WE are delighted to find that he has got in! Our honourable friend is
triumphantly returned to serve in the next Parliament. He is the
honourable member for Verbosity—the best represented place in England.
Our honourable friend has issued an address of congratulation to the
Electors, which is worthy of that noble constituency, and is a very
pretty piece of composition. In electing him, he says, they have covered
themselves with glory, and England has been true to herself. (In his
preliminary address he had remarked, in a poetical quotation of great
rarity, that nought could make us rue, if England to herself did prove
but true.)
Our honourable friend delivers a prediction, in the same document, that
the feeble minions of a faction will never hold up their heads any more;
and that the finger of scorn will point at them in their dejected state,
through countless ages of time. Further, that the hireling tools that
would destroy the sacred bulwarks of our nationality are unworthy of the
name of Englishman; and that so long as the sea shall roll around our
ocean-girded isle, so long his motto shall be, No surrender. Certain
dogged persons of low principles and no intellect, have disputed whether
anybody knows who the minions are, or what the faction is, or which are
the hireling tools and which the sacred bulwarks, or what it is that is
never to be surrendered, and if not, why not? But, our honourable friend
the member for Verbosity knows all about it.
Our honourable friend has sat in several parliaments, and given bushels
of votes. He is a man of that profundity in the matter of vote-giving,
that you never know what he means. When he seems to be voting pure
white, he may be in reality voting jet black. When he says Yes, it is
just as likely as not—or rather more so—that he means No. This is the
statesmanship of our honourable friend. It is in this, that he differs
from mere unparliamentary men. You may not know what he meant then, or
what he means now; but, our honourable friend knows, and did from the
first know, both what he meant then, and what he means now; and when he
said he didn’t mean it then, he did in fact say, that he means it now.
And if you mean to say that you did not then, and do not now, know what
he did mean then, or does mean now, our honourable friend will be glad to
receive an explicit declaration from you whether you are prepared to
destroy the sacred bulwarks of our nationality.
Our honourable friend, the member for Verbosity, has this great
attribute, that he always means something, and always means the same
thing. When he came down to that House and mournfully boasted in his
place, as an individual member of the assembled Commons of this great and
happy country, that he could lay his hand upon his heart, and solemnly
declare that no consideration on earth should induce him, at any time or
under any circumstances, to go as far north as Berwick-upon-Tweed; and
when he nevertheless, next year, did go to Berwick-upon-Tweed, and even
beyond it, to Edinburgh; he had one single meaning, one and indivisible.
And God forbid (our honourable friend says) that he should waste another
argument upon the man who professes that he cannot understand it! ‘I do
NOT, gentlemen,’ said our honourable friend, with indignant emphasis and
amid great cheering, on one such public occasion. ‘I do NOT, gentlemen,
I am free to confess, envy the feelings of that man whose mind is so
constituted as that he can hold such language to me, and yet lay his head
upon his pillow, claiming to be a native of that land,
Whose march is o’er the mountain-wave,
Whose home is on the deep!
(Vehement cheering, and man expelled.)
When our honourable friend issued his preliminary address to the
constituent body of Verbosity on the occasion of one particular glorious
triumph, it was supposed by some of his enemies, that even he would be
placed in a situation of difficulty by the following comparatively
trifling conjunction of circumstances. The dozen noblemen and gentlemen
whom our honourable friend supported, had ‘come in,’ expressly to do a
certain thing. Now, four of the dozen said, at a certain place, that
they didn’t mean to do that thing, and had never meant to do it; another
four of the dozen said, at another certain place, that they did mean to
do that thing, and had always meant to do it; two of the remaining four
said, at two other certain places, that they meant to do half of that
thing (but differed about which half), and to do a variety of nameless
wonders instead of the other half; and one of the remaining two declared
that the thing itself was dead and buried, while the other as strenuously
protested that it was alive and kicking. It was admitted that the
parliamentary genius of our honourable friend would be quite able to
reconcile such small discrepancies as these; but, there remained the
additional difficulty that each of the twelve made entirely different
statements at different places, and that all the twelve called everything
visible and invisible, sacred and profane, to witness, that they were a
perfectly impregnable phalanx of unanimity. This, it was apprehended,
would be a stumbling-block to our honourable friend.
The difficulty came before our honourable friend, in this way. He went
down to Verbosity to meet his free and independent constituents, and to
render an account (as he informed them in the local papers) of the trust
they had confided to his hands—that trust which it was one of the
proudest privileges of an Englishman to possess—that trust which it was
the proudest privilege of an Englishman to hold. It may be mentioned as
a proof of the great general interest attaching to the contest, that a
Lunatic whom nobody employed or knew, went down to Verbosity with several
thousand pounds in gold, determined to give the whole away—which he
actually did; and that all the publicans opened their houses for nothing.
Likewise, several fighting men, and a patriotic group of burglars
sportively armed with life-preservers, proceeded (in barouches and very
drunk) to the scene of action at their own expense; these children of
nature having conceived a warm attachment to our honourable friend, and
intending, in their artless manner, to testify it by knocking the voters
in the opposite interest on the head.
Our honourable friend being come into the presence of his constituents,
and having professed with great suavity that he was delighted to see his
good friend Tipkisson there, in his working-dress—his good friend
Tipkisson being an inveterate saddler, who always opposes him, and for
whom he has a mortal hatred—made them a brisk, ginger-beery sort of
speech, in which he showed them how the dozen noblemen and gentlemen had
(in exactly ten days from their coming in) exercised a surprisingly
beneficial effect on the whole financial condition of Europe, had altered
the state of the exports and imports for the current half-year, had
prevented the drain of gold, had made all that matter right about the
glut of the raw material, and had restored all sorts of balances with
which the superseded noblemen and gentlemen had played the deuce—and all
this, with wheat at so much a quarter, gold at so much an ounce, and the
Bank of England discounting good bills at so much per cent.! He might be
asked, he observed in a peroration of great power, what were his
principles? His principles were what they always had been. His
principles were written in the countenances of the lion and unicorn; were
stamped indelibly upon the royal shield which those grand animals
supported, and upon the free words of fire which that shield bore. His
principles were, Britannia and her sea-king trident! His principles
were, commercial prosperity co-existently with perfect and profound
agricultural contentment; but short of this he would never stop. His
principles were, these,—with the addition of his colours nailed to the
mast, every man’s heart in the right place, every man’s eye open, every
man’s hand ready, every man’s mind on the alert. His principles were
these, concurrently with a general revision of something—speaking
generally—and a possible readjustment of something else, not to be
mentioned more particularly. His principles, to sum up all in a word,
were, Hearths and Altars, Labour and Capital, Crown and Sceptre, Elephant
and Castle. And now, if his good friend Tipkisson required any further
explanation from him, he (our honourable friend) was there, willing and
ready to give it.
Tipkisson, who all this time had stood conspicuous in the crowd, with his
arms folded and his eyes intently fastened on our honourable friend:
Tipkisson, who throughout our honourable friend’s address had not relaxed
a muscle of his visage, but had stood there, wholly unaffected by the
torrent of eloquence: an object of contempt and scorn to mankind (by
which we mean, of course, to the supporters of our honourable friend);
Tipkisson now said that he was a plain man (Cries of ‘You are indeed!’),
and that what he wanted to know was, what our honourable friend and the
dozen noblemen and gentlemen were driving at?
Our honourable friend immediately replied, ‘At the illimitable
perspective.’
It was considered by the whole assembly that this happy statement of our
honourable friend’s political views ought, immediately, to have settled
Tipkisson’s business and covered him with confusion; but, that implacable
person, regardless of the execrations that were heaped upon him from all
sides (by which we mean, of course, from our honourable friend’s side),
persisted in retaining an unmoved countenance, and obstinately retorted
that if our honourable friend meant that, he wished to know what _that_
meant?
It was in repelling this most objectionable and indecent opposition, that
our honourable friend displayed his highest qualifications for the
representation of Verbosity. His warmest supporters present, and those
who were best acquainted with his generalship, supposed that the moment
was come when he would fall back upon the sacred bulwarks of our
nationality. No such thing. He replied thus: ‘My good friend Tipkisson,
gentlemen, wishes to know what I mean when he asks me what we are driving
at, and when I candidly tell him, at the illimitable perspective, he
wishes (if I understand him) to know what I mean?’—‘I do!’ says
Tipkisson, amid cries of ‘Shame’ and ‘Down with him.’ ‘Gentlemen,’ says
our honourable friend, ‘I will indulge my good friend Tipkisson, by
telling him, both what I mean and what I don’t mean. (Cheers and cries
of ‘Give it him!’) Be it known to him then, and to all whom it may
concern, that I do mean altars, hearths, and homes, and that I don’t mean
mosques and Mohammedanism!’ The effect of this home-thrust was terrific.
Tipkisson (who is a Baptist) was hooted down and hustled out, and has
ever since been regarded as a Turkish Renegade who contemplates an early
pilgrimage to Mecca. Nor was he the only discomfited man. The charge,
while it stuck to him, was magically transferred to our honourable
friend’s opponent, who was represented in an immense variety of placards
as a firm believer in Mahomet; and the men of Verbosity were asked to
choose between our honourable friend and the Bible, and our honourable
friend’s opponent and the Koran. They decided for our honourable friend,
and rallied round the illimitable perspective.
It has been claimed for our honourable friend, with much appearance of
reason, that he was the first to bend sacred matters to electioneering
tactics. However this may be, the fine precedent was undoubtedly set in
a Verbosity election: and it is certain that our honourable friend (who
was a disciple of Brahma in his youth, and was a Buddhist when we had the
honour of travelling with him a few years ago) always professes in public
more anxiety than the whole Bench of Bishops, regarding the theological
and doxological opinions of every man, woman, and child, in the United
Kingdom.
As we began by saying that our honourable friend has got in again at this
last election, and that we are delighted to find that he has got in, so
we will conclude. Our honourable friend cannot come in for Verbosity too
often. It is a good sign; it is a great example. It is to men like our
honourable friend, and to contests like those from which he comes
triumphant, that we are mainly indebted for that ready interest in
politics, that fresh enthusiasm in the discharge of the duties of
citizenship, that ardent desire to rush to the poll, at present so
manifest throughout England. When the contest lies (as it sometimes
does) between two such men as our honourable friend, it stimulates the
finest emotions of our nature, and awakens the highest admiration of
which our heads and hearts are capable.
It is not too much to predict that our honourable friend will be always
at his post in the ensuing session. Whatever the question be, or
whatever the form of its discussion; address to the crown, election
petition, expenditure of the public money, extension of the public
suffrage, education, crime; in the whole house, in committee of the whole
house, in select committee; in every parliamentary discussion of every
subject, everywhere: the Honourable Member for Verbosity will most
certainly be found.