymen do indeed relieve the drab-coloured
look of every-day life--they come out in strong colour from the sombre
tints of common-place events and people. Queer dogs! nothing can damp
the warm ardour of their comic vein--all the solemnity of a court of
justice--the look of the bar and the bench--the voice of the crier--the
blue bags of briefs--the "terrible show," has no effect on their
minds--"ruat coelum," they will have their joke.
It is in vain for the judge, let him be ever so rigid in his charge,
to tell them that their province is simply with certain facts, on
which they have to pronounce an opinion of yea or nay. They must be
jurymen, and "something more." It's not every day Mr. Sniggins, of
Pimlico, is called upon to keep company with a chief-justice and
sergeant learned in the law--Popkins don't leave his shop once a week
to discuss Coke upon Littleton with an attorney-general. No: the event
to them is a great one--there they sit, fawned on, and flattered by
counsel on both sides--called impartial and intelligent, and all
that--and while every impertinence the law encourages has been bandied
about the body of the court, _they_ remain to be lauded and praised by
all parties, for they have a verdict in their power, and when it
comes--what a thing it is!
There is a well-known story of an English nobleman, desiring to remain
_incog._ in Calais, telling his negro servant--"If any one ask who I
am, Sambo, mind you say, 'a Frenchman.'" Sambo carried out the
instruction by saying--"My massa a Frenchman, and so am I." This
anecdote exactly exemplifies a verdict of a jury--it cannot stop short
at sense, but must, by one fatal plunge, involve its decision in
absurdity.
Hear what lately happened in the north of Ireland. A man was tried and
found guilty of murder--the case admitted no doubt--the act was a
cold-blooded, deliberate assassination, committed by a soldier on his
sergeant, in the presence of many witnesses. The trial proceeded; the
facts were proved; and--I quote the local newspaper--
"The jury retired, and were shut up when the judge left the
court, at half-past seven. At nine, his lordship returned to
court, when the foreman of the jury intimated that they had
agreed. They were then called into court, and having
answered to their names, returned a verdict of guilty, but
recommended the prisoner to mercy upon account of the close
intimacy that existed between the parties at the time of the
occurrence."
Now, what ever equalled this? When the jury who tried Madame Laffarge
for the murder of her husband, returned a verdict of guilty, with that
recommendation to mercy which is implied by the words "des
circonstances attenuantes," Alphonse Karr pronounced the "extenuating
circumstances," to be the fact, that she always mixed gum with the
arsenic, and never gave him his poison "neat."
But even _they_ never thought of carrying out their humanity farther
by employing the Belfast plea, that she had been "intimate with him"
before she killed him. No, it was reserved for our canny northerns to
find out this new secret of criminal jurisprudence, and to show the
world that there is a deep philosophy in the vulgar expression, a
blood relation--meaning thereby that degree of allianceship which
admits of butchery, and makes killing no murder; for if intimacy be a
ground of mercy, what must be friendship, what brotherhood, or
paternity?
Were this plea to become general, how cautious would men become about
their acquaintances--what a dread they would entertain of becoming
intimate with gentlemen from Tipperary!
I scarcely think the Whigs would throw out such lures for Dan and his
followers, if they could consider these consequences; and I doubt
much--taking everything into consideration, that the "Duke" would see
so much of Lord Brougham as he has latterly.
"Whom can a man make free with, if not with his friends?" saith
Figaro; and the Belfast men have studied Beaumarchais, and only
"carried out his principle," as the Whigs say, when they speak of
establishing popery in Ireland, to complete the intention of
emancipation.
Lawyers must have been prodigiously sick of all the usual arguments in
defence of prisoners in criminal cases many a year ago. One of the
cleverest lawyers and the cleverest men I ever knew, says he would
hang any man who was defended on an _alibi_, and backed by a good
character. Insanity is worn out; but here comes Belfast to the rescue,
with its plea of intimacy. Show that your client was no common
acquaintance--prove clearly habits of meeting and dining
together--display a degree of friendship between the parties that
bordered on brotherhood, and all is safe. Let your witness satisfy the
jury that they never had an altercation or angry word in their lives,
and depend upon it, killing will seem merely a little freak of
eccentricity, that may be indulged with Norfolk Island, but not
punished with the gallows.
"Guilty, my lord, but very intimate with the deceased," is a new
discovery in law, and will hereafter be known as "the Belfast
verdict."
A NUT FOR THE REAL "LIBERATOR."
[Illustration]
When Solomon said there was nothing new under the sun, he never knew
Lord Normanby. That's a fact, and now to show cause.
No attribute of regal, and consequently it may be inferred of
viceregal personages, have met such universal praise from the world,
as the wondrous tact they would seem to possess, regarding the most
suitable modes of flattering the pride and gratifying the passions of
those they govern.
It happens not unfrequently, that they leave this blessed privilege
unused, and give themselves slight pains in its exercise; but should
the time come when its exhibition may be deemed fit or necessary,
their instinctive appreciation is said never to fail them, and they
invariably hit off the great trait of a people at once.
Perhaps it may be the elevated standard on which they are placed,
gives them this wondrous _coup-d'oeil_, and enables them to take wider
views than mortals less eminently situated; perhaps it is some old
leaven of privileges derivable from right divine. But no matter, the
thing is so.
Napoleon well knew the temper of Frenchmen in his day, and how certain
short words, emblematic of their country's greatness and glory, could
fascinate their minds and bend them to his purpose. In Russia, the
czar is the head of the church, as of the state, and a mere word from
him to one of his people is a treasure above all price. In Holland, a
popular monarch taps some forty puncheons of schnapps, and makes the
people drunk. In Belgium, he gets up a high mass, and a procession of
virgins. In the States, a rabid diatribe against England, and a spice
of Lynch Law, are clap-trap. But every land has its own peculiar
leaning--to be gratified by some one concession or compliment in
preference to every other.
Now, when Lord Normanby came to Ireland, he must have been somewhat
puzzled by the very multiplicity of these expectations. It was a
regular "embarras de richesses." There was so much to give, and he so
willing to give it!
First, there was discouragement to be dealt out against
Protestants--an easy and a pleasant path; then the priests were to be
brought into fashion--a somewhat harder task; country gentlemen were
to be snubbed and affronted; petty attorneys were to be petted and
promoted; all claimants with an "O" to their names were to have
something--it looked national; men of position and true influence were
to be pulled down and degraded, and so on. In fact, there was a good
two years of smart practice in the rupture of all the ties of society,
and in the overthrow of whatever was respectable in the land, before
he need cry halt.
Away he went then, cheered by the sweet voices of the mob he loved,
and quick work he made of it. I need not stop to say, how pleasant
Dublin became when deserted of all who could afford to quit it; nor
how peaceful were the streets which no one traversed--_ubi solitudinem
faciunt pacem appellant_. The people, like Oliver, "asked for more;"
ungrateful people! not content with Father Glynn at the viceroy's
table, and the Bishop of "Mesopotamia" in the council, they cried,
like the horseleech's daughters, "Give! give!"
"What would they have, the spalpeens?" said Pierce Mahony; "sure ain't
we destroying the place entirely, and nobody will be able to live here
after us."
"What do they want?" quoth Anthony Blake; "can't they have patience?
Isn't the church trembling, and property not worth two years'
purchase?"
"Upon my life!" whispered Lord Morpeth, "I can't comprehend them. I
fear we have been only but too good-natured!--don't you think so?"
And so they pondered over their difficulties, but never a man among
them could suggest a remedy for their new demand, nor make out a
concession which had not been already made.
"Did you butter Dan?" said Anthony.
"Ay, and offered him the 'rolls' too," said Sheil.
"It's no use," interposed Pierce; "he's not to be caught."
"Couldn't ye make Tom Steele Bishop of Cashel?"
"He wouldn't take it," groaned the viceroy.
"Is Mr. Arkins a privy councillor?"
"No; but he might if he liked. There's no use in these trifles."
"_Eureka_, gents, I have it!" cried my lord; "order post-horses for me
this instant--I have it!"
And so he had, and by that act alone he stamped himself as the first
man of his party.
Swift philosophised on the satiric touch of building a madhouse, as
the most appropriate charity to Ireland; but what would he have said
had he heard that the greatest favour its rulers could bestow--the
most flattering compliment to national feeling--was to open the gaols,
to let loose robbers and housebreakers, highwaymen and cutthroats--to
return burglars to their afflicted homes, and bring back felons to
their weeping families. Some sneering critic will object to it, as
scarcely complimentary to a country to say--"these gentlemen are only
thieves--murderers; they cannot hurt _your_ morals. They were
sentenced to transportation, but why should we spread vice among
innocent bushmen, and disseminate wickedness through Norfolk Island?
Let them loose where they are, they know the ways of the place,
they'll not murder the 'wrong man;' depend upon it, too, the rent
won't suffer by their remaining." And so my lord took off the
hand-cuffs, and filed the fetters; and the bondsmen, albeit not all
"hereditary," went free. Who should be called the Liberator, I ask,
after this? Is it your Daniel, who promises year after year, and never
performs; or you, my lord, who strikes off real chains, not
metaphorical ones, and liberates real captives, not figurative slaves?
It was, indeed, a "great day for Ireland" when the villains got loose;
and must have been a strong lesson on the score of domestic duty to
many a roving blade, who preferred spending that evening at home, to
venturing out after dark. My lord covered himself with laurels, and
albeit they were gathered, as Lord Wellesley said, in the "Groves of
Blarney," they well became the brow they ornamented.
I should scarcely have thought necessary to ring a paean of praise on
this great governor, if it were not for a most unaccountable attack
his magnanimous and stupendous mercy, as Tom Steele would call it,
has called forth from some organ of the press.
This print, calling itself _The Cork Constitution_, thus
discourseth:--