On the present occasion the company was numerous: the tobacco-smoke hung like a dense mist in the place, the gas-burners showing dimly through the pestiferous haze;—and the heat was intense.
Jack Rily and Vitriol Bob contrived to find room at one of the tables; and a slip-shod waiter supplied them in due time with a pot of ale and bread and cheese, to the discussion of which they addressed themselves in a manner affording not the slightest suspicion of the deadly enmity which existed between them.
While they were thus engaged they had an opportunity of listening to the conversation that was taking place amongst the other guests.
“Well, for my part,” said a little, stout, podgy individual, with a bald head and a round, red, good-humoured countenance, “I have always been taught to look on the City institootions as the blessedest things ever inwented.”
“And I maintain that they’re the foulest abuses in the universe,” exclaimed a tall, thin, sallow-faced individual, striking the table with his clenched fist as he spoke. “Why should everything east of Temple Bar be different from everything west?” he demanded, looking sternly round upon the company as if to defy any one to answer his questions. “Why should it be necessary to have barristers as magistrates in Westminster, and fat stupid old Aldermen in the City?—why should the ridiculous ostentation, useless trappings, and preposterous display of the Mayoralty be maintained for so miserably small a fraction of the great metropolis? Talk of your City Institutions, indeed!—they are either the most awful nonsense that ever made grown up persons look more absurd than little boys playing with paper cocked-hats and wooden swords—or else they are rottenness and corruption. When the Municipal Corporations were reformed in 1835, why was the City of London omitted! Did not Lord John Russell then pledge himself most solemnly and sacredly to bring in a separate bill for the London Corporation?—and has this promise, almost amounting to a vow, ever been fulfilled? No: and why? Because every Government, one after another, is afraid to lose the political support of this precious Corporation. And to these selfish considerations is sacrificed every principle of justice, propriety, and common sense. Look at the rascally extravagance and vile profusion which characterise the Corporation. The parish of St. Marylebone, with its hundred and forty thousand inhabitants, only expends a hundred and twenty-eight thousand pounds for those parochial purposes which cost the City, with a population of ten thousand less than the other, nearly a million! The difference is that Marylebone is governed by an intelligent vestry—whereas London is under a stupid Corporation! Look, again, at the iniquities perpetrated by the Aldermen in their capacity as licensing magistrates—the gross partiality that they show towards some publicans, and the inveterate hostility they manifest towards others. The rights of the freemen are a scandal and a shame—many able mechanics and other operatives being frequently driven from the City on account of their inability to pay the money for taking up their freedom.[32] Then again, look at the preposterous power which the Lord Mayor enjoys of stopping up all the thoroughfares and impeding business in every shape and way, on any occasion when it may suit him and his bloated, guzzling, purse-proud adherents to pass in their gingerbread coaches through the City. Is this consistent with British freedom?—is it compatible with the rights or interests of the citizens? Faugh!”
And the speaker resumed his pipe, in deep disgust at the abuses which he had thus succinctly, but most truly enumerated.
“Well, I don’t know—but I like all our old institutions,” said the bald-headed man, with the stolid obstinacy and contemptible narrow-mindedness which so frequently characterise the John Bullism of a certain class. “The wisdom of our ancestors——”
“The wisdom of the devil!” ejaculated the tall, sallow-faced individual who had held forth on the City abuses. “That is a fool’s reason for admiring established and inveterate corruption. The wisdom of our ancestors, indeed! Why—those ancestors believed in the divine right of Kings, and were sincere in praying on the 30th of January as if Charles the First was really a Martyr instead of a Traitor. Our ancestors, too, put faith in witches—aye, and burnt them also! It was our ancestors who kindled the fires in Smithfield where persons suffered at the stake; and our ancestors advocated the most blood-thirsty code of laws in Europe, in virtue of which men were strung up by dozens at a time at the Old Bailey. Our ancestors prosecuted writers for their political and religious opinions, and seemed to take a delight in everything that gratified the inhuman ambition of Kings and Queens, to the prejudice of real freedom. Our ancestors, in fact, were the most ignorant—besotted—bloody-minded miscreants that ever disgraced God’s earth; and any man who turns an adoring glance upon the deeds of those ruffians, deserves to be hooted out of all decent society.”
Having thus delivered his sentiments on the subject, the sallow-faced individual was about to resume his pipe, when, another idea occurring to him, he suddenly burst forth again in the following terms:—
“But who are those people that generalise so inanely when they speak of the wisdom of our ancestors? They are persons who inherit all the old, wretched, and worn-out prejudices of their forefathers, without having the intellect or the courage to think for themselves. They are the statesmen who gladly fall back upon any argument in order to defend the monstrous abuses of our institutions against the enlightening influence of reform. They are the churchmen who are deeply interested in preserving the loaves and fishes of which their ancestors in the hierarchy plundered the nation. They are, in fact, all those individuals who have anything to lose by wholesome innovation, and everything to gain by the maintenance of a system so thoroughly rotten, corrupt, and loathsome that it infects and demoralizes every grade of society. The Peer eulogises the wisdom of his ancestors, because they handed down to him usurped privileges and an hereditary rank the principle of which is a crying shame. The Member of the House of Commons speaks of the wisdom of his ancestors, because he holds his seat through the frightful corruption introduced by them into the electoral system. The placeman talks of the wisdom of his ancestors, because they invented sinecures and distributed with the lavish hand of robbers the gold which they wrung from the marrow and the sinew of the industrious millions. The parson praises the wisdom of his ancestors, because they invented the atrocious system of allowing a rector to enjoy five thousand a-year for doing nothing, and paying his curate ninety pounds a-year for doing everything. The lawyer praises the wisdom of his ancestors, because they devised such myriads of insane, stupid, unjust, rascally, and contradictory enactments, that a man cannot move hand or foot even in the most trivial and common sense affairs, without the intervention of an attorney: and wherever that common sense does exist on one side, law is almost sure to be on the other; in the same way that wherever justice is, there law is not. For my part, I do firmly believe that there is not a more wretched and oppressed country in all the world than England—nor a more duped, deceived, gulled, and humbugged people on the face of the earth than the English. Talk of freedom, indeed: why, almost every institution you have is in favour of the rich and against the poor!”