SECOND MEMBER
I wish I had gone down. But the wind soon blew the other way.
THIRD MEMBER
Then Gower rapped out his amendment. That was good, too, by God.
SECOND MEMBER
Well, the war must go on. And that being the general conviction
this censure and that censure are only so many blank cartridges.
THIRD MEMBER
Blank? Damn me, were they! Gower’s was a palpable hit when he said
that Parliament had placed unheard-of resources in the hands of the
Ministers last year, to make this year’s results to the country
worse than if they had been afforded no resources at all. Every
single enterprise of theirs had been a beggarly failure.
SECOND MEMBER
Anybody could have said it, come to that.
THIRD MEMBER
Yes, because it is so true. However, when he began to lay on with
such rhetoric as “the treasures of the nation lavished in wasteful
thoughtlessness,”—“thousands of our troops sacrificed wantonly in
pestilential swamps of Walcheren,” and gave the details we know so
well, Ministers wriggled a good one, though ’twas no news to ’em.
Castlereagh kept on starting forward as if he were going to jump up
and interrupt, taking the strictures entirely as a personal affront.
[Enter a fourth member.]
SEVERAL MEMBERS
Who’s speaking now?
FOURTH MEMBER
I don’t know. I have heard nobody later than Ward.
SECOND MEMBER
The fact is that, as Whitbread said to me to-day, the materials for
condemnation are so prodigious that we can scarce marshal them into
argument. We are just able to pour ’em out one upon t’other.
THIRD MEMBER
Ward said, with the blandest air in the world: “Censure? Do his
Majesty’s Ministers expect censure? Not a bit. They are going
about asking in tremulous tones if anybody has heard when their
impeachment is going to begin.”