Various
Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine — Volume 55, No. 342, April, 1844
CHAPTER VII
Half an hour passed—an hour—and yet the conversation was flowing on as briskly as ever. Mr Bill Whalley had explained the exact difference between Norway and Canada timber, greatly to Miss Emily's satisfaction; and Miss Sophia had again and again expressed her determination to leave the house the moment Miss Hendy entered it; and both the young ladies had related the energetic language in which they had expressed this resolution to their father, and threatened him with immediate desertion if he didn't cut that horrid old schoolmistress at once. The same speeches about happiness and simple cottages, with peace and contentment, had been made a dozen time over by all parties, when the great clock in the hall—a Dutch pendule, inserted in a statue of Time—struck three o'clock, and at the same moment a loud rap was heard at the front door.
"Who can it be?" exclaimed Miss Sophia. "It isn't papa's knock;"—and hiding her face in the thick hydrangia which filled the drawing-room window, she gazed down to catch a glimpse of the entrance steps. She only saw the top of a large wooden case, and the white hat of a gentleman who rested his hand on the burden, and was giving directions to the bearers to be very careful how they carried it up stairs.
Mr Whalley started up, as did Mr Sidsby, in no small alarm. "I wouldn't be found here for half-a-crown," said the former gentleman: "old father would shake his head into a reg'lar palsy if he knew I was philandering here, when the Riga brig is unloading at the wharf."
"Let us go into the back drawing-room," suggested one of the young ladies, "and you can get out quite easily when the parcel, whatever it is, is delivered." They accordingly retired to the back drawing-room, and in a few minutes had the satisfaction of hearing heavy steps on the stairs, and the voice of the redoubtable Mr Bristles saying, "Gently, gently,—I have no hesitation in stating, that you were never entrusted with so valuable a burden before. Deposit it with gentleness on the large table in the middle; and, you may now boast, that your hands have borne the noblest specimen of grace and genius that modern ages have produced."
"It's that everlasting donkey papa is always talking about!" whispered Sophia.
"If it's Stickleback's statue," said Mr William Whalley, "the little vagabond promised the first sight of it to old father. He'll be in a precious stew when he finds his rival has been beforehand!"
The porters now apparently retired, and the youthful prisoners in the back drawing-room tried to effect their escape by the door which opened on the stairs; but, alas! it was locked on the outside, and it was evident, from the soliloquy of Mr Bristles, that their retreat was cut off through the front room. A knock—the well-known rat, tat, tat, of the owner of the mansion—now completed their perplexity; and, in a moment more, they heard the steps of several persons rushing up stairs.
"Mr Pitskiver!" exclaimed Bristles in intense agitation, "you have surely forgotten our agreement—Snooksby! Butters! Banks! Why, I am quite overpowered with the surprise! It was to have been alone, without witnesses; or at most, in my presence. But so public!"
"Never mind, my dear Bristles. Why should I conceal my triumph—my happiness—the boast and gratification of my future days? Let us open the casket that enshrines such unequaled merits."
"If you really wish for no further secresy," replied Mr Bristles.
"Certainly! Don't I know that that case contains a masterpiece, softly sweet and beautifully feminine, as a talented friend of ours would say?"
"An exquisite woman, indeed!" said Bristles; "and a truly talented friend. The case, as you justly observe," proceeded the critic, while he untied the cords, "contains the most glorious manifestation of the softening influences of sex."
"It's a pity she's an ass," suggested Mr Pitskiver. "I can't help thinking that that's a drawback."
"What?—what is a drawback, my dear sir?"
"That femininity, as Miss Hendy calls it, should be brought so prominently forward in the person of an ass."
"An ass?—I don't understand! Are you serious?"
"Serious! to be sure, my dear Bristles. In spite of all efforts to assume an intellectual expression, the donkey, depend upon it, preponderates—the long visage, the dull eyes, the crooked legs—it is impossible to perceive any grace in such a wretched animal. I can't help thinking that if it had been a young girl you had brought me—say, a sleeping nymph—full of youth and beauty, 'twould have been a vast improvement on the scraggy jeanie contained in this box. But clear away, Bristles, we are all impatience."
"My dear sir—Mr Pitskiver—unaccustomed as I am, his I can truly say is the most uncomfortable moment of my life."
"Why, what's the matter with you, Bristles, can't you untie the string?"—"Here," continued Mr Pitskiver, "give me the cord," and so saying he untwisted it in a moment—down fell the side of the case, and to the astonished eyes of the assembled critics, and also of the party in the back drawing-room, revealed, not the masterpiece of the immortal Stickleback, but a female figure enveloped in a grey silk cloak, and covering its face with a white muslin handkerchief.
"Why, what the mischief is all this?" exclaimed the bewildered Mr Pitskiver; "this isn't the jeanie-ass you promised me a sight of. Who the deuce is this?"
The handkerchief was majestically removed, and the sharp eyes of Miss Hendy fixed in unspeakable disdain on the assembled party.
"'Tis I, base man! Are all your protestations of admiration come to this? Who shall doubt hereafter that it is the task of noble, gentle, self-denying woman to elevate society?"
A smothered but very audible laugh proceeding from the back drawing-room, interrupted the further eloquence of the regenerator of mankind; and, finding concealment useless, the two young ladies threw open the door, and advanced with their attendant lovers to the table. The female philosopher, with the assistance of Mr Bristles, descended from her lofty pedestal, and looked unutterable basilisks at the open-mouthed Mæcenas, who turned his eyes from the wooden box to Miss Hendy, and from Miss Hendy to the wooden box, without trusting himself with a word of either explanation or enquiry.
"We told you of our intentions, papa," said Miss Sophia, "if you brought that old lady to your house."
"I didn't bring her; I give you my honour 'twas that scoundrel Bristles," whispered the dismayed Pitskiver.
"You told me sir," exclaimed Bristles, "that you would be for ever indebted to me if I brought this lady to your mansion—that she was the perfection of grace and innocence. By a friendly arrangement with Mr Stickleback, the greatest sculptor of ancient or modern times, I managed to secure to this illustrious woman an admission to your house, which, I understood, she could not openly obtain through the opposition of your daughters. I considered that you knew of the arrangement, sir; and I know that, with a soft and feminine trustfulness, this most gentle and intellectual ornament of her sex and species consented to meet the wish you had so ardently expressed."
"I never had a wish of the kind," cried Mr Pitskiver; "and I believe you talking fellows and chattering women are all in a plot to make me ridiculous. I won't stand it any longer."
"Stand what?" enquired Mr Bristles, knitting his brows.
"Your nonsensical praises of each other—your boastings of Sticklebacks, and Snooksbys, and Bankses; a set of mere humbugs and blockheads! And even this foolish woman, with her femininities and re-invigorating society, I believe to be a regular quack. By dad! one would think there had never been a woman in the world before."
"Your observations are uncalled for"—
"By no manner of means," continued the senior, waxing bolder from the sound of his own voice. "I believe you're in a conspiracy to puff each other into reputation; and, if possible, get hold of some silly fellow's daughters. But no painting, chiseling, writing, or sonneteering blackguard, shall ever catch a girl of mine. What the deuce brings you here, sir?" he added, fiercely turning to Mr Sidsby. "You're the impostor that read the first act of a play"—
"I read it, sir," said the youth, "but didn't write a word of it, I assure you. Bristles is the author, and I gave him six dozen of sherry."
"No indeed, papa; he never wrote a line in his life," said Sophia.
"Then he may have you if he likes."
"Nor I, except in the ledger," modestly observed Mr Bill Whalley.
"Then take Emily with all my heart. Here, Daggles," he continue, ringing the bell, "open the street-door, and show these parties out!"
Amidst muttered threats, fierce looks, and lips contorted into all modes and expression of indignation, the guests speedily disappeared. And while Mr Pitskiver, still panting from his exertions, related to his daughters and their enchanted partners his grounds for anger at the attempt to impose Miss Hendy on him instead of a statue, Mr Daggles shut the front door in great exultation as the last of the intruders vanished, and said—
"Snipe, old Pits may do after all. He ain't a bad round of beef; and I almost like our two mutton-chops, since they have freed the house from such shocking sour-crouts and watery taties as I have just flinged into the street."
But it was impossible to convert the great Mr Bristles to the belief into which his quondam follower, Mr Pitskiver, had fallen as to the qualities of Miss Hendy. That literary gentleman had too just a perception of the virtues of the modern Corinne, and of a comfortable house at Hammersmith, with an income of seven hundred a-year, to allow them to waste their sweetness on some indecent clown, unqualified by genius and education to appreciate them. The result of this resolution was seen in a very few days after the interesting scene in Harley Street; and the following announcement in the newspapers will put our readers in as full a state of knowledge as we can boast of being in ourselves:—
"Woman's value Vindicated as the teacher and example of Man, by Mrs Bristles, late Miss Hendy, Hammersmith."
IRELAND
An interdict has rested, through four months, on the discussion of Irish affairs—an interdict self-imposed by the English press, in a spirit of honourable (almost of superstitious) jealousy on behalf of public justice; jealousy for the law, that it should not be biased by irresponsible statements—jealousy for the accused, that they should not be prejudiced by extra-judicial charges. At length the interdict is raised, and we are all free once more to discuss the great interests so long sealed up and sequestered by the tribunals of Dublin. Could it have been foreseen or fancied, pending this sequestration, that before it should be removed by the delivery of the verdict, nay, two months before the trial should have closed in a technical sense, by the delivery of the sentence, the original interest (profound as it was) would be obliterated, effaced, practically superseded, by a new phasis of the same unparalleled movement? Yet this has happened. A debate, which (like a series of natural echoes) has awakened and revived all the political transactions of last year in Ireland, should naturally have preserved the same relation to those transactions that any other shadow or reflection bears to the substance. And so it would: but unhappily with these rehearsals of the past, have mingled tumultuous menaces of a new plot. And these menaces, in the very act of uttering themselves, advertise for accomplices, and openly organize themselves as the principle of a new faction for refusing tranquillity once more to Ireland. Once more an opportunity is to be stifled for obtaining rest to that afflicted land.
This "monster" debate, therefore, presents us in equal proportions with grounds of disgust and terror—a disgust which forces us often to forget the new form of terror—a terror (from a new conspiracy) which forces us to forget even the late conspiracy of Repeal, and that glorious catastrophe which has trampled it under foot for ever.
It is painful to the understanding—this iteration of statements a thousand times refuted; it is painful to the heart—this eternal neglect (in exchange for a hear, hear) of what the speaker knows to be mere necessities of a poor distracted land: this folly privileged by courtesy, this treason privileged by the place. If indeed of every idle word—meaning not trivial word, but word consciously false—men shall hereafter give account, Heavens! what an arrear, in the single case of Ireland, will by this time have gathered against the House of Commons! Perfectly appalled we are when we look into the formless chaos of that nine nights' debate! Beginning with a motion which he who made it did not wish28 to succeed—ending with a vote by which one-half of the parties to that vote meant the flattest contradiction of all that was contemplated by the rest. On this quarter, a section raging in the highest against the Protestant church—on that quarter, a section (in terror of their constituents) vowing aid to this church, and yet allying themselves with men pledged to her destruction. Here, men rampant against the Minister as having strained the laws, in what regarded Ireland, for the sake of a vigour altogether unnecessary; there, men threatening impeachment—as for a lenity in the same case altogether intolerable! To the right, "how durst you diminish the army in Ireland, leaving that country, up to March 1843, with a force lower by 2400 rank and file shall the lowest that the Whigs had maintained?" To the left, "how durst you govern Ireland by martial strength?" Question from the Minister—"Will you of the Opposition place popish bishops in the House of Lords?" Answer from a premature sponsor of Lord John's—"We will." Answer from Lord John—"I will not." Question retrospective from the Conservatives—"What is it, not being already done, that we could have done for Ireland?" Answer from the Liberals—"Oh, a thousand things!" Question prospective from the Conservatives—"What is it, then, in particular, that you, in our places, would do for Ireland? Name it." Answer from the Liberals—"Oh, nothing in particular!" Sir R. Peel ought to have done for Ireland whole worlds of new things. But the Liberals, with the very same power to do heretofore, and to propose now, neither did then, nor can propose at present. And why? partly because the privilege of acting for Ireland, so fruitful in reproaches, is barren in practice: the one thing that remained to be done,—viz. the putting down agitators—has been done; and partly because the privilege of proposing for Ireland is dangerous: first, as pledging themselves hereafter; second, because to specify, though it were in so trivial a matter as the making pounds into guineas for Maynooth, is but to put on record, and to publish their own party incapacity to agree upon any one of the merest trifles imaginable. Anarchy of anarchies, very mob of very mobs, whose internal strife is greater than your common enmity ab extra—what shall we believe? Which is your true doctrine? Where do you fasten your real charge? Amongst conflicting arguments, which is it that you adopt? Amongst self-destroying purposes, for which is it that you make your election?
It might seem almost unnecessary to answer those who thus answer themselves, or to expose the ruinous architecture of politicians, who thus with mutual hands tear down their own walls as they advance, were it not for the other aspect of the debate. But the times are agitated; the crisis of Ireland is upon us; now, or not at all, there is an opening for a new dawn to arise upon the distracted land; and when a public necessity calls for a contradiction of the enemy, it is a providential bounty that we are able to plead his self-contradiction. In the hurry of the public mind, there is always a danger that many great advantages for the truth should be overlooked: even things seen steadily, yet seen but once and amongst alien objects, are seen to little purpose. Lowered also in their apparent value by the prejudice, that what passes in parliament is but the harmless skirmishing of partisanship, dazzling the eye, but innocuous as the aurora borealis, demonstrations only too certain of coming evils receive but little attention in their earlier stages. Yet undoubtedly, if the laws applicable to conspiracy can in any way be evaded, we may see by the extensive cabal now organizing itself in England for aiding the Irish conspiracy to overthrow the Irish Protestant church, that we have but exchanged one form of agitation for a worse. Worse in what respect? Not as measured simply by the ruin it would cause—between ruin and ruin, there is little reason for choice; but worse, as having all the old supporters that Repeal ever counted, and many others beside. Especially with Repeal agitation recommending itself to the Irish priesthood, and to those whom the priesthood can put in motion, it will recommend itself also and separately to vast multitudes amongst ourselves. It is worse also—not because in the event more ruinous, but because in its means less desperate. All the factious in politics and the schismatic in religion—all those who, caring little or nothing about religion as a spiritual interest, seek to overthrow the present Ministers—all those who (caring little or nothing about politics as a trading interest) seek to overthrow the Church of England—all, again, who are distressed in point of patriotism, as in Ireland many are, hoping to establish a foreign influence upon any prosperous body of native prejudice against British influence, are now throwing themselves, as by a forlorn hope, into this rearmost of their batteries, (but also the strongest)—a deadly and combined struggle to pull down the Irish Protestant establishment. And why? because nothing else is left to them as a hopeful subject of conspiracy, now that the Repeal conspiracy is crushed; and because in its own nature an assault upon Protestantism has always been a promising speculation—sure to draw support from England, whilst Repeal drew none; and because such an assault strikes at the citadel of our strength. For the established church of Ireland is the one main lever by which Great Britain carries out the machinery of her power over the Irish people. The Protestant church is by analogy the umbilical cord through which England connects herself materially with Ireland; through that she propagates her milder influence; that gone, the rest would offer only coercive influence. Without going diffusively into such a point, two vast advantages to the civil administration, from the predominance of a Protestant church in Ireland, meet us at the threshold: 1st, that it moulds by the gentlest of all possible agencies the recusant part of this Irish nation into a growing conformity with the two other limbs of the empire. The Irish population is usually assumed at about one fourth part of the total imperial population. Now, the gradual absorption of so large a section amongst our resources into the temper, sympathies, and moral habits of the rest, is an object to be kept in view by every successive government, let their politics otherwise be what they may; and therefore to be kept in view by all Irish institutions. In Canada everybody is now aware how much this country has been wanting to herself, (that is, wanting to the united interests equally of England and Canada,) in not having operated from the first upon the political dispositions of the old French population by the powerful machinery of her own language, and in some cases of her institutions. Her neglect in this instance she now feels to have been at her own cost, and therefore politically to have been her crime. Granting to her population a certain degree of education, and of familiarity with the English language, certain civic privileges, (as those of voting at political elections, of holding offices, profitable or honorary, &c.,) under such reasonable latitude as to time as might have made the transition easy, England would have prevented the late wicked insurrection in Canada, and gradually have obliterated the external monuments of French remembrances, which have served only to nurse a senseless (because a hopeless) enmity. Now, in Ireland, the Protestant predominance has long since trained and moulded the channels through which flows the ordinary ambition of her national aristocracy. The Popery of Ireland settles and roots itself chiefly in the peasantry of three provinces. The bias of the gentry, and of the aspiring in all ranks, is towards Protestantism. Activity of mind and honourable ambition in every land, where the two forms of Christianity are politically in equilibrium, move in that same line of direction. Undoubtedly the Emancipation bill of 1829 was calculated, or might have seemed calculated, to disturb this old order of tendencies. But against that disturbance, and in defiance of the unexampled liberality shown to Papists upon every mode of national competition, there is still in action (and judging by the condition of the Irish bar, in undiminished action) the old spontaneous tendency of Protestantism to 'go ahead;' the fact being that the original independency and freedom of the Protestant principle not only create this tendency, but also meet and favour it wherever nature has already created it, so as to operate in the way of a perpetual bounty upon Protestant leanings. Here, therefore, is one of the great advantages to every English government from upholding and fostering, in all modes left open by the Emancipation bill, the Protestant principle—viz. as a principle which is the pledge of a continual tendency to union; since, as no prejudice can flatter itself with seeing the twenty-one millions of our Protestant population pass over to Popery, it remains that we encourage a tendency in the adverse direction, long since established and annually increasing amongst the six and a half Irish Papists. Thus only can our total population be fused; and without that fusion, it will scarcely be hoped that we can enjoy the whole unmutilated use of our own latent power.
Towards such a purpose therefore, as tending to union by its political effects, the Protestant predominancy is useful; and secondly, were it no otherwise useful, it is so to every possible administration by means of its patronage. This function of a government—which, being withdrawn, no government could have the means of sustaining itself for a year—connects the collateral channels of Irish honours and remunerations with the great national current of similar distributions at home. We see that the Scottish establishment, although differing essentially by church government, yet on the ground that doctrinally it is almost in alliance with the Church of England, has not (except by a transient caprice) refused to the crown a portion of its patronage. On the other hand, if the Roman Catholic church were installed as the ruling church, every avenue and access for the government to the administration of national resources so great, would be closed at once. These evils from the overthrow of the Protestant church, we mention in limine, not as the greatest—they are the least; or, at any rate, they are so with reference to the highest interests—but for their immediate results upon the purposes common to all governments; and there they would be fatal, for any Roman Catholic church, where it happens also (like the Irish) to be a Papal church, neither will nor can confide privileges of this nature to the state. A Papal church, not modified (as the Gallican church) by original limitations of the Papal authority, not modified (as even the bigoted churches of Portugal and Austria) by modern conventional limitations of that alien authority, gloomily refuses and must refuse, to accept any thing from the state, for the simple reason that she is incapacitated for giving any thing. Wisely, according to the wisdom of this world, she cuts away from below the footing of the state all ground on which a pretence could ever be advanced for interfering with herself. Consequently, whosoever, and by whatsoever organs, would suffer from the overthrow of the Irish church as now established by law, the administration of the land would feel the effects from such a change, first and instantly. Let us not mistake the case. Mr O'Connell did not seriously aim at Repeal—that he knew too well to be an enterprise which could not surmount its earliest stages without coming into collision with the armed forces of the land; and no man will ever believe that he dreamed of prevailing there. What was it, then, that he did aim at? It was the establishment in supremacy of the Papal church. His meaning was, in case he had been left quietly to build up his aspiring purpose so high as seriously to alarm the government, then suddenly to halt, to propose by way of compromise some step in advance for his own church. Suppose that some arrangement which should have the effect of placing that church on a footing of equality, as a privileged (not as an endowed) church, with the present establishment; this gained, he might have safely left the church herself thenceforwards, from such a position of advantage, to fight her way onwards, to the utter destruction of her rival.
Thus it was that the conspirators hoped to terrify the minister into secret negotiation and compromise. But that hope failed. The minister was firm. He watched and waited his opportunity; he kept his eye settled upon them, to profit by the first opening which their folly should offer to the dreadful artillery of law. At last, said the minister, we will put to proof this vaunt of yours. We dare not bring you to trial, is your boast. Now, we will see that settled; and, at the same time, we will try whether we cannot put you down for ever. That trial was made, and with what perfection of success the reader knows; for let us remind him, that the perfection we speak of lay as much in the manner of the trial as in its result—in the sanctities of abstinence, in the holy forbearance to use any one of many decent advantages, in the reverence for the sublime equities of law. Oh, mightiest of spectacles which human grandeur can unfold to the gaze of less civilized nations, when the ermine of the judge and the judgment-seat, belted by no swords, bristling with no bayonets—when the shadowy power of conscience, citing, as it were, into the immediate presence of God twelve upright men, accomplishing for great kingdoms, by one day's memorable verdict, that solemn revolution which elsewhere would have caused torrents of blood to flow, and would perhaps have unsealed the tears of generations. Since the trial of the seven bishops29—which inaugurated for England the certainty that for her the "bloody writing" was torn which would have consigned her children to the mercies of despotism—there has been no such crisis, no such agitation, no such almighty triumph. Here was the second chapter of the history; and lastly, that the nine nights' debate attached itself as the third, is evident from its real purpose, which may be expressed strictly in this problem: Given, as a fact beyond all doubt, that O'Connell's Repeal conspiracy is for ever shattered; let it now be proposed, as a thing worthy of the combined parties in opposition, to find out some vicarious or supplementary matter for sedition. A new agitation must be found, gentlemen—a new grievance must be had, or Ireland is tranquillized, and we are lost. Was there ever a case illustrating so strongly the maxim, that no man can be effectually ruined except by himself? Here is Lord John Russell, taxed a thousand times with having not merely used Mr O'Connell as an ally, but actually as having lent himself to Mr O'Connell as an instrument. Is that true? A wise man, kind-hearted, and liberal in the construction of motives, will have found himself hitherto unwilling to suppose a thing so full of disgrace; he will have fancied arguments for scepticism. But just at this moment of critical suspense, forth steps Lord John himself, and by his own act dissipates all doubts, frankly subscribing the whole charge against himself; for his own motion reveals and publishes his wrath against the ministers for having extinguished the only man, viz. a piratical conspirator, by whose private license there was any safety for navigating the sea of Irish politics. The exact relation in which Lord John had hitherto stood to Mr O'Connell, was that of a land-owner paying black-mail to the cateran who guaranteed his flocks from molestation: how naturally must the grazier turn with fury on the man who, by suppressing his guardian, has made it hopeless for the future to gain private ease by trafficking in public wrongs! The real grievance was, the lopping Dagon of all power to stand erect, and thus laying the Whig-radical under the necessity of "walking in the light of the constitution" without aid from Irish crutches. The realonus imposed on Lord John's party is, where to look for, and how to suborn, some new idol and some fresh idolatry. Still to dispense with the laws in Ireland in the event of their own return to power, still to banish tranquillity from Ireland in the event of Sir Robert's power continuing, required that some new conspiracy should be cited to the public service, possibly (after the 15th of April) some new conspirator. The new seditious movement could not be doubtful: by many degrees of preference, the war upon the Irish church had the "call." This is to be the war now pursued, and with advantages (as we have already said) never possessed by the Repeal cause. The chief advantage of that lay in the utter darkness to the Irish peasantry of the word "Repeal." What it meant no wizard could guess; and merely as a subject to allure by uncertain hopes, on the old maxim of "omne ignotum pro magnifico," the choice of that word had considerable merit. But the cause of Popery has another kind of merit, and (again we remind the reader) reposes upon another kind of support. In that cause the Irish peasantry will be unaffectedly and spontaneously zealous; in that cause there will be a confluence from many quarters of English aid. Far other phenomena will now come forward. Meetings, even of the kind convened by Mr O'Connell, are not, we must remember, found to be unlawful by the issue of the late trials. Had certain melodramatic features been as cautiously banished from Mr O'Connell's parades as latterly they were affectedly sought, it is certain that, to this hour, he and his pretended myriads would have been untouched by the petrific mace of the policeman. Lay aside this theatrical costuming of cavalry, of military step, &c., and it will be found that these meetings were lawful. Most certainly a meeting for the purpose of petitioning is not, and (unless by its own folly) never can be, found unlawful.