system of salvation.
One of Belfast’s local jokes was very good. It referred to the uniform
and inevitable fine of forty shillings and costs for uttering a party
cry–and it is no economical fine for a poor man, either, by the way.
They say that a policeman found a drunken man lying on the ground, up a
dark alley, entertaining himself with shouting, “To hell with!” “To hell
with!” The officer smelt a fine–informers get half.
“What’s that you say?”
“To hell with!”
“To hell with who? To hell with what?”
“Ah, bedad, ye can finish it yourself–it’s too expansive for me!”
I think the seditious disposition, restrained by the economical instinct,
is finely put in that.
THE FACTS CONCERNING THE RECENT RESIGNATION
WASHINGTON, December, 1867.
I have resigned. The government appears to go on much the same, but
there is a spoke out of its wheel, nevertheless. I was clerk of the
Senate Committee on Conchology, and I have thrown up the position.
I could see the plainest disposition on the part of the other members of
the government to debar me from having any voice in the counsels of the
nation, and so I could no longer hold office and retain my self-respect.
If I were to detail all the outrages that were heaped upon me during the
six days that I was connected with the government in an official
capacity, the narrative would fill a volume. They appointed me clerk of
that Committee on Conchology and then allowed me no amanuensis to play
billiards with. I would have borne that, lonesome as it was, if I had
met with that courtesy from the other members of the Cabinet which was my
due. But I did not. Whenever I observed that the head of a department
was pursuing a wrong course, I laid down everything and went and tried to
set him right, as it was my duty to do; and I never was thanked for it in
a single instance. I went, with the best intentions in the world, to the
Secretary of the Navy, and said:
“Sir, I cannot see that Admiral Farragut is doing anything but
skirmishing around there in Europe, having a sort of picnic. Now, that
may be all very well, but it does not exhibit itself to me in that light.
If there is no fighting for him to do, let him come home. There is no
use in a man having a whole fleet for a pleasure excursion. It is too
expensive. Mind, I do not object to pleasure excursions for the naval
officers–pleasure excursions that are in reason–pleasure excursions
that are economical. Now, they might go down the Mississippi
on a raft–”
You ought to have heard him storm! One would have supposed I had
committed a crime of some kind. But I didn’t mind. I said it was cheap,
and full of republican simplicity, and perfectly safe. I said that, for
a tranquil pleasure excursion, there was nothing equal to a raft.
Then the Secretary of the Navy asked me who I was; and when I told him I
was connected with the government, he wanted to know in what capacity. I
said that, without remarking upon the singularity of such a question,
coming, as it did, from a member of that same government, I would inform
him that I was clerk of the Senate Committee on Conchology. Then there
was a fine storm! He finished by ordering me to leave the premises, and
give my attention strictly to my own business in future. My first
impulse was to get him removed. However, that would harm others besides
himself, and do me no real good, and so I let him stay.
I went next to the Secretary of War, who was not inclined to see me at
all until he learned that I was connected with the government. If I had
not been on important business, I suppose I could not have got in.
I asked him for alight (he was smoking at the time), and then I told him
I had no fault to find with his defending the parole stipulations of
General Lee and his comrades in arms, but that I could not approve of his