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
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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 workingdress
– 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,