_=NUTTS= reading newspaper; customers drop in._
_Mrs Nutts._ Now, Mr Nutts; will you drag yourself out of that
newspaper? I wish there wasn’t such a thing in the world. I’m sure a
man with his wife and family oughtn’t to waste his time with newspapers.
_Nutts._ (_Laying down paper._) Mrs Nutts--but I’m too melancholy
to make a noise. Be quiet, my dear, can’t you, and let me enjoy my
wretchedness? How d’ye do, Slowgoe? Servant, Mr Peabody. If I should
cut you all round to-day, let it go for nothing; for the fact is, the
Chancellor’s “Budget’s” quite put my hand out of order.
_Nosebag._ Well, I haven’t read it, but I’ve heard the pints. I did
think to have a little more light in my back room, but now the ’tatoes
have made it impossible. We’re to have the window-tax still.
_Slowgoe._ I must confess it; not that I ever expect anything from the
Whigs--still I did look for some fall in soap. I thought washing might
be made a little cheaper; but, as you say, Mr Nutts, the taxes keep us
still in our dirt.
_Peabody._ And then in the matter of tea----
_Mrs Nutts._ What’s that about tea?
_Nutts._ Of course. Put politics in a teapot, and you women will listen
to ’em directly. Why, the tea won’t come down a halfpenny. And why not?
Because of the ’tatoes. The potato’s the real root of evil.
_Peabody._ And the first is--eight millions of money for Ireland. Eight
millions more of debt to be laid upon the innocent shoulders of unborn
babes.
_Mrs Nutts._ Dear little creturs!
_Nutts._ Still it can’t be helped. As a policeman and once a
schoolmaster, you must own this, Mr Peabody, the famishing must be fed.
_Peabody._ He’s no better than a stone that denies it. Nevertheless,
it is a little hard that for so many years there should be a running
account of misery and profit between tenants and landlords; and
at the last, when misery sinks to famine, we should be called on
to make up the balance, pocketed years ago by others. There’s
a passage, I remember, in Mr Disraeli’s--I don’t mean young
Benjamin’s--“Curiosities,” that’s taken from a sermon, and it runs
somehow so: “If you ladies and gentlemen who are fattening on your
pleasures, and wear scarlet clothes--I believe, if you were put in a
good press, we should see the blood of the poor gush out with which
your scarlet is dyed.” Now, if a good many Irish landlords were
squeezed after this fashion, their pockets would run scarlet too.
_Nutts._ Didn’t Sir Walter Rawley bring potatoes from the New World? I
thought so. ’Pon my life! when I think of it, they almost seem as if
they’d been sent from the New World to revenge the wickedness she’d
suffered from the Old. We made slaves with whips and chains; and the
New World, waiting her time--for the wheel of right and wrong comes
round, let it turn ever so slowly--makes slaves with potatoes. What do
you think of that, Mr Peabody?
_Peabody._ Why, I think that Mr M’Neile, or any other of the
illustrators of Providence--and pretty fiery pictures they’ve painted
about it lately--wouldn’t grudge half-a-crown for that thought. Why,
he’d beat it into a discourse of an hour and a half long, and print and
publish it for a shilling afterwards. _The Potato in its Iniquity!_
Depend on it, Mr M’Neile would make a grand thing of it; showing that
Irish landlords had nothing to do with the famine, but that the whole
of the potato blight was nothing more than the wickedness of Cortez
and such fellows--all Catholics, be it remembered--coming up more than
two hundred years afterwards. The rottenness of present potatoes no
other than the whips and chains of bygone centuries coming to a head!
There would be something grand in this. Whereas, to lay the blight upon
the Maynooth Grant isn’t worthy of the old woman who cursed the Pope
for inventing the scarlet fever.
_Nutts._ Whatever brought the blight, I hope they’ll never trust to
’tatoes again. For my part, I shall never again think of fields of
’em in Ireland, without thinking every root a human slave: fields of
misery, and want, and death. I’ve read somewhere of a certain root,
that when men eat it they are turned to brutes: well, the potato’s very
like it; for, living upon nothing else, it takes the best part of a
man clean out of him: it takes away his respect from himself; and when
that’s the case, a man’s lost, and may as well go upon all fours at
once. And then for the landlords----
_Slowgoe._ I will not sit any longer in the shop, and hear those worthy
and most unfortunate gentlemen abused. As for the National Debt, as
a lover of the institutions of my country, I’m bound to think it’s a
blessing.
_Tickle._ What! you don’t think it a burden?
_Slowgoe._ Not at all. The National Debt is like the hump on a
camel--it makes the State carry what it has to carry with greater
convenience. (_Looking at paper._) So they’re going to make Prince
Albert Chancellor of Cambridge. Mr Peabody, though you are now in the
police, I believe last week you said you had a vote? Who do you give it
to?
_Peabody._ _Nobody._ In the first place, I don’t see how the Earl of
Powis, being, on his own confession, not so wise a man as the Duke of
Northumberland, can have the face to ask for it. And secondly, Prince
Albert’s intentions, should he be elected, are too military.
_Nutts._ What do you mean?--going to turn the students into soldiers?
_Peabody._ Not all at once; but it’s generally reported, that if he’s
made Chancellor, he intends to abolish the trencher-cap at Cambridge
University and bring in the Albert hat. I shouldn’t wish it talked
about, because it might lose the poor girl her place; nevertheless, the
housemaid at Fulham told me of the fact, that on Thursday last she saw
her master, the Bishop of London, trying on the Albert hat before the
looking-glass.
_Tickle._ That’s nothing; he might only be doing that as an
officer--and I suppose a bishop would rank as lieutenant-colonel--in
the Army of Martyrs. Talking of the Duke of Northumberland, I see he’s
been lying in state.
_Slowgoe._ Very right. Even in death people should respect their proper
rank, and not come down to the vulgar. I see here’s the account taken
from the _Morning Herald_. Hark! (_Reads._) “The noblest and most
conspicuous town mansion of the nobility of this country is that which
now bears the aspect of desolation, and betokens the chill presence of
death. _The busy throng without pursue their wonted avocations around
the princely pile_ ‘regardless of the dead:’ within, all is darkness
and pompous gloom.” Beautiful, isn’t it?
_Peabody._ Very good, hearselike literature, written with a black
plume. But why shouldn’t “the busy throng” go about their business?
Would the gentleman have ’em stop and throng about the house? If so,
and I’d been on duty, I am sure I should have said “Move on.”
_Slowgoe._ Don’t be profane, Mr Peabody. The gentleman is now in the
chamber. (_Reads._) “Eight enormous altar candles _vainly_ attempted to
dispel the gloom that _thickened_ around the unconscious object of all
this pomp, which was supported upon trestles, within an ebony railing,
surmounted by eight _enormous plumes_ of black ostrich feathers. The
pall, of rich Genoa velvet, thrown partially aside, disclosed the
coffin, _an unparalleled piece of art_, covered with crimson velvet,
and sumptuously mounted with massive gold ornaments, and a plate
inscribed with the style and title of the Duke at great length.” And
this, the writer goes on beautifully to say, is all that remained of
the “illustrious object.”
_Nutts._ Well, he was a very decent man, I believe; but I never knew
anything illustrious that he did. What made him illustrious--does
anybody know?
_Tickle._ Why, the same thing that makes a weathercock
illustrious--gold.
_Nutts._ And they call this “lying in state.” “Ostrich feathers--Genoa
velvet--and an unparalleled coffin.” Well, when we think what coffins
hold at the best, such a show is rightly named; it is “_Lying_ in
State,” and nothing better.
_Slowgoe._ Of course you’ll sneer, Mr Nutts; anything against the
aristocracy. But I’m happy to say that the funeral was of corresponding
splendour, and went off remarkably well. A great many of the
ambassadors and nobility--though they didn’t go themselves--in the very
handsomest manner sent their carriages.
_Nutts._ Well, that’s making woe easy, isn’t it, when--poor
things!--it’s put upon the horses?
_Tickle._ (_With newspaper._) I’m the veriest varmint, if the Church
isn’t really in danger now.
_Slowgoe._ What do you mean? How so?
_Tickle._ Why, here’s Lord John Russell’s word for it; he’s going to
make three more bishops. Manchester’s to be the smallest; I suppose not
exactly a fine lawn bishop, but a cotton one.
_Slowgoe._ Three more? I wish it was thirty.
_Tickle._ All the worse for the Church, then, I say again. Don’t tell
me. Poor old soul! When we think of the money her sons, the bishops,
do get through--when we think of their palaces and their coaches--and
their bankers’ books--and their coal-mines and their sulphur-mines, for
what I know--when we think of all this, and remember the precepts--I
think they’re so called--of Lady Church herself, I think her sons
can’t be called the most dutiful of children. On the contrary, I do
believe they’re getting the old lady every day into greater discredit;
and where it will end, who shall say? Thus, it’s my opinion--the more
bishops, the more danger.
_Nutts._ I wonder if Mr Barry’s had orders in the House of Lords to
make seats for ’em.
_Tickle_. Oh, they’re not to go to Parliament, says Lord John, “except
as vacancies in the bench of bishops occur.”
_Slowgoe_. I don’t quite understand that. And I must confess
it--whenever I see a Whig meddling with the Church, I feel as if I
was looking at a cat in a china-closet; nobody can say what precious
article mayn’t be smashed.
_Nutts._ Perhaps his Lordship means that the bishops, like the
soldiers, should take the House of Lords in turn; mounting guard in the
Church one after t’other.
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