Tickle. But the best on it is, he can’t help it. Mr Nutts and I was talking about that afore, warn’t we, Nutts.
Nutts. The very fact, says I, of Cobden being received as he is by Frenchmen, makes him a propagandist. There he is, with every syllable he says, preaching free trade for the wine-growers, though he doesn’t say a word about it. There he is in the city of Paris ten thousand times bigger conq’ror than Marshal Blucher. Lor’ bless you! the soldiers, poor fellows! never thought of it; but Cobden will prove the worst English general for them. He’s opened the campaign that will knock up their trade. There wasn’t a French soldier, whilst Cobden was talking and the Frenchmen were cheering, that oughtn’t to have felt his musket crumbling away in his arms like dust, and his bayonet melting like in its scabbard. There wasn’t a single French cannon, if it had had any sense at all, that oughtn’t to have groaned as with the bellyache, knowing that, as condemned old iron, it would go to the melting-pot. Then for the Gallic cock—the cock of glory!—the cock that, unlike any decent barndoor fowl, is always for picking out the eyes of nations—the cock that only lives upon a morning feed of bullets—why, after Cobden had made his speech, the poor thing felt his appetite get weaker and weaker for the garbage of glory, and in the end, depend on’t, he’ll live upon corn, without a drop o’ blood mixed in it, like a decent respectable bird, and never think of cock-a-doodle-dooing above all his neighbours.
Nightflit. Shouldn’t wonder. Why, doesn’t the French paper itself—the Journal des—des——
Peabody. The Journal des Débats—the Government organ.
Nightflit. Doesn’t it, here, in what it says about Cobden, talk as if it was ashamed of the business of the customhouse officers rumpling and tousling everybody as steps into the country, for smuggled goods? Turning people upside down, and shaking ’em like so many pickpockets.
Nutts. Don’t talk of it. Shall I ever forget when Mrs Nutts and me crossed to Calais to see France? Shall I ever forget how fellows in blue uniforms, with swords by their sides, searched us over and over, as if we’d brought a cutler’s shop and a cotton-mill in every one of our pockets? Isn’t it dreadful to think that men should be such fools to themselves as to pay soldiers and customhouse officers to prevent one country bringing its blessings to another, as if heaven only intended the best iron for England, and the best claret wines for France? Well, isn’t it a comfortable thing to think of, that Mr Cobden has spoken the dying speech of all them customhouse officers? They mayn’t believe it just yet, but it’s sure to come. They’ve got consumption in ’em, and sooner or later they must go. Only I do hope that on both sides they’ll save one or two specimens for their museums, just to show the children that come arter us what fools their fathers was afore ’em.
Slowgoe. Well, there’s one comfort left for me, I shan’t live to see it. You’re for universal peace, and all that sort of stuff. Very well in story-books, but never was intended. War and all that was meant from the first. War runs through our nature. Everything wars upon everything. There’s nothing so little as doesn’t eat up something as is smaller than itself. Look here now; here’s a paragraph from an Injy paper, the Agra Chronicle, about the battle-field in the Sutlej. It says: “We came viâ Loodianah and Firozepore, and on our way encamped on the fields of Alrival and Ferozeshah. Alrival was a beautiful green plain, the only one I saw between Meerut and this, and seemed intended by nature for a battle-field. A few skeletons were strewed over it, and of the wells one was just drinkable, and the other was so impregnated with gunpowder as to be wholly unfit for use.”
Tickle. I can’t have that. “Intended by nature for a battle-field.” And do you think when nature made this beautiful world, and filled it with fruits and flowers, and sent down blessed light upon it—made it, as I may say, a paradise for folks to live in—do you for a moment think that nature made certain “beautiful green plains” for slaughterhouses? You might as well say that when nature made iron, she made it not for carpenters’ tools, but a-purpose for swords and bayonets; and that the sea would have all been fresh water only that we wanted the salt for gunpowder. That’s the shabby part of man. Whenever he does wickedness upon a large scale, he always lays it upon nature. If Cain had been a general, he’d have put all his bloodshed upon nature.
Nosebag. Then never mind nature; let’s talk of the Court. So the Queen’s a-goin’ to have another palace. Isn’t it an odd thing that kings and queens in our country never do get properly suited with houses? All their palaces—like their clothes—seem misfits when they leave ’em to them who comes after ’m. There was George the Fourth, he could no more live in his old father’s palace than he could get into his coat; so he had Buckingham Palace built, with a fine archway that always looks jest whitewashed. And now that’s so little that the present Royal Family fill it all up, like a cucumber in a bottle. And so we’re to have another building.
Slowgoe. Never mind that. It won’t cost a farthing. For doesn’t Sir F. Trench say in his motion—here it is—“That while this House feels confident that Parliament would willingly supply any reasonable amount of expense for the attainment of so desirable an object, it has great pleasure in expressing its belief, that by proper management of the means at the disposal of her Majesty and her Government (in aid of the £150,000 voted for alterations at Buckingham Palace), this great and desirable national object may be obtained without adding one shilling to the burthens of the people.” What do you think of that? Not one shilling, says Sir Frederick.