Slowgoe. (With paper.) Great season for the vineyards. It seems there never was such a promise for champagne. Glorious news this for the poor. In course nobody here understands it; but according to perlitical economy, when champagne’s plentiful it must bring down ginger-beer.
Nutts. Well, all I know is, pineapples haven’t cheapened potatoes.
Slowgoe. Don’t talk of potatoes in that heathen way, Mr Nutts; if you’d any decency, any religion, you wouldn’t talk of a potato with a smile. I suppose you haven’t seen what Lord George Bentinck—that’s a pious soul, that is—says upon potatoes? I thought not. Here it is. His Lordship as will be Prime Minister—it’s at Mr Newdegate’s dinner—his Lordship says (reads): “They would recollect that at the close of the last year there was a sham cry got up, respecting the failure in the potato crop, to serve the purpose of an administration; he was now sorry to say that that feint had become a reality; that the potato failure had spread from one end of the kingdom to the other—from the Land’s End to John o’ Groats, throughout the whole of Ireland, and throughout the whole of the countries bordering upon the Atlantic. (Hear.) He was fain to confess, and he did so with sorrow, that this time there was no sham, but he greatly feared that this sad reality was the just vengeance of Providence for the great ingratitude we had displayed in needlessly complaining of His bounty.” And all the people cried “Hear, hear,” and with the wind in their faces, no doubt, looked very believing, very solemn. So you see, ’cording to Lord George, it’s Peel, and nobody but Peel, as has brought the potato rot upon us. Peel cried “Wolf” to pass the corn-laws; and now for his wickedness, and his alone, the wild beast is really come—has been sent, as dear Lord George says, by Providence, to tear the bowels of hundreds o’ thousands of innocent people; and, moreover——
Nutts. Don’t—don’t go on in that way, or I must lay down the razor. Well, I hope I’m a religious man—I haven’t cut you, Mr Bleak, I trust?—and I love a bit o’ politics, nobody better; but if I shouldn’t blush redder than that blacking-bill, to think for a minute of making Providence Whig or Tory, and counting the angels on my side of the question; whether it was for all the world as they count a majority in the House of Commons. If there is a presumption that shows what an impudent worm upon two legs a man is—and I don’t care a button whether the worm is a worm with stars and ribands, or a worm with no more nobility of flesh in him than a worm in a pauper burial-ground—if there is a presumption in this world, it is, I say, when a man will take religion into partnership with him, and whatever he may do, make himself and his little dirty doings the special pets of Providence. And yet, I daresay, Lord George thinks this the Christianity for gentlemen! Well, there’s no knowing what use a man may make of his religion. Hearing what I have heard, I won’t swear that a member of the Jockey Club mayn’t bind his betting-book up with his Bible.
Slowgoe. I’ve often threatened it, Mr Nutts; but if you go on in this infidel manner, I must take my chin to another shop.
Nutts. Why, look here: truth isn’t like a penny-piece with two different sides to it; and a flum is not less a flum for coming after dinner. Either Lord George meant what he said, or he didn’t. Now, if he meant it, he meant to make Sir Robert Peel answerable for what he calls “the vengeance of Providence;” he meant to lay at Sir Robert’s door the misery and starvation—and it makes one’s heart sick and one’s blood cold to think of it—of thousands and thousands of suffering creaturs; he meant——
Slowgoe. Nonsense! you’re such a violent man: he meant nothing of the sort. When a man bids for Minister, everything’s fair: public men——
Tickle. Oh yes; men blacken one another as they like, they means nothing. They do it, I s’pose, just as last Tuesday we blackened Bill Simpson’s face when he was asleep—for a joke, and nothing more.
Nutts. Ha! and his Lordship having dined, I s’pose you’ll have it, there was a greater allowance for burnt cork? Don’t tell me. They take up poor fortin-tellers—hocus-pocus fellows that cast nativities and suchlike, and tell servant-gals what every star means when it winks upon ’em. But when a lord—and a lord, too, that would be a prime minister—would trade upon Providence, and, thinking he knows all its doings, would lay the misery of millions upon the head of one man, they never send for the constable, oh no; but fine gentlemen, full of piousness and port wine, stamp their feet and whobble out “Hear! hear!” Such religion’s like olives to ’em, and gives quite a relish to their drink.
Slowgoe. I say again, you’re a violent man, Mr Nutts. There is no doubt that the potato disease is brought about by something; and until that something is discovered, we—I mean us of true Conservative principles—may as well lay it upon the treason of Sir Robert Peel as upon anything else. When the true cause is found out, why, then, as gentlemen, we can shift it.