for the honour of your – and my – independent vote and interest. I
will not ask what is that Secretarian figure, full of
blandishments, standing on the threshold, with its finger on its
lips. I will not ask how it comes that those personal
altercations, involving all the removes and definitions of
Shakespeare’s Touchstone – the retort courteous – the quip modest –
the reply churlish – the reproof valiant – the countercheck
quarrelsome – the lie circumstantial and the lie direct – are of
immeasurably greater interest in the House of Commons than the
health, the taxation, and the education, of a whole people. I will
not penetrate into the mysteries of that secret chamber in which
the Bluebeard of Party keeps his strangled public questions, and
with regard to which, when he gives the key to his wife, the new
comer, he strictly charges her on no account to open the door. I
will merely put it to the experience of everybody here, whether the
House of Commons is not occasionally a little hard of hearing, a
little dim of sight, a little slow of understanding, and whether,
in short, it is not in a sufficiency invalided state to require
close watching, and the occasional application of sharp stimulants;
and whether it is not capable of considerable improvement? I
believe that, in order to preserve it in a state of real usefulness
and independence, the people must be very watchful and very jealous
of it; and it must have its memory jogged; and be kept awake when
it happens to have taken too much Ministerial narcotic; it must be
trotted about, and must be bustled and pinched in a friendly way,
as is the usage in such cases. I hold that no power can deprive us
of the right to administer our functions as a body comprising
electors from all parts of the country, associated together because
their country is dearer to them than drowsy twaddle, unmeaning
routine, or worn-out conventionalities.
This brings me to objection number two. It is stated that this
Association sets class against class. Is this so? (CRIES OF
“No.”) No, it finds class set against class, and seeks to
reconcile them. I wish to avoid placing in opposition those two
words – Aristocracy and People. I am one who can believe in the
virtues and uses of both, and would not on any account deprive
either of a single just right belonging to it. I will use, instead
of these words, the terms, the governors and the governed. These
two bodies the Association finds with a gulf between them, in which
are lying, newly-buried, thousands on thousands of the bravest and
most devoted men that even England ever bred. It is to prevent the
recurrence of innumerable smaller evils, of which, unchecked, that
great calamity was the crowning height and the necessary
consummation, and to bring together those two fronts looking now so
strangely at each other, that this Association seeks to help to
bridge over that abyss, with a structure founded on common justice
and supported by common sense. Setting class against class! That
is the very parrot prattle that we have so long heard. Try its
justice by the following example:- A respectable gentleman had a
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Dickens, Charles – Speeches, Literary & Social
large establishment, and a great number of servants, who were good
for nothing, who, when he asked them to give his children bread,
gave them stones; who, when they were told to give those children
fish, gave them serpents. When they were ordered to send to the
East, they sent to the West; when they ought to have been serving
dinner in the North, they were consulting exploded cookery books in
the South; who wasted, destroyed, tumbled over one another when
required to do anything, and were bringing everything to ruin. At
last the respectable gentleman calls his house steward, and says,
even then more in sorrow than in anger, “This is a terrible
business; no fortune can stand it – no mortal equanimity can bear
it! I must change my system; I must obtain servants who will do
their duty.” The house steward throws up his eyes in pious horror,