Peabody. Why, I think that Mr M’Neile, or any other of the illustrators of Providence—and pretty fiery pictures they’ve painted about it lately—wouldn’t grudge half-a-crown for that thought. Why, he’d beat it into a discourse of an hour and a half long, and print and publish it for a shilling afterwards. The Potato in its Iniquity! Depend on it, Mr M’Neile would make a grand thing of it; showing that Irish landlords had nothing to do with the famine, but that the whole of the potato blight was nothing more than the wickedness of Cortez and such fellows—all Catholics, be it remembered—coming up more than two hundred years afterwards. The rottenness of present potatoes no other than the whips and chains of bygone centuries coming to a head! There would be something grand in this. Whereas, to lay the blight upon the Maynooth Grant isn’t worthy of the old woman who cursed the Pope for inventing the scarlet fever.
Nutts. Whatever brought the blight, I hope they’ll never trust to ’tatoes again. For my part, I shall never again think of fields of ’em in Ireland, without thinking every root a human slave: fields of misery, and want, and death. I’ve read somewhere of a certain root, that when men eat it they are turned to brutes: well, the potato’s very like it; for, living upon nothing else, it takes the best part of a man clean out of him: it takes away his respect from himself; and when that’s the case, a man’s lost, and may as well go upon all fours at once. And then for the landlords——
Slowgoe. I will not sit any longer in the shop, and hear those worthy and most unfortunate gentlemen abused. As for the National Debt, as a lover of the institutions of my country, I’m bound to think it’s a blessing.
Tickle. What! you don’t think it a burden?
Slowgoe. Not at all. The National Debt is like the hump on a camel—it makes the State carry what it has to carry with greater convenience. (Looking at paper.) So they’re going to make Prince Albert Chancellor of Cambridge. Mr Peabody, though you are now in the police, I believe last week you said you had a vote? Who do you give it to?
Peabody. Nobody. In the first place, I don’t see how the Earl of Powis, being, on his own confession, not so wise a man as the Duke of Northumberland, can have the face to ask for it. And secondly, Prince Albert’s intentions, should he be elected, are too military.
Nutts. What do you mean?—going to turn the students into soldiers?
Peabody. Not all at once; but it’s generally reported, that if he’s made Chancellor, he intends to abolish the trencher-cap at Cambridge University and bring in the Albert hat. I shouldn’t wish it talked about, because it might lose the poor girl her place; nevertheless, the housemaid at Fulham told me of the fact, that on Thursday last she saw her master, the Bishop of London, trying on the Albert hat before the looking-glass.
Tickle. That’s nothing; he might only be doing that as an officer—and I suppose a bishop would rank as lieutenant-colonel—in the Army of Martyrs. Talking of the Duke of Northumberland, I see he’s been lying in state.
Slowgoe. Very right. Even in death people should respect their proper rank, and not come down to the vulgar. I see here’s the account taken from the Morning Herald. Hark! (Reads.) “The noblest and most conspicuous town mansion of the nobility of this country is that which now bears the aspect of desolation, and betokens the chill presence of death. The busy throng without pursue their wonted avocations around the princely pile ‘regardless of the dead:’ within, all is darkness and pompous gloom.” Beautiful, isn’t it?