PEEL “REGULARLY CALLED IN.”
At length, PEEL is called in “in a regular way.” Being assured of his quarterly fee, the state physician may now, in the magnanimity of his soul, prescribe new life for moribund John Bull. Whether he has resolved within himself to emulate the generous dealing of kindred professors—of those sanative philosophers, whose benevolence, stamped in modest handbills, “crieth out in the street,” exclaiming “No cure no pay,”—we know not; certain we are, that such is not the old Tory practice. On the contrary, the healing, with Tory doctors, has ever been in an inverse ratio to the reward. Like the faculty at large, the Tories have flourished on the sickness of the patient. They have, with Falstaff, “turned diseases to commodity;” their only concern being to keep out the undertaker. Whilst there’s life, there’s profit,—is the philosophy of the Tory College; hence, poor Mr. Bull, though shrunk, attenuated,—with a blister on his head, and cataplasms at his soles,—has been kept just alive enough to pay. And then his patience under Tory treatment—the obedience of his swallow! “Admirable, excellent!” cried a certain doctor (we will not swear that his name was not PEEL), when his patient pointed to a dozen empty phials. “Taken them all, eh? Delightful! My dear sir, you are worthy to be ill.” JOHN BULL having again called in the Tories, is “worthy to be ill;” and very ill he will be.
The tenacity of life displayed by BULL is paralleled by a case quoted by LE VAILLANT. That naturalist speaks of a turtle that continued to live after its brain was taken from its skull, and the cavity stuffed with cotton. Is not England, with spinning-jenny PEEL at the head of its affairs, in this precise predicament? England may live; but inactive, torpid; unfitted for all healthful exertion,—deprived of its grandest functions—paralyzed in its noblest strength. We have a Tory Cabinet, but where is the brain of statesmanship?
Now, however, there are no Tories. Oh, no! Sir ROBERT PEEL is a Conservative—LYNDHURST is a Conservative—all are Conservative. Toryism has sloughed its old skin, and rejoices in a new coat of many colours; but the sting remains—the venom is the same; the reptile that would have struck to the heart the freedom of Europe, elaborates the self-same poison, is endowed with the same subtilty, the same grovelling, tortuous action. It still creeps upon its belly, and wriggles to its purpose. When adders shall become eels, then will we believe that Conservatives cannot be Tories.
When folks change their names—unless by the gracious permission of the Gazette—they rarely do so to avoid the fame of brilliant deeds. It is not the act of an over-sensitive modesty that induces Peter Wiggins to dub himself John Smith. Be certain of it, Peter has not saved half a boarding-school from the tremendous fire that entirely destroyed “Ringworm House”—Peter has not dived into the Thames, and rescued some respectable attorney from a death hitherto deemed by his friends impossible to him. It is from no such heroism that Peter Wiggins is compelled to take refuge in John Smith from the oppressive admiration of the world about him. Certainly not. Depend upon it, Peter has been signalised in the Hue and Cry, as one endowed with a love for the silver spoons of other men—as an individual who, abusing the hospitality of his lodgings, has conveyed away and sold the best goose feathers of his landlady. What then, with his name ripe enough to drop from the tree of life, remains to Wiggins, but to subside into Smith? What hope was there for the well-known swindler, the posted pickpocket, the callous-hearted, slug-brained Tory? None: he was hooted, pelted at; all men stopped the nose at his approach. He was voted a nuisance, and turned forth into the world, with all his vices, like ulcers, upon him. Well, Tory adopts the inevitable policy of Wiggins; he changes his name! He comes forth, curled and sweetened, and with a smile upon his mealy face, and placing his felon hand above the vacuum on the left side of his bosom—declares, whilst the tears he weeps would make a crocodile blush—that he is by no means the Tory his wicked, heartless enemies would call him. Certainly not. His name is—Conservative! There was, once, to be sure, a Tory—in existence;
“But he is dead, and nailed in his chest!”
He is a creature extinct, gone with the wolves annihilated by the Saxon monarch. There may be the skeleton of the animal in some rare collections in the kingdom; but for the living creature, you shall as soon find a phoenix building in the trees of Windsor Park, as a Tory kissing hands in Windsor Castle!
The lie is but gulped as a truth, and Conservative is taken into service. Once more, he is the factotum to JOHN BULL. But when the knave shall have worn out his second name—when he shall again be turned away—look to your feather-beds, oh, JOHN! and foolish, credulous, leathern-eared Mr. BULL—be sure and count your spoons!
Can it be supposed that the loss of office, that the ten years’ hunger for the loaves and fishes endured by the Tory party, has disciplined them into a wiser humanity? Can it be believed that they have arrived at a more comprehensive grasp of intellect—that they are ennobled by a loftier consideration of the social rights of man—that they are gifted with a more stirring sympathy for the wants that, in the present iniquitous system of society, reduce him to little less than pining idiotcy, or madden him to what the statutes call crime, and what judges, sleek as their ermine, preach upon as rebellion to the government—the government that, in fact, having stung starvation into treason, takes to itself the loftiest praise for refusing the hangman—a task—for appeasing Justice with simple transportation?
Already the Tories have declared themselves. In the flush of anticipated success, PEEL at the Tamworth election denounced the French Revolution that escorted Charles the Tenth—with his foolish head still upon his shoulders—out of France, as the “triumph of might over right.” It was the right—the divine right of Charles—(the sacred ampoule, yet dropping with the heavenly oil brought by the mystic dove for Clovis, had bestowed the privilege)—to gag the mouth of man; to scourge a nation with decrees, begot by bigot tyranny upon folly—to reduce a people into uncomplaining slavery. Such was his right: and the burst of indignation, the irresistible assertion of the native dignity of man, that shivered the throne of Charles like glass, was a felonious might—a rebellious, treasonous potency—the very wickedness of strength. Such is the opinion of Conservative PEEL! Such the old Tory faith of the child of Toryism!
Since the Tamworth speech—since the scourging of Sir ROBERT by the French press—PEEL has essayed a small philanthropic oration. He has endeavoured to paint—and certainly in the most delicate water-colours—the horrors of war. The premier makes his speech to the nations with the palm-branch in his hand—with the olive around his brow. He has applied arithmetic to war, and finds it expensive. He would therefore induce France to disarm, that by reductions at home he may not be compelled to risk what would certainly jerk him out of the premiership—the imposition of new taxes. He may then keep his Corn Laws—he may then securely enjoy his sliding scale. Such are the hopes that dictate the intimation to disarm. It is sweet to prevent war; and, oh! far sweeter still to keep out the Wigs!
The Duke of WELLINGTON, who is to be the moral force of the Tory Cabinet, is a great soldier; and by the very greatness of his martial fame, has been enabled to carry certain political questions which, proposed by a lesser genius, had been scouted by the party otherwise irresistibly compelled to admit them. (Imagine, for instance, the Marquis of Londonderry handling Catholic Emancipation.) Nevertheless, should “The follies of the Wise”—a chronicle much wanted—be ever collected for the world, his Grace of Wellington will certainly shine as a conspicuous contributor. In the name of famine, what could have induced his Grace to insult the misery at this moment, eating the hearts of thousands of Englishmen? For, within these few days, the Victor of Waterloo expressed his conviction that England was the only country in which “the poor man, if only sober and industrious, WAS QUITE CERTAIN of acquiring a competency!” And it is this man, imbued with this opinion, who is to be hailed as the presiding wisdom—the great moral strength—the healing humanity of the Tory Cabinet. If rags and starvation put up their prayer to the present Ministry, what must be the answer delivered by the Duke of Wellington? “YE ARE DRUNKEN AND LAZY!”
If on the night of the 24th of August—the memorable night on which this heartless insult was thrown in the idle teeth of famishing thousands—the ghosts of the victims of the Corn Laws,—the spectres of the wretches who had been ground out of life by the infamy of Tory taxation, could have been permitted to lift the bed-curtains of Apsley-House,—his Grace the Duke of Wellington would have been scared by even a greater majority than ultimately awaits his fellowship in the present Cabinet. Still we can only visit upon the Duke the censure of ignorance. “He knows not what he says.” If it be his belief that England suffers only because she is drunken and idle, he knows no more of England than the Icelander in his sledge: if, on the other hand, he used the libel as a party warfare, he is still one of the “old set,”—and his “crowning carnage, Waterloo,” with all its greatness, is but a poor set-off against the more lasting iniquities which he would visit upon his fellow-men. Anyhow, he cannot—he must not—escape from his opinion; we will nail him to it, as we would nail a weasel to a barn-door; “if Englishmen want competence, they must be drunken—they must be idle.” Gentlemen Tories, shuffle the cards as you will, the Duke of Wellington either lacks principle or brains.
Next week we will speak of the Whigs; of the good they have done—of the good they have, with an instinct towards aristocracy—most foolishly, most traitorously, missed.
Q.