have mair consideration for folk frae the landwards. Dear me, man, I dinna [May, see a newspaper every day, like you in the town. I just get some ae bit account o' onything that's been gaun on, and maun either take my yeditor's opinion, whilk I would be sorry to do, or make up ane for mysell. I thought this had been a business that had set a' Edinburgh in a perfect low. Sae did Watty Brydone, and a' Yarrow water, for that maiter. TICKLER. Come, come, Christopher-after all, 'tis we that are in the wrong. Believing as you did, you were quite right, James, in feeling as you did. You could not be expected to divine the utter humbug of all this, especially as the Scotch papers seem to have given into the mystification, uno ore. There's even James Ballantyne now-does not even he publish a Supplement-a Supplement, forsooth!-on purpose to give the world of the Weekly Journal a more plenteous bellyfull of this Brougham balaam ?—You take in that paper, Jamie? HOGG. Ay, my nevoy sends't out to huz. And we've the New Times too; but then we only get them ance a-week; and than they're sic a bundle, that I canna take heart to begin wi't amaist. Aught or nine papers a' at ance! It's ower meikle for ony ordinar stamach. The Journal's as meikle as I can weel manage. I read naething else about the Brougham matter, however. TICKLER. My dear friend, you must buy the "Report from Authority"-the regular concern-the pamphlet. Your library will be incomplete, if you don't. NORTH. My dear Hogg, we have joked enough about all this. The truth is, that I perfectly agree with you. I think the Bailies were asses to offer Brougham their freedom-I think Brougham was an ass to take it-I think the Whigs were mean rogues to give out that the dinner was not to be a political one, and that the few Tories whom they took in were magnificent asses for their pains -the whole affair was a betise from beginning to end, and the only difficulty is to say who was the greatest béte. What's bait? Beast, Hogg, beast. HOGG. NORTH. HOGG. Od, man! if ye but kenn'd hoo I like to listen to you when you speak plain sense and plain English, ye wad neither quizz folk, nor haul in a Latin word (or a Greek ane, gude kens whilk yon was,) when your ain mither-tongue would serve the turn; but I'm no meaning to interrupt you-haud on, haud on, sir,-it does me gude to hear you. Curse the Bailies! ODOHERTY. NORTH. Come, come, you're too severe-pass the bottle, Secretary.The Bailies are good men and true-they have but made no heeltaps, Timothy-a blunder for once. Humanum est. TICKLER. Mere cowardice, sir-I beg your pardon, the word now-a-days is conciliation. HOGG. Consillyation, an ye like, Southside. A fairish emendation, i'faith. TICKLER. HOGG. Hoots! hoots! haud ye to the Baillies, Mr North. Silly bodies! NORTH. Why, yes-in sober truth, James, what does all this sort of thing come to? Brougham is a clever fellow certainly, and a gutter-blood, and I for one should have had, in one view, no objection at all to the magistrates of Edinburgh paying him a compliment of more value than this. But what is the return? Any thanks? Any gratitude? Not at all, Hogg-nothing of the kind. He and his crew have insulted these people all their lives, and they will continue to insult them. Who can be fool enough to suppose that a piece of parchment, with the Nisi Dominus Frustra upon it, will alter in any respect the old settled aversions of the sulkiest creature that ever growled? Not I, for one. Nor me, for anither. HOGG. TICKLER. Depend upon it, nothing ever meets with gratitude which is felt and known, or at the lowest penny suspected, to be extracted from fear. NORTH. Certainly not. The Bailies are Tories. whenever he can. MULLION. Brougham will comb their cars I take it, they wanted to buy his forbearance in relation to some paltry little job-I don't mean job in its bad sense-that they have in hand-their improvements bill, for example. NORTH. That's too bad. No, no, I consider this doing of theirs, as just one of the doings, and sayings too, in which the Tories as a body seem at this present to be indulging to a pretty considerable extent. But I submit that the compliment in this case was paid-the submission vouchsafed, that is not to Brougham personally, but to the Whigs of Edinburgh itself as a body. The Provost and Bailies thought more of your James Gibsons, your Cockburns, Jeffreys, and so forth, than of anybody so much out of their own sphere as Master Brougham. HOGG. And what for should onybody think about them? NORTH. Indeed, my dear fellow, it is easier to put such questions than to answer them. The fact is, that the Tories don't stick together for each other, and till they learn to do so, they will individually, and even as knots, remain to a certain extent at the mercy of the other faction-that faction whose geese are always swans-that faction who have chosen to vote all their idiots clever men-and all their clever men great men. HOGG. I am a simple man, I allow; but I confess I really would like to hear what it is that they say Brougham has done. NORTH. My dear, he has done nothing; that they admit. But he has said a great deal, and that they wish us to take as good coin. TICKLER. He has done something, Kit; but I won't interrupt you just yet. ODOHERTY. I don't know anything he ever did except about the poor Queen, and that I thought might as well have been left out of the account. NORTH. The talk at present afloat about Brougham's gigantic mind, awful powers, terrific eloquence, crushing vituperation, withering sarcasm, &c. &c. &c. is, you may rely upon it, the merest gabble. Agreed. TICKLER. NORTH. A clever man-and a clever speaker-who denies that? But he is great in nothing. Neither in intellect, nor in character, nor even in eloquence. The man's soul is prosaic-his character nothing-his eloquence, all that they talk of as the grand part of it, is mere vulgar slang and rabid rhodomontade. His soul prosaic?—That's news. HOGG. Wha ever said he was a Poet? NORTH. No, no, you mistake me, James. I mean to say that his soul wants all the noblest and highest points. He is a cold, rancorous, sour, disappointed man, and hatred is his ruling passion. He is a mere beast of prey-and more of the Tiger than the Lion, I guess. He never makes any impression, sir, when he is really met. Nobody would characterize Canning as an awful orator, and yet he squeezes the life out of Brougham The Thunderer whenever he has a mind. TICKLER. Would that were oftener! Canning is too fine a gentleman for some parts of his office-too delicate-too contemptuously squeamish. Londonderry, whose speaking was nothing to Canning's, did Brougham's business, on the whole, better. NORTH. Much. Whenever Canning pleases, he makes Brougham look and feel extremely ridiculous-and there is an end of him for the nonce. But Lord Castlereagh treated him with high, settled, imperturbable scorn, and Brougham could never look at him without trembling. You pay a club-armed savage too much respect when you run him through with a beautifully-polished lance. He bleeds, runs, and sulks. But the mace is the true weapon for him. TICKLER. Was it not fine to hear Harry Cockburn, or some such Castiglione, telling a parcel of Auld Reekie riff-raff, that Brougham had taught the world in what way despots should be talked of in a British Senate ? NORTH. Ay, indeed-Robbers, ruffians, and Gentlemen of Verona !-These are fine flowers of speech. ODOHERTY. And great is the heroism of uttering them, about folks a thousand miles off, and a million of miles above one. Thersites was a hero. TICKLER. MULLION. I confess I was scarcely prepared to find Brougham audacious enough to play the thunder-claimer over again, so soon after that squabash of Canning's; for that surely was a squabash. TICKLER. Yes, so it seemed. But you see Canning had not, after all, laid in his whipcord deep enough. MULLION. Why, what would you have had him say? TICKLER. What would I have had him say! Sir, I would have had him crack no jokes about any such puppy. I would have had him fix his eye-Heavens, what an eye it is! (if he knew it!)-on this Brougham, and say,-The honourable member claims the merit of having instructed the ministers of England how to serve her in peace. Why does not the same sage and hero claim the merit of the peace itself? God knows, he had been calling on us long and loud enough to make peace with France. We partook in his thirst for peace-we beat our enemies, and then we had it. We did not follow the advice of our master, to crouch before the footstool of Buonaparte-we knocked down throne, and footstool, and all-and then we got what we wanted. There is seldom much dispute in this world, as to what is absolutely good. We all agreed in wishing for peace at the time when he thundered submission in our ears. We all wished for extension of trade-repeal of taxes-and acknowledgment of South American Independence, as early as the beneficent character of these things became apparent to this gentleman's enlightened glance. But we had to do that which he had only to talk about. We had to overcome the obstacles and dif ficulties which he had but to sneer at. This is the way I would have treated him, had I been one of his pupils! ODOHERTY. One man says, it would be a fine thing to have an instrument by which we could see the stars; another, who may, perhaps, be supposed to have formed the same notion at least as soon, happens to invent a telescope. And Galileo is the pupil! NORTH. Why, after all, Canning said something not very unlike all this. The short and the long of it is this TICKLER. The difference between the Broughams and the Ministers, whose capacity they sneer at, and whose merits they claim, is exactly the same as that between a dream and a reality-or, rather, between madness and genius. Sir, I have no toleration for all this egregious humbug. But it was well fitted, no doubt, for the swallow of the rag and tag who, I understand, constituted all but a very small minority in this dinner-party in George's Street. MULLION. Why, I take it for granted they have placarded, for our behoof, as many names as they durst well show ;-and these are not many. ODOHERTY. Nor great. One young Lord-Glenorchy,- MULLION. Whom, by the way, I was amused to see talked of the other day, in one of the London papers, as one of the few literary characters in the House of Com mons. ODOHERTY. Very good ;-then there's an honourable somebody Haliburton, whom nobody ever heard of before-and Sir Harry, honest man-and Raith-and then, plump, you come at once upon a few talking barristers, and feeing writersand there's your roll of magnates. Deil tak thae blethering skytes, the Embro lawwars-I wonder what they think themselves-Scotland here and Scotland there!-Is a' Scotland in the Parleament Close, I wonder? TICKLER. Why, it would seem as these gentry thought so; but, seriously, it is a pleasant thing to see such a failure as this. "Dinner in Scotland in honour of Henry Brougham, Esq. of Brougham-Hall, M. P."!!! And, after all, the concern to turn out to be a mere meeting of the clanjamphrey ! NORTH. One is pleased to find our nobility and gentry showing a proper respect for themselves. But, indeed, what could have been expected? MULLION. How could gentlemen parade themselves where they were to hear such orators, as the Jeffreys, &c. are not now a-days ashamed to hunt in couples with? Cranstoun, you see, staid away. A bad headach. NORTH. He had the same, if you recollect, at the Pantheon. TICKLER. Yes, yes, Cranstoun is an aristocrat to the backbone. All the water in Clyde will never wash his blood out of his veins-nor his pride out of his heart neither. NORTH. No, nor his cold scorn out of his clear blue eye, when it chances to rest upon a spouting mechanical. TICKLER. Ay, or even whether there was no mechanical in the case. Imagine Cran stoun-or since he was there-imagine Ferguson of Raith-one of the completest gentlemen in Britain-imagine his feelings when Cockburn, after having called for a bumper to THE KING, and another to the Duke of York, said, "Now, gentlemen, a ráal bumper!" and so gave Squire Brougham of Brougham-Hall. Pleasant and genteel. ODOHERTY. TICKLER. Such weaver wit must have delighted the galleries. Quite Cockburnian! ODOHERTY. Brougham approves of the Greek eloquence. This would suit his fancy, no doubt. HOGG. He was aye a very vulgar speaker that Hairy Cobren. I could never thole him wi' his lang precenter-like drawl-and his pronoonciashin-it's clean Coogate. But faith there's few o' thae lads ony great deacons at that department. There's Jeffrey himsel, wi' his snipp, snepp, yirp, yerp-the body pits me in mind o' a mouse cheepin. Ha! ha! ODOHERTY. TICKLER. Clever fellow as he undoubtedly is, what a blockhead, after all, is Brougham, when you come to think of anything like prudence-Here you have these idiots drinking him in thunders as the leader of the Opposition-and him nolo-episcopari-ing that with a most amiable degree of simplicity-and then, at the same meeting, every one of the three estates of this empire is openly and ferociously insulted. A pretty leader for the real old Gentlemen Whigs of England, if there be any of them remaining. Ay, truly, Tickler. NORTH. TICKLER. Let us see how the account stands. First of all, Parliamentary reform is given by an obscure Edinburgh bookseller, and drunk with three times three-the whole speech being one libel upon the House of Commons as now existing. Then we have Brougham himself openly, and without disguise, calling the House of Lords a "den" of corruption-declaring in round unequivocal terms, that the majority of Peers who voted the Queen guilty, did so "against their own feelings," and " in violation of their own avowed principles, merely because their master commanded them." Nay, you have him spouting about" ALL the arms of EACH of the powers and princedoms of the state, united with ALL THE POWERS of DARKNESS and INFAMY against INNOCENCE and LAW." These, I think, are the man's ipsissima. Now, what does this really come to? Is it more or less than this "LEADER of the Opposition" expressing his belief that the majority of the Peers of Britain are the meanest, most cowardly, lying slaves in the world -personally so-each man a liar and a scoundrel in his secret heart-dead to all honour-lost to every principle that makes the character of a man respectable? Why, sirs, we all understand that people in Parliament vote with their party now and then, upon general political questions, without having examined the matter and made up their opinion strictly from and for themselves. But this had nothing in common with such cases as these. Here, sirs, was a solemn court of justice, a tribunal gravely constituted for judicial, strictly judicial, purposes. Here was the highest court of justice in Britain called upon to decide upon evidence, whether an individual lady had, or not, been guilty of a certain crime. And here is a man who coolly-years after-expresses his conviction, that the greater number of the judges who composed that court, were capable of laying their hands upon their breasts, and solemnly saying GUILTY, when their hearts prompted to NOT GUILTY-capable of ruining a woman, a lady, a queen-of ruining her by declaring her to have forfeited the honour of her sex-merely because their master commanded them so to do. Is this the language of one whom the Whigs of England recognize as their Leader? I think not, indeed! |
