“Well, when a critter talks for talk sake, jist to have a speech in the paper to send to home, and not for any other airthly puppus but electioneering, our folks call it Bunkum. Now the State o’ Maine is a great place for Bunkum—its members for years threatened to run foul of England, with all steam on, and sink her, about the boundary line, voted a million of dollars, payable in pine logs and spruce boards, up to Bangor mills—and called out a hundred thousand militia, (only they never come,) to captur’ a saw mill to New Brunswick—that’s Bunkum. All that flourish about Right o’ Sarch was Bunkum—all that brag about hangin’ your Canada sheriff was Bunkum. All the speeches about the Caroline, and Creole, and Right of Sarch, was Bunkum, In short, almost all that’s said in Congress in the colonies, (for we set the fashions to them, as Paris galls do to our milliners,) and all over America is Bunkum.
“Well, they talk Bunkum here too, as well as there. Slavery speeches are all Bunkum; so are reform speeches, too. Do you think them fellers that keep up such an everlastin’ gab about representation, care one cent about the extension of franchise? Why no, not they; it’s only to secure their seats to gull their constituents, to get a name. Do you think them goneys that make such a touss about the Arms’ Bill, care about the Irish? No, not they; they want Irish votes, that’s all—it’s Bunkum. Do you jist go and mesmerise John Russell, and Macauley, and the other officers of the regiment of Reformers, and then take the awkward squad of recruits—fellers that were made drunk with excitement, and then enlisted with the promise of a shillin’, which they never got, the sargeants having drank it all; go and mesmerise them all, from General Russell down to Private Chartist, clap ‘em into a caterwaulin’ or catalapsin’ sleep, or whatever the word is, and make ‘em tell the secrets of their hearts, as Dupotet did the Clear-voyancing gall, and jist hear what they’ll tell you.
“Lord John will say—‘I was sincere!’ (and I believe on my soul he was. He is wrong beyond all doubt, but he is an honest man, and a clever man, and if he had taken his own way more, and given Powlet Thompson his less, he would a’ been a great colony secretary; and more’s the pity he is in such company. He’ll get off his beam ends, and right himself though, yet, I guess.) Well, he’d say—‘I was sincere, I was disinterested; but I am disappointed. I have awakened a pack of hungry villains who have sharp teeth, long claws, and the appetite of the devil. They have swallered all I gave ‘em, and now would eat me up without salt, if they could. Oh, that I could hark back! there is no satisfyin’ a movement party.’
“Now what do the men say, (I don’t mean men of rank, but the men in the ranks),—‘Where’s all the fine things we were promised when Reform gained the day?’ sais they, ‘ay, where are they? for we are wuss off than ever, now, havin’ lost all our old friends, and got bilked by our new ones tarnationly. What did all their fine speeches end in at last? Bunkum; damn the thing but Bunkum.
“But that aint the wust of it, nother. Bunkum, like lyin’, is plaguy apt to make a man believe his own bams at last. From telling ‘em so often, he forgets whether he grow’d ‘em or dreamt ‘em, and so he stands’ right up on end, kisses the book, and swears to ‘em, as positive as the Irishman did to the gun, which he said he know’d ever since it was a pistol. Now, that’s Bunkum.
“But to get back to what we was a talkin’ of, did you ever hear such bad speakin’ in your life, now tell me candid? because if you have, I never did, that’s all. Both sides was bad, it aint easy to say which is wus, six of one and half a dozen of t’other, nothin to brag of nary way. That government man, that spoke in their favour, warn’t his speech rich?
“Lord love you! I aint no speaker, I never made but one speech since I was raised, and that was afore a Slickville legislatur, and then I broke down. I know’d who I was a talkin’ afore; they was men that had cut their eye-teeth, and that you could’nt pull the wool over their eyes, nohow you could fix it, and I was young then. Now I’m growed up, I guess, and I’ve got my narves in the right place, and as taught as a drum; and I could speak if I was in the House o’ Commons, that’s a fact. If a man was to try there, that was worth any thin’, he’d find he was a flute without knowin’ it. They don’t onderstand nothin’ but Latin and Greek, and I’d buoy out them sand banks, keep the lead agoin’, stick to the channel, and never take ground, I know. The way I’d cut water aint no matter. Oh Solomon! what a field for good speakin’ that question was to-night, if they only had half an eye, them fellers, and what a’most a beautiful mess they made of it on both sides!
“I ain’t a vain man, and never was. You know, Squire, I hante a mossel of it in my composition; no, if you was to look at me with a ship’s glass you wouldn’t see a grease spot of it in me. I don’t think any of us Yankees is vain people; it’s a thing don’t grow in our diggins. We have too much sense in a giniral way for that; indeed if we wanted any, we couldn’t get none for love nor money, for John Bull has a monopoly of it. He won’t open the trade. It’s a home market he looks to, and the best of it is, he thinks he hante none to spare.
“Oh, John Bull, John Bull, when you are full rigged, with your white cravat and white waistcoat like Young England, and have got your go-to-meetin’ clothes on, if you ain’t a sneezer, it’s a pity, that’s all. No, I ain’t a vain man, I despise it, as I do a nigger; but, Squire, what a glorious field the subject to-night is for a man that knows what’s what, and was up to snuff, ain’t it? Airth and seas! if I was there, I could speak on either side; for like Waterloo it’s a fair field; it’s good ground for both parties. Heavens what a speech I could make! I’d electrify ‘em and kill ‘em dead like lightnin’, and then galvanise ‘em and fetch’ em to life agin, and then give them exhiliratin’ gass and set ‘em a larfin’, till they fairly wet themselves agin with cryin’. Wouldn’t it be fun, that’s all? I could sting Peel so if I liked, he’d think a galley nipper had bit him, and he’d spring right off the floor on to the table at one jump, gout or no gout, ravin’ mad with pain and say, ‘I’m bit thro’ the boot by Gosh;’ or if I was to take his side, for I care so little about the British, all sides is alike to me, I’d make them Irish members dance like ravin’, distractin’ bed bugs. I’d make ‘em howl, first wicked and then dismal, I know.
“But they can’t do it, to save their souls alive; some has it in ‘em and can’t get it out, physic ‘em as you would, first with vanity, and then with office; others have got a way out, but have nothin’ to drive thro’ the gate; some is so timid, they can’t go ahead; and others are in such an infarnal hurry, they spend the whole time in false starts.