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,
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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