“Why, you don’t mean to say you don’t know what that is?”
“I do not indeed.”
“Not Bunkum? Why, there is more of it to Nova Scotia every winter, than would paper every room in Government House, and then curl the hair of every gall in the town. Not heer of Bunkum? why how you talk!”
“No, never.”
“Well, if that don’t pass! I thought every body know’d that word. I’ll tell you then, what Bunkum is. All over America, every place likes to hear of its members to Congress, and see their speeches, and if they don’t, they send a piece to the paper, enquirin’ if their member died a nateral death, or was skivered with a bowie knife, for they hante seen his speeches lately, and his friends are anxious to know his fate. Our free and enlightened citizens don’t approbate silent members; it don’t seem to them as if Squashville, or Punkinville, or Lumbertown was right represented, unless Squashville, or Punkinville, or Lumbertown, makes itself heard and known, ay, and feared too. So every feller in bounden duty, talks, and talks big too, and the smaller the State, the louder, bigger, and fiercer its members talk.
“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.