“And then,” continued her brother, kindling with professional enthusiasm, “after that divorce case, too, when the noble lords and ladies washed their dirty linen in public. You can figure how it will all work out. Here is my Lord Lamerton knows that the titled aristocracy have so much dirty linen at home, that he is determined to prevent the British public from wearing bleached linen at all, lest they should perceive the difference. There is nothing,” continued Welsh with a chuckle, “nothing so convenient for one’s purpose as well mixing one’s hyperboles and analogies, and drawing just any conclusions you like out of premises well muddled up with similitudes. We know very well, my dear Marianne, that the bread we buy of the bakers is composed of some flour, and some alum, and some plaster-of-paris, and some china-clay, but we don’t stop to analyse it at our breakfast; we cut ourselves a slice, butter it, and pop it into our mouths, and like it a thousand times better than home-made bread made of pure unadulterated flour. It is just the same with political articles and political speeches. There’s a lot of stuff of all sorts goes into them besides the flour of pure reason. And the British public don’t analyse, they swallow. What they consume they expect to be light and to taste agreeably—they don’t care a farthing what it is made up of.”
Mr. Welsh took out his pocket-book, and jotted down his ideas. “Of course,” said he, talking and laughing to himself, “we must touch this off with a light hand in a semi-jocose, and semi-serious manner. There are some folks who never see a joke, or rather they always see it as something grave. They are like earth-worms—all swallow.”
Mr. Welsh put up his knee, interlaced his fingers round it, and began to swing his knee on a level with his chest.
“If you want to rouse the British public,” he said, “you must tickle them. You can’t do much with their heads, but their feelings are easily roused. Heads!—why there was no getting wisdom out of the head of Jupiter, till it was clove with an axe, and you would not have the skull of the British public more yielding than that of the king of the gods.” He put down his leg that he had been hugging. “My dear sister,” he went on, “I know the British public, it is my business to study it and treat it. I know its moods, and it is one of the most docile of creatures to drive. There is one thing it loves above anything, and that is a sore. Do you remember how Aunt Susan had a bad leg, and how she went on about that leg, the pride she took in it, the medicines she swallowed for it, and how she hated Betsy Tucker because she also had a bad leg, and how she contended that hers was the worst, the most inflamed, and caused her most pain? It is so with the public. It must have its sore; and show it, and discuss it, and apply to it quack plasters, and drink for it quack draughts. What would the doctors do but for the Aunt Susans and Betsy Tuckers—their fortunes stand on these old women’s legs. So is it with us—we live by the bad legs of the nation. The public, in its heart of hearts, don’t want those precious legs to be healed—certainly not to be taken off. What we have to do is to keep the sores angry with caustic, and poked with needles. And that is just why I want this manganese now, to rub it into the legs of the public and wake the sores up into irritation once more.”
Then Welsh began to whistle between his front teeth and swing his foot again.
“The public,” he continued, “are like Job on a dunghill, rubbing its sores. The public has no desire to have the dunghill removed; it rather likes the warmth. When it nods off into a nap then we stick the prongs of the fork into it, and up it starts excited and angry, and we turn the heap over under its nose, and then it settles down into it again deeper than before.”
“I confess I do not know much about the public,” said Mrs. Saltren, resolved to have a word; “but when you come to the aristocracy, why then you are on my ground.”
“On your ground,” laughed Welsh, “because you were lady’s maid at the Park; that is like the land surveyor claiming a property because he has walked over it with a chain.”
“At all events the surveyor knows it,” said Mrs. Saltren, with some spirit, “perhaps better than does the owner.”
“I admit that you have me there,” laughed her brother.