"And if it teach us to stay at home, and live under laws that we understand, the price is not too high for the benefit."
He blustered away about what he would n't do in the Press, and in his "place" in Parliament; but what's the use of all that? Will England go to war for Kenny James Dodd? No. Well, then, by no other argument is the foreigner assailable. Tell the Austrian or the Russian Government that the company at the "Freemasons'" dinner were shocked, and the ladies at Exeter Hall were outraged at their cruelty, and they 'll only laugh at you. We can't send a fleet to Vienna; nor—we would n't if we could.
I did n't tell Lord George, but to you, in confidence, Tom, I will say, I think we have—if we liked it—a grand remedy for all these cases. Do you know that it was thinking of Tim Ryan, the rat-catcher at Kelly's mills, suggested it to me. Whenever Tim came up to a house with his traps and contrivances, if the family said they did n't need him, "for they had no rats," he 'd just loiter about the place till evening,—and, whatever he did, or how he did it, one thing was quite sure, they had never to make the same complaint again! Now, my notion is, whenever we have any grudge with a foreign State, don't begin to fit out fleets or armaments, but just send a steamer off to the nearest port with one of the refugees aboard. I 'd keep Kossuth at Malta, always ready; Louis Blanc and Ledru Rollin at Jersey; Don Miguel and Don Carlos at Gibraltar; and have Mazzini and some of the rest cruising about for any service they may be wanted on. In that way, Tom, we 'd keep these Governments in order, and, like Tim Ryan, be turning our vermin to a good account besides!
I thought that Mrs. D. and Mary Anne displayed a degree of attachment to this place rather surprising, considering that I have heard of nothing but its inconvenience till this moment, when we are ordered to quit it. Now, however, they suddenly discover it to be healthful, charming, and economical. I have questioned Cary as to the secret of this change, but she does not understand it. She knows that Lord George received a large packet by the post this morning, and instantly hurried off to communicate its contents to Mary Anne. By George! Tom, I have come to the notion that to rule a family of four people, one ought to have a "detective officer" attached to the household. Every day or so, something puzzling and inexplicable occurs, the meaning of which never turns up till you find yourself duped, and then it is too late to complain. Now, this same letter Cary speaks of is at this very instant exercising a degree of influence here, and I am to remain in ignorance of the cause till I can pick it out from the effect. This, too, is another blessed result of foreign travel! When we lived at home the incidents of our daily life were few, and not very eventful; they were circumscribed within narrow limits, and addressed themselves to the feelings of every one amongst us. Concealment would have been absurd, even were it possible; but the truth was, we were all so engaged with the same topics and the same spirit, that we talked of them constantly, and grew to think that outside the little circle of ourselves the world was a mere wilderness. To be sure, all this sounds very narrow-minded, and all that. So it does; but let me tell you, it conduces greatly to happiness and contentment.
Now, here, we have so many irons in the fire, some one or other of us is always burning his fingers!
I continue to be very uneasy about James. Not a line have we had from him, and he 's now several weeks gone! I wrote to Vickars, but have not yet heard from him in reply. Cary endeavors to persuade me that it is only his indolent, careless habit is in fault; but I can see that she is just as uncomfortable and anxious as myself.
You will collect from the length of this document that I am quite myself again; and, indeed, except a little dizziness in my head after dinner, and a tendency to sleep, I 'm all right. Not that I complain of the latter,—far from it, Tom. Sancho Panza himself never blessed the inventor of it more fervently than I do.
Sometimes, however, I think that it is the newspapers are not so amusing as they used to be. The racy old bitterness of party spirit is dying out, and all the spicy drollery and epigrammatic fun of former days gone with it. It strikes me, too, Tom, that "Party," in the strong sense, never can exist again amongst us. Party is essentially the submission of the many to the few; and so long as the few were pre-eminent in ability and tactical skill, nothing was more salutary. Wal-pole, Pelham, Pitt, and Fox stood immeasurably above the men and the intelligence of their time. Their statecraft was a science of which the mass of their followers were totally ignorant, and the crew never dreamt of questioning the pilot as to the course he was about to take. Whereas now—although by no means deficient in able and competent men to rule us—the body of the House is filled by others very little their inferiors. Old Babbington used to say "that between a good physician and a bad one, there was only the difference between a pound and a guinea." In the same way, there is not a wider interval now between the Right Honorable Secretary on the Treasury Bench and the Honorable Member below him. Education is widely disseminated,—the intercourse of club life is immense,—opportunities of knowledge abound on every hand,—the Press is a great popular instructor; and, above all, the temper and tendency of the age favors labor of every kind. Idleness is not in vogue with any class of the whole community. What chance, then, of any man, no matter how great and gifted he be, imposing, his opinions—as such—upon the world of politics! A minister, or his opponent, may get together a number of supporters for a particular measure, just as you or I could muster a mob at an election or a fair; but there would be no more discipline in the one case than in the other. They'd come now, and go when they liked; and any chance of reducing such "irregulars" to the habits of an army would be downright impossible!
There is another cause of dulness, too, in the newspapers. All the accidents—a most amusing column it used to be—are now entirely caused by railroads; and there is a shocking sameness about them. They were "shunting" wagons across the line when the express came up, or the pointsman did n't turn the switch, or the fog obscured the danger signal. With these three explanations, some hundreds of human beings are annually smashed, smothered, and scalded, and the survivors not a whit more provident than before.
Cruel assaults upon women—usually the wives of the ruffians themselves—are, I perceive, becoming a species of popular custom in England. Every "Times" I see has its catalogue of these atrocities; and I don't perceive that five shilling fines nor even three weeks at the treadmill diminishes the number. One of the railroad companies announces that it will not hold itself responsible for casualties, nor indemnify the sufferers. Don't you think that we might borrow a hint from them, and insert some cause of the same kind into the marriage ceremony, and that the woman should know all her "liabilities" without any hope of appeal? Ah! Tom Purcell, all our naval reviews, and industrial exhibitions, and boastful "leading" articles about our national greatness come with a very ill grace in the same broad sheet with these degrading police histories. Must savage ferocity accompany us as we grow in wealth and power? If so, then I 'd rather see us a third-rate power to-morrow than rule the world at the cost of such disgrace!